Penn State 16, Wisconsin 10

Like chicken soup, I don’t know whether this game portends well for the season, but it couldn’t hoit. After a scoreless first-half puntfest in which the Badgers dominated “increasingly irrelevant time of possession” (IITOP), the Nittany Lions wound up winning.

Wisconsin fans are now officially calling for quarterback Graham Mertz’s head after he committed three game-changing turnovers, including two INTs in the closing moments. The Badgers had two excellent chances to win this one late, but their offensive screwups, coupled with Penn State’s staunch red zone defense, slammed the door shut.

Was it just Mertz’s opening night jitters? Whatever the case, the Badgers dominated the stats, but Penn State put up the numbers where they count — on the scoreboard. Meanwhile, Mertz had a horrendous day, winding it up with a QBR of 18.5. How LOW can you GO?

Gotta Have Explosive Plays

In the QB battle, though, Sean Clifford wasn’t exactly Joe Montana. His big redemption was finally hitting Jahan Dotson for a 49-yard TD early in the third quarter. Some of his other throws were wayyyyyyyy off the mark. However, it looks like the Franklin Era “we gotta have explosive plays” doctrine is in full effect. That and defense are what won this game for the Lions.

What certainly came close to losing it for them was their chosen all-purpose kicker, Jordan Stout. Jordo has a lot of distance in his leg, as exemplified by his typically unreturnable kickoffs and his long punt of the day being 76 yards. However, his short game is like mine used to be on the golf course: he missed a couple of easy chip shots, including an extra point. What happened to the more accurate Jake Pinegar? I’m told he is still on the team.

Wisconsin’s staunch defense was predictable, which is why “we gotta have explosive plays”. Running up the gut proved to be nothing but frustrations for the Lions, who “amassed” a putrid 50 yards rushing all day long. The passing game was a better bet against the Badgers’ D, with Dotson beating the coverage consistently — if only Clifford could have hit him when he did. Clifford wound up 18-33 for 247 yards and a TD, still a credible effort. Dotson had five catches for 102 yards and a TD. Clifford only hit four different receivers all day, and one of them was Noah Cain coming out of the backfield.

Special Teams Giveth, Special Teams Taketh Away

Jordan Stout owed a debt of gratitude to Jaquan Brisker for his interception of Mertz on fourth-and-goal from the PSU 8 with a couple minutes left in the game. Although they had sucked from scoring position all day, my heart had sunk, believing that the Badgers would surely score in this situation. Big-time college football kickers don’t flub extra points, so I saw a 17-16 loss and a disgraced Jordan Stout on the near horizon. I felt relieved when Brisker snagged that INT.

However, my euphoria was short-lived. The damn game wasn’t over yet. Once again, Penn State couldn’t move the ball, so they wound up punting the ball back to the guys in red. It was like deja vu all over again as the Jerry Sandusky prevent defense bent but fortunately did not break. In fact, it was Mertz’s suckage that ended the game on a sour note for Wisconsin fans, tossing the ball to our own Ji’Ayir Brown with no time on the clock. It was a horrible throw, but the safeties did well today.

For having to be on the field continuously, the Penn State defense was tired but solid. They need to improve. Wisconsin had 174 yards on the ground, which we all would have predicted if asked.

How Irrelevant is TOP?

Is TOP increasingly irrelevant? As I mentioned, the Nittany Lions’ defense was on the field a lonnnnnnnng time, given that the Badgers held the ball for 43 minutes. They managed to keep it together for this game, but as the season wears on, the defense will wear out at this rate. Penn State was able to convert only three of thirteen third downs and no fourth downs. Do we need “explosive” plays? You betcha! Did it take a gift from either God or Graham Mertz to win this one? Yowzah! Can we keep on winning with this imbalance in TOP? Methinks not. Fix it, Yurcich!

I imagine that the Sanguinarians will now think a playoff berth is inevitable. But it’s a lonnnnng season.

(I’ll be back during the week with a prediction of the big showdown with Ball State. I’m not sure, but does their team logo cardinal have teeth, like Louisville’s? Who the hell ever heard of a bird with teeth? But I digress…)

No, this is not the Hydraulic Press Channel on YouTube, but the mishmash of drivel you’ll see below closely resembles what Finnish workshop owner Lauri Vuohensilta and his wife Anni smash for amusement in their 150-ton hydraulic press.

