Make that a once-great rivalry. Uh, would you believe a sort of decent one?

Yes, it is true the Orange used to be a national power when Hall of Fame coach Ben Schwartzwalder was patrolling the sidelines and All-Americas Jim Brown, Ernie Davis, Floyd Little, Jim Nance and Larry Csonka were carrying the ball and gaining miles of yardage. Those glory days are long gone, but it was only a little more than a decade ago that Syracuse football was still fairly relevant, with coach Paul Pasqualoni calling the shots and some quarterback named Donovan McNabb making magic.

But, with Saturday's 42-28 home loss to Akron - yes, the Zips - Syracuse is now 0-2, giving the program a 7-30 record in coach Greg Robinson's fourth and probably final season. Although the announced attendance in the Carrier Dome was 31,808, some observers have pegged the actual body count at closer to 22,000.

And now in come the Lions, who not only are 2-0, but have amassed 111 points and 1,048 yards of total offense in doing so, despite second-half bench-clearings. Going against a threadbare Syracuse defense that has been punctured for 962 yards in losses to Northwestern and Akron, Penn State wouldn't shock anyone by putting up half a hundred or more during its trip to upstate New York.

This is not what SU fans could want the day after "The Express," a film about Davis, the Heisman Trophy-winning halfback for the Orange in 1961, has its world premiere in Syracuse.

Penn State and Syracuse once played almost annually, but this is the first meeting since 1990, when the Lions won, 27-20. But even then the series was something less than competitive; Paterno is 21-4 all-time against the Orange since he became head coach in 1966. *