A bit lighter in the wallet but probably still none the wiser

We never learn. We never learn our lesson and continue to amaze ourselves over the lengths we will travel to invent excuses to pick (and bet!) against USC in their bowl games. Let’s see, what was it this year? Oh, yeah – the Trojans would come out flat and play generally uninspired football because this was their 4th straight trip to Pasadena and as Bill Plaschke of the L.A. Times duly noted, the Trojan senior class had never taken a plane ride to a bowl game… honestly, just how many times can you get up for the Lowry’s Beef Bowl?

Oh, and ignoring B-Daddy’s advise that season openers and bowl games where Pete Carroll and his staff have multiple weeks to prepare for an opponent are near-mortal locks, we drifted into point spread delerium over the wizened and wizardly perception of head coach, Joe Paterno and all the laudatory praise that was heaped upon him and his program by USC’s coaches and players. It was going to be different this year.

And at the end of the day, it was just another Rose Bowl. Just another Rose Bowl where another plodding team from the Midwest (with a young Italian fellow at free safety, no less) gets run over, through and mostly around by an over-qualified USC that tried its darndest to allow Penn St. a backdoor cover (+10 pts.) by taking the entire 4th quarter off and still won by two touchdowns, 38-24. Oh for two crappy quarters up in Corvalis way back in September and what might have been.

(btw, the Figurehead was in fine form in yesterday’s broadcast though we missed those classic late 3rd quarter/early 4th quarter panoramic shots of the setting sun against the San Gabriel mountains as that usual January 1st Pasadena postcard to the rest of the nation was most likely obscured by the fog and haze that returned to the Southland after a week of spectacularly clear weather.)

And how about that Big 10? Wow. Is there any way Ohio St., the lone remaining team from a conference that is 1-5 in its bowl games thus far with an average margin of defeat of 17 points can graciously bow out of its Fiesta Bowl match up against Texas on Monday and save the Big 10 any further embarrassment?

And for all the shots that were taken at the Pac-10 this season (some of which were volleyed from these very pages), the conference goes 5-0 which excluding the USC game involved 4 upsets and which also garners them victors of some ESPN fabrication, the Bowl Challenge Cup.

And did you all enjoy that scintillating scrum in the Orange Bowl between Va. Tech and Cincinnati won by the Hokies 20-7 last night and which featured plenty of tight low angle shots to, hopefully, hide a completely empty upper level (strangely, attendance was reported as 73,602. Those must have been some very long lines at the concession stands).

There was only one reason to watch that game and that was to listen to booth analyst Charles Davis who has a regular gig on the NFL Network’s College Football Now and who is one of the brightest, sharpest and most insightful minds working in all of football. Fox had the game and we are glad they are getting out of broadcasting the BCS bowl games and letting ABC/ESPN take over after the 2010 regular season. All their production techniques and graphics are lifted directly from their NFL games and it simply does not cross over well to the college game.

And speaking of the NFL, Mongo dialed this up after the Rose Bowl and though we had not heard it in probably 25 years or whenever it was they discontinued it, we recognized it immediately as one of the great intro music pieces in television history. It’s the Figurehead along with Jayne Kennedy and Jimmy the Greek at the Big Sombrero prior to our Los Angeles Rams' only NFC championship victory, a 9-0 win over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in January of 1980.

We would’ve thought that driving while wearing that mascot head would’ve been difficult enough

Penn State’s mascot or rather the senior who plays Penn State’s mascot, James Sheep, was arrested on a DUI charge in the wee hours prior to the Michigan St. game on Nov. 22 and his status to make the trip out west for the Rose Bowl is in doubt.

The officer who made the stop saw that the vehicle was overloaded, with passengers piled onto each other and blocking the driver's view.

And just when you thought things could not get any more embarrassing…

At the Michigan State game, the final home game of the year, Sheep was honored for serving as the mascot since January 2007.

No word yet on whether JoePa will have Sheep running gassers with the mascot outfit on as punishment.

H/T: AOL Fanhouse

So, what do you got going on tomorrow?

Received an email from our old roommate from Seminary, Jonesy, title “Busy Sunday”



Greetings,

Becca & I have a very busy Sunday.

Here is our itinery:

9:00 AM Awake after victory celebration of PSU's win over OSU.

10:30 AM Attend church service , give thanks for PSU's win over OSU, pray for Philly teams.

1:00 PM Attend Eagles Game at the Link, watch Birds beat up on Falcons. Watch Philly's own Matt "Ice" Ryan play well in loss.

4:00 PM Attend Flyers-Devils game at First Union/Watchovia/Wells Fargo stadium. Hopefully Flyers get 1st win of season.

8:00 PM Morgan heads to Phillies game at Citizens Bank Balpark for Game 4 of World Series.

9:00 PM Becca heads over to Spectum to see Who concert with friend.

12:00 PM Meet up in parking lot and head home for recovery.

Total Cost of Day: $(redacted). Totally worth it.

Later.


A busy day, indeed that might even get the nod over Mongo’s Saturday afternoon/evening double dipping at the Coliseum (USC) and Rose Bowl (UCLA) which entails a cross-town commute as opposed to Jonesy’s sojourn in the South Philly sports complex where all these venues reside.

The Penn St. Nittany Lions and the JoePa Experience

To paraphrase a rotund cable sports personality, no one circles the wagons like Joe Paterno. Every time people try to start shoveling dirt on his career, he comes out of the gates undefeated and has his team in the Top 10 and angling for BCS glory.

And everytime this occurs as is happening this season as 6-0 Penn St. goes on the road to Camp Randall Stadium to take on the Wisconsin Badgers, the fact that Joe is too old and too out of touch to get out on the road and make personal recruiting visits is alternately perceived as wisely “delegating” those responsibilities to his younger assistants. And, of course, Penn St. goes from having a “stagnating program” without any “succession plan” in a post-JoePa world to that of “Joe’s feeling great and the passion is still there so don’t expect him to step down any time soon”.

