Big Opening Day Clash!

Welcome back, Nittany Lions fans! There’s a big game on Saturday, and we’re all ready for another season of thrills, chills, spills, and cash in the NIL tills. I’m here to write about the big opener. No, not Texas vs tOSU on the undercard Saturday. This is a Penn State blog after all. Yea, verily, today’s topic is Saturday’s 3:30 featured game pitting our Nittany Lions against the Nevada Wolf Pack in the inagural scrimmage at the new, improved, $700 million better Beaver Stadium.

This encounter is the all-time first for the two teams. Penn State is favored by 42.5 points as I’m writing this. So, we’ll be watching players battling each other for starting jobs and reveling over the wonders of the retreaded stadium while James Franklin slowly (as usual) buries the hapless opponent by five or six touchdowns. What we won’t be watching is anything resembling competitive, top-tier football.

Not much to write about, then. We might see some things shake out during this game, or we might not. Franklin will be holding back the all-out effort to avert early season injuries in meaningless games. Hell, the season doesn’t really start until September 27 Beaver Stadium white-out versus Oregon, so Franklin will be coddling presumably fragile talent for the next four weeks.

So, my season opening post introduced the subjects we’re concerned about, like whether Drew Allar will be a man or a mouse, and whether James Franklin can surmount the stigma of never winning big games. I could write about those things more here, but what’s the point? In each week’s recap, I’m going to be bitching about them, so we don’t need more of the same.

Infamous Alumnus

Colin Kaepernick. Need I say anymore?

Da Wedda

We’re looking at a nice football weekend, 72 and partly cloudy, with nothing for either team to worry about.

Da Bottom Line

For those of you who are new here, this is where we prognosticate, namely the Official Turkey Poop Prediction, an awful bit of offal from this foul old fowl. Anything I might have written above is incorporated into the prediction pulled straight from my cloaca. In this game, it just boils down to how much humiliation James Tiberius Franklin is willing to heap on the Puppies. No hefty pseudo-scientific analysis can distill that information in advance, so you won’t do better anywhere else.

That having been said, as I mentioned at the outset, the spread is 42.5. Now, I’m going to tell you that the over/under is 55.5, which means the gamblers are looking for the Pups to score 6.5 points. Big question: will this team continue to waste first halves like last year? Will they screw around playing down to inferior opponents? If so, I could see Nevada getting an early touchdown. No doubt that Penn State will win; how much of a massacre is the only issue. So, I’m going to go with an early-season “statement”. The statement is, “WE ARE slow out of the gate!” After falling behind 7-0, the Nittany Lions will thrash the opponent, just barely failing to cover the spread. Penn State 52, Nevada 10. Take the under.

I’ll be back after the laugher with some laughable comments. Good to see y’all back in the saddle!