Category: Football

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A New Years Memory

It’s a little strange sitting home watching football on New Years after so many years of being at bowl games for the holidays (for the record I’ve been to 23 bowl games) but with the slump that Penn State was in before this season I’ve started to get used to it.

One trip that stands out was thirty years ago. Penn State played Alabama in the first Sugar Bowl in the Superdome on New Years Eve December 31st 1975. The game started at about 8 PM local time and seemed to drag on forever. Penn State wound up losing 13-6 with the game ending a little past 11:30 which meant that we were going to have to rush to get down to Bourbon Street before midnight.

I was with Tod Jeffers and he and I rushed to the famed Pat O’Brien’s. Unfortunately, hundreds of others had the same idea and we wound up trapped in line during a rainstorm. Sure enough, midnight struck with us still in line. Cheers and noisemakers started going off and everyone started hugging and kissing their dates. Bummer, we had lost the game, we were soaking wet, and we had failed to get into the bar before midnight – the night wasn’t going well at all.

At that point I looked up and there was this cute blond coed dressed in Penn State blue standing in line just in front of me. Time to seize the moment. I just grabbed her, wished her a Happy New Year, and laid a big kiss on her. The kiss must have worked because I wound up dating her for about 3 1/2 years.

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End of year Penn State sports wrap-up

Just for sake of completeness, I thought I’d give everyone a final wrap-up (OK asemi-final wrap-up – we still have a bowl game left but that’s next year 🙂 ) of the PSU Fall sports scene. My hospitalization three weeks ago got in the way of my weekend posts and it turns out my superstitious fears were justified.

In case you don’t remember, Penn State’s five fall sports programs (football, women’s volleyball, field hockey, and men’s and women’s soccer) had gone through an unprecedented Big Ten season. The teams each won a Big Ten championship going a combined 49-1 with the sole loss being the football teams last second loss at Michigan. Each of the teams advanced to post season play (the football team is headed to the Orange Bowl while the other four squads all competed in NCAA tournaments.

As I reported earlier, the #8 ranked Field Hockey team was the first to taste defeat when they lost to #6 ranked American University. As I’ve also previously mentioned, UncleLar niece Natalie Berrena (shown here with me during our Santa Crawl) was named first team All-American.

The next team to fall by the wayside was the men’s soccer team. The guys won their first two NCAA matches to make it to the Sweet Sixteen but fell to Creighton in a 3-1 loss at home. That loss happened while I was in the hospital.

The women’s soccer team had more success. The made it to the College Cup, soccer’s equivalent of the Final Four, the weekend after I was hospitalized. Unfortunately, the way that the College Cup draw worked, #2 ranked Penn State had to meet #1 ranked Portland in the semifinals. Both Penn State and Portland were undefeated going into their semifinal match and the consensus opinion was that the victor of this game would probably take home the national championship. The two teams battled to a 0-0 first half tie. This was the first time all year that Portland had been held scoreless in the first half of their game. That defensive battle continued as both teams failed to score in the second half also. They continued play through two 10 minute sudden death overtimes, so after 110 minutes of soccer play neither team was able to eke out a goal. They meant that the winner would be determined by a shoot-out. Portland’s two time Hermann Trophy winner (soccer’s equivalent to the Heisman trophy) nailed the final kick of the shootout to give Portland the 4-3 shootout win. Because the game ended in a shootout, it will go into the record book as a tie. That means that Penn State becomes the first undefeated team in NCAA soccer history to not win the title. As expected Portland went on to claim the crown with a 4-0 victory over UCLA two days later.

Two weekends after my operation, the women’s volleyball team took on Tennessee in the NCAA Regional Semifinal. The regionals were being held on Penn State’s home court and the #2 ranked Nittany Lions were huge favorites to win at home and advanced to the Final Four. Unfortunately, one of Penn State’s star players, Christa Harmotta, had gone down with a season ending injury in Penn State’s last home regular season match and the loss showed. Tennessee pulled off a huge upset knocking off Penn State in four games (that made three staight weekends where one of our teams lost – all no doubt due to my failure to make my regular weekend blog post). The Lady Vols then went on to beat Missouri the next day and advanced to the Final Four.

Two of UncleLar’s volleyball buddies did receive post season honors however. Senior libero Kaleena Walters (also shown here in a Santa Crawl photo) was named B10 Ten Defensive Player of the Year and third team All-American.

Senior setter Sam Tortorello (of course in a Santa Crawl photo) was a unanimous pick as B10 Player of the Year and was also named a first team All-American.

