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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Deep Trouble for Stanley, Thomas

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The most telling thing in Joe Paterno’s press conference today was not what he said, but what he did not say on the subject of the players who were held back in State College while the team traveled to Iowa, to wit:

Q. Could you update us on the status of (Sean) Stanley and (Derrick) Thomas, two of the kids who didn’t play last week, didn’t make the trip?

COACH PATERNO: I’m not allowed to talk about that. We’ve been I’m telling you, we were told that we’re breaking the law if we talk about it.

If any kid is in any way not allowed to play for one reason or another, we have a long letter from the university administration not to discuss it.

But Joe is pretty open about players who have grade issues and the like. He wasn’t being completely truthful when he said “if a kid is in any way not allowed to play for one reason or another” [emphasis mine] he is not allowed to discuss it. For example, Brandon Ware was grounded in the doghouse last weekend as well, but Joe gave a specific reason:

Q. Is (Brandon) Ware in the same boat?

COACH PATERNO: Ware is in the same boat except I can say that Ware has had academic problems.

Q. Are you at the point where you’re about ready to give up on Ware?

COACH PATERNO: Well, until he does a better job academically. He’s here to get an education.

So, Ware is in the same boat, but with academic problems. This Turkey can conceive of only two reasons players would be remanded to that floating doghouse, the S. S. Shitouttaluck: grades and legal issues. Thus, it is reasonable to deduce that Thomas and Stanley are in deep legal doodoo.

Said doodoo can run the gamut of law-breaking, I suppose. I would have to believe that if they were arrested for any reason, it would be a matter of public record and word would have already gotten out through the local rags. You can’t keep that stuff quiet in State College. Even the Nittany Lion being arrested for public drunkenness was splashed all over the place the next day.

This one is really tight-assed, stone cold slammed shut. It must be something big. The decision to sit these guys didn’t come from Paterno, as it does when the matter is just bad grades. No arrest records have been unearthed. What the hell could it be?

In another obvious press conference omission, nobody asked Paterno about “the punt”. (For those who were getting laid during the Iowa game, I mean the decision to punt from the PSU 46 on 4th and 6 trailing 17-3 with less than five minutes remaining.)  Come on! This represents a serious abrogation of responsibility by the media. Did no one in the room or on the phone have the balls to ask Joe about the controversial call? Surely, it was one of the two dumbass sideline issues that stuck out in the Iowa game, the other being the timeout vs. spike at the end of the first half.  He did address that latter issue.

Q. I know you said after the game about the spike, taking three seconds, that seemed like it was a fast three seconds. But it looked like you initially wanted a timeout first. Could you review that?

COACH PATERNO: I wanted a timeout and the guy didn’t give it to me. He said because it was a penalty involved he said he didn’t think he wanted a timeout. I said, “what are you talking about, I told you I wanted a timeout.” I tried to call the timeout as soon as the ball was located. And they started the clock, the wrong guy started the clock. The guy that places the ball should start the clock.

You know, we’ll get the blame. But that’s fine. We handled it all right. We knew what we were doing. We got some other people that didn’t know what they were doing. And they’re not on our team.

Paterno also talked about the red zone issues without mentioning any specific names. He (kinda) explains why coaches favor the run over the pass in the red zone.

Q. Joe, the problem in the red zone, couple of players said there’s problems, confusion getting plays down there. Have there been problems with your team getting plays down on the field or letting the clock run down?

COACH PATERNO: The clock ran down on Saturday. That was not I won’t get into whose fault that was. That certainly wasn’t one of the coach’s faults or our players. Again, I hate to point the finger to anybody, so we’ll leave that go.

But I don’t know whether that’s accurate. It may be. I don’t think so. I think part of our problem, again, is making some plays and we have to make them. And when you’re not running (the ball) as well as we’d like to run, the closer you get to the goal line, the tougher it is to throw.

They start…they don’t have to back up 30 yards. They squeeze you up and back on you. They play short stuff better. So it’s a combination of things. And I don’t mean to make excuses, because I don’t think we’ve done a good enough job in a lot of different ways.

But I think down on the goal line and in the red zone, we know what the problem is. The problem is we can’t just take it and knock people back, particularly against a couple of teams that particularly Iowa is you guys may not recognize it, Iowa, that was one tough football game, physically. It was a tough football game physically.

Iowa is one heck of a defensive football team, particularly against the run.

On to Illinois. Let’s put Iowa behind us.

LaVar Says Joe Should Stay

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Writing yesterday in his Washington Post sponsored blog called Hard Hits with LaVar Arrington, the former Nittany Lion and Washington Redskins linebacker stated that Joe Paterno should remain head coach at Penn State as long as he is physically and mentally able.

LaVar, who could use a grammar coach at this point, correctly posited that “college athletics isn’t all about wins and loses [sic] for a team”. He writes of the positive influence Paterno had on his life and the lives of countless hundreds of other student athletes he coached. Regardless of how much ink Joe gets in the record books, this will be his lasting legacy.

