The Penn State Football Show

This is great news for Penn State. They really avoided what surely would have been a big blow. You have to wonder what was said/promised to him for the future when he met with Joe. He claims nothing was promised, but I find that hard to believe. He was told something that kept him at Penn State, he just won't say what it is.

Here is a good article about his decision to stay:

http://www.pennlive.com/pennstatefootball/patriotnews/index.ssf?/base/sports/1232084404301790.xml&coll=1

Deon is receiving great reviews from all-star practice at the East-West Shrine game:

http://draftguys.com/index.php/articles/1/2009_shrine_game_practice_report_day_one_east/

Lots of good points in there Drew. In fact, I was pretty much going to say the same exact thing about LJ Sr. Losing him would be really tough. As you pointed out, he is a great recruiter, but he is also a tremendous d-line coach.

Look at our d-lines the last 5 years. Nobody in the Big Ten has been able to run on Penn State, even when Penn State was struggling. Lawrence Maroney, nation's leading rusher at the time, comes to Happy Valley: 22 carries for 48 yards. Same for Chris Wells and Javon Ringer this year. Look at the guys he has sent to the NFL: Jay Alford, Tamba Hali, Jimmy Kennedy, Anthony Adams, Michael Haynes. The list goes on.

He would be sorely missed, and I agree with your exact plan: Name Bradley the head coach-in-waiting and LJ Sr. the next defensive coordinator. This would certainly get him to stay. The problem then is Vanderlinden might bounce, but I think it is inevitable that either he or Johnson, whoever is not the next d-coordinator, will look to go elsewhere. If it were up to me, I would choose Johnson over Vanderlinden.

Joe loves the university and has done so many wonderful things for Penn State. It would be in the best interest of the university to name the successor right now before things start to fall apart. I have said before how excited I am about the defense next year. But, if LJ Sr. goes, and Maybin leaves early, and so does Evans, things could be not nearly as promising as they were two weeks ago. Keep in mind, if LJ Sr. does decide to leave, it would obviously have a huge impact on the decisions of Maybin, Evans, and Odrick. They do have to decide by Thursday though. Right now it's looking like Maybin is gone - but he hasn't officially said that yet. Odrick looks like he's coming back, and I have no clue what to expect with Evans. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

In regards to Obama, I'm siding with him on this one. I've seen him say a few times that he has more important things to deal with and can't really waste his time on the BCS. So it's not like he's going around parading for a playoff and spending hours formulating a system. I think it's more that he had that one interview where he mentioned it as the number one issue to change in sports, and now reporters continually bring it up to him because it's something that many Americans are interested in. At first I too thought it was kind of silly for the President to even be discussing the issue, but the more I thought about it, the more sense it made. While sports might seem like a trivial matter, when you look at it from the business perspective and how college football is letting financial interests completely control the way the entire business is run, it becomes a more pressing issue. Also, I've heard a number of cases of attorneys looking into the BCS being a violation of various anti-trust laws and things of that sort. We will see what comes out of it, but I don't have much problem with the President merely acknowledging that is an issue.

And believe it or not, I actually did not tune in to the Va Tech-Cincy game. I enjoyed that shot at me though. Haha.

I'm going to sort of throw some things out there the way Pete did with things that have been bothering me for a while now.

We'll start with the state of college football. The BCS was obviously a step in the right direction but you will never truly satisfy the public. People will complain and look for a better system all the time and you will just get more arguing over conference strength and teams getting byes and such. I hear President-elect Obama calling for a playoff system and to that I say "F*** off!" This is not your world. There are bigger problems at hand than college football; none really come to mind but I'm sure they are out there. This needs to be decided among university presidents, athletic directors, and coaches with no influence given to sports writers or sponsors. The football will sell itself. If Gaylord Hotels wants to pull their sponsorship of a third rate bowl I say good riddance. Slingin Sammy Baugh never played in the AT&T Cotton Bowl Classic. And for that matter I'm sick of seeing athletes walk away with thousands of dollars worth of electronics just for showing up. This wondeful game is losing its direction very fast. I'm just happy Penn State is a "traditional" program. Eventhough I doubt 10% of the players or 15% of the student body and alums could tell you who was the head coach before Joe Paterno. If you are heading for the new tab button and the google search bar now shame on you. On to Penn State...

I see Larry Johnson is tabbed as a top candidate for defensive coordinator at Illinois. This is a direct result of Paterno staying on. Not only is Larry Johnson a phenomenal coach, he is perhaps our best recruiter. He has lead the recruit for Jelani Jenkins. These recruits are jittery as bunny rabbits and I imagine thats all he needed to hear to scratch Penn State off his list. I'm not asking Paterno to retire. I was actually somewhat happy with his re-signing. But I think we could do what so many universities are doing now with the "head coach in waiting" title. Name Bradley your next head coach to help recruiting and tell Johnson he will take over as defensive coordinator. Good guys will not stay position coaches for long. Brian Norwood left and we replaced him with Kermit Buggs, some guy, who to the best of my knowledge played sparingly in his time and had been pushing paper in the front office for a while, and our weakest spot this year was pass defense. Small wonder.

I'd like to finish by saying Utah is this year's national champion. Hands down bar none. If this were any other league or sport, they would go first to record: Utah wins, head to head: no matchup, common opponents: one- and Utah dispacthed of them way easier than Florida. This is an absolute shame. If they do stick with the BCS, the most immediate change that can take place to help is to take away the automatic bid for the big east and acc and give it to the mountain west and the WAC. Did anyone even watch Virgina Tech-Cinci besides Pete? I mean who cares?

So now all thats left is for Mel Kiper and Todd McShay to ruin so many young man's lives by using no information whatsoever to make up their big boards and mis-lead kids into thinking they'll be millionares. Hats off to you gentlemen, I hope you both die.