No, that’s crap. I just forgot.

I’m torn on this one. I’m pretty sure Ohio State has an excellent defense, but I’m mostly basing that on the USC game, and now you have to wonder how big a deal USC is.

That’s the problem with this sport, the huge talent disparity, even at the highest level. I think Penn State can make big plays in the passing game, but have they done so against a big-league defense?

Two edges for the Nits, as I see it: 1. They’re at home, and 2. The only even arguable weakness of Penn State’s D is the secondary, and Terrelle Pryor isn’t equipped to take advantage of it.

Penn State 23, Ohio State 17.

The trap game concern is a real one. A quarterback named Kafka (not Franz, but still) has to give one pause. Kafka runs a pretty good passing game that should test Penn State’s mostly untested secondary.

But I’m not bullish on Northwestern’s intangibles, either. The Wildcats are coming off an unlikely homecoming win (they trailed 28-3, and won 29-28) which must’ve had a considerable emotional and psychic price. Coming up with a great effort to beat a superior opponent one week later seems a long shot. Also they’re beat up, especially in the secondary, and the Nittany Lions can throw the rock.

Penn State 33, Northwestern 24.

And speaking of local angles….

Chase Utley has won over at least one New York scribe.

Tim McCarver made a good point that I missed in last night’s live blog: You have to pitch inside to Utley, but it’s a very fine line. Get it to far in, and you hit him. Not inside enough and, well, you saw last night what happens.

Here’s an interesting look at the impact of the DH on the series.

7:45 p.m.- Phils starters being introduced. I know TV flattens sound, but I thought the boos for Jimmy “Shut him up” Rollins were fairly subdued. Don’t hear any evidence that there’s a Philly presence in the crowd, though. Could do without the music….

7:50- Over on Comcast, Sixers are being lit up by Jason Williams - the point guard, not the psycho gun nut - who took last year off and played in a Miami summer league. Andre Miller, meanwhile, is playing behind Steve Blake in Portland.

7:56- Is Jill Biden hot? That theory has been advanced by a colleague.

Thanks to Joe Buck for mentioning that it’s the Phillies who are defending champs. Thanks also to Buck for not being Chip Carey.

8:01- This just in: Jill Biden less hot that Kim Basinger. (Took me five minutes on IMDB to come up with Basinger’s name. You’re not dealing with Bill Simmons here folks.)

Text from ET- ‘Yogi wth a broad on each arm. He’s so pimp.’

8:02- Leading off the game and the series, J-Roll… bunts? Little late in the game, and the career, to start that.

Utley gets behind and then works a walk. Excellent.

Howard looks like Dave Parker in that profile shot with the facial hair and the helmet a bit cockeyed.

8:08- Howard - who, remember, can’t hit lefties - lines a double to right. Sabbathia’s head can be messed with, and this is just how to do it. Werth’s gonna have to do something against this guy.

Werth walks. They’re loaded. This is a positive first inning even if they don’t score. Crowd sitting on hands, CC at 22-pitch mark and groping a little already.

8:14- Jumpy, got-to-drive-em-in swing by Ibanez on 3-1 pitch lets Yanks off easy.

8:18- Something to watch here- do Yanks step out a lot to miss with Lee’s fast rhythm?

Jeter whiffs on three pitches. Lee looks like Lee, and that’s a very good thing.

How smooth was that 1-2-3 first?

8:25- Top 2nd. Ben Francisco looks nervous. Sabbathia’s the all-time Yankee leader in pants fabric. Including the Bambino. And David Wells.

8:32- Fearsome Sixers’ D has held Orlando to 66 percent shooting and 10 threes. They’re down 23 at the half. Methinks this is tonight’s final dispatch from Orlando.

8:33- Lee vs. A-Rod.

8:34- Be seated, Alex.

Now Posada, the one Yankee I actually dislike. Bit of a snotty whiner. Naturally, he’s the first guy Lee gets behind.

Posada singles rather softly to right. Looks like it’s raining and blowing like hell right now. 

8:38- No problem- Matsui and Cano go quietly. Lee’s dealin’. Top of the Phils order coming up.

J-Roll was born in 1978, so he appeared in MC Hammer videos was he was like, what, 10? Nice resume-builder.

Victorino drives one to upper deck in left, foul, as evil visions dance in CC’s head.

