Friday, October 24, 2008

Blue & White Roundtable: the poisonous nut edition

This week's Blue and White Roundtable is brought to you by We Want the Lion and we're dotting the 'I' bitches!

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

Was Ohio State's blowout of Michigan State last weekend an anomaly or are the Buckeyes "back"?

I don't think you can judge any team on one game alone but you can see how different of a team the Buckeyes are with a healthy (or at least on top of his game) Beanie Wells. I'm not advocating that Wells would have made a difference in the USC loss, they just got blown out from the start in that game, but Ohio State's offense was very anemic in the Big Ten until Beanie got back to form.

What can Penn State do to avoid a slow start in this game?

Good question and I don't have an answer. Not snapping the ball over the head of the quarterback on the first offensive play would be a very good start. Look, I'll take a slow start if it doesn't involve turnovers. Ohio State's going to run the ball and try to control the clock so a slow defensive start won't kill things as long as the coaches make adjustments and make Ohio State earn their points (read: no broken coverages and missed tackles). Penn State's offense can't turn the ball over or it will kill them. Ohio State is a great defensive team but they aren't going to keep Penn State's offense down forever, once the offense gets going let's just hope they aren't playing from behind.

Why is Ohio State ranked ahead of Penn State in the computer rankings? And why is every media member and his brother picking Ohio State this week?

Ohio State is ahead of PSU in the computer rankings because they aren't afraid to schedule good non-conference games. It's that simple. Penn State has no one to blame but themselves for scheduling absolutely shit teams if they go undefeated and get left out of the national title game. Stop scheduling crap and the media (and computers) will respect you, until then, go cry on someone else's shoulder.

As for the media's seemingly anti-Penn State bias, let's face it when you haven't won in Columbus since joining the Big Ten people are going to take the "prove it" mentality until you do just that. As Penn State fans, we can all say "well all those years don't mean a damn thing about this team" but we could have said the same thing for every one of those games as well. When you have a losing streak that spans decades, there's something more to it than just bad luck, it has to be something with the coaching philosophy in those games and the media doesn't think that's suddenly going to change (and neither do I).

Lightning Round

Who gets more TDs on the ground, Clark or Pryor?

Pryor gets his TD's on the ground Clark gets his through the air.

If the winner of this game wins out, will they get a shot in the BCS title game?

Not without help, for Penn State they need just one team ahead to lose for OSU it's several.

Does dotting the "I" even compare to our drum major doing flips?

<extreme sarcasm on> What? Come on, a slowly moving band geek is WAAAAAYYYYYY cooler than a guy doing a front flip after running the length of the football field (twice), wearing 50 pounds of clothing and a hat that's about 3 feet tall. Way more impressive. <extreme sarcasm off>

4 comments:

drozz said...

i say we trade up for this game. ohio gets our drum major to dot the "I", and we have their fat kid with the tuba attempt flips in front of our band.

Galen said...

Excellent idea and the fat kid has to wear his tuba.

Anonymous said...

Coastal Carolina,Syracuse,Temple 8-15 so far....Youngstown State,Ohio,Troy 8-14 do some research before you speak

Michael Pigott said...

The dot shit sucks. Now when the Rhode Island School of Design's band does script Rhode Island (degree of difficulty amped up by 10) and their mascot dots the I, that's a sight to see.