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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O’Brien runner-up AP Coach of Year

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Although Brian Kelly finished first in the AP voting for Coach of the Year, Bill O’Brien is the real story.

But Kelly is due some credit here, as he is the first Notre Dame coach to have won the award since its inception in 1998. The Fighting Irish, mostly irrelevant since that time,  finished the season with a perfect record and will play in the SSMNC. Those things give Kelly some pretty strong credentials for this award.

Kelly wound up with 25 votes. O’Brien finished well ahead of all others in the voting with 14 votes. His closest competition was David Shaw of Stanford, with 4.

Notwithstanding the fact that the Notre Dame coaching job is always the hot seat for whoever occupies it, the pressure on O’Brien was beyond imagination. To have stepped into the shoes of one of the greatest college football coaches of all time and quickly received the full support of a demanding army of fans is an amazing accomplishment in itself, but to have managed to field a competitive team following a plethora of high-profile defections is icing on the cake. O’Brien is more than just an emotional favorite for us homeys. He is fully deserving of the votes he received.

Had Penn State been allowed the opportunity to play in the post-season, Kelly still would have won this award, so let’s not blame Emmert, not that I wouldn’t otherwise want to bash him in every article I write.

Laser Focus: Peetz will call it quits as BoT chairman

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The good news is that Karen Peetz, she of the famous “laser focus” quote, will not be seeking to renew her chairmanship of the Penn State Board of Trustees; the bad news is that she will become President of BNY Mellon, where this turkey stores some of his scratch.

For public consumption, Peetz is broadcasting the notion that her new, “significantly broader” responsibilities with Mellon will preclude her from spending the appropriate amount of time to chair the BoT. I guess her former responsibilities at Andrew’s bank involved discharging the less than onerous responsibilities of a 9-5 teller, right? Yeah, sure.

Peetz has said that she will happily remain on the BoT and she has offered to remain chair of both the Trustee Presidential Search Council and the Blue & White Vision Council. Plenty of opportunities for laser foci on the future in those roles, ain’t? ????? ???? ???????

So, who’s the next fool to take over this motley group? Peetzie is happy to note that Vice Chairman Keith Masser has indicated his intention to throw his hat into the ring. Masser is chairman and CEO of Sterman Masser Inc., a family owned potato farming company in the Pennsylvania Dutch region of the Hegin and Lykens valleys. They package and ship more than 130 million kilograms of potatoes each year — and that ain’t just mashed potatoes.

I guess the folks up on Ag Hill are rooting for Masser.

A lot of you are rooting for someone outside the “inner circle.” Ain’t going to happen. ???? ????????

See the Penn State press release.

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Mega-congratulations to the magnificent Penn State Women’s volleyball team, who made it to the final four in the NCAA tournament, but were sliced and diced by a hot (in every sense of the word), fifth-seeded Oregon team.

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“We can’t stand to the side and watch the values of intercollegiate athletics be blown up in that fashion. We want everyone to pay attention. This is indeed a cautionary tale, that the athletic tail can’t wag the academic dog.”  —Mark Emmert, NCAA Chief Tyrant and Self-Aggrandizer

So, listen, Mark. Apparently, you can’t throw your weight around enough to convince the B1G to bury Penn State as you and your friend Vicky Triponey want to do. Penn State has announced that 100 fall student athletes have received Academic All-Big Ten honors this semester, which eclipses the previous record of 81 (2007) and stands at the top of the Big Ten.

Since we concentrate on football here, we’ll note that the football team was tied for third in the conference with a program record 28 honorees, of whom one — John Urschel — had a perfect 4. ??? ???? 0 GPA.

Perhaps Emmert can use Peetz’ laser to do some surgery on his tightly constricted anal sphincter to let out some of that shit he’s full of.

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Since it lost its pet Pulitzer Prize winning reporter Sara Ganim to CNN last month, the Patriot-News has suffered from a lack of investigative creativity. Just when you thought college football bowl proliferation had peaked, their web arm, Penn-Live.com, ever behind the curve, is proposing the far-fetched idea of a new bowl game: in Hershey, Pennsylvania.

Yea, verily, the wonderful new thirty-sixth bowl game would be sponsored by the chocolate confectioners we all know and love, if Penn-Live.com blogger Rege Ryan’s pipe dream ever materialized.

Of the existing 35 bowl games,  how many are consequential? Three or four, maybe. Do we really need another made-for-TV debacle where the TV cameras assiduously avoid panning across the sparsely populated bleachers? Fuck no!

Ryan can take a ride on the Hershey Highway, but he is barking up the wrong tree. (There are innumerable possibilities for salacious mixing of metaphors, which I’ll avoid.)

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Thanks again to reader Joe for bringing these important stories to the fore, offsetting the eternal laziness of your turkey.

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Finally, as I might not be writing again before Christmas rolls by, I want to wish each of you a very Merry Christmas. I don’t really give a shit if you’re a Muslim, an atheist, or a Jew — Merry Christmas: take it or leave it!