Since the bowl game is scheduled for next year, i.e. January 3rd, I thought this would a good time to make a year end wrap up. As promissed, you won’t have to put up with all these sports reports in the future (of course, that’s partially because our basketball team sucks so much – we did beat New Hampshire (sorry Shannon) this week though).

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Penn State has next

I love the title of this article

If USC or Texas stumbles, Penn State has next: “It was well after midnight, East Coast time, when the notion became clear. Hey, maybe this USC-Texas match-up in the Rose Bowl isn’t a done deal, after all. Not yet, at least.

USC’s 50-42 escape against Fresno State reinforced the reality that two more weeks of games are remaining. And even though the Trojans and Longhorns are the only unbeaten teams left in Division I-A, something crazy still could happen.

What then? What if there’s a BCS free-for-all?”

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In case you didn’t see this before

About 10 days ago, in my “Ken – remember this?” post, I said:

Just like this year, PSU was hot in the middle of the football national championship picture

Gary came back with:

BTW, Is PSU really “hot in the middle of the football national championship picture “?

And I responded:

Most definitely we are. We are fifth in the BCS. That means we need three teams in front of us to lose to get into the BCS championship game.The four teams ahead of us and their remaining games are:

Miami: @Wake Forest (4-6), Geo Tech (6-2), Virginia (5-3), then Fla State (7-2) in the conference championship game – none of those games are easy and it will be tough for them to win all four games (Fla St has already beaten them once).

Alabama: LSU (7-1), @Auburn (7-2), and a conference championship game against either Georgia (7-1) or Florida (7-2). Alabama’s offense is atrocious – they haven’t scored a TD in 13 quarters and it would be a big surprise for them to record three wins against the teams they have yet to play.

Texas: Kansas (5-4), @Tex A&M (5-4), and a conference championship game against Colorado (7-2). Anytime you have to defeat three teams with winning records there is a decent chance you could lose. The favorite has a history of losing the conference championship in the B12 so it wouldn’t be too much of a surprise to see the Longhorns go down.

USC: @California (6-3), Fresno State (7-1), and UCLA (8-1). While Southern Cal looks to be the strongest contender for the national championship they do have challenges ahead of them. None of those teams are pushovers and UCLA would just love to knock their cross town rivals out of the BCS picture.

Penn State on the other hand has two weeks to get ready for their sole remaining game with Michigan State (5-4). MSU is in their usual late season collapse having lost 4 of their last 5 games. We should be able to handle them easily and just sit back and watch the others fall by the wayside.

The good news is that only three of the four teams in front of us need to lose. There is a very good chance that could happen.

Here’s an update of what has happened since:

Just as I suggested, we were able to beat Michigan State and capture the B10 title and secure a berth in a BCS Bowl. Which bowl is still up in the air.

Last week, Alabama lost to LSU in overtime and dropped out of the national championship picture.

Yesterday, Miami lost to Georgia Tech and their national championship hopes have been dashed.

So two of the three things that needed to happen have. We just need one more and we almost got that late last night (people were glued to TV’s in the bars here in State College last night as the USC/Fresno State game didn’t end until 2:15AM).

Southern Cal staged a furious comeback and managed to overcome Fresno State 50-42 in a game that saw them trailing 42-41 in the fourth quarter (Fresno State had also led at halftime 21-13). USC looks beatable and they have crosstown rivals UCLA in two weeks.

Texas was off this week but they have always dangerous Texas A&M and their famed 12th man next week, then a conference championship matchup with Colorado in two weeks.

That means there are three chances for an upset to happen – I’d say odds are about 50-50 that one of the upsets will occur – and Penn State can claim a spot in the national championship game in the Rose Bowl (there is also an outside chance that LSU could sneak by us with a win in their conference championship game).

Realistically, there are now only five schools with a shot at the title. USC and Texas still have their destiny in their own hands. Win out and they are in. Penn State’s season is over and we sit just on the outside waiting for one of the two to fail. LSU not only needs one of the top two to falter but they also need to win out and start getting some love from the BCS computers. Virginia Tech remains a very big long shot to somehow sneak into the game – they probably need both teams on the top to lose and have LSU also lose while they win out and meet Penn State for the title.

So that’s a long winded way of saying “Yes, Gary we very much are in the middle of the national championship picture.

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Penn State vs. Notre Dame?

UncleLar (BroLar),

So what are the odds and what has to take place for Penn State to end up playing Notre Dame in a bowl game? I’ve got a household full of “golden domers”, not to mention Mary Ann’s entire family. I’d like nothing better than to watch Penn State beat Notre Dame somewhere on New Year’s Day.

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Ken – remember this?

