The opening game of the 2008 season will be played at Beaver Stadium on Saturday, as the Nittany Lions face the Coastal Carolina Chandeliers.

That’s a weird mascot—what do they do, hang it from the goal post crossbar? At least it lights up.

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…it’s Chanticleers! Sorry. This old Turkey is dyslexic. OK, so what the hell is a chanticleer?

I didn’t know, so I went to that infallible source of Internet misinformation, Wikipedia. ??? ????? This is what I learned:

Chanticleer [is] a rooster appearing in fables surrounding the fables of Reynard the Fox. The most famous of these is probably Chanticleer and the Fox, a version of which is told in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.

I should brush up on my Middle English and read Chaucer. Geoff was quite a football fan in his day.

Chanticleer was also a character played by the forgettable Glen Campbell in a regrettable musical animated movie called Rock-A-Doodle. Apparently, it was about roosters.

I went on to read that the Chanticleer is also the mascot of Ord High School in Ord, Nebraska. ???? ??? ???? Clearly, both Ord High and Coastal Carolina wanted a unique mascot. ???? ?????? ??? Enough, already about the weirdly named rooster mascot. Suffice to say that this Turkey appreciates Penn State hosting another foul fowl.

And now, on to the actual business at hand.

I don’t really have much to say about the game itself because it is such a mismatch. Coastal is a middle-of-the-pack Division I-AA (I still call it that to avoid confusion, as that’s what most of you still call it) team playing in the Big South, which I had heretofore never heard of. Penn State is—well, Penn State. So, what I’ll do is give you some little known facts about Coastal Carolina, courtesy of their web site.

• Current Coastal Carolina Athletic Director Warren “Moose” Koegel played offensive line for the Nittany Lions, where he was co-captain of the Nittany Lions his senior season, was a Third Team All-American as a senior and played on two Orange Bowl champion teams.
• Senior quarterback William Richardson is the younger brother of former Penn State quarterback Wally Richardson (1992, 1994-96). Wally is now the Associate Director of Athletic Academic Services at the University of Georgia. (I wonder if William can throw the moon ball like Wally did.)
• In its brief history of 56 games, the Chanticleers have yet to be shutout on the scoreboard, the longest current streak in the Big South Conference. In fact, Coastal Carolina’s lowest single game point total was in 2005 at Appalachian State, with just a lone field goal. (This streak might end. Soon.)
• Sept. 2, 2006 marked the first game with the new seating capacity of Coastal Carolina University’s Brooks Stadium. The school added 914 seats to the facility to bring seating capacity up to 7,322 for the 2006 season. Now Coastal Carolina has completed ground work in preparation for full construction to start right after Christmas on the new Adkins Fieldhouse. (Hmmm…Beaver Stadium 15 times as many people. Hmmm…which leads to the next point…)
• Today’s capacity at Beaver Stadium (107,282) is more than all of the attendance combined at all 11 games on Coastal Carolina’s 2007 schedule (93,231). As a matter of fact, the largest crowd that the Chanticleers have played in front of was at eventual national champion Appalachian State, when a then Kidd Brewer Stadium record 23,267 watched the Mountaineers get a 30-3 win.

And now, what you’ve all been waiting for: the first Official Turkey Poop Prediction of the fledgeling season. Yes, folks, it’s that time. This Turkey has no doubts as to the outcome of this game. Although the crystal ball was broken in a Turkey rage sometime around the third quarter of last season’s Michigan State game, it is still functional enough to predict this result. This is about as sure a thing as the last babe in the bar on a Friday night. I looked for a betting line and couldn’t find one. There won’t be one. Last year, the Nittany Lions played FIU on opening day and won 59-0. The result of this one is likely to be similar.

We’ll be back after the game with commentary by our guest reporter, Miss Teen South Carolina 2007, Caitlin Upton.