The Links: Slow Week Edition

We're not gonna lie, besides all the inane stories about why Penn State doesn't deserve a title shot, news on the actual team has been pretty slow lately. Regardless, here are some links that we've been able to dig up. As usual we start with Lion news and then broaden the focus.

This was a widely-held assumption, but Daryll Clark will be playing Saturday. -Rivals-

Oh, and remember when Clark was looking really pissed when Devlin went in during the Ohio State game? Well, he wasn't pissed, he just didn't know what was going on... -Big11Ten Blog-

Iowa administrators couldn't decide whether to do a blackout or a greene-out (for running back extraordinaire Shonn Greene) on Saturday, so they said, "Fuck it, we'll do them both." -Hawk Central-

Kirk Ferentz took a page out of Joe's book and gushed to the press about the Nittany Lions. -Hawk Central-

Joe was asked about the BCS madness quite a bit during his press conference, but as usual, he didn't take the bait. -Rivals-

Pete Carroll did, however. -BCS Stinks-

Funny, you never heard Carroll complaining in '05 and '06. Maybe his team is dropping because they have the worst loss out of all the big-time one loss teams. Then again, the BCS does stink, so do we have a point? Not really.

Hey, speaking of the BCS, and since we're getting to a point in the season where these scenarios are actually interesting, here are some bowl projections. -Bowls-

Based on those projections, Texas wins the Big 12 and Florida wins the SEC. Throw the national media man-love for the SEC out the window, and doesn't Florida have the worse loss of the two, by a looonnnnng shot? This whole system is such a joke.

Ivan Maisel of E!SPN is the latest to defend the system, however. No word on whether Maisel is good friends with Tim Cowlishaw. -I'm A Clown-

A brief rebuttal: The BCS is both different AND wrong. And we're sick of this whole "interest in the sport is higher than ever" argument. That may be true, but it would no doubt be even higher with the payoff of an eight-team playoff at the end of the season.

And to cap off the BCS news, here's an article from the Baltimore Sun, where one guy defends Penn State, and another one rags on PSU fans for whining. -Sun-

We're not sure we agree with either of them. We can't speak for all Nittany Lion fans out there, but we're completely fine with being #3, mostly because we think both Alabama and Texas Tech are going to lose eventually. And if they don't, they deserve to go to the title game, based on this system. We're realists, so we get it. And yes, we will start lobbying for a playoff, dick.

In other news, this guy from Florida makes Penn State's criminals look like amateurs. -Anger Management-

And finally, just in case you didn't have them on your calendar already, don't forget to keep your eye on these these two potentially huge games this weekend: OK State @Texas Tech | Alabama @ LSU

The Links

We're so excited about the team right now that we're actually posting on a Tuesday. Don't get used to it.

Starting off in the Blue & White world, Gene Wojciechowski says that Joe deserves a contract for next season. -Wojo-

By the way, are you tired of Joe injury news yet? If you are, don't click this link. -Rivals-

Adam Rittenberg points out how much the playbook has opened up this year. -E!SPN-

Speaking of that, it now looks as if Galen and JayPa purposely kept the play calling conservative against Purdue to sort of set up Wisconsin. If so (and that is based on 0% fact), it was a great move.

Jeff Rice of the CDT talks about how well Penn State's offensive weapons performed in the 'Sconsin game. -CDT-

However, as a commenter points out, maybe it's not the best idea to give a Penn State football article the headline of "Weapons abound in PSU domination." We just think maybe that could be a little misleading. Maybe.

The Lions' dominating performance did not go unnoticed, as Daryll Clark and Aaron Maybin were named Big11Ten offensive and defensive players of the week, respectively. -Altoona Mirror-

Moving on to our upcoming foes, South Florida coach Jim Leavitt took some shots at UM coach and resident ass clown, Rich Rodriguez. Consider us fans of Jim Leavitt. -Nice-

Mark Snyder of the Detroit Free-Press talks about Michigan leaving the Toledo game in the past and focusing on the Lions. Just take a minute to take in that sentence and have a chuckle. -DFP-

Of course Snyder buried the lead in that article. Check out the part about RichRod not being interested in the Clemson job, which Tommy Bowden just vacated. If Rodriguez left Michigan after this year for Clemson, on a comedy scale of 1 to 10, that would be a 40.