On the other hand, visions of Phils stranding baserunners and blowing chances…..

Utley isn’t a great hitter behind in the count, but you better throw him strikes.

Utley grinding, CC’s pitch count building….

8:52- Utley homers to right. Great AB. Sabbathia looked agitated even before that. Expect him to pitch Howard verrryyy carefully…

8:54- Give CC credit. He got pissed and went right at Howard. 1-0 Phils through two and a half.

ET, a huge Yankee fan, already counting this one as a loss.

Didn’t Justin Timberlake use to be involved in music?

9:00- Jeter drills first pitch to right for two-out double. Damon looks lost against Lee, though.

Werth, due up, needs to take some pitches.

9:10- Sabbathia blows Phils away in 4th. Give him credit- He took Utley’s homer like a slap in the face in a good way, gunning the heat to get ahead and then making aggressive pitches.

Lee looks to be going against type and working deliberately. To me, for Lee against this lineup, Texiera and A-Rod are litmus tests- so far, so great, he’s whiffed them four times. I’m not sure Lee isn’t a lefty version of Greg Maddux as his peak right now.

Into the fifth, still 1-0.

9:24- Looks like its raining hard again. Feliz bugs me- through the first couple months of this season he seemed to have picked something up from his mates. Now he’s swinging at everything again.

9:27- Fox graphic shows Lee and Sabbathia (both ex-Indians) and says “You still have Lebron.” Buck: ”The clock’s ticking.” How many Clevelanders just gave Buck the finger?

Oh by the way- Phils haven’t had a good AB since Utley’s homer…. it’s not like they can depend on Lee throwing a CG shutout… 

Rain always looks worse than it is on TV but still, these pitchers are doing a hell of a job given the conditions… Oops, Matsui bounces a leadoff single up the middle.

9:36- And we have the first potential umpiring cluster@#*$ of the Fall Classic….. but they got it right. Rollins caught a sinking liner on the fly and doubled Matsui, but it was a little confusing-looking. Give credit to the umps and Buck/McCarver, who decisively explained what happened.

In case you’re wondering, cluster@#*$ is being turned into a link because the @ is making wordpress think it’s an e-mail address. If you’re interested in e-mailing cluster@#*$, simply click on the link.

9:46- Time for a little Harry the K: CHASE UTLEY, YOU ARE THE MAN… Guess he’s not hurt that bad. It’s 2-0. Both homers came off a grade A-plus-plus lefty, both after being behind in the count.

Werth not patient enough. But he did get a dribbler through the infield for a single. He should be running.

9:52- Sabbathia’s over 100 pitches with two outs in the sixth.

Again, a glum ET reports that it’s over.

I can’t think of a movie I’m more looking forward to based entirely on the TV trailer and the title than, “The men who stare at goats.”

10:05- Lee just caught a weak pop-up, off Damon’s bat, as nonchalantly as if he was playing catch with his kid. He seems fairly relaxed.

And we’re into the seventh.

Seeing Phil Hughes warm up reminds me… During the summer I remember reading a quote from some jackass scout saying that JA Happ’s success is evidence of how bad the NL is. Of course, he’s probably one of the scouts who would’ve have told you, not long ago, that Phil Hughes was God.

10:15- I love America as much as the next guy (assuming the next guy isn’t in al-Qaida), but “creative” or long-form versions of “God Bless America,” such as they’re now singing at the ballpark, make me swell with a feeling I’m pretty sure is not patriotism. I worked a Barnstormers’ game this summer in which a local choral group came up with an interpretation of GBA that was longer than a rain delay in the same game. I’m not kidding. That’s literally true.

On the bright side, I switched over to that MTV HD station and heard Elvis Costello do “Allison,” live.

10:21- Very strong 7th for Lee. You just can’t be much better. Not sure the pitch count, but a complete game seems possible. Now we get to see Utley hit again.

10:30- Rollins on, nobody out… I was just about the write that he should be running here and… there he goes. Posada can’t throw these guys out. One of the reasons I like the Phils in the series is I love their lineup against Hughes and Joba on this stage.

Victorino walks. 1st-and-second, nobody out, Hughes is gone. Guess who’s up?

Marte vs. Utley… it’s 2-and-0, crowd turning on the Yanks….. and the plate ump bails Marte out on two straight outside fastballs. Even ET (God live him) concurs, via text, although not in language that, uh, can be shared.