First a little background:

Dick Harmon of the Deseret News (out there in Ken’s neck of the woods), a voter in the new Harris Poll, which is part of the BCS ranking system, voted PSU the #17 football team in the country this week. That has raised the ire of many PSU football fans (see this Centre Daily Times Blog post), caused numerous rants and rages on PSU internet forums, generated a plethora of emails to Harmon and his superiors, and even inspired this column by a local sportswriter, Dave Jones.

This paragraph by Dave caught my eye (my emphasis added)

Harmon writes for the Deseret News, one of two papers in Salt Lake, is 52 and has been writing about college football for three decades. He also exposes his ballot every Monday on the Deseret News site, deseretnews.com, which is more than you can say for most Harris voters, let alone the opaque coaches who let underlings fill out their ballots every week on the other poll with understood directives never to vote that Son of a Gun from So’n’so State above No. 24.

The underlings line hit home.

Back in 1972, a friend of mine was a sportswriter for a local paper here in State College and was a voting member of the Associated Press Basketball poll (he shall go nameless because he’s still in the business and just might want to regain his AP vote some day). Right around this time of year he was supposed to submit his ballot for the preseason AP poll. Just like this year, PSU was hot in the middle of the football national championship picture (at the time we were 8-1 and 7th ranked – we wound up 10-2 losing to #2 Oklahoma in the Sugar Bowl – USC won it all at 12-0). Just to show you some things never change, basketball took a back seat to football and my friend asked me to put together a preseason ballot for him because he was too tied up with football coverage. I quickly agreed.

At the time, the AP’s list was a top twenty and you only voted for the top 15. I quickly dove into my research (if only the internet existed back then I could have been much much more thorough). I came up with fourteen teams without too much trouble but was having a hard time settling on a 15th. Then I had a brainstorm – Ken was going to school at Illinois State and he had told me they had a pretty good team, why not do him a favor and plug them in at #15. So be it. I then called him up and told him that as long as his team kept winning I would guarantee that they would appear in the “among those also receiving votes” category.

Damn, if that little school didn’t keep winning. For the first couple of weeks, my little vote meant that they were at the bottom of the “others” category but, after a while, lo and behold they started getting votes from others. They eventually got to about 11-0 and were getting close to the top twenty when their bubble burst and they lost. I would like to think that my original vote caught the attention of other voters and they started to pay attention to the Redbirds as they maintained their winning streak. If it weren’t for me maybe they wouldn’t have gotten any national exposure that year.

Without that exposure, maybe no one would have noticed their 6’6″ guard that was lighting up the conference, eventually earning him a consensus All-American spot and a first round draft by the Phila 76ers which he parlayed into a long time basketball playing, coaching, and broadcasting career. Yup – if it weren’t for me, Doug Collins wouldn’t be where he is today. He owes it all to me.

All kidding aside, I actually had a lot of fun watching Illinois State make me proud of that vote that I initially cast for them. That year also gave me an appreciation for how difficult a job it is to be a voter, particularly in those days when there was no way to see most of the teams you actually were voting for. The only thing you could base your vote on were scores that rolled across the wire services. Even finding a game story was extremely difficult then.

It is easier now but it’s a daunting task and I don’t envy the guys that try to do it (that’s why I am a fan of the computer polls – that and because I’m a computer geek to begin with). At least guys like Dick Harmon put their vote out there for all to see (and thus get some feedback). It’s the secret votes that bother me the most. You can also bet that some of those votes, particularly in the preseason, have as much validity as my “my little brother goes to school there” vote.

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I’m really beginning to dislike Michigan

First their literal last second play three weeks ago turns out to be the only thing standing between us an an undefeated season. Our win over Wisconsin this weekend has jumped us to #5 in the BCS. If Michigan hadn’t beaten us we would probably be #3 just waiting for someone to screw up a little so we could jump into the national championship game.

The Michigan had to go through a monkey wrench into our other sports too. On Friday, their women’s soccer team handed #1 Penn State their only loss of the season avenging an earlier Penn State win. The game was decided on a 4-2 shootout after two periods of overtime failed to decide a winner (that’s a hard way to suffer your only defeat). Michigan went on to win the B10 tournament crown but PSU is still the regular season champ.

Then on Saturday, the Michigan field hockey team knocked off the #1 seeded PSU women’s field hockey team 2-1 in the B10 tournament semifinals. And just like the Michigan women’s soccer team, their field hockey team went on to claim the tournament crown while we had to be satisfied with the regular season title.

At least our #3 ranked women’s volleyball team continued on a roll. They claimed two B10 wins in the last week defeating Ohio State 3-0 and Indiana 3-0. The ladies remain undefeated in Big Ten play with a huge three game lead in the standings.

