Nittany Lions Show How to Skin Wildcats : College football: No. 3 Penn State scores early and often in 41-7 crunching of No. 4 Arizona.

The school from the conference famous for staging thrill-a-minute games on late-night cable stepped into broad daylight Saturday looking for a little respect on national television.

So what did it amount to?

Razing Arizona.

Penn State’s 41-7 demolition of Arizona before a crowd of 97,168 at Beaver Stadium in the Pigskin Classic all but extinguished the Wildcats’ national title chances and added another coat of taint on the Pacific 10 Conference.

Pac it in?

On Aug. 28?

“It’s tremendously damaging to them and also damaging to the conference,” said Pac-10 Commissioner Tom Hansen, who attended Saturday’s game. “This was a measuring stick.”

Arizona, it turned out, was running about four quarts low.

It was a stunning and disheartening defeat for the Wildcats, who returned 17 players from last year’s 12-1 team and entered the game ranked No. 4 nationally.

Arizona would have been forgiven a tough road defeat against No. 3 Penn State, but the Wildcats’ ineptness on the national stage served as a reminder to UCLA’s consecutive pratfalls last season against Miami and Wisconsin.

Arizona, in fact, appeared to have borrowed from UCLA’s defensive playbook given its dizzying array of miscues and missed tackles.

“I hope they’re a great team,” Arizona Coach Dick Tomey said of Penn State.

If not . . .

To get back on the national map now, Arizona needs Penn State to end up as good as Knute Rockne’s Four Horsemen squad.

Hey, who knows?

Nittany Lion Coach Joe Paterno, housebound this summer tending to his wife Sue, who broke her hip in a fall, used the time to watch the history of Arizona on film.

Safe to say Paterno exposed some weaknesses.

Penn State drove 80 yards in seven plays on its opening drive and scored when Kevin Thompson threw a short pass that Chafie Fields turned into a 37-yard touchdown after Arizona cornerback Kelvin Hunter whiffed on a tackle attempt.

After Arizona’s first drive ended with a missed field goal, Penn State moved in for the kill, Fields taking an inside reverse on second down and prancing 70 yards through the Arizona secondary to make it 14-0.

Penn State made it 17-0 in the second quarter on Travis Forney’s 31-yard field goal, 24-0 on Thompson’s 60-yard scoring pass to Larry Johnson, and 31-zip with 5:13 left in the half on Leo Mill’s one-yard touchdown run.

Paterno thought his team would play well.

“But I didn’t expect us to go up and down field the first couple of times,” he said.

Up and down the field they went.

The Nittany Lions’ longest scoring drive took only 2:57. Arizona, which averaged 34.7 points a game last year, avoided the shutout with a meaningless touchdown in the final minute.

There was heavy damage control in the losing locker room. Arizona accepted an offer to the Pigskin Classic last January thinking it had the talent to at least hang tough with Penn State in Happy Valley.

Tomey tried to shape the loss as a character builder.

“In the big picture, I think this was good for us,” Tomey said. “I didn’t think there was a downside coming in. This doesn’t have to be a death knell. This needed to happen to us, and it’s a hell of a lot better this happened now than to Stanford in conference.”

That kind of talk sounds OK for a team looking to go to its first Rose Bowl, but it doesn’t wash for a group competing for a national title.

As it stands, Arizona now has to avoid the emotional letdown that befell Arizona State last year after the Sun Devils suffered a last-minute loss against Washington in the opener, lost at Brigham Young the next week and finished 5-6.

Next week, Arizona plays at Texas Christian. “It’s over, you can’t get it back, you can’t think about it next week,” Arizona quarterback Ortege Jenkins said. “We have to play on.”

Arizona’s national hopes, though, appear doomed, and Jenkins acknowledged afterward that his team was overrated.

Penn State fans made the same claim when they struck up the chant after the touchdown that made it 31-0.

“When you’re on a team, you know what your team is,” Jenkins said. “Some guys fell into the hype.”

Arizona probably will take a major tumble in the writers’ and coaches’ poll, and doesn’t have a marquee nonconference game left on the schedule to make up ground in the all-important Bowl Championship Series rankings.

Arizona’s sad-sack showing only reinforced the nation’s perception of the Pac-10 as the can’t-tackle conference.

“It’s something we’ll have to come a long way to overcome,” Hansen said of his conference. “We’ll have to win some nonconference games to change the perception.”

The reality: On Sept. 11 California plays at Nebraska and UCLA, reeling from the loss of suspended players, limps into Ohio State.

The Pac-10’s best shot at a prestige win might be Oregon at Michigan State on Thursday, and even that one won’t raise eyebrows.

Paterno, in the meantime, has a different challenge with his Nittany Lions: taming expectations.

Penn State amassed 504 yards in offense. Fields, a receiver, led the team with 110 rushing yards in three carries and also added 76 yards in three catches.

The Penn State defense held Trung Canidate, who averaged 7.3 yards a carry in winning the Pac-10 rushing title last year, to 31 yards in 10 carries.

And LaVar Arrington looked every bit like the nation’s best linebacker as he tormented Arizona offenders from sideline to sideline.

“I’d hate to say they got their butts kicked,” he said. “That’s kind of harsh.”

Arrington, who left the game after being bothered by cramps and dehydration, said he was all right and won’t miss any practice.

And now what, Penn State is supposed to get excited about playing Akron on Saturday?

“This is a mature team,” Paterno said. “I think they will handle it. I just don’t know how good they are yet. This was just one game. I’m very reluctant to make too much of one game. It’s not fair to my team, not fair to Arizona.”