- Times Leader

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It will be two weeks shy of a decade since Frank Solich last visited Beaver Stadium. Once again, it will be tough for him to know what to expect.

Then the coach at Nebraska in 2002, Solich faced what turned out to be the largest crowd in Penn State history, a charged-up atmosphere in prime-time that saw the game get away from the highly ranked Cornhuskers before halftime.

Now leading an Ohio program that he has dramatically improved, Solich again finds himself having to consider things outside of a normal gameplan while preparing for Saturday’s opener against the Nittany Lions.

This one will kick off at noon instead of 8 p.m. And though there is a concerted fan effort to break that attendance record of 110,753 from the night of Sept. 14, 2002, tickets still remained for sale by Penn State as of Tuesday night.

The unpredictable part will be the fans, eager to see a football game without the heavy baggage of the last game at Beaver Stadium – coincidentally, also against Nebraska last November, days after Jerry Sandusky was arrested and Joe Paterno was fired.

For Solich, the key is to shut out as much of that background noise as possible.

“Number one, it’s obvious that the reason we’re going to Penn State is to play a football game,” Solich said. “And that’s what were focused on. We’ve tried to not have all the other areas that can surround a football game – and certainly this one – enter into it. Because we’re just preparing to play a game.

“Now, there are a lot of things that have to be addressed to make sure that your guys feel as comfortable as possible in going there and getting lined up to play the game. To have as few surprises prior to the kickoff as there can be.”

Solich is well familiar with overwhelming crowds from his six years as head coach at Nebraska, a program he spent nearly 30 years at as a player and a coach. And the Bobcats, long an afterthought in the Mid-American Conference, are now the league favorite, having been to three straight bowl games and winning one last season for the first time in school history.

In other words, Ohio is better prepared to play in a place like Penn State than nearly all of the Lions’ recent opening opponents, populated with FCS outfits like Coastal Carolina, Youngstown State and Indiana State.

Solich brings a big-game mentality to the Bobcats. And he knows as well as anyone the task that lies ahead of Bill O’Brien in his first game leading the Lions.

Born near Johnstown in western Pennsylvania, Solich happened to be the one to replace legendary ‘Huskers coach Tom Osborne, being selected for the job by an athletic director hand-picked by Graham Spanier, the former Nebraska chancellor and Penn State president.

Despite winning 59 games in six years at Nebraska, Solich was fired because of those incredibly high expectations set by his predecessor.

“Obviously he’s got more challenges than most any football coach that I can remember,” Solich said of O’Brien. “But the challenge of replacing a program with a tremendously successful coach prior to you is daunting. When you look at the Nebraska situation, not only did Tom Osborne win three national championships and had tremendous success, especially at the end, but he set the program’s expectations right at the very top in the country. And Bob Devaney was before Tom, and he started the success at Nebraska.

“Obviously Joe, Coach Paterno, was at Penn State for all those years and had all that success. And the expectations there are, I’m sure, very much the same as what they were when I took over at Nebraska. “There’s some things that transpired that, obviously, complicated things more (for O’Brien).”