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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Way to end the season!

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This will be brief due to the hour, but I wanted to express my delight that the Nittany Lions made me look like an idiot. Yeah, I predicted that they would lose, as I had given up any hope of special teams competence, and I still wasn’t comfortable with both the offensive line and the defensive secondary. While special teams still suck, they were able to minimize one aspect of the suckage: they committed no turnovers, after that debacle last week. Collin Wagner still managed to go 0-2, missing from 39 and 51 yards. They still can’t return punts worth a shit, but Stephfon Green did a decent job returning kickoffs. So, in a rip-roaring 515 total yard offensive performance, Penn State beat Moo U. 42-14 on the victims’ home turf, and that makes this Turkey very happy.

The Land Grant trophy will remain in the trophy case at the Penn State All Sports Museum. You should pay a special visit just to see the coveted and revered agglomeration close-up.

More later.

It won’t be significant longer than yesterday!

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I wish to relegate yet another hackneyed sportswriter cliche to the literary garbage can to accompany “it is what it is” and “controls one’s own destiny” in that abominable collection of shoddily written detritus. Today’s trite construct is:

“If [such and such happens/doesn’t happen], it’s going to be a very long day.”

Writers of such trash need to go back to school —  not only to learn how to write, but also to close the scientific knowledge game caused by them sleeping through fifth grade science class. No matter what the Nittany Lions do today, unless the Mayans are correct, Saturday will be approximately as long as any other day. There are minute variations based on many esoteric astrophysical parameters, but how Penn State’s offense performs is not one of them.

Next on the list, two gems: “at the end of the day” and “the [insert famous athlete name here]s of the world”, not to mention using the present tense to describe future activities.

The Battle for THIS!!!

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Land Grant Trophy
Land Grant Trophy

Lots of people think that Penn State still is in the running for a BCS bowl this year. That might well be the case, but I cringe at the thought of crappy special teams play making the Nittany Lions a laughingstock in a big, highly visible BCS bowl.

I don’t think the coaching staff has any answers for the lousy play. In fact, the big guy himself was his old, testy self at the press conference, throwing out flippant responses to serious questions about the special teams’ incompetence.

Yes, indeed. Joe Paterno’s got me worried. ????? ??????? ?????? He says that he’s going to go out there and show them how he did it at Brown, where he still holds the record for most yards gained on punt returns in a single day. Perhaps the Nittany Lions would be better off with Joe returning punts at 83 years of age, bionic hip and all. ?????? ???? ??? When it gets down to Joe offering to do it himself, then you know there’s something to worry about. It might have been tongue-in-cheek and, yeah, he was talking about practice, not the actual game, but how bad is it when the old man himself offers to take over? Pretty bad.

So, here we are, facing the last game of the year with a dysfunctional special teams unit — still. Well, “still” is too bland a word in that context, as they’ve gone from bad to worse. This is a season of regression to the mean, not of raising the level of play. It seems pretty obvious that many of the special teams guys don’t want to be out there, and those who do aren’t getting support from the rest. When you can’t count on guys like Graham Zug, you know it needs to be nuked and rebuilt from the ground up.

I’m not suggesting a special teams coach. The NCAA only allows each school so many coaches. If I was as smart as all the message board geniuses, blogwonks, and lowly sportswriters who think a special teams coach is a pat solution that will transform this fucked up recon platoon into an elite company of fighting men, I’d be pontificating about it here. However, I’m obviously not that smart, as I have no solution to propose. I tend to agree with Paterno that personnel changes are necessary on the field, though, although this is sure as hell not the right time of year to be thinking about that. The special teams coach deal is TFE (that means “too easy”), much akin to changing the head coach if the team has a losing record. You can’t fire the team, so fire the coach. That’s the way fandom works these days. This Turkey is of the opinion that if you don’t have the personnel on the field, you can’t do the job. I’m sorry to say that this year’s personnel pool is largely mediocre, if not in talent, then in attitude. Accordingly, don’t expect any marked improvement between now and the end of that wonderful bowl game you are all hoping for. Moreover, you ain’t going to see what you perceive as a panacea — the vaunted special teams coach — anytime soon.

There. I got that off my chest. Now on to the Michigan State game. Moooooooooooooo U!

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