While back at Penn St. a couple of weeks back, never more did we witness a football program and an entire Unversity that was dominated more by the past legacy and current force of personality of a single person than there in State College, PA. And we saw this fully-justified reverence/kool-aid drinking dichotomy, firsthand, along with some rather interesting rationalizations for a big-time college football program: “Actually, the program is designed to make a run at the BCS championship (only) every 4 or 5 years.”

And don’t delude yourself for a moment to think that Joe’s (pending?) retirement plans are not inextricably tied to those of Florida St.’s Bobby Bowden, who is in a very similar situation and who is locked in a Wild West stare-down with JoePa as the two vie for the honor of most collegiate coaching victories. (Currently, Paterno has 378 and Bowden sits at 376. Who’s gonna blink first?

Anyway, good read here regarding Greg Schiano, former Paterno assistant, current Rutgers HC and alleged heir apparent to Paterno and who has, himself, what would appear to be some “stagnation” problems with his football program that is of this posting, 1-4.

Us, "Lucky"? That would be one way of putting it.

We may post more on our trip to the greater Philadelphia area and State College, PA later… well, we may post some more pictures but were up to our eyeballs right now in other stuff, including an 8 o’clock tip for our rec league hoops game that because of this unseasonal heat and humidity, we are not looking forward to (scheduled post flashback).

So, lest we become sidetracked with anything else, we just want to say we had a fantastic time, enjoyed every minute of it (except that Old Testament-like deluge around Harrisburg on the drive back from State College) and would go back in a heartbeat if invited.

We also would like to say we had the privilege of being hosted by the most gracious, giving and friendly people both in Philly (“Jonesy” and “’Becca”) and State College (“Todd” and “Toni” and family). We are continually amazed by the quality of people that pass through (and hopefully stay) in our life as we unwittingly schlep through it oblivious to Providence that is constantly working to make our time here on this planet a more blessed one. We can only hope that we are half as much that to others in their lives.

... but just this once.

We’ve been instructed to wear white for tonight’s Penn St.-Illinois game as it will be a “White Out” in Beaver Stadium. We remember the White Out showing-up quite nicely in HD under the lights last year, though, Nittany Lion fans will be hoping for a different outcome this evening as Ohio State used the occasion to trounce the home team.

Anyway, these color-related themes have become all the rage. It used to be Notre Dame would break-out their green jersey every 3-4 years for big home games but now these color-related theme (gimmick?) games are occurring with greater frequency. In fact, the PSU-Illinois game will not be the only “color” game this weekend as Georgia is planning a “Black Out” for their big game against ‘Bama today.

We are willing participants this week as it will be a first for us and we, of course, want to be gracious guests but in the future, we see our participation in these “color” games being as enthusiastic as taking part in the “Wave”.

Programming Alert

Starting Thursday morning, we will be in the air to Philadelphia to meet up with some mates from Seminary and from there we will be heading out to State College for the Penn St. - Illinois game on Saturday night.

We've never been so we're looking forward to the Beaver Stadium "White Out" that takes place on selected night games there in State College.

As usual, the fort will be held down by a completely haphazard compilation of heat'n'serve scheduled posts and efforts by contributors.

If they have internet out there in central PA ("guns" and "religion" is all from what we've been told) we'll try to check in.

Time to Go.

Bobby Bowden and Joe Paterno share more than a few things in common. Both the Florida St. and Penn St. football coaches are living legends, good friends and both sit atop the all-time Div. I-A (we still can't get used to/remember what it is they now want us to call it) career coaching victories list. Also, both are holding their respective programs hostage as they show no signs of wanting to step down while the programs have slipped into mediocrity over the past several seasons.

And when asked about how long they intend on coaching, they both respond with something of a breezy and dismissive air of entitlement as if to say, "Don't you worry your pretty little head 'bout them things - I got everything under contol so just run along now." (People close to the Penn St. program say that Paterno does not even make recruiting visits anymore and while Bobby Bowden has some sort of succession plan in place with Offensive Coordinator, Jimbo Fisher, no such plan is even being considered in Happy Valley).

But while Paterno shows at least some fire when dealing with off-field issues (a string of incidents last off-season including an ugly brawl at a party led Paterno to conscript the entire roster to clean-up Beaver Stadium on the Sundays after Nittany Lion home games), Bowden’s nonchalance in the face of continuing off-field problems for his players is troubling.

An academic scandal that was uncovered last year continues to unfold and continues to claim casualties. 36 players were ruled ineligible for last year’s Music City Bowl and at least 7 starters and roughly 20 subs will be ineligible for the first 3 games of this season.

But when asked how this scandal affected him and if he felt responsible his answer was:

"It didn't bother me because I knew there was no involvement by me or my staff. But I didn't know about it until the president told me. My staff didn't know about it until I told them. I know some people will say 'you're the head coach' but there are a number of things like this that the head coach does not know."

We’re happy to know that Bowden feels absolved because his coaching staff wasn’t involved and that he is so out of touch with his own program the University President was the one who broke him the bad news.

… Uhhh, coach… there is this concept within the NCAA rules and regulations known as “institutional control”, whereby you as the coach do not need to be even remotely aware the rule-breaking that is occurring on your watch but which still holds you ultimately responsible.

And what’s doubly disappointing is that in giving that answer he appears to be distancing himself from his players, effectively signalling that the players are on their own in this matter instead of stepping into a leadership and disciplinary role.

Its clear that the game and the times have passed by Bowden and Paterno who seem to possess neither the energy nor awareness to what is transpiring around them to be effective leaders and faces of these once-proud football schools.

H/T: AOL FanHouse