“I’ve had my fair share of run-ins with coach. He was real hard on me — like a father figure I didn’t like it too much. But as a result, he prepared me for a much more important game, the game of life.” —LaVar Arrington

During the past ten years, fans including this Turkey at times have grown restless about Paterno. In each year when the PSU football team falls short of their expectations — or perhaps, their needs — they clamor for Joe’s head on a plate. In years like 2005, they shut up for a while, placated by what has more often than not of late turned out to be fleeting success. In most years the team has been ordinary — middle of the pack Big Ten — as Bob Flounders and I recently asserted (see “Floundering Around in Mediocrity“).

It would be nice if Penn State was able to put a national title contender on the field every year, but that’s not possible. Even if it were possible to field a top five team every year, would you really want to have a program like USC?

When Joe goes, we will have lost a legend, and you’re not likely to see another like him during your lifetime. Isn’t that worth preserving as long as possible?

Floundering Around in Mediocrity

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Bob Flounders of the good old Harrisburg Patriot-News wrote in today’s edition that Penn State is, at this point, a mediocre football program, as in fact it has been for several years.

Funny, this Turkey essentially wrote a similar piece back in November 2007. It was the end of the 2007 campaign and PSU had just lost to Moo U. The Nittany Lions wound up playing in the Valero Alamo Bowl that year. I think I fell asleep during the game. A mediocre bowl for a mediocre team having a mediocre year.

In that post I mentioned that aside from two anomalous years, 2002 and 2005, when some especially talented players were playing well, PSU hadn’t done much at all in the new millennium. Ironically, the following year they backed into the Rose Bowl, but they lost miserably to USC.

“It’s the five-year anniversary of the last time the Nittany Lions beat anyone worth a damn.”

Flounders asserts much the same. He leads in with the assertion that this weekend is the fifth anniversary of the last time Penn State beat anyone worthwhile. That was Ohio State, and no doubt you all remember that game. Some say it was the best game in recent history. Penn State 17, Ohio State 10 was the final score. (See my post back then, entitled “One for the Ages“).

The Buckeyes’ offense, a unit featuring future Heisman Trophy winner Troy Smith and future first-round picks Nick Mangold and Ted Ginn Jr., could do little against Paterno’s defense. The sellout crowd made it difficult for the visitors to hear – and execute – and when they did, they went nowhere fast against Paul Posluszny, Tamba Hali and the guys.

PSU’s offense was efficient enough, riding touchdowns from true freshman Derrick Williams and team captain Michael Robinson.

That Paterno team had heart and featured great leadership. It played with intensity.

Most important, it was loaded with talent.

Remember what we had going for us back then? Quite a few of those guys found themselves playing on Sundays after leaving Penn State. Ah, the memories.

How many NFL caliber players can you count on the present team? Where is the senior leadership? What kind of a bowl do you think this team will play in with a 7-5 or (gulp!) 6-6 record? And more important, what will the future hold, given that recruiting has not been so great? Once again, Flounders and I are on the same channel:

Looking for reasons why the Lions may not win more than seven games this season? Those are the big ones. Lack of talent and experience. Tell me how many future NFL players you see on the starting offense and defense.

Maybe a half-dozen or so? That might be stretching it. You can make a case for wideouts Derek Moye and Justin Brown, offensive lineman Stefen Wisniewski and freshman QB Rob Bolden. On defense, there’s linebacker Mike Mauti and possibly true freshman linebacker Khairi Fortt and a defensive back or two.

That’s it. That 2005 Paterno team had Robinson at quarterback, Posluszny and Connor at linebacker, Hali and Jay Alford on the defensive line, Levi Brown at offensive tackle, Tony Hunt in the backfield, Deon Butler and Williams at wideout and Calvin Lowry at safety.

And don’t forget about Alan Zemaitis – a Tampa Bay draft pick – at corner and the true freshman from western Pennsylvania, Sean Lee, who came to the rescue in the Orange Bowl when “Poz” hurt his knee. That Lion team was so good its special teams ace – gunner Ethan Kilmer – went to Cincinnati in the seventh round.

It’s going to be a long time before the Nittany Lions put a team like that on the field again. Flounders thinks so, too. It might be darkest before dawn, but I think we’re around midnight right about now.

Paterno and his players haven’t been able to duplicate that effort since. It’s been too long. And don’t look for it anytime soon. The Lions will lose to Big Ten power Ohio State in November and figure to struggle with the likes of Michigan, Northwestern, Michigan State and Saturday’s opponent, Illinois, at home.

Flounders and I are seriously on the same wavelength. The only future opponent he doesn’t mention in that litany is Indiana, which essentially got a $3 million payoff to play in our backyard at FedEx Field instead of their home field on November 20. Still, if Michigan will be a potential struggle for PSU, consider that the Wolverines just barely—albeit spectacularly, in Denard Robinson fashion—beat Indiana last week; therefore, the Lions might have trouble with the Hoosiers, too.

I do expect them to win at least one of the five games against what some of you persist in calling inferior opponents. The problem is that they’re not inferior. I expect Illinois to be no picnic in the park, and I expect losses to Michigan and Moo U. Northwestern could be tough, too.

Let’s re-evaluate that “inferior opponent” thing. It might have been true in 1994, but it is not true now. Penn State is a middle of the pack Big Ten team at best now. Just wait until Nebraska comes along next year to provide another potential top echelon foe.

As Flounders says, I’m not suggesting that these former “inferior opponents” are better than Penn State. They’re pretty much on similar levels. Flounders used the word “ordinary”; I’ll stick with mediocre.

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