The Nittany Turkey

Primarily about Penn State football, this is a tale told by idiots, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

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Home 2010 September Archives for 27th

Archives for September 27, 2010

Getting a Little Religion from Temple

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First of all, how about a big round of applause for this Turkey, who just about nailed the score prediction for Temple vs. PSU. My prediction was 24-13. The final score was Penn State (3-1, 0-0 Big Ten) 22, Temple (3-1, 1-0 Big MAC-haha) 13, and the Nittany Lions once again did not cover the spread, which had dropped to around 13 by game time. If you followed my advice to take the “under” and take Temple and the points, you’d be buying me dinner right now.

No, Temple was definitely not a pushover cupcake cream puff team. They scored first and kept PSU in the hole for the best part of three quarters.

One thing I never would have predicted was that Collin Wagner would tie the school record for number of field goals in a game. (If he hadn’t missed one of six, he would have set a new record.) Winning ugly is one thing, but letting Temple hang around for a whole game with a Penn State offense so impotent in the red zone that it had to rely on its kicker to generate any points at all is ridiculous.

Temple scored all its points in the first quarter, before the PSU defense showed up. However, once the defense got the message, they played well against the up and coming Owls. Stupar and Sukay both showed that they can play if they want to and Mauti gave us a flash of what we’ve been wanting to see from him.

The offense just couldn’t move the ball inside the 30 yard-line, in spite of the suddenly effective Evan Royster having a career day (193 all-purpose yards) and breaking out of his season-long slump. He nearly doubled his output in the first three games. Nevertheless, the offense was hopeless in the red zone for most of the game. Was it their execution? Partly. Was it the play calling? Partly. Whatever the reason, they just sucked, with the result being two field goals in the first period, one in the second, and two in the third, the last of which finally gave Penn State a 15-13 lead with 1:38 left in the third. They would add a touchdown on a spirited one yard run by Michael Zordich with 3:55 left in the game, leaving fans to sweat out the final few minutes.

Fortunately, the defense was sound. The Nittany Lions got the ball back at their own 46 on an interception of a Chester Stewart pass, and were able to drive the ball down to the Temple 25 before stalling once again and turning it over on downs without completely running the clock out. With 19 seconds left, Stewart threw and incompletion and was sacked by Pete Massaro on second down. Stewart fumbled, Massaro recovered, and that was the ball game.

Injuries were costly to both squads. Bernard Pierce, Temple’s star running back was carted off early in the third quarter after running for 42 yards and both Temple’s touchdowns. Penn State lost offensive tackle Lou Eliades to a torn ACL late in the game. He’ll be out for the remainder of the season. This will hurt an already mediocre offensive line, which could subject a freshman quarterback Rob Bolden to much more pressure than he has experienced thus far.

Overall, Penn State more than doubled Temple’s offensive stats. First downs were 20 vs. 8; total yards were 439 vs. 202. Yet, Temple was in the game until that final sack of Chester Stewart. On defense, Penn State forced three Stewart interceptions and a fumble, while Temple forced a single Evan Royster fumble.

On special teams, both sides played well. Collin Wagner should be a candidate for Big Ten Offensive Player of the Week with his five field goals and 16 points total. Temple’s punter, big Jeff Wathne, boomed one of his seven punts 57 yards and averaged 44.7 yds. Chaz Powell had three kick returns for 48 yards. I think it’s about time we saw a little more from this guy with all that speed. He needs to break one soon.

Unfortunately, my poor old PSU English professor, Dr. McGillicuddy, has Alzheimer’s, so when I gave him my pre-game preview to grade last week, he misplaced it and gave me back a paper from English 10 in 1964. Apparently, he’s kept it all these years to— I’m not sure why he would have done that, other than to attract flies. I don’t think I know any more about Aeschylus, Elektra, and company now than I did back then, and I sure as hell didn’t deserve the C- Dr. Mick gave me. But I digress.

I think this game was indicative of a team that still needs lots of work. The defense might be ready to handle the Big Ten schedule, but the offense will need to figure out how to put six points at a time on the scoreboard more often than not. The red zone performance has to improve. The offensive line was just coming together when Eliades got hurt, so now it’s two steps back. However, Royster’s performance was encouraging, and this Turkey hopes it instills added confidence as the meat of the season comes out of the fridge.