10:45- Now the plate ump squeezes Robertson and Werth walks. Bases loaded, two outs. Either Girardi uses four pitchers this inning or Ibanez finally gets to see a righty…

Robertson still in- Ibanez 3-2 bouncer finds a hole… and it’s 4-0. Timmy makes the good point that all Phils big hits have come with two strikes. The broadcasters have really been perfectly fine.

Now, maybe, I can stomach Lidge in the ninth. Not that I’m advocating it…

10:54- Lee vs. the Yankees’ 7-8-9 guys in the eighth- behind-the-back glove save and a beauty for the first out. He’s finally at 100 pitches. To paraphrase George Costanza, He’s Batman…

11:04- Ruiz gets a one-out double in the ninth, and McCarver says something nonsensical about icing and cake. Very good for Ruiz to get going- maybe I’m nuts, but it seems like the nine-hole hitter is big in DH games.

Rollins infeld hit, Victorino line single, and it’s 5-0.

How does the concept “All you need is love?” sell Blackberrys?

Howard’s second double of the night makes it 6-0. Victorino out at the plate, but this is starting to seem too good to be true.

11:20- Jeter gets his third hit, a blooper to center. Madson, not Lidge, up in the pen. McCarver says they should let Lee pitch at least to the apparently overmatched Damon, he’s right.

Damon singles to right. What was McCarver thinking?

Just kidding. It does make sense to go to Madson now. Texiera’s really struggling with Lee, though.

Texiera grounder up the middle, nice play by Utley, but Rollins messes up the DP throw. Jeter scores. Crap.

Lee’s up to 114 pitches now, A-Rod up. Lee should be done. Remember you want to throw him three times in the series.

11:28- Lee whiffs A-Rod for the third time, the sixth time he’s whiffed middle of the order righties A-Rod/Texiera. I’d like to see Posada end it…..

And he does. Whiff. Lee: 6 hits, 0 earned runs, 10 ks, 0 walks.

Phils should follow the old basketball coaches’ advice for playing on the road…. savor the silence in that ballpark. 

So many good things about tonight… the best of which might be that Mariano Rivera wasn’t heard from.

Tomorrow night- Pedro takes center stage. Peace out.

Problem:  I just went through the last 30 World Series at length. There were 22 in which, by my reckoning, a superior team could be identified. In those 22, the better team went 10-12. (The other eight I considered, conservatively, too close to call. And when I say conservatively I’m not kidding. If I split hairs, the “superiors” would have done even worse.)

The “better” team has won just 10 of the last 30 Fall Classics, it says here. You can argue individual cases here and there, but there’s no way you can argue that being “better,” has been a decisive edge.

And some of those weren’t even close; the 1988 Dodgers, 1990 Reds and 2006 Cardinals honestly weren’t much above average. If the Phillies beat the Yankees, it won’t be one of the 10 biggest “upsets,” (if that’s the right word, and I don’t think it is) of the modern era.

The Phillies’ lefthandedness concerns me. The layoff concerns me. Cole Hamels concerns me. The woes, injury-related or otherwise, of the Phillies’ best player, Chase Utley, concern me.

But the thing that really concerns me is Brad Lidge - again, perhaps the least effective pitcher in major-league baseball this year - on the mound with the season on the line. The more Charlie Manuel handles his bullpen situationally, the better. The deeper the Phils’ starters go into games, the better (but, you know, duh- that’s like saying the team that scores more will win).

There’s no good reason for games to come down to Lidge vs. Rivera, but if they do, the Phillies lose. Absolutely. That’s just reality.

Having said all of that, I’m going to go back to what the Phillies have, as a matter of objective fact, done: three straight division titles. They’ve won five straight postseason series and 18 of their last 22 postseason games. I can’t believe how little has been said about that nationally. Not to play the “media wants New York to win,” card, because that’s boring and dumb, but imagine if the Yankees came into the series with that resume? We’d be hearing about it until our ears bled.

Has there even been a more seasoned, proven, accomplished underdog? Has there ever been an underdog with such bottomless belief in itself? Has that belief ever had a more substantial foundation? I might be drummed out of SABR for claiming that such things matter more than VORP and EqA and SNLVAR, but look at the history. Look at the evidence.

Phillies in seven.