Yesterday Adam Rittenberg said Steven Threet was expected back for this weekend's game. -E!SPN-

Today, John Heuser of the Ann Arbor news says Threet could miss the game (and gives other injury updates). -AAN-

We don't know who to believe, but really, we could care less either way.

Threet, desperately trying to escape high expectations.

Now, in national news...

A dude from Rivals lists his early top 5 Heisman candidates. Enjoy flavor-of-the-week status, Colt! -Heisman-

Chase Daniel, a guy who no doubt fell out of that Top 5 this past weekend, will try to lead Missouri to a win over the new #1. -Rivals-

Keep your eye on USC the next couple weeks. They're going to sneak back into this thing before all is said and done. That is if QB Mark Sanchez can rebound from a shaky outing against Arizona State last weekend. -Trojans-

Finally, here are bowl projections from two losers from E!SPN. Obviously, not a lot of love. Feel free to email Bruce Feldman and tell him he's a dick. -Blah-

Penn State vs. Wisconsin Links

Since the first really big game of the season is almost upon us - though not as big as it would've been had 'Sconsin not lost its first two conference games - we're going to forget about the normal college football links and concentrate on this week's game.

While Norwood is back for Penn State, the status of Wisconsin left tackle Gabe Carimi is uncertain for Saturday’s game. As you can see, the Badgers are a bit banged up as a whole as well. -Milwaukee Journal Sentinel-

It’s definitely a good thing that stories like this one about Wisconsin QB Allan Evridge are popping up the week before the game. -MJS-

Joe is still trying to determine whether he’ll coach on the sidelines or from the booth. Maybe he ought to stay in the booth, given what happened last time he was in Madison. -CDT-

Bob Flounders of the Patriot-News thinks Clark needs to win the game with his feet this week. If we had to guess, we’d say Clark will be on the move more this week than last. -PennLive-

It’s been a tough 2008 for A.J. Wallace, but he’s overcoming it and will make his second straight start at corner on Saturday. Just one question: how do you “eat some bad soup”? -CDT-

Bret Bielema has a great moment in this AP article where he says the Badgers are only 5 points away from being 5-0. Apparently he had no comment on those 19 points that disappeared against Michigan. -Altoona Mirror-

On the off-chance that you’re headed to the land of cheese for the game this weekend, here are some things to do and see in Madison. -CDT-

No word on whether or not the Wisconsin band will be back for this week’s game after it’s suspension last week. But this isn’t the first time they’ve been on bad behavior. -Band Gone Wild-
Just check out that headline! When the first three words of a news headline are “hazing”, “booze”, and “sex”, you don’t expect to see the rest of the headline be about a marching band.

Rivals gives us a little game preview. -Rivals-

And finally, CollegeFootballNews picks Penn State to prevail in a close game. All the fears mentioned in that paragraph are pretty much what we’re worried about too. -CFN-

The Links

Welcome back. Here are some links to college football stories around the internets.

We begin, of course, with Penn State.

ESPN.com’s Big11Ten blogger Adam Rittenberg has a nice story about Daryl Clark. You might be shocked when you read about it, but it looks like Jay Paterno was pushing for Clark to play last season when Morelli was struggling. For the first time in our lives, we couldn’t agree more with Jay Paterno. -E!SPN-

Speaking of Jay, is it time to give him credit? -Altoona Mirror-
I doubt we will ever swallow our pride and credit the man. But it is nice to see the playbook open up this year after the last two years of blandness, as the column mentions.

We can't give credit to JayPa solely because he's in this photo (and appears to be checking Morelli out).

Joe’s not sure if Norwood will play this weekend. -GoPSUSports-

It’s been a rough week for Josh Hull. He had a mediocre performance on Saturday, and Cory Giger of the Altoona mirror says he has to step up. -Altoona Mirror-

Black Shoe Diaries also took some shots at Hull. Let’s hope the criticism fires him up, because linebacker play will be crucial against the Badgers and Buckeyes.

The CDT points out how much Penn State benefited from all the Top Ten teams losing over the weekend. We’d like to point out that it’s week 6, we still have 7 games and we could care less about the rankings right now. -CDT-

Seriously, just count the number of national championship mentions in those articles above. Everyone needs to take a cold shower and stop trying to jinx the team.

In other college football news, Michigan State coach Mark Dantonio says he isn’t worried about stud running back Javon Ringer being overworked. Maybe he should be, as Ringer is averaging just over 37 carries a game. -MLive.com-

People are definitely taking notice of Ringer, as he is getting some early Heisman talk, and Rivals has him at the top of their running back power rankings, while our own Evan Royster is 16th. Not sure why Beanie is still #2 when so many others have done so much more this year, but oh well. -Rivals-
Check out the other position power rankings as well, you may see some familiar names.

