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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How’s the Weather?

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The Nittany Turkey has added an extremely valuable feature that is well worth the subscription fee you all aren’t paying. (Hey, answer me this: where else can you get yelled at by an old curmudgeon completely gratis?) I picked up the weather widget on The Nittany Turkey home page (right sidebar) from State College-based AccuWeather. They don’t charge me for it and I give them free advertising—such a deal! I shall use it henceforth to display the weather in the city of each forthcoming game, starting with State College this week. In the off-season, I’ll point it at Istanbul or something.

You’ll be pleased to know that the forecast for the Ohio State game has changed for the better. Last I looked, it was going to be partly cloudy with winds around 9 mph. (Kelly will need to check windage and elevation before launching his boomers.)

Since this game is a hypefest, I’ll embed the up-to-the-minute AccuWeather video forecast below. The weather guy is quite animated.

Here ya go:

Weather Forecast | Weather Maps | Weather Radar

PSU Going to the Rose Bowl?

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Do whut, Buford? How?

Hint: We gotta beat tOSU.

A friend, who shall be known here only as zbeard, has graciously but unknowingly provided an analysis of the tediuous Big Ten championship tie-breaker rules, which admit a slim possibility of a PSU coup, given a lot of help from others, a few favorable breaks, a blue moon, and something about donkeys being able to fly. This is taken from an e-mail, reprinted without permission (but who says I need any):

OSU (4-0) & Michigan(4-0) are currently in the driver’s seat. If they win out, their final game will settle the Big 10 championship. Ill(3-2) & PSU(3-2) have very outside chances. Purdue(2-2) & Wisconsin(2-2) also have outside chances. For PSU to win, we have to win out which puts one loss on OSU. OSU has to win at Michigan but lose one other game (home vs Wisconsin & Illinois). Michigan has to lose to OSU and one other game (home vs Minnesota, away vs MSU & Wisconsin). That scenario results in a 3 way tie and nulls the 1st tiebreaker which is one team beating the other two and the 2nd tiebreaker (2 teams defeated the 3rd). The 3rd tiebreaker hurts both Michigan and OSU since they played a FCS (formerly Div 1-AA) and PSU gets the nod. Big Ten tiebreaker has full details.

Oy, my head hurts! Nevertheless, thanks for the fine techno-pigskin analysis, zbeard, unwittingly provided to this blog though it might be. I would have never had the patience to wade through all that stuff myself. However, you’ve gotta stop putting two spaces after each period. That stuff went out with Mrs. Abrams’ sixth grade typing class. (I took the liberty of fixing it for this electronic medium, and Mrs. Abrams retired in 1972.)

Hey, speaking of pigskin, we don’t hear that term much anymore, do we? What’s the deal there? Have the political correctness police expunged yet another innocuous term from our everyday vocabulary? Are we catering to Muslim sensitivities again? Or is PETA behind it? YEAH, that’s it—PETA! That single-mindedly perverted bunch of bellicose, pomeranian-hugging weenies screw everything up for everybody! Especially Michael Vick. Former All-Star NBA power forward and future governor of Alabama Charles Barkley once said, “Animals are good for two things: eatin’ and wearin’.” And if God didn’t want us to eat animals, then why did He make them out of meat? Never mind. It’s a rhetorical question. But I digress. You will not find censorship of the word pigskin here! My Jewish grandmother made me promise that I would wash my hands after playing with that thing and that I would never, ever bring it into her house. Yeah, I meant the damn football! Pigskin, pigskin, pigskin! Take that, PETA, and I better not catch you wearing leather shoes!

Oh, yeah. Back to our Rose Bowl chances. To simplify zbeard’s analysis, I can break it down to two possible scenarios: slim and none. That’s succinct. Terse, even. Now, don’t get me started on at-large BCS bids. That ain’t gonna happen, either. Too many good SEC and PAC-10 teams running around. Forget the BCS this year, folks. Or call your lawyers and try to find some loopholes in the legalese. The Nittany Lions ain’t going to be able to play their way into the BCS. Not this year.

They’ve turned over the pigskin too many times.

(zbeard is is real name, you know—and, yes, he writes it in Italics.)

Tough Win on the Road

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The final score 36-31 doesn’t tell you much about this game. It was that close. The Indiana Hoosiers were worthy opponents. As for my prediction (45-17), I underestimated Indiana’s offense and overestimated the Nittany Lions’. The win brings the Nittany Lions’ record to 6-2 (3-2 Big Ten) while inspiring a meaningless #24 ranking in the AP poll.

The win has to be classified as bittersweet due to significant injuries. Matt Hahn tore his ACL, which will probably end his football career. Jared Odrick, who had broken his hand in the Wisconsin game, broke a bone in his ankle against Indiana. He was able to play with a broken hand, but he won’t play with a broken ankle. He’s out for the year. Thus, the already banged up defensive line is even thinner than before.

