WEST LAFAYETTE, IN, October 28 — The Turkey’s attention span just wasn’t broad enough to stay involved in this boring game, but Ol’ Birdbrain forced himself to watch it so that he would have something to say here. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
Huh? Oh, yeah. The Score! Penn State (6–3, 4–2 Big Ten) won it 12–0 over Purdue (5–4, 2–3 Big Ten). And the Turkey’s prediction was incorrect—way incorrect! The Turkey was setting his sights low, so he wouldn’t be disappointed.
(To refresh your memory, the prediction was Purdue 27, Penn State 17.)
My prognostication gave Purdue much too much credit for its offense, which prior to this game was #8 in the nation and #1 in the Big Ten. In reality, the Boilermakers haven’t played all that well against good defenses. Last week, squaring off with Wisconsin, they were able to score just three points. This week they got the big goose egg for the first time since 1996. It was also the first shutout pitched by the Nittany Lions since they beat Northwestern in 2002. Inexplicably, I also gave our offense too much credit, thinking that they could surely score 17 against Purdue’s porous defense. They wound up turning in their usual half-assed performance.
