Three Big Ten teams — Penn State, Michigan, and Wisconsin — have had the luxury thus far of playing all of their games at home.

And who can blame them? Beaver Stadium, the Big House, and Camp Randall Stadium are among the best college football atmospheres in the Big Ten — if not the country.

All three teams will make their first road trips of the season this weekend. One looks to rebound from a bitter defeat, and the other two look to remain unbeaten in 2009 when facing some of their biggest rivals.

Penn State

The Nittany Lions (3-1, 0-1) will play on the road for the first time this week. And that may be a good thing.

After opening with three convincing nonconference victories at home, Penn State is coming off a disappointing 21-10 loss to Iowa. What made it worse for the Nittany Lions was that the game against the Hawkeyes was played in front of 109,316, most of whom were dressed in white.

This week, the 15th-ranked Nittany Lions will travel to Champaign, Ill., to face a reeling Illinois squad coming off an embarrassing 30-0 loss at the hands of Ohio State.

Even though the Fighting Illini are 1-2, Joe Paterno defended his coaching counterpart this week, Ron Zook.

“It comes down to what do you have, how do you use them to the best that you can, make sure you don’t deprive these kids of an opportunity to show what they can do, and I think Ron has done a great job with them,” the Penn State head coach said on Tuesday during the Big Ten football teleconference.

Michigan

The 22nd-ranked Wolverines may not leave the comforts of their own state, but they will leave the confines of the Big House this weekend when they play intrastate foe Michigan State in East Lansing, Mich.

Michigan enters its first road game with a 4-0 mark, which exceeds the number of victories the Wolverines achieved last season. However, it wasn’t easy; the Wolverines had to overcome a fourth-quarter deficit to beat Indiana in Ann Arbor, Mich., last weekend.

This week, the Wolverines will seek revenge for losing at home to the Spartans last season, 35-21. For Michigan State, Saturday’s game may make or break the rest of its season — the Spartans have lost three-straight games and head into this contest with a 1-3 record.

“We know we’re going to have adversity early, and late, and throughout,” Michigan head coach Rich Rodriguez said on Tuesday during the Big Ten football teleconference. “We just have to be able to keep our poise and try to block out the noise and just concentrate on execution.”

Wisconsin

Camp Randall Stadium may not hold 100,000-plus, as do Beaver Stadium and the Big House, but the Badgers have benefited greatly from playing their first four games of the season at home.

Now Wisconsin takes its 4-0 record into its biggest rivalry game this weekend when the Badgers faces a 3-1 Minnesota squad at TCF Bank Stadium in Minneapolis.

Wisconsin won the most recent meeting of one of college football’s oldest rivalries last year in Madison, Wis., overcoming a 21-3 deficit and defeating the Golden Gophers, 35-32.

In addition to this being the first road game for Wisconsin and being a rivalry game, this also is the first Big Ten game Minnesota will play inside the new TCF Bank Stadium, which officially opened on Sept. 12. Knowing this, head coach Bret Bielema is excited about taking his team there.

“The part that I like is that it’s just another venue in the Big Ten,” Bielema said on Tuesday during the Big Ten football teleconference. “As coaches, I know we always talk about your home stadium, but one of the things you talk about when you’re going out and recruiting nationally is playing in the Big Ten and being in environments such as Minnesota’s new stadium.”