The Nittany Turkey

The Colts’ owner, Bill Polian announced that Ed Johnson would be waived Thursday as a result of his drug arrest. While the Colts consider every disciplinary issue on a case by case basis, Johnson essentially had been on probation with the Colts because of his history at Penn State. He screwed up once and he was gone.

He’s pretty much dead meat in the NFL now, unless the Raiders have a spot for him.

Another round of negative publicity for Penn State Football.

See my earlier post about Johnson and read the ESPN story about his dumpage.

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Ed Johnson, former Nittany Lion and now starting defensive tackle for the NFL Indianapolis Colts, was arrested early Wednesday on a drug possession charge.

Ed’s Penn State screwups are still fresh in most of our minds. You’ll remember Ed from the sexual assualt episode back in 2005. He was reinstated in 2006, but didn’t play in the Outback bowl due to a violation of team rules.

This Turkey thought that Johnson would straighten out his act when he got the stint with the Colts and happened into the starting job when Booger McFarland went down. He was an undrafted free agent, who was lucky to find any interest in him by the NFL and even more fortuitous to get a starting job by happenstance. He has a very supportive coach in Tony Dungy, who is often referred to as a “players’ coach.” Dungy had a talk with Johnson when he was brought on board and thought they had reached an understanding about behavior issues. However, clearly, you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.

Ed had a fine year last year, starting all 16 games and recording 63 tackles, one sack, and one forced fumble. He won’t be playing this week for sure, according to Head Coach Tony Dungy, and his future is uncertain.

Johnson was stopped for speeding on I-465 north of Indianapolis. The cops subsequently charged him with both possession of illegal drugs and possession of marijuana. (This Turkey doesn’t know why there were two separate charges, but I guess there is a legal distinction in Indiana.)

“As in any other incident of this nature, it will be reviewed under the league’s substance abuse policy,” league spokesman Greg Aiello wrote in an e-mail to The Associated Press. “A player’s prior history can be considered in evaluating potential discipline under the program.”

This underscores what I’ve been saying about guys like Maurice Evans and Abe Koroma. First of all, not keeping their noses clean gets them the “character flag” on their NFL scouting report, which alerts teams to character issues and, in the worst case, keeps them undrafted. Then, later on, if they should happen to actually land an NFL job and get into even a minor jam, the league will look back at their college record and brand them as repeat offenders. This does not portend well for the health of their wallets.

Ed’s checkered past, along with the plethora of recent off-field incidents, could impact Penn State players trying to enter the NFL. I hope Penn State is not developing a reputation for producing tainted players, but the more incidents that come to light, the more NFL teams will shy away from Nittany Lions.

Time will tell whether Ed Johnson’s NFL career will survive this incident. If it does, he better reform his ass, or he’ll be gone for good.

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I can’t believe that I missed it! Presidential candidate Barack Obama, stumping in Pennsylvania last week, called the Penn State football team “The Nittley Lions”? While feigning being a college football fan to attempt to regain the votes his “clinging to their guns and religion” faux pas in San Francisco lost, he blew any hope of establishing credibility on the chosen subject. The only mystery is why didn’t I hear about it until it was mentioned by Tony Kornheiser and Mike Wilbon on Pardon the Interruption on Monday evening. How the hell could I have missed something this hilarious?

This Mouse thinks Senator Obama is running scared and is trying a little too hard to get the Pennsylvania working class vote. If he just would shut his mouth, he probably would get their vote, but if he keeps putting his foot in it, enough of them could become disgusted enough to make a difference. You and I know small town Pennsylvanians. Obama is on thin enough ice with them to begin with. He ought to stop pressing his luck.

I’m lovin’ every minute of it! Let Obama keep on revealing the faker he really is.

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So, I have a bellyache and my creative title generator isn’t working too well. Thus, “Logjam in Beaverville” was the best I could muster. It sucks, I know, but I’m amusing myself, which is the stated purpose of this blog. In any event, the title refers to the total domination of the Oregon State Beavers by the #19 Penn State Nittany Lions on Saturday last. The final score was 45-14, and to use my oft-abused hack sports writer cliche, it wuddn’t that close.

