The Penn State Football Show

With this being my first post, I'd also like to thank the members of the PSFB for allowing me to join in on the fun and express my thoughts on Penn State Football and the ever-growing media machine known as College Football.

Acknowledging that I am not a technician of the game nor did I ever play the game, I look forward to covering the broader picture in my posts. My intentions are to capture the general feelings as both a loyal PSU fan as well as an enthusiast of the sports business industry. I will offer some brief post-game analyses, but primarily focus my posts around the external aspects of the game such as the media, the atmosphere, and the implications.

Five days have passed now since the Lions dropped a tough one on a nationally televised game. There are a number of places to point our fingers at such as a blocked punt, timely turnovers, and a struggling running game, but in the end, the bottom line was the lions didn't have their best day against the Hawkeyes.

Since the loss, the media has thrashed the lions in every way imaginable, exposing each and every one of their weaknesses. Penn State fans and beat writers are already jumping ship on a team that going into the game, had several questions. Which leads me to ask, if we didn't know much about them coming into this game, how can we assume we know it all now? The season is young and each week seems to present more and more wrinkles that will once again con volute the Bull-Chit-Systems (BCS).

Going into Iowa, Penn State was favored by most analysts to win the Big Ten, and if not, be a top contender. Following the Iowa loss, many are predicting a tailspin and a mediocre bowl bid with a potential 4 loss season. This situation seems to happen all too often, not just in college football, but the sports world in general. The media jumps on a bandwagon, runs it into the ground, invites College Gameday to a game featuring a non-ranked team, and then acts like the world is shocked when things don't play out accordingly.

People are wandering how Darryl Clark will respond to the Iowa loss and if he can pull himself back together and lead this team to a BCS game. The kid is an athlete. You win some, you lose some, you wake up the next day, and the sun comes up (or in State College, it rains again). Clark has proven himself for a year and a half now as a solid leader and sound college football quarterback. Whether he leads this team to an amazing run, or they lose four games, you can be sure that he will be doing everything in his power to put his team in a position to win. You will never see a player in the entire country play as hard....wait...no...that's not the Penn State way.

Outside the lines - lets look at some items aside from the game...

• "Welcome to the Great Show" - PSU has proven itself as one of the most hostile environments in College Football. Much of this credit goes to the gameday marketing guru Guido D'elia. The Whiteout, Zombie Nation, the whole-nine-yards. However, is it completely necessary to remind the fans of this by pasting it on the scoreboards and loudspeakers throughout much of warmups and the game. This somewhat goes against "The Penn State Way" in that actions do the speaking and there is no name in my jersey. It's amazing how the Great Show, turns into the Quiet show in the face of adversity.
• Stadium Music - Did you notice that once PSU fell behind, the pump-up music on defense and even the tone of PA announcer Dean DeVore significantly changed? This was definitely felt in the stadium and the crowd was eliminated for a large portion of the second half.
• Replays..What Replays? Beaver Stadium refuses to show questionable replays on the scoreboard because we don't want to hurt the officials feelings? These days are well past us, the officials will get booed once they announce the call anyway, so show the damn replay. Additionally, few (if any) replays were shown following PSU turnovers (i.e. Royster Fumble and Clark's last interception).
• The Pennsylvania State Sitting Blue Band - Sloppy weather usually means the Blue Band does not get to perform their pregame ritual. I never understood this, every alum and their respective entourage is allowed to field punts for the third-string punter during pregame warm ups, but the band can't perform? I was never a band-wally, but c'mon, these guys get a couple times a year to go out there and perform, not only that, it is a PSU ritual that plays into the whole "Great Show" agenda. Oh well, I guess they can just pull another pump-up video off of YouTube featuring the '05 Hali Sack and the sun rising over Beaver Stadium to the music of Gladiator and it does the same justice.
• TV Timeouts - Iowa touchdown - TV Timeout - Iowa Kickoff - TV Timeout. The media timeouts are prolonging the game, not only killing the intensity of the crowd.

In conclusion, the Lions disappointed us on the national stage, but the season is not over. We still have a lot of questions to answer about this team, and it's unfair to write this season off after a sloppy performance under sloppy conditions. 19 of 21 points on turnovers.

A road game in Champaign will be a tough week for the Lions to bounce back, but the 3:30pm kickoff will be a bit of relief as they usually have trouble getting their legs going for noon-time kickoffs.

Just as this team is not nearly as good as the band-waggoners talked them up to be, they are not nearly as bad as many are making them out to be.