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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Lust Remembered

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The Morelli Era is officially—and gladly—over. With the Nittany Lions’ 24-17 victory over Texas A&M in the 2007 Valero Alamo Bowl, the curtain falls on one of the biggest busts in Penn State recruiting history. The great promise that Morelli’s rifle arm dangled before us when we fans were wanting to dump Mike Robinson in order to play the great freshman brought us the ultimate reward of an arm with no brain; a rifle with defective sights.

We need to learn a couple of lessons from the Morelli Morass. First, remember that we fans did, in fact, whine for playing time for Morelli over Robinson, because we thought we could make personnel decisions better than Paterno and staff. This is pure folly, but it is the cornerstone of sports blogs, message boards, booster organizations, and David Jones. Fans always think they know better. Fans are fickle. A screwed-up game or two and they want to dump the quarterback. Second, the guy who is sitting on the bench only looks better because he hasn’t been given the opportunity to screw up yet. It is inevitable that when he comes in, his honeymoon will be brief before we know-it-all fans find enough flaws to jump on his case.

And so it goes, like clockwork. That’s the nature of the beast. Fans second-guessing coaches is what sells beer. How ludicrous a premise it is that CPAs, roofers, and students could manage a sports team better than the guys who are paid to do it and who must live with their decisions when they go home every night! Anyhow, we decided that we needed Morelli and then we decided that he sucked. And now it’s over.

Morelli’s final performance in blue and white was the quintessence of his career. Poor decisions, balls thrown too tall for his receivers, and a mediocre 15-31 for 143 yards with one TD and one INT was pretty much what we had come to expect from AM. He was at his best handing the ball to Rod Kinlaw or Evan Royster, who chewed up 143 and 65 yards, respectively. Penn State rolled up 270 yards on the ground, including a 50-yard, one touchdown performance from future QB Darryll Clark.

The Clark Era preview consisted of six plays that left me wondering how A&M, coached by a defensive coordinator, could get burned by the same play each time. Clark’s rushing average was 8.3 yards per carry. Each time, Clark would line up as shotgun QB with Morelli flanked wide. By the way, in one such case, Morelli threw a great block to spring Clark. Here’s to you, Anthony! That hard head can be useful at times.

Give it two games next year and Clark’s honeymoon will be over. Hell, fans can’t leave well enough alone. We’re already bitching about Pat Devlin probably sitting on the bench most of next year. Chronic malcontents we are, but that’s sports for ya!

A&M, as we knew they would, burned the defense with a couple of things. The punishing running of Jorvorskie Lane, whose name is reminiscent of a tree-lined street in Warsaw, wore down the Nittany Lions’ depleted defensive front four. With that big load (reported to be close to 300 lbs) pounding on them all day, the boys got tired. Furthermore, for variety, A&M QB Stephen McGee and speedy running back Mike Goodson ran the option at the Lions, knowing the difficulties Bradley’s boys have had defending it. For variety, McGee also knew that Penn State can’t defend the slant. The result was a balanced attack with 164 yards in both running and passing.

CollegeFootballNews.com came up with an interesting treatise on what lost the game for the Aggies. Specifically, the instant analysis article postulates that when McGee called a time-out on 3rd-and-3 at 8:34, he gave the Penn State defense a breather that enabled them to persevere. The game was close enough that any such blunder could have cause it to go one way or the other.

And so it was that the 81 year-old legend Joe Paterno coached his 500th game to achieve yet another bowl victory, while the hapless Aggies augmented their dismal bowl record.

And now, the Turkey will take a break from football. After eating his requisite New Years’ Pennsylvania Dutch spare ribs & sauerkraut, which would have my Orthodox Jewish grandmother rolling over in her grave, I’ll embark on a four-day backpacking/camping trip in the frigid Panhandle of Florida, where Wednesday night’s low is forecast to be an unFlorida-like 14 degrees. If I survive the freeze-out, I’ll be back here to blow off about non-football issues for a while. After all, I’ve earned the break from dissing Morelli and putting up the lightning rod to attract shots at Paterno, Paterno, and Hall.

With all that in mind, this Turkey wishes all of his distinguished readers (both of you) a healthy and happy New Year. See you in 2008!

Official Aggie Joke Open Thread

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Aww, what the hell. As long as the dissin’ has started, we might as well tell our favorite Aggie jokes. Gotta do something to spark interest in this dadgum game. Turn about is fair play. If they’re going to berate our esteemed head coach because he’s old, we might as well respond in kind.