As I mentioned in my season kick-off post:

That’s right. I said almost nothing. Covid fatigue, last year’s ridiculous on-again, off-again, on-again season, and off-season disinterest, coupled with lots of other things to do all conspired to direct a prostatitis-dampened urine stream on my interest in college football. ???? ?????? ??? Oh, and one more thing: the same four or five teams always wind up at the top, playing against each other in the playoffs. We should twang our magic twangers at the beginning of the year to see which one will come out on top, but we don’t give a damn if it ain’t Dear Olde State, do we?

Anyhow, here I am with the opener at Camp Randall looming in five days and I still have nothing to say. That’s not true, though, because there’s always something to write about even if I have no great insights into what this year’s Nittany Lions might be capable of accomplishing.

Critical Rock Theory

Take, for example, the University of Wisconsin story that emerged last month, a nauseating example of the “woke culture” afflicting our screwed-up, bifurcated society today. It seems that there was a racist rock on the Wisconsin campus, a 42-ton hateful boulder, which had to be removed at a cost of $50,000 because it had been offending people for one hundred years. Now, back in the good old days, when we fought our own battles, that rock of color would have inevitably said the wrong thing to the wrong person and gotten the living shit kicked out of it or vice-versa. Then they would have had a beer together and gotten over it. Not in today’s USA, where we cut off our nose to spite our face.

This rock was so offensive that it could have bolstered (or bouldered) the Badger offense with its offensiveness. It would have joined Alan Ameche (1954) and Ron Dayne (1999) as the only other Wisconsin Heisman winner, and it could be the only entity ever to earn both a Heisman and a Friar’s Club Roast for offending more people than Don Rickles ever did.

Today we need to cancel anything we contrive to suggest even the minutest scintilla of offensiveness, even 42-ton rocks that have been there for a century and cost the University fifty grand to move.. Goodbye, Rock of Rages. Hello, homogenized safe conduct through life. Come on, now! Who was offended by the damn rock? Yeah, Sweetpea, EVERYTHING is offensive to SOMEBODY and NOTHING is inoffensive to EVERYONE.

Contriving offensiveness for fun and profit has become a road to appeasement. What is next? So, we waste our time, money, and sweat going after rocks and statues while revising history to make us feel better about our sordid past. My, my! Why are we falling behind the rest of the world in so many areas? Because we worry about racist rocks. Give me a break.

Something About Football

I’ll conclude with something about football. OK, so we got Mike Yurcich as our new offensive coordinator. What will he do with the offense? Will Franklin get in his way or give him free reign. We’re about to find out and even if we don’t know for sure, we’ll make something up. We’re all so knowledgeable about the inner workings of the PSU football program (also known as “Culture of Football”, thanks to Louis Freeh) that we’ll know exactly what Yurcich needs to do to be successful.

Jahan Dotson. See him run. Run run run. Lots of eyes and lofty expectations this year. But can Clifford get the ball to him, or will Sean turn into another Hack? ????? ??? ??????? ??????

Oh, and kudos to former Wisconsin head coach Brett Bulimia (sic) who led his feckless, Illiniwekless Illini to victory over hopeless, hapless Nebraska. Scott Frost sure was a godsend, right?

Sam Ficken is still kicking field goals in the NFL. There is hope for all of us.

And now, let me pull something straight out of my ass, because I have no idea what to expect from this team this season. ???? ?????

Official Turkey Poop Prediction (or Not)

Well, this is what you haven’t been waiting for because I told you I had nothing to say. If you stopped reading after the big blank space above, thanks — that equates to fewer people telling me I’m full of shit. So, let me proceed to be full of shit.

One thing we know for sure is that no matter whether this is 2001 or 2021, noon starts on the road suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucckk and so do our teams that play in them — at least for the first half. Remember, James Franklin famously stated, “We’re a second half team.” Even he gave up on getting these guys to play in noon starts. So, expect the boys to come out of the tunnel with as much enthusiasm as dog about to get a bath.

The Vegas pundits, who have about as much to go on as I do at this early juncture, favor Wisconsin at home by 4-1/2 to 5-1/2 points with an over/under of 50, which works out 27-22. I’m going to say that the noon effect will make the first half more exasperatingly interesting than it should be, and the second half an exercise in Penn State trying to dig its way out of the hole it dug for itself in the first half. But I think a lot of points will wind up being scored, and even if it goes the other way, it’ll be good to be back in action again. So, again, you know where this came from: Wisconsin 42, Penn State 36. Take the over.

(I’ll be back after the game with a better idea of how this team conducts itself. “Poise” is a word Paterno liked to use. Do they have poise?)