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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Is the Steelers’ season over?

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On Monday night, the Steelers lost right guard Kendall Simmons and running back Rashard Mendenhall for the season. Simmons tore his right achilles tendon and Mendenhall had his left shoulder shattered by a clean hit by Ray Lewis.

Earlier in the season, Willie Parker had gone down with a sprained knee. The Steelers are down to one healthy running back, Mewelde Moore, who didn’t impress this Turkey very strongly with his performance in the Ravens game. Furthermore, fullback Cary Davis also went down with an ankle injury, so the Steelers are down to former Nittany Lion Sean McHugh, who isn’t even listed on the depth chart at that position but played some fullback on Monday night. McHugh was signed as a third-string tight end.

Now, the Steelers have re-signed Najeh Davenport, who they had dumped, and they might bring back Gary Russell, a Minnesota product who played on the practice team.

Parker will not play against Jacksonville on Sunday and it is not known whether he’ll be ready to play Cincinnati on October 19. The bye week in between is fortunate, but it won’t heal Mendenhall and Simmons.

Try and pick up a starting right guard at this point in the season, willya?

It looks like the Steelers are in trouble, but when life is dealing lemons, guys like Tomlin make lemonade.

The Way We Were, 1964

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Last year I published some photos I took of Beaver Stadium back in 1964, when I was a student at Penn State. At that time, Beaver Stadium had been in its present location for only about five years since it was moved piece-by-piece from its prior location north of Rec Hall, where it was called “New Beaver Field.” I’ll republish links to the photos here this year just in case anyone missed them.

The Blue Band at Beaver Stadium, 1964
The Blue Band at Beaver Stadium, 1964

The capacity of the stadium then was around 45,000. The south end was open, with only some rickety bleachers where the parking and traffic guys and the kids who chased field goals watched the game; that end is also where the antique scoreboard was located. There was no second deck, there were no luxury boxes, and there was no Mt. Nittany Club. In fact, you could still enjoy a perfect view of Mt. Nittany itself because of that open end. Pennants representing each scheduled PSU opponent flew from flagpoles which you can see it here at the very top of the east and west stands. Rip Engle was the head coach back then, and his feisty former quarterback at Brown University, Joe Paterno, was his number one assistant. There sure as hell was no Paterno statue behind the east stands or a Penn State All-Sports Museum and Gift Shop under the nonexistent south stands!

The photos, 35 mm slides long stashed away in a shoebox, have become a little bluish over the 44 years since they were taken as you can see above, and they might have some dust spots here and there. Most were taken from the freshman/sophomore section in the stadium, which were cheap end zone seats. (Cheap, hell. They were free. This was before I learned how to borrow an upperclassman’s matric card so I could get into the senior section on the 20 yard-line over in the east stands. It was an early form of condoned identity theft. But I digress…) Nevertheless, the photos will give you an idea of what Beaver Stadium was all about back then.

As those good old days are long gone, I wanted to make those photos and descriptions available to you again. For the photo gallery, click here. The original post is here. You’ll find another post about how things were at Penn State in 1964 here. Finally, an aerial photo of the pre-1959 New Beaver Field is here. This foul old fowl hopes you enjoy them!

Boss to Grace Halftime at Super Bowl XLIII

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Yeah, you heard it somewhere else first, but it seems that the NFL has continued in its string of selecting aging rock superstars for halftime entertainment at its premier event. Bruce Springsteen and the reassembled E Street Band will perform in Tampa at Super Bowl XLIII. I was pretty much over Springsteen by 1988 or so, but the NFL must be attempting to appeal to the now affluent Generation Xers who craved the New Jerseyite’s raspy voice back in the day.

As for this Turkey, I don’t particularly care who the hell performs at halftime. As far as I’m concerned, that’s for the girls in the audience who can’t hold their bladders until halftime, when we dudes are queuing up for the urinal. I rarely watch the halftime show. The last time I did, Mick Jagger was performing on a stage shaped like a gigantic tongue, and his triceps flab was flapping in the breeze. Before him was Paul McCartney, and since then, the league has given us Prince, Tom Petty, and now, Springsteen.

Springsteen is pushing 60, so he’s a little younger. At least they’re not giving us Tony Bennett.

I liked The Boss back in the day, but I would rather look at another wardrobe malfunction. Sticking a rock concert in the middle of a crucial football game is just too big a production, and too distracting. Let us have breasts—they’re always on our mind, anyway!