For the uninitiated, Aggie jokes in Texas are sort of the equivalent of Newfie jokes to Canadians, blonde jokes to non-Aryans, and Polack jokes to non-Polacks before we were sanitized by the brain-dead, humorless Oberleutnants of the Political Correctness Sanitization Gestapo.

Moving right along, here are a few Aggie jokes I collected from the Web. Please feel free to augment this Aggie-mocking open thread with your own Aggie jokes. Be creative! (UT fans are very welcome to post here, especially after the fluke loss to the lowly Aggies. But be careful. Aggies might retaliate about the wisdom of your coaches who run out on the field to down the ball.)

Q: Why did the Aggie get fired from the M&M factory?
A: He kept on throwing out the W’s.

A guy walks into a bar and walks up to the bartender and says, “Would you like to hear an Aggie joke?” The bartender, who was a big guy says “Now before you tell that joke take a look at that diploma, I went to Texas A&M, and you see that guy working the door, an equally large man, he went to A&M, and that guy over there playing pool well he’s an Aggie too, so now are you sure you want to tell that joke?” So the guy says “Well not anymore, I would have to explain it 3 times.”

The Aggie goes into the drug store to buy his first pack of condoms. He asks the clerk for the pack marked $2.00 on the display rack behind the counter. The clerk rings up the purchase and says, “That will be $2.12 with tax, please”, to which the Aggie responds in horror, “Tacks! My friends didn’t tell me that’s how they stay on.”

Two Aggie fans were walking through the woods when they came upon a set of tracks. The first Aggie fan said, “Those are deer tracks.” The second fan said, “No, they’re too big to be deer tracks. They must be elk tracks.” As the debate continued, they got hit by a train.

Q: Why do Aggie cheerleaders wear bibs?
A: To keep the tobacco juice off their uniforms.

Q: Why is ice no longer available at Aggie football games?
A: The senior who knew the recipe graduated.

Did you hear about the Aggie terrorist who tried to blow up the Longhorn team bus?
He burned his lip on the tailpipe.

An Aggie got a job at an east Texas sawmill. Just before lunch on his first day, he lost a finger. When asked how he lost it, he replied, “I just touched this big spinning thing here like thi—Damn! There goes another one!”

Q: How do you get a Texas A & M graduate off your front porch?
A: You pay for your pizza!

OK. Your turn!

Dissin’ Paterno in Alamoville

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You’ve all heard about it by now. The Texas A&M Yell Leader (whatever the hell that is) laid some amplified smack on ol’ JoePa at a joint Alamo Bowl pep rally. Specifically:

Joe Paterno’s on his death bed! And someone needs to find him a casket!

Contrary to what was reported by Fox Sports, both PSU and A&M fans attended the rally at the San Antonio Riverwalk. The Penn State fans were reportedly stunned at first, and then outraged.

Why? After all, Joe is 81 and he’s a helluva lot closer to the grave than the “yell leader,” unless the latter drinks himself to death. Joe is even older than I am. We don’t like to admit it, but we don’t have all that many years left. Life is a terminal condition; the older you get, the closer you are to The End.

Sure, one could argue that the kid was being disrespectful to his elder. But let me ask you a question. When was the last time you got some respect from someone younger than you who wasn’t working for you, studying under you, or taking the big bamboo from you? Know what I mean? It’s a rude world. People aren’t brought up proper and respectful anymore. In fact, parents set the poor examples for their children to follow.

While I’ll agree that this was a low-class, below-the-belt remark, this Turkey stands behind the kid’s right to stand up in public and say what he wants to say. That’s the cornerstone on which this country was founded.

“I think everybody has to take things with a grain of salt,” Paterno said. “Some young guy went up there, trying to be funny. Maybe he’s accurate, I don’t know.”

Did we all lose our sense of humor when the Political Correctness Police started classifying every little slightly offensive comment as hate speech? Hell, we can’t make fun of anyone anymore, so we’re always walking on eggs. Just take a cue from Joe and let the kid say what he will. Consider the source: he’s a kid, he was probably loaded, and he’s an Aggie. Use this as an example for your kids about what not to say about their elders. Don’t be outraged if you can’t do your part to fix the underlying problem. Teach them to at least be creative and classy in their insults. Otherwise, as Eldridge Cleaver would have said, you’re part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Anybody heard any good Aggie jokes lately?