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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The Battle for THIS!!!

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Land Grant Trophy
Land Grant Trophy

Lots of people think that Penn State still is in the running for a BCS bowl this year. That might well be the case, but I cringe at the thought of crappy special teams play making the Nittany Lions a laughingstock in a big, highly visible BCS bowl.

I don’t think the coaching staff has any answers for the lousy play. In fact, the big guy himself was his old, testy self at the press conference, throwing out flippant responses to serious questions about the special teams’ incompetence.

Yes, indeed. Joe Paterno’s got me worried. ????? ??????? ?????? He says that he’s going to go out there and show them how he did it at Brown, where he still holds the record for most yards gained on punt returns in a single day. Perhaps the Nittany Lions would be better off with Joe returning punts at 83 years of age, bionic hip and all. ?????? ???? ??? When it gets down to Joe offering to do it himself, then you know there’s something to worry about. It might have been tongue-in-cheek and, yeah, he was talking about practice, not the actual game, but how bad is it when the old man himself offers to take over? Pretty bad.

So, here we are, facing the last game of the year with a dysfunctional special teams unit — still. Well, “still” is too bland a word in that context, as they’ve gone from bad to worse. This is a season of regression to the mean, not of raising the level of play. It seems pretty obvious that many of the special teams guys don’t want to be out there, and those who do aren’t getting support from the rest. When you can’t count on guys like Graham Zug, you know it needs to be nuked and rebuilt from the ground up.

I’m not suggesting a special teams coach. The NCAA only allows each school so many coaches. If I was as smart as all the message board geniuses, blogwonks, and lowly sportswriters who think a special teams coach is a pat solution that will transform this fucked up recon platoon into an elite company of fighting men, I’d be pontificating about it here. However, I’m obviously not that smart, as I have no solution to propose. I tend to agree with Paterno that personnel changes are necessary on the field, though, although this is sure as hell not the right time of year to be thinking about that. The special teams coach deal is TFE (that means “too easy”), much akin to changing the head coach if the team has a losing record. You can’t fire the team, so fire the coach. That’s the way fandom works these days. This Turkey is of the opinion that if you don’t have the personnel on the field, you can’t do the job. I’m sorry to say that this year’s personnel pool is largely mediocre, if not in talent, then in attitude. Accordingly, don’t expect any marked improvement between now and the end of that wonderful bowl game you are all hoping for. Moreover, you ain’t going to see what you perceive as a panacea — the vaunted special teams coach — anytime soon.

There. I got that off my chest. Now on to the Michigan State game. Moooooooooooooo U!

[Read more…]

More on the Season Ticket Morass

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In an article posted last night on PennLive.com, David Jones of the Patriot-News amplifies upon the earlier report regarding the Penn State administration’s intention to charge additional fees for season ticket holders and to relocate the student section at Beaver Stadium.

Jones takes no pro or con position on the fees themselves, letting conceptual validation stand up to the fundamental microeconomic principles of supply and demand. He posits that as long as demand exists for the product Penn State is putting out, alumni and fans will pay the freight. However, in the unrestrained manner to which we are accustomed from Jones, he proceeds to go off on the quality of the product, to wit:

“Where I have a real problem with Penn State is part of the product — the pansy scheduling that so transparently reeks of money-grubbing. As a fan of college football, I hate seeing the current trend, not just here but around the country, of power schools scheduling pancakes just in order to get a home game and an extra payout.

…

“Running a business to succeed is one thing. Marketing a product without value is another. And Penn State football this year had very little.”

Although to say that Penn State football this year had very little value might seem like a wee bit of over the top hyperbole, it’s not very far from the truth. Season ticket holders were treated to such finery as sure wins against ho-hum opponents Akron, Syracuse, Temple, and Eastern Illinois, in which the Nittany Lions underperformed, apparently thinking they could “mail it in”. Paying customers were further tormented by the inability of this year’s team to rise to the level of Iowa and Ohio State, and they were wrung out watching a half-assed effort against Indiana. Alas, the homecoming game with Minnesota, won by PSU 20-0, might have been the only truly entertaining game of the year, but because of the snowstorm, it was sparsely attended, the vast confines of Beaver Stadium appearing to be half empty. In summation, the home fans attending games at Beaver Stadium were treated to three halves of football: half-assed, half-gassed, and half-vast.

As I mentioned in my previous post on this subject, I know a long-time season ticket holder who has had enough of this crap and will definitely not be renewing his contract. I know that there are more like him who will raise hell, and many more who will silently pull out. Raising the price of a product while reducing its quality is an arrogant gesture that takes unfair advantage of the fierce loyalty we all feel for Dear Old State. David Jones hits the bullseye in that regard.

Read Jones’ article here.

WTF #2 — You Can’t Be Serious!

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Forgive the John McEnroe rip-off quote in the headline, please. I couldn’t believe what I had read about Penn State’s plan to hit up season ticket holders for a new ongoing annual fee of up to $600 per seat. They also intend to re-purpose (I cannot stand that word, but it somehow seems appropriate in this case) an entire section of student seats into big bucks revenue producers.

Penn-Live reports that the powers that be have pushed back the mailing informing season ticket holders of the new fees a couple of times, and that they will probably wait until after the regular season ends or perhaps, until after the bowl game.

Meanwhile, Athletic Director Tim Curley is playing it close to the vest. 1xbet.com

“Our program costs a lot of money to support. We’re in times right now where finances are real important. If we’re going to maintain that program, we need to do creative things.”

Many season ticket holders are already pissed off at the money-grubbing policies of the athletic department. Adding a 12th game to further fill the program’s coffers didn’t go over big with people who were already spending a helluva lot of money to watch the likes of Akron, Syracuse, and Temple. ???? ????? ????? It wouldn’t have gone over quite so badly if the twelfth game had been scheduled with the likes of Notre Dame, USC, Oklahoma, or Pitt. Instead, they found themselves throwing money down the toilet to waste weekends with Eastern Illinois and Coastal Carolina — in addition to the already soft out of conference schedule. The ticket cost is just the beginning. Local lodging establishments turn into highway robbers for football weekends. arabic casino It is basic supply and demand. They charge big bucks because they can. However, with the currently extant sour economy, when will this institutionalized extortion arrive at the tipping point?

Here’s a quote from a Club Seat season ticket holder, one of my PSU contemporaries whom I shall call Toe Jam:

“Given this news, I can only guess that the Club Seat license fees will increase also.  Next year is the tenth and last year on my contract.  I was 99% sure I would not renew — now I am 150% sure.”

Before there were Club Seats, Toe Jam had four season tickets in section WC for about 25 years, more or less. It is a crying shame that the whole thing has come to this.

This Turkey thinks that the administration might have miscalculated on this latest proposed money grab. As the Lions wrap up a season of beating weak opponents, losing to reasonably strong ones, and demonstrating precious little improvement in crucial areas such as special teams and the offensive line by the penultimate game of the season, one has to wonder just what in the hell they are thinking up there in the ivory tower. We Penn State alumni and fans are a loyal bunch, but we’re also not idiots. The time to piss on season ticket holder by asking for mo’ money and piss off students by taking their desirable seats away from them sure as hell isn’t now, when they’re all already pissed off enough at the schedule, the coaching, and prior money grabs.

As for the students, they are being moved from the sidelines to the south end zone, reports the Daily Collegian, and they will actually gain 800 seats in the process. The prices will not be increased, so the students will merely lose their great location. Perhaps they won’t notice.

Read the full story here.