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It was all over his face.

James Franklin had just watched his super-hyped, seven-figure quarterback get helped off the field on the Nittany Lions’ gotta-have-it drive, then his backup come in and get squashed on another futile fourth-down call, then his defense fail to get a stop and provide his offense one more fleeting chance.

It was the third loss in a row in a season that was supposed to have been the one that finally got him and his program over the hump. Franklin made his customary walk to midfield and congratulated his counterpart, Northwestern’s David Braun, while the fans who he had always praised and encouraged serenaded him with a chorus of Homecoming boos and “Fire Franklin.”

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The thing you have to remember about football is that it’s played — and coached — by human beings. And when those human beings reach a certain point, sometimes they’ve just had enough.

Maybe the UCLA Bruins were sick of being the laughingstock of the Power Four, let alone the Big Ten. Maybe they wanted to rally around  interim head coach Tim Skipper or its newly appointed offensive coordinator Jerry Neuheisel, who is the spitting image of his Tavern-loving father and called a pretty solid game on Saturday against a Penn State defense that hadn’t allowed much of anything to anyone through four games.

Whatever the case, the home team played like it had something to prove in the Rose Bowl, and it became the first 0-4 program to defeat a top-10 ranked opponent in 40 years.

But you don’t want to read about UCLA. You’re here for blood.

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