Evan Royster had a career day, running for 141 yards on 17 carries and three TDs. Daryll Clark looked sharp, too, going 14-23 for 215 yards and two TDs and no INTs. Clark also ran the ball five times for 61 yards, looking much like Michael Robinson in 2005. In all, the Nittany Lions rung up 454 all-purpose yards. On the strength of this performance, the Lions rose to #17 in the AP Poll.

Jordan Norwood reeled in eight passes, which moved him past O. J. McDuffie on Penn State’s all-time list.

Josh Hull and Mark Rubin both had interceptions and both were career firsts.

The game started with a flubbed kickoff by Kevin Kelly, which put the Beavers on the 40 yard-line. Fortunately, it was his last awful kick of the day. After Oregon State couldn’t move the ball, they kicked and in so doing returned the favor with a shanked, 18-yard punt.

Oregon State’s running game stayed grounded against the depleted Penn State front four, which would become more depleted as the day progressed. Still, star rusher Jacquizz Rogers mustered 91 yards and two touchdowns.

The Nittany Lions ran at will against what was last year’s #1 rush defense. However, the Beavers had to replace the entire front seven, so the defense did not resemble what they had on the field last year.

Penn State lost the ball only once, a heartbreaker for Evan Royster as he fumbled close to the goal line. Otherwise, the Lions were perfect.

Close to perfect, that is. Alas, they were not perfect on the injury front, losing Jerome Hayes for the season with a torn ACL in his right knee on a punt return in the fourth quarter. Hayes just returned from rehabbing his left knee, which was injured last season.

We TV viewing fans did not get to witness the Hayes injury, as ABC decided to cut away in the fourth quarter to the Oklahoma game, which also wound up not close. I expressed my discontent over this travesty of TV coverage in a prior post.

So, was this the Spread HD? I think we saw some of what it has to offer. Joe and Jay seemed to open it up a bit after the Coastal Carolina game. There was a big difference in one area—using Daryll Clark in the running game.

What was Jay Paterno doing down in the coaches’ huddle on the sideline close to the end of the first half? In the second half, the camera found him in his usual position upstairs in the booth.

We promised you a guest reporter, and you will have a guest reporter. You’ll recall that Sacajawea, a Shoshone, was one of the first and foremost Oregonians. She was an indispensable helper for Lewis & Clark in their search for the Northwest Passage. Sacajawea spoke English, French, and Shoshone and she wore cool looking buckskin dresses. Clark affectionately named her “Janey.”

Sacajawea was said to have died in 1812, but then a woman died in 1884 in Wyoming who many people believed was the real Sacajawea. Well, we probed a bit and found the elderly Janey actually still living amongst the Seminoles at the Micosukee Reservation behind the casino in Hollywood, Florida. She is getting a little old, slightly over 220, but she still sparkles with the determination and humor that got her through those many thousands of miles with the Lewis & Clark expedition and made her an icon for the Women’s Suffrage Movement in the early 20th century. She gave us some Sacajawea dollars as souvenirs of our visit.

Janey’s sense of humor is evident in her report. This Turkey asked her what she thought of her fellow Oregonians’ first 18-yard punt, and she replied with the following, which I’ve printed in red. We thought the modern day National Organization for Women (NOW) might particularly like it.

Punts? You want to hear about punts? Oy, I’ll give you already a story about punts!

It was the cold winter of 1804 and I was in the service of Meri and Bill on the Oregon Trail. Being fluent in English, French, and Shoshone, I was tasked with carrying a note containing the supply order to M. Carbonneau’s trading post, many miles away. All those languages—so confusing at times for a Shoshone girl. The order said, “Please have three punts and a canoe ready for us on Tuesday.”

Unfortunately, along the way, a beaver ate the note and I had to hastily scrawl out a copy of the order when I got to my destination. As nightfall was nigh, I quickly dropped off the rewritten order and beat a hasty path back to the boys’ camp. I had a close encounter with a bear, but I was able to rejoin the party, which left the next day for the trading post.

Upon our reaching the trading post the proprietor greeted Lewis & Clark. “Welcome, Lewis and Clark! I was pleased to receive your order, but there is one problem, mes amis. I got you the girls, but what the hell is a ‘panoe’?”

Um, thank you, Janey.

This Turkey will be back with a hopefully relevant write up about the Syracuse game later in the week, possibly, maybe.

Perhaps.