Category: Sports

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More signs of the buzz

Today, PSU made its an appearance in the AP and USA Today top twenty for the first time in 3 years.

Look for ESPN to announce, either later today or sometime tomorrow, that Gameday will be headed to Happy Valley.
(Monday morning editors note: While the SID has yet to confirm the student paper has announced that ESPNs GameDay will be here Saturday. Plus ESPN’s TV schedule lists State College as the locale for the broadcast.)

On Tuesday, Sports Illustrated will name Penn State as the #1 tailgating locale in college football.

Happy days are here again.

Monday noon addition:

Students have already started getting in line to be the first in the stadium Saturday.

Paternoville

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The buzz is back in Happy Valley

ESPN.com – COLUMNIST/FORDE – Forde: Something to shout about:
“STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — With the sun setting on a perfect football Saturday and the home team up 30 big ones, a familiar chant shook Beaver Stadium.

‘We are!’ bellowed one side of the stadium.

‘Penn State!’ roared the other side.

Back and forth it went. With feeling. And with good reason.

For the first time in years, being Penn State is something to shout about.

Being Penn State means being a player on the national scene once again. It means a 5-0 record for the first time since 1999, the end of an 11-game losing streak against ranked opponents, an impending national ranking, a ton of hype for Ohio State’s arrival next Saturday and happy chants echoing through Happy Valley. It means the Nittany Lions stand alongside Alabama, Nebraska and Notre Dame in the Resurgent Old Money Program department.”

Go to the complete article

The town was really jumping following our big win yesterday. One point the author failed to note was that Penn State now has the third longest winning streak in the country trailing only USC and Texas. We have quietly been lurking on the national scene this season and this win will alert many to us BUT the real test will be this Saturday when Ohio State comes to Happy Valley for a 7:45PM kickoff and an ESPN national audience. A win there will prove that we are really back.

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Nice work if you can get it

When I was out last night I ran into a friend, Pete Lisicky, who is a former Penn State basketball player and is now playing professionally in Europe. With Pete was another former PSU player Calvin Booth. Calvin has been playing in the NBA for six years, usually averaging about 10 minutes per game. Calvin and Pete are in town for the football game today.

Calvin is in a unique situation. The NBA and their players association recently renegotiated their collective bargaining agreement. A new provision of the agreement was the amnesty player. This was a one-time deal where an NBA team could cut one player from their team without the player’s salary counting against the team’s salary cap – that was the team’s benefit. The team still had to pay the player the remaining money on his contract and the player became an immediate free agent – that’s the player’s benefit.

Calvin was the Milwaukee Bucks amnesty player. He then went on to sign a contract with the Washington Wizards for this upcoming season. That means that Calvin will be getting two paychecks this year. Now I don’t know what his contract with the Wizards is but I do know that the Milwaukee Bucks owe him $13 million over the next two years – not bad for about 10 minutes work 50-70 times a year.

That’s nice work if you can get it.

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Huge win for Penn State soccer last night

I got to watch Penn State’s men’s soccer team take on Indiana on national TV (Fox Soccer Channel) last night. PSU has had a terribly disappointing season to date. They were a preseason Top 25 team but fell out of the national rankings with a 2-6-2 start. Indiana has had their normal fine season. They are the two time defending national champions and had been #1 ranked up until last week when they slipped to #5 as a result of two ties. However, they were still undefeated and the game was being played in Indiana so Penn State was a huge underdog.

PSU pulled out a 2-1 win on a Golden Goal six minutes into overtime.

My buddy David Gray, whom you may remember from my post on the dummy blog, had his moment in the sun when the national TV cameras clearly caught him throwing an elbow at an Indiana player (the ref saw it too and it earned David a yellow card).

This was PSU’s second win over a ranked opponent in 10 days (they beat #6 Maryland here in State College last week) and hopefully will propell them to a successful B10 campaign.