 

 

Sudden Impact: Whazzup?!

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I think I’m suffering from PTSD or something. Maybe it’s early-stage Penn State football withdrawal (don’t count on it to avert pregnancy). I dunno. I just haven’t felt like writing lately.

But today, I had a shitty day and I wrote about it — on Facebook. A friend saw my rant, and told me that I ought to write a blog. (Said friend obviously is not aware of the world-famous Nittany Turkey, and my connection to the phantom publication.) So, I feel obligated to republish it here because why should I deprive my readers of what they could be getting by trolling around on Facebook?

How to screw up a hiking day:
1. Wake up pissing and moaning about arthritis.
2. Just about drive Jennifer out of her mind so she wants to go do housework.
3. Finally convince her to go hiking with the old curmudgeon.
4. Decide to go to an area whose location I am “pretty sure” I know.
5. Get pulled over by an 18 year-old Oviedo cop who claimed he was following me for a long time and I was going 49 in a 35 zone when he really was sitting on the side of the road when I passed him going 45 in a 45 zone.
6. Realize that I had neglected to bring my wallet along with my driver’s license.
7. Thank the cop when he runs down the menu of offenses for which he could have written a citation, but says he’ll just cite me for failure to produce a license on demand (because he knew damn well I wasn’t speeding), so I get a $116 ticket instead of $280 plus 3 points, but he kept me waiting for 15 minutes so you gotta count the time, too.
8. Fail to find the area I was pretty sure I knew was where I didn’t think it wasn’t.
9. Decide while looping around to take Ft. Christmas Road (it’s the season, you know), and visit Orlando Wetlands Park for a hike. Yeah, that’s it.
10. Get there and find that Orlando Wetlands Park will reopen on February 1, 2013.
11. No problem. There’s a nice hiking trail through Seminole Ranch right across the street.
12. Problem: Jenny doesn’t like hiking through cow pastures. The first half mile is a cow pasture.
13. Jenny gets sleepy. She doesn’t want to hike anymore.
14. Ben proposes lunch at Black Hammock fish camp. Jenny agrees. She orders a hamburger with gator bites.
15. After eating the fried gator, Jenny spots one of the waitresses from the Lazy Gator bar bringing in a cute little baby gator and heading for the kitchen, thus ruining her lunch with visions of the poor little vile reptile being slaughtered at the behest of the redneck chef.
16. Well, at least I got to drink beer.

Given that the cop reduced my charge to the only thing for which he knew he could nail me and not be taken to task in court, what would he have done if I actually had produced my driver’s license?

So, there. I am now a blogger. Let’s move on.

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So tell me, what do you all think about the Bielema move? Reader Joe sent me this mock dialog about it, which is pretty damn funny. Read it — although it is a little long and drags in parts, some of the lines are hilarious.

My thoughts: if Bielema can land an SEC job, more power to him. Can he coach an SEC team? Who knows. Do I care? Nope. If his name was Alvarez and he left Wisconsin, it would be a big deal, but this is Bret Bielema. Did I care when Saban left Moo U. for LSU? Nope. Why should I?

I guess we need something to talk about in the off-season, so coach firing-time is a good place to kick off the off-season bullshit.

Barry AlvarezMeanwhile, back at Camp Randall, Barry Alvarez is prepping his aging ass to make one more active sideline appearance as head coach — in Pasadena on New Year’s Day. Like all elder statesmen who served their time in the trenches and then elevated themselves above the fray (except for Barry Switzer), Alvarez is a man among men, and I like him. He’s a month younger than I, so what’s this “aging ass” shit? It will be great to see him on the sidelines coaching his Badgers in the Rose Bowl!

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So, does anyone out there think that Northern Illinois stands a chance against FSU?

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The trial of Tim Curley and Gary Schultz has been postponed indefinitely, reports the Altoona Mirror. The same article revealed that Jerry Sandusky has appealed the revocation of his $59,000 per year pension. He and his lawyers are trying to squeeze every last buck out of the Pennsylvania State Employee Retirement System.

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Beginning in 2016, Penn State and Pitt will initiate a series that has been extended for two more games. Thus, someone who went into a coma in 1983 could wake up, find Penn State playing Pitt, Nebraska, Rutgers, and Maryland again, and not feel that he missed much of anything. Read the story by Nate Mink in StateCollege.com.

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And finally, speaking of Barry Alvarez, he has piped up about the Big Ten expansion, stating that the B1G feared that PSU would consider moving to another conference if the league didn’t expand to include Maryland and Rutgers. Seems to me that if the B1G starts watering down the conference with Big East and ACC cast-offs, Penn State might well still want to bolt. What about yinz folks? Whattya t’ink? Read the ESPN story and discuss!

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Thanks again to my research staff, reader Joe, for the two contributions above. (And no, I’m not in hibernation, just — aw, well, I explained it in my opening paragraph!)