Terry Bowden says that Michigan gained a lot of confidence this past weekend. -Rivals-
Hey, we're glad Wisconsin lost to Michigan. It makes the Badgers look much more vulnerable, but we don’t want Michigan to be brimming with confidence when they visit the Beav. Just thinking about the last few games against them gives us panic sweats. Still, we have a tough time being too worried about Steven Threet.

Moving outside of the Big11Ten, here's a story on BYU and it's coach, Bronco Mendenhall. That is maybe the coolest coach name ever, and it's definitely the weirdest. Also, BYU sounds like a horrible college choice if you enjoy fun. -No Short Shorts-

Oregon State will try to knock off another undefeated team this weekend when they face Utah. We don't know what the hell they were doing when they played Penn State, but obviously they've ironed out some issues. -Beavers-

We've seen Boise State games before last night, but we never noticed this:

Nice change-up on the full stadium color idea, which is rapidly becoming overused throughout the country.

Finally, here are 5 good games to pay attention to this weekend. We’re particularly interested in that middle one. -Rivals-

Preview is coming tomorrow as usual.

Links Roundup

First of all, thanks to Tangled Up In White and Blue to mentioning us the other day. Tangled is a cool blog and we admire anyone who references Bob Dylan in any facet of life, so check it out! Onto the links.

In Penn State news, Royster shared Big11Ten player of the week honors after his big performance over the weekend. Can’t they just pick one guy? -GoPSUSports-

DE Jerome Hayes is out for the year. We’re late as hell on this one. Too bad that doesn’t it make it suck any less. Any readers out there play D line? -GoPSUSports-

Penn State is #17 in both the AP Poll and the Coaches Poll. Check out where the CBS 120 has them. If you don’t feel like looking, here are some of the teams ahead of them: East Carolina, South Florida, Fresno State, and worst of all, Wake Forest. The ACC should give up its BCS bid. -Laugher-

Of course the big news this weekend is not PSU-Syracuse, believe it or not. It’s the big clash between USC and the Buckeyes of Ohio State. Here’s a lengthy history of the USC-OSU battle. -Bucknuts-

Dennis Dodd thinks that if OSU wants to win, they better play Terrelle Pryor. -Sportsline-

Sweater Vest says Beanie Wells is a go. Beanie Wells says he wants 45 carries. We say Beanie Wells is a moron. -Sportsline-

Bad news for Minnesota, their leading rusher is out for the year. We might have to change our prediction for them to 2 wins instead of 3. Love his first name pronunciation. -Twin Cities-

Hey, speaking of being out for the year, don’t know if you heard about this:


San Diego State is one of the bottom five teams in the country, and Notre Dame BARELY beat them. We think ND sucks, and apparently we’re not alone. -NotreDameSucks-

To all those people who love to extol the virtues of the Big East: well, you’re idiots. We’re two games into the season and you have two unbeaten teams left (and somehow West Virginia is still ranked). -Poop Teams-

Tom Brady.

The last few years have been rough on Ty Willingham. He’s on the hot seat again. -Rivals-

Speaking of Ty Willingham, in case you missed the replays of that insanity at the end of the Washington-BYU game, here you go:

Rant of the week: Okay, we all know that this rule sucks. But everyone should stop blaming this on the refs. It’s a rule, and they enforced it, it’s not their fault. Don’t shoot the messenger, blame the stupid rule. Plus BYU could've blocked that kick just the same if it was kicked from the normal spot. Next time, wait 'til AFTER you tie the game to celebrate, and you won't have this problem.

Links Roundup

First, we’d like to give a quick thank you to the four blogs you see listed on our sidebar. They’ve welcomed us to the blog community with open arms, and we appreciate it very much. Special thanks to The Nittany Line and Zombie Nation, who both took the time to write a post about us, which was awesome. Make sure to check them all out because they’re all great blogs with unique views on PSU.

Next, despite the calls for bad weather, we are really looking forward to this weekend. It will be WWTL’s first big tailgate of the season, and we’re looking forward to another dominating performance from the blue and white. We’ll have the game preview later in the week, but until then, here are some links to some Penn State news, as well as some news from around college football world.

