Penn State steals another lineman from Pitt

After yesterday's fiasco with WPIAL offensive lineman Miles Dieffenbach you would think Pitt would get a break, I mean Miles' dad is a tennis coach there, that must have stung. Well the universe can be very cruel sometimes because, on the heels of Dieffenbach's commitment comes the second WPIAL lineman to spurn Pitt and choose Penn State: Tom Ricketts. The thing is Ricketts father isn't some non-revenue women's athletics coach, no it's much worse for Pitt; much, much worse:

Ricketts' decision might have been even a bigger blow to Pitt. Ricketts father, Tom II, was a standout lineman at Pitt in the 1980s. His mother, Sandy (Albright) Ricketts, was a standout swimmer at Pitt. The parents have season tickets to Pitt football games. Ricketts' great grandfather was Charles "Doc" Hartwig, who was a first-team All-American at Pitt in the 1930s.

The dude's a Pitt legacy the entire freakin' family has award winning athletic ties to Pitt. That, my friends is cold.

"Penn State has always been my secret favorite," Ricketts said. "Growing up, Pitt was a favorite, too. But just looking at the opportunities given to me, Penn State was the best thing for me. ... This past week - and maybe even a little less than that - I was pretty sure Penn State is where I wanted to go. The past three days, I said, 'This is where I need to be.' I love the campus, the coaching staff, everything about Penn State."

More from young Tom about his commitment: "Really, it's just about the best fit for me - as a student and player. Maybe as Tom Ricketts' son, it might have been best for me at Pitt. But as Thomas Ricketts III, Penn State is where I need to be."

Ricketts really didn't have a chance though, he was recruited by Penn State's best recruiter at a VERY early age:

Fourteen years ago, Penn State defensive coordinator Tom Bradley sent a recruiting letter to Tom Ricketts. Ricketts was 3 years old at the time.

Bradley knew Ricketts' father, Tom II, and sent the letter as a joke. Fourteen years later, Bradley recruited the younger Ricketts for real - and got him.

Both Ricketts and his father talked tonight in a phone interview about the letter from Bradley and laughed about it. They have the letter framed in their home.

Somewhere Ron Zook is frantically constructing thousands of recruiting letters for newborns of former college football players.

Blog Chips: It’s the little things in life

-Sometimes it's the little things in life that make your day. BSD is reporting that Penn State has landed four star center Miles Dieffenbach. Good, yes but the schadenfreuderific twist to this is that Miles is from Pittsburgh and grew up a huge Pitt fan until…

"I wasn't really holding out for it. I mean, I grew up a Pitt fan all my life and always hated Penn State, so when they offered me, I wasn't really that into it," said Dieffenbach. "But then I visited and it was different from what I thought. I loved it, and the tables turned."

As Mike points out, head on over to the Pitt message boards, if you don't have a smile on your face for the rest of the day… well… you're just not an ignorant ass like me.

-The AP is reporting that the NCAA has responded to Florida State's appeal of sanctions from their academic cheating scandal and they've done so with a carrier pigeon and decoder ring.

The NCAA's Committee on Infractions responded Tuesday to Florida State's appeal of sanctions from an academic cheating scandal, but kept its answer secret and gave the school 15 days to respond.

FSU's response?

"Our comment will be the rebuttal," associate athletic director Rob Wilson said. "We'll all know a lot more when we send this thing back."

Super secret probation and an equally clandestine response = not good news for FSU.

-Things have been quiet on the wrestling front since "the day the wrestling world was turned upside down" when PSU hired Cael Sanderson but the rumor mill hasn't stopped buzzing. Some items of concrete certainty have surfaced though. A week after the announcement, two of the nation's best high school wrestlers signed on with Penn State: twin brothers Andrew and Dylan Alton. Recently, all-American and erstwhile Iowa State wrestler Cyler Sanderson was given a release to join his older brother and wrestle his senior season at Penn State. This will instantly give Penn State a shot in the arm for this season, it's been widely speculated that until Cael gets his recruits in place that Penn State would be in a rebuilding phase at least for the next couple years, but if this is any indication of things to come, perhaps not.

-Speaking of Penn State wrestling, if you want a great blog of all things PSU Wrestling, visit Happy Valley Half Nelson. I have to admit, we wrestling fans may be small in number but we make up for it in fanaticism.

Who wants to be a millionaire: JoePa

This is as surprising as someone revealing that Rush Limbaugh is fat:

Records released Friday by the university show the 82-year-old Hall of Famer is Penn State's highest-paid employee, making more than $1.03 million last year.

That includes his base salary plus any bonuses, but does not include compensation from outside the university that top coaches typically collect. Paterno's compensation from other sources is not a public record.

We've long speculated that Mr. Paterno (will be fine thank you very much) made much less than the top college football coaches and here we have empirical evidence. Sure, he probably makes a boat-load of money from endorsement deals but what big-name coach doesn't? The point is Paterno makes less than 1/3 of the nation's highest paid coaches Les Miles and Nick Saban (3.8 M) and let's face it, would Nittany Nation be proud of the recruiting tactics that Saban has displayed? Yeah, we'll take that old guy in a heartbeat, we still have a soul.

Now that we know does this change anything, people? Not for me, but hey, thanks to the lawyers for bringing this to light.

Paterno's salary was once one of college football's most closely-guarded secrets until his base salary of roughly $500,000 was made public two years ago as part of an open records request of state retirement data initiated by the Patriot News of Harrisburg.

Oh, the good old Harrisburg Patriot, collecting your puppy's droppings since 1986. Hope the money spent to get this info helps you guys sell papers.*

More fun with numbers:

Men's basketball coach Ed DeChellis made more than $642,000.

Of other salaries released, five were for officers of the university and therefore paid mostly from public funding or tuition. That includes president Graham Spanier, who made $590,000.

So Spanier makes almost as much as the Men's Basketball coach, interesting indeed. I would say that a half Mil isn't that much to pay for a major university president but 600 Grand is really really cheep for a big time university basketball coach. I think in Paterno's and DeChellis' case we have a very good bargain.

*not really I hope you go bankrupt for this obvious attempt at publicity.