The B10 champion men’s soccer team didn’t have a conference match but they did knock off #19 Hartwick 2-0 in a warmup for next weekend’s B10 tournament.

Our 3-2 all sport conference record over the last week moves us to 41-3 overall in conference play (5-3 against Michigan, 36-0 against everyone else), still an incredible performance by our fall sports teams.

The football team is off next weekend, the mens soccer team will take on the winner of the Michigan (yes them again)/Michigan State match in the B10 tournament, the women’s soccer team and women’s field hockey teams commence NCAA championship play, while the women’s volleyball team continues conference play with matches at Purdue and Illinois.

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An almost perfect weekend

Here we go with my weekly PSU athletic report. I really didn’t plan on doing this on a weekly basis but we just kept winning and the superstitious side of me said “don’t do anything different”.

Friday afternoon started off with the #6 ranked women’s field hockey team travelling to #9 Indiana to take on the Hoosiers in a match to decide the #1 seed in the conference tournament. Penn State had already clinched at least a share of the title but Indiana could have tied them with a victory. However, the women were not to be denied. They won 4-3 in overtime, their school record 17th straight win, to become the third Penn State athletic team to lock up sole possession of a Big Ten Championship.

Then later Friday night, the #3 ranked took on #11 ranked Wisconsin here in Happy Valley. The women were the only undefeated team in the conference and came into the match with a two game lead over Wisconsin. The ladies knocked out a 3-1 victory over Wisconsin to get a stranglehold on the conference title a little over halfway through the season.

Saturday the football team remained atop the conference with a 33-15 win over Purdue. Penn State controls their destiny in their hunt for a BCS bowl bid. Win the next two games and they will be headed to either the Fiesta, Orange, or Sugar Bowls. The victory sets up a huge battle for next Saturday when Wisconsin comes to town. Wisconsin and PSU are currently tied atop the conference and Saturday’s game will go a long way toward determining the conference champ. On the national scene, Penn State will move up to #8 in the BCS rankings when they are announced tomorrow.

On Saturday night, the women’s volleyball team hosted Northwestern in a conference battle. The ladies won easily in a 3-0 sweep of the Wildcats. The win not only kept the team undefeated in league play but it gave them a 3 game lead in the championship race virtually insuring that they will claim a third straight league title.

On Sunday the 20th ranked men’s soccer team took on Michigan. The men had already locked up the Big Ten title but this battle was to ensure that they finished the season undefeated within the conference. Sure enough, they prevailed 3-2 in overtime.

The men’s soccer game was the final Penn State Big Ten conference battle of the weekend and left the Nits with a perfect 5-0 conference all sports record and stretched our athletic teams records to an absolutely incredible 37-1 in conference play. We have locked in three B10 titles (field hockey, mens soccer, womens soccer), have a solid three game lead in volleyball, and control our destiny in football. No Big Ten athletic program has ever claimed all five fall team titles but we have an excellent chance of doing so. Also, all five of our programs are ranked in the top twenty in their respective sports and no other school in the country can currently make that claim.

While conference play was finished for the weekend, there were still two other contests to be held. The #1 ranked womens soccer team had already locked in their Big Ten championship but they went on todefeat Navy 5-0 in their final match of the season to remain the only unbeaten untied team in the nation. This was the first perfect season in the short history of the womens soccer program.

Lastly, the #6 ranked and Big Ten Champion womens field hockey team traveled to Chapel Hill to take on the #3 ranked Lady Tarheels in a big intersectional battle. Unfortunately, another perfect weekend was not to be when the girls lost a heartbreaker to North Carolina 3-2 in overtime. The loss ended the girls school record 17 game winning streak. The girls ended their season at 17-2 and will go for the Big Ten Tournament title beginning Saturday.

Almost a perfect weekend, but 7-1 is pretty darn good anyway.

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Credit where credit is due

Penn State has been receiving lots of good press because of their spectacular implementation of the “White Out” theme at the Ohio State game this year.

The reality of it all is that we really weren’t the ones that started it. We kind of borrowed the idea from Michigan who has been alternating “Maize Outs” and “Blue Outs” at the football games for four years. The Michigan football team picked up the “Maize Out” idea from the Michigan Hockey team.

The Michigan hockey team undoubtedly got the idea from the Winnipeg Jets who created the promotion for the 1986 Stanley Cup Playoffs.

One of the more effective color implementations was a Texas A&M “Red, White, and Blue Out” shortly after 9/11.

However, as good as out “White Out” was, it really can’t top the Michigan “Maize Out” shown below.