The Daily Collegian ran a story yesterday stating that Penn State student tickets will go paperless, starting next season. Students will have to swipe their ID cards to get into the games. They can sell their tickets to other students and transfer the tickets using an online system. Why should you care if you’re not a student? If you’re a couple years removed from school like we are, that means you’re probably sitting with the old people the rest of your life. -The Collegian-

In the polls, Penn State has risen three spots to #19 in both the AP and Coaches rankings. -Sportsline-
Here’s a quick shout-out to Tennessee, Virginia Tech and Clemson for being so nice and letting us climb in the polls. Can we all agree that ACC teams should not be ranked in the preseason polls from now on? Good, glad we got that settled.

Also, it turns out that Daryll Clark will be eligible for another season next year. If he’s great this year, then this is potentially good news. But will Devlin stay around, or transfer to a place with more playing time? It’s too early to say at this point, as both are expected to continue playing this season. -E!SPN-

And in the least surprising story of the century, there was a police visit to an apartment of Penn State football players last night. And oh yeah, the police confiscated some weed. We were woefully behind on this story, so we send you to Black Shoe Diaries for the details. -BSD-

What kinda of injury does Beanie Wells have exactly? His mom says it’s his toe, while Tressel acts like he’s surprised to hear that Wells is injured at all. -Columbus Dispatch-
If the guy’s even questionable, why the hell would’ve they even THINK about playing him this week against Ohio U with USC looming next week? Whatever, we hope they give it a go.

It’s 5 o’clock and Pitt’s offense still sucks. -Pittsburgh Trib-

We tried to gather some news about Oregon State’s thoughts on this week’s game, but our heads exploded when we saw their site. -Beavers-

And finally, here’s a fun one. A skydiver was supposed to deliver the gameball to the UNC game Saturday, but dropped in on Duke’s game instead. Whoops. -E!SPN-

Here's the YouTube. Just ignore the more info thing, it's some stupid ad on the actual YouTube page.

Lazy... Saturday? Have some links.

We all know that this time of year things are slow. We're also working on some other things that are taking longer than expected. We can't let the site idle, so here's some stories you may or may not have come across recently.

The captains of the football team recently held a press conference. Little did we know, the Collegian does stuff in the summer. They have a nice write-up on the whole event. -The Daily Collegian-

I can't speak for the rest of the staff here, but I read every article written in The Collegian during the 2004 and 2006 calendar years.

Here's the link a lengthy transcript of the conference. -GoPsuSports.com-

Scirrotto was asked about team exercise on and off the field and had this to say:

A lot of guys are doing a lot of community service, doing great things, helping people out. A lot of guys are working, so it's real exciting to know what we've got going on and its exciting to see how everything pans out.

There was no mention as to whether or not the community service was court ordered or volunteer.

and now that we've taken a quote out of context, we feel like real journalists.

Official off-season program of the PSU football team.

Next up, Comcast and The Big11Ten Network reached a deal that will allow people in Big11Ten country to get it. Honestly, we don't know one single person who had the network last year. If we wanted to watch a game we had to get inside, or go to Frat-tastic Bill Pickle's. -bigtennetwork.com-

We read the article and are trying to figure out who gets the channel. It says expanded basic, which to us isn't very basic at all. Once you expand basic, isn't it no longer basic? Regardless, Comcast picking up the network is good news for every fan.

Last week, Penn State announced their schedules through 2012. -GoPSUSports.com-

We really love out of conference play and are thrilled to see three games a year against the Charmin Bears.

Toughest Non Conference Opponent Available

Playing Alabama doesn't cancel out the combo of Kent State, Youngstown and Temple.

On ESPN.com, Joe turned up in an article about football legends.
Kind of a no brainer. -ESPN.com-
Look for the same article about every sport at the beginning of their respective season.

Duke sucks at football. o rly? -Courier-Journal-

Notre Dame is going to bring their exceedingly average program to NBC for 8 more years. -Mediocrity-

Like us today, Mark Schlabach mailed in this article about faces to watch during the coming season. Tim Tebow? Really? Pat White? Way to go way out on a limb with those predictions.
-ESPN.com-

Again, look for this article just before NFL season starts. Swap some names, and some dude has a another article.

And finally, we close with this. -Weird People and their pets-
We're going to skip straight to the pumpkins. First, that's not a pet. Second, if you're going to decorate a pumpkin, isn't cutting it almost a requirement? Painted pumpkin = fail. Put on your man pants, and get out the knife.