Sports

College football

By Derek Levarse dlevarse@timesleader.com
Sports Reporter
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STATE COLLEGE — Daryll Clark and Sean Lee have seen about enough of themselves.

Now that it’s June, walking into any store around town means having their uniformed selves stare back at them from the magazine racks. Clark has been especially well represented on regional covers of national publications – Athlon, Lindy’s and The Sporting News, just to name a few.

Lee appears front and center on the state’s shipment of Phil Steele’s annual preview.

Much of the ink has been positive for the defending Big Ten champions despite their humbling defeat to USC in the Rose Bowl back in January. The Nittany Lions are typically listed as the league co-favorites, along with Ohio State, and have been projected as high as No. 5 in the nation.

The two Penn State captains are trying as much as possible to block it all out.

“I try to stay away from that stuff,” Clark said Thursday from the team’s on-campus headquarters in the Lasch Building. “I hear about it all the time – phone calls, people from home talking about it. It’s real nice to be predicted so high and to see your picture and everything like that in the book. But none of it matters if you’re not winning football games.”

Those temptations tend to be greater for Lee, who has been on the periphery of the program since tearing his ACL last spring and missing the entire 2008 season.

It’s been so long since Lee has actually been on the field for a play in a live game – Dec. 29, 2007, in the Alamo Bowl, to be exact – that reading the predictions or hearing them on TV can be borderline painful.

“Whenever you look at the magazines or anything college football, you start thinking of the season,” Lee said. “I get hyped up, worked up, adrenaline starts pumping. I almost have to – like, say if (ESPN’s) “College Football Live” is on, I have to change the channel sometimes because my adrenaline starts running so much.”

Lee said he puts all that energy into his summer workouts, which typically begin for himself, Clark and the other players on campus with a run at 6 a.m. That leaves plenty of time in the day to hit the weights, watch film and gather together with teammates for some impromptu seven-on-seven drills.

But Lee is thrilled just to be able to participate in it all once again. Though he was a captain in name during the 2008 campaign, Lee said he didn’t necessarily feel like one because he couldn’t be in the trenches with his teammates.

“Now you can start leading by example during the workouts,” Lee said. “Before, when a guy was running and he’s to the point of almost puking, you can’t really yell at him because you’re not in the workouts with him. Now you can get him going and get guys together. I’m not as much out of the loop.”

The captains’ job now is to help make sure everyone is in peak condition for the start of preseason camp in August – well before the season opener against Akron on Sept. 5.

Though both declined to discuss how the Lions’ unimpressive non-conference schedule – home games against Akron, Syracuse, Temple and FCS Eastern Illinois – could affect their national title hopes, they acknowledged that anything short of a 12-0 record likely won’t be enough.

“We’re not mentioned in the national title run if we don’t win every game,” Clark said matter-of-factly.

“You have to be perfect,” Lee added. “That’s something we stress in workouts. I mean, one play could have made the difference in the Iowa game last year. And that can come down to just one step. Such little things.”