1. Secondary-market tickets are going for about $50 percent more in Philly than in New York. With the I-95 corridor proximity of the teams, ticket brokers are expecting a bigger Philly presence at the games in Yankee Stadium than the other way around.

“We’ll be watching prices in Philadelphia and New York very closely in the coming days to see what happens to ticket availability and prices,” a broker said. “If these prices hold, look for lots of red in Yankee Stadium.”

2. It’s making Mets fans inconsolably miserable. (An odd footnote: the linked story was written by A.G. Sulzberger, 28 year-old scion of the dynastic family that owns the New York Times.)

Pathetic, actually, that Mets’ fans are developing a Cub-fan-like complex , replete with romantic failure-angst. Their club has won two World Series, one by getting on one of those unstoppable and inexplicable rolls and beating an utterly superior opponent (1969), the other handed to them through Bill Buckner’s legs (1986).

Nobody owes them anything.

In related news, it’s apparently very good to be a Phillie right now in ways that are only tangentially connected to baseball. To summarize, chicks dig Charlie Manuel.

It’s cold here, and intermittently windy and rainy. And, weirdly, the sun comes out once in a while. It’s not nice, but probably not bad enough to factor into the game.

Just some random stuff…

Pretty good interview with Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz, in which he says Big Ten should go to a round-robin format.

In other Big Ten news, religion is trivialized by Goldy the Gopher. We are assured he’s sorry.

(On second thought, the weather might indeed be bad enough to factor in the game- Michigan coaches are standing at midfield, and the wind is whipping their khakis around.)

In the for-what-it’s-worth category, AccuScore (”The Leader in Sports Forecasting”), likes the Nits.

Beat food guru Frank Bodani now extolling the virtues of toiletries and lotions provided at Marriott hotels. Obsessions with plantains and flan are one thing, but phrases like “fresh and citrusy,” represent territory I don’t care to inhabit.

Random brush with celebrity: So we’re sitting at breakfast today, and at the next table is Ed Helms, of “The Office,” “The Hangover,” and “Daily Show with Jon Stewart,” fame. At a hotel in Ypsilanti, Mich. Go figure.

The story was on an economist from the University of Pennsylvania winning the Nobel Prize. It appeared during the run-up to the Phillies winning the 1980 World Series. The headline: “Phils fan nabs Nobel.”

I love the idea as a Nobel Prize as something one can “nab.”

Anyway, the Daily News, of course very Phils-oriented right now, came up almost as big in today’s paper: “Murder count keeps N.J. nurse from seeing a lot of Phils games.”

What really sucks about murder is, of course, the inconvenience.

In the wild-card era, when winning a championship means winning three short series, one of them a  best-of-five, it’s easy to write off any single World Series title as not particularly indicative of anything (see the 2006 Cardinals). But the Phils have now won three straight division titles, five straight postseason series, and 18 of their last 23 postseason games. The Dodgers outscored their opponents by 169 runs this regular season. In the NLCS, the Phils outscored them 35-16.

The last time this sustained level of postseason performance was even approached was a decade ago, by the Yankees of the late 1990s. The last time it was approached by a National League team was by the Big Red Machine in the mid-1970s, but that was long before the Wild-Card, three-round playoff era.

 This just in: We’re watching a great baseball team.

Of course, the Phils will have to win the next series to get any lasting credit for all this. Don’t bet against them.

Among travelers sitting at the gate, there’s exactly the same amount of Penn State attire and Michigan attire. For what it’s worth.

This could be one of those situations where it’s no advantage to being at home. Rich-Rod planted the seeds of a quarterback controversy two weeks back. If Tate Forcier struggles, does the crowd start agitating for the other guy? If RR goes to the other guy, also a true freshman, does the crowd turn over that? Has Forcier, a true freshman, had his confidence shaken just a bit?

As I said in the paper today, Penn State getting an early lead is more crucial than usual- it’ll take the crowd out of the game and perhaps even turn it hostile- Wolverine Nation still wants to dislike Rodriguez. With Penn State having a bit more to play for, I just have a feeling the Michigan psyche is an issue here.

The position-group most likely to dominate is Penn State’s defensive front seven.

(Penn State just took the lead in the logo-clothing category.)

Penn State 24, Michigan 21

(Penn State now has a sizable lead in logo clothing.)