For the Nittany Lions’ fine performance, they were sucked up to #22 in the AP poll once again.

I’ll be back later in the week with a preview of the Big Ten opener, the big road game at Kinnick Stadium against the Iowa Hawkeyes.

The Anachronistic NFL Blackout Rule

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The NFL’s TV blackout rule states that if stadium seats for a given game are not sold out, television coverage in the local area (defined as broadcast signals reaching within a 75 mile radius) shall be blacked out. This is a simplification of the rule, which has been around since 1972; there are many ifs, ands, and buts inserted by whichever high priced Park Avenue law firm the NFL retains for rule obfuscation. The idea is that if the game can be seen via TV, people won’t buy the remaining seats. I contend that in this economy, stadiums in some markets might never sell out, and the more blackouts there are, the worse it will get.

Consider the past Sunday. As you might or might not know, I’m a displaced Pittsburgher who has long been a Steelers fan. On Sunday the Steelers were playing the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in Tampa. I’m in the Orlando area, approximately 85 miles as the Raven flies from Raymond James Stadium. However, the way the rule reads, the Orlando TV channels cover part of that 75-mile radius circle around the stadium. The game did not sell out despite heavy ticket sales to Steelers fans (one Tampa Bay player said it looked to be about half and half) and a base of 40,000 season tickets, therefore it was blacked out for me. I wound up listening to the 1 PM game on the radio. Meanwhile, the hated Philadelphia Eagles were playing in Jacksonville at 4:30. At least, I thought, I would be able to cheer on the Jaguars as they throttled the Eagles. No such luck. Alltel Stadium is 113 miles from my house, but there’s that signal penetration thing going on, I suppose.

But there’s more. I have DirecTV, and one—if not the—reason I do is that the satellite TV company has an exclusive deal with the NFL to broadcast all the in- and out-of-market 1:00 and 4:30 games each Sunday. Aside from the non-sports entertainment portion of their charges, I pay an additional $350 per year for the NFL Sunday Ticket package. The NFL sucks off a portion of that annual fee as well as whatever extortion DirecTV pays them to maintain exclusivity of the NFL package. They’re being compensated quite well by us morons who demand to see every game. Only thing is, we’re not seeing every game, because the blackout rule is applied whether we’ve purchased the Sunday Ticket or not. I don’t think I need to tell you that we don’t get billing credit for blacked out games. So, even with this extra expenditure, I didn’t get to watch either game.

Naturally, the NFL would like to fill all its stadium seats. It not only wants the bucks from ticket sales, but also, it wants stadiums to look full for people watching from afar, thus enhancing the appeal of attending live games. The obvious purpose of the blackout rule was to make certain that people had no other way to see a “local” game if they didn’t buy a ticket.

Would I have bought a ticket for the Tampa Bay game at $120? Perhaps, but if I was going to take Jenny and two kids, it wasn’t going to happen, especially since the kids aren’t big sports fans. Would I have attended the Jacksonville game in person? Hell, no!

Perhaps the NFL doesn’t understand that in this recessionary economy, people tend to ditch the frivolous extras first. You take a team like Tampa Bay, whose record was 3-13 last year, and you feel damn lucky that there are 40,000 suckers with season tickets, because your ticket window sales are going to plummet. Start pissing people off in the local area (which apparently is more like a 150-mile radius) and you’ll depress future sales, too. Jacksonville is one of the smallest media markets in the NFL and they’re not doing well at all. They’ve even cordoned off whole sections at Alltel Stadium to reduce its capacity in view of the sellout rule (the NFL requires that if you do this for one game, you have to do it for all games, including the playoffs), but still they get blacked out. Better they should get some local TV revenue than trying in vain to sell tickets.

I know that for the NFL it sounds a lot like “damned if you do, damned if you don’t”, but shouldn’t a league that is raking in money hand over fist (including over $20 billion in TV revenue) be a little more sensitive to the economic plight of the typical football fan? Either reduce ticket prices or ease up on the blackouts, but how about taking a hit like the rest of us?