Were you surprised at how easily Indiana marched down the field in its opening drive? Where is our vaunted defense? Kellen Lewis wound up torching us for 318 yards passing, going 30-48 with 3 TDs. They, like other opponents this year, have challenged so-called lock down corner Justin King, which has been a successful strategy all season. (And this lad wants to go to the NFL after this season? I’ll once again exhort King to think twice about that, especially since he’s been playing with his thumbs up his ass the whole season and every Big Ten coach knows that he can be beaten.) By predictably concentrating on stopping the run in the defensive game plan we sent the following message to the Indiana coaching staff: “You can’t run on us, so try the pass. It has worked for others.” I’d say that 48 pass attempts pretty much says that they took our advice seriously. James Hardy, Indiana’s 6’7″ Junior wide receiver, was responsible for most of the damage, with 14 catches for 142 yards and two touchdowns. He was lined up on King.

Meanwhile, when the Nittany Lions got the ball, they came out throwing. Did that surprise you, too? I was fully expecting “sphincter mode.” But the offensive brain trust had Morelli throwing out there, short routes but nevertheless passes, particularly in the first half before the anus clamped shut. (Hey, why is it that when an offensive plan is acceptable to us “expert” fans, Galen Hall gets the credit; whereas when the plan sucks, it’s Jay Paterno who gets the raspberries?) I suppose it can be argued that they were throwing safe swing passes all day, which are only slightly less risky and slightly more effective than running the ball on every down. I often wonder whether our offensive coaches shouldn’t have their testosterone levels checked. Morelli went 22-32 for 195 yards, 2 TDs, and one very unnecessary interception, in which he led Butler by about 10 yards, dropping the lob right into the waiting arms of an Indiana safety who was playing center field in the end zone. Unlike the Indiana offense, PSU’s was balanced, with Kinlaw, Royster, Hahn, and Morelli running for 192 yards. Yes, I said Morelli. While A-Mo wound up with -2 yards net, he actually had one 11-yard scramble for a first down that was ugly, but effective.

In the second half, sphincteritis kicked in, and were it not for Indiana’s fortuitous turnovers, the Nittany Lions could have very easily lost this game. One thing is for certain: we still have red-zone problems, as evidenced by Kevin Kelly having kicked three second-half field goals of 22, 21, and 2o yards. That equates to kicking from the 5, 4, and 3 yard-line. All three fizzled drives started with an Indiana turnover. So, the Lions semi-squandered three sparkling opportunities, getting a total of 9 points instead of 21. Something is very sick when the defense hands the offense the ball inside the 20 and the offense can’t do anything about it. It fully equates to discovering a different hot, naked girl in one’s dorm room three nights in a row and having no clue as to what to do with them, consequently telling them to put their clothes on and go home. The play calling was definitely that timid. I guess it was with the self-deprecating realization that the Lions don’t know what they’re doing inside the twenty that our coaching geniuses kicked an extra point instead of going for two in a situation that called for it in the second quarter.

Indiana deserves a lot of credit for what they’ve done with this team. They’ll probably wind up being bowl eligible this year. I believe that the Penn State defensive squad has a new found respect for the Hoosier offense. Kellen Lewis and James Hardy are seriously talented athletes. Hats off to the Hoosiers.

OK, then. With this one safely in the win column, it is now appropriate to look ahead to next Saturday’s showdown with #1 Ohio State. Number One, my ass. I don’t think they’re any closer to actually being the top team in the country than they were last year when the pretenders were embarrassed by the Gators in the Still Somewhat Mythical National Championship Game (SSMNCG). They just happen to be winning a war of attrition, playing patsy-ass opponents while the likes of LSU play tough games against REAL teams. We already know that everybody in the Big Ten sucks this year; just add wins over Akron, Youngstown State, Kent State and a 2-5 Washington team to victories over the dregs of the Big Ten (Northwester, Minnesota, Purdue, and Michigan State) and you have a fraud pretending to be Number One. They’ve got a helluva good defense (on paper) and they’ve got the swagger of a champion. But should they be so fortunate as to wind up with their ass in the SSMNCG, they’ll get the aforesaid ass soundly kicked once again. I’ll be back on Wednesday with more irreverent, albeit insouciant, commentary about these pretenders and the Nittany Lions’ chances against them. This Turkey thinks they can be beaten, but should that happen, I further think the importance of such a victory shouldn’t be overinflated. First things first. We’ve got to win. Sure, the Big Ten sucks this year, but bragging rights accrue to those who beat the best, even if it’s the best of the worst.