Blue & White Roundtable: the black out edition

Zombie Nation hosts the Blue & White Roundtable this week and it's my turn to handle the answers.

B&W Roundtable Posse
Black Shoe Diaries
Happy Hour Valley
Tangled Up In Blue And White
There is No Name On My Jersey
We Want the Lion
William F. Yurasko
Zombie Nation

Name one unit-to-unit match up Penn State must win Saturday. How does PSU win that battle?

Believe it or not I think a key matchup is the defensive line/linebackers vs. Kory Sheets. Sheets is averaging almost 110 yards per game and almost 6 yards per rush and you know Penn State will be looking to stop the pass. Allow me to direct your attention to one of the Purdue "experts" and get his take on the Boilermaker offense against ND.

Painter played poorly, sailing passes over and over again… …Sheets was very good, both catching the ball out of the backfield and running and earning yards after the initial hit. It seems to me, that it's time to, at very minimum, see a second quarterback, at least situationally, if not a different quarterback starting next week...once again, that's just my opinion.

I hate to beleaguer the point but Penn State's defensive weakness is its linebacker play specifically the middle against the run. If Penn State allows Sheets to control the game the Nittany Lion offense will have to bail them out once again.

This trip to Purdue is setting up to be a classic trap game. Do you agree? Why or why not?

Trap? No I don't think so. The only thing that concerns me (other than the previously mentioned defensive woes) is Penn State's notoriously bad start in noon games. Hopefully they got that out of their system against Temple because this isn't Temple and the defense won't shut the Purdue offense out.

Purdue will be doing a "Black Out" this week. Putting aside that it's going to raise money for charity (each shirt sold sends money to United Way), what are your feelings on other schools organizing "[insert color here] Outs?"

Meeh. Good for them they're trying to generate excitement for a team that desperately needs some. The problem is, you can try to coax fan excitement but it really has to happen organically (corporate middle manager word alert) that is to say it has to happen in a grass roots sort of way from the student body or fan base, like it did at PSU, and not from a university mandate. Once you successfully organize a [color] out and it catches on the athletic department can ask fans on specific games to wear said color like Penn State does but really it hast to come from the fans first. Georgia tried a black out last week… yeah, didn't work out so well.

Lightening Round
-Royster over 100 yards?

Oh my yes, I'll be shocked if he doesn't.

-Curtis Painter throws first TD ever vs. PSU?

Oh my yes, I'll be shocked if he doesn't.

-Pat Devlin gets meaningful playing time?

Oh my no, I'll be shocked if he does.