1 a.m., Monday — The first kid showed up early Monday morning — late Sunday, actually. Geez, the Nittany Lions’ 31-6 victory over Temple was all of 33 hours old. And in 139 hours and 12 minutes would be the kickoff for The Game.

To hell with the hype, the kid wanted the front row. That’s why he was the first student to show up for the pre-Iowa Paternoville encampment. Over the next 23 hours, 105 groups totaling nearly 800 students showed up to wait in line to get in line and pitch their tents for front row seats for The Game.

By mid-day Tuesday, the numbers settled in at 110 tents and upwards to 900 students. The record is 126 tents, set before the Ohio State game in 2005. That was the first The Game, at least in recent memory.

The kids are ready, down to the tiniest detail of the advertised White Out. The signs and banners that they normally hang along the railing in the southeast corner of Beaver Stadium, promoting “Blue Royster Cult” and the like, will still be there. But they’ll all be blank, as in white, for The Game.

10:45 p.m., Monday —The Fray was over. Not The Game, the concert. The crowd inside the Bryce Jordan Center was about 5 percent the size of the one that will be across the street in six days. Will “Heartless, Happiness, Over My Head or How to Save a Life” be the theme song for The Game?

How about “How to Save a Linebacker,” at least for The Game?

12:30 p.m., Tuesday — As has been his custom this season, Joe Paterno appears early in the media room, several minutes before it’s scheduled to begin. Joe is wearing the kind of smile only seen in these parts when it is the week of The Game.

The Lions could be down to their second string of linebackers. Fast and furious Michael Mauti went down with a torn ACL in his right knee in the middle of summer drills. Navarro Bowman, a first team All Big Ten in 2008, has missed all but the first two series of the season opener against Akron. And Sean Lee left the game against Temple on Saturday with a knee injured so badly that Paterno said (50 minutes from now) he thinks the senior captain may not be ready for The Game.

1:20 p.m., Tuesday — That’s Paterno’s time slot for the weekly Big Ten teleconference. It includes all of the Big Ten’s head coaches, including the granddaddy of them all, Paterno himself. He has been coaching in the Big Ten longer than any other current coach, a full half-dozen years more than Iowa’s Kirk Ferentz, who Joe will face in The Game.

On the call, Paterno said that Lee, named Big Ten Defensive Player of the Week after making 12 tackles, 2-1/2 tackles for a loss and a sack against Temple, is day-to-day with a sprained knee: "It's doubtful he'll be ready to go Saturday. But he is a tough kid. He may be able to swing it.''

(He’ll play.)

Paterno then said that Bowman practiced Monday after missing the last two games with a groin injury: "He's not 100 percent yet. He didn't go very long. If he can get through today, I will feel better he has a chance to go 100 percent."

If Bowman and Lee somehow can’t go, then Josh Hull, Nathan Stupar and Bani Gbadyu would be the Lions’ starting linebackers for The Game.

Lunch, Wednesday — When Paterno gets together with a few hundred of his most ardent admirers for the weekly State College Quarterback Club in Beaver Stadium’s Mount Nittany Lounge, it’s unlikely that emcee Steve Jones will mention the “R” word. Or the other “R” word. Joe hates ’em both.

The first one is for rankings. The Nittany Lions enter the game rated No. 4 in the USA Today Coaches poll and No. 5 in the Associated Press poll (one point below Mississippi). Luckily for PSU, the pollsters don’t get the Big Ten Network.

The second one is for revenge. The Nittany Lions are 1-6 in their last seven games and 2-7 in their last nine games against Iowa. Those seven losses have been by a combined 32 points – or 4.6 points per game. Two have been by a point, one has been by two points and a fourth came in OT.

To be frank with you, surely the Lions are seething with retribution. Right?

“I don’t know what revenge has got to do with it in football,” Paterno says. “It’s not like they sneaked up on us and stuck us in the back with a knife or something. They played a good football game and they beat us. I don’t think we’re going to get too fired (up).”

Besides, Joe says he doesn’t even remember all those losses. Has nothing to do with that fact that he’s going on 83. Joe looks ahead, not behind at those seven defeats, which represent a full 5.5 percent of his 127 entire career losses over 44 seasons.

“I couldn’t tell you what they did to us two years ago,” he admits. “I couldn’t tell three or four years ago. I honest to God couldn’t tell you.”

Good for him. That means he doesn’t recall that classically awful 6-4 Penn State loss to the Hawkeyes in 2004, near the end of a five-year tailspin when many Lion loyalists thought that never again would they win The Game.

9:45 a.m., Thursday — That’s when Lisa Salters and Ivan Maisel team up to do a little bit of guest hosting in my Penn State classroom. Salters is the ABC college football sideline reporter and a loyal Penn State grad, while Ivan Maisel, is the noted ESPN.com college football writer and author of two books about college football. It’s a lot easier to get Big Name Guests to class when it’s two days before The Game.

8 p.m., Friday — Joe gets his mojo on in Rec Hall at the traditional “Rally in the Valley” pep rally. Odds that he will swing a towel: 5-1. Do a jig: 3-1. Call this team the best group of guys he’s ever had: 2-1. Mangle Astorino’s name: 1-1. And…this is guaranteed…promise that Lions will win The Game.

10 a.m., Saturday — ESPN’s College GameDay will broadcast live from Happy Valley. Lee, Kirk and Fowler will do the honors; maybe Desmond Howard will do his thing from atop the BJC. This is the third time (also the 2005 and 2007 Ohio State games) in five seasons the GameDay guys will be in Happy Valley to do The Game.

8:12 p.m., Saturday — Kickoff.

“To be home and to have a crowd as enthusiastic as the crowds that we have here, and to have them as loud as it has been, it’s an advantage for us,” says Paterno. “There’s something about it, the whole business about the White Out. It’s a bringing together of the whole institution, not only the undergraduate kids, but you see people who will be old men, maybe 60.”

At last, The Game.

11:59 p.m., Saturday — Penn State wins! Just six more weeks until the next The Game. 

Mike Poorman covers Penn State football for StateCollege.com. His column appears Wednesdays and Saturdays after the game during football season. He teaches the 400-level course “Joe Paterno, Communications & The Media” in the John Curley Center for Sports Journalism in Penn State’s College of Communications.