The Nittany Turkey

Primarily about Penn State football, this is a tale told by idiots, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

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Home 2012 Archives for April 2012

Archives for April 2012

Four Lions Drafted by NFL

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Penn State, like most of the other Big Ten programs, was only fair ta middlin’ in the NFL Draft. Wisconsin provided one player for each of the first six rounds to tie for tops in the conference with Michigan State. Iowa had five, including one first-rounder, while four selections tied the Nittany Lions with Ohio State, Nebraska, and Illinois (although Illinois had two first-rounders and two seconds), followed by Michigan with three, and both Purdue and Northwestern with two. Indiana and Minnesota… well… the big ZERO.

Defensive Tackle Devon Still was projected by many pundits to be a first-round pick; however, he wound up being chosen toward the bottom of the second round, as fifty-third overall pick. He will be an important component of the Cincinnati Bengals’ rebuilding program. The Bengals had a very successful draft and should be a contender in the AFC North.

Johnnie Troutman and Jack Crawford were 14th and 23rd picks, respectively, in the fifth round, with Troutman going to San Diego and Crawford joining former teammate Stefen Wisniewski in Oakland. Nate Stupar was chosen by Oakland as well, 23rd pick in the seventh round. (Mr. Irrelevant was the 46th pick this year, Chandler Harnish, QB from Northern Illinois, chosen by the Indianapolis Colts. No doubt, Andrew Luck is quaking in his size 15 boots.)

Undrafted were D’anton Lynn, Eric Latimore, Joe Suhey, Chaz Powell, Stephfon Green, Quinn Barham, Derek Moye, Drew Astorino, and Nick Sukay. Nick Sukay has been picked up by the Buffalo Bills as an undrafted free agent (UFA). Andrew Szczerba, who was not even on my draft list, was signed by the Dallas Cowboys. Quinn Barham, who is so obscure that his first name was listed as “Sam” on the NFL site, was signed by the Detroit Lions. Finally, Eric Latimore went to the Minnesota Vikings.

That leaves Lynn, Suhey, Powell, Green, Moye, and Astorino. They are still chances that someone will take a chance on them as UFA’s, but it would be best if they brush up on their life insurance underwriter exams in any case.

Really?

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Recently, a single word, vogue affectation has emerged in vocal and written commentary, in particular reflecting the perceived need to express sarcastic bemusement in commenting on current events in politics with a wink and a slant. This oft abused interjection is cropping up more and more in the media and in the blogosphere. Moreover, it is slithering into casual conversation, as any annoying vogue word is wont to do. ?????? ???? ?????? It goes without saying that its condescending tone of ironic incredulity mixed with moral superiority, along with its exponentially grown ubiquity is beginning to piss this Turkey off. That’s nothing new. After all, this old curmudgeon gets pissed off when the last drop winds up hitting the water after the flush is complete. And thanks to a benignly overgrown prostate, it frequently does so, but I digress. (TMI. Really?) Anyhow, someone needs to turn off the spiggot.

“What is this word, already?” you ask.
Really?

“Yes, really.”
That’s what it is.

“What’s what it is?”
OK, so you can’t glean in from the headline and I hand it to you and you still don’t get it? Really?

The vogue word today, much as it was in the 1970s, is really. Only the punctuation and inflection have changed to protect the no longer innocent.

Back in the 1970s, the word was used as a semi-disinterested, declarative interjection to convey vacuous agreement. Sometimes it was pronounced to rhyme with “Philly”, especially among the Valley Girl demographic. Here’s a conversation from the 1970s, taking place in a fern bar. (If you have to ask what a fern bar is, you weren’t of age in the 1970s.)

She: I’m like totally into the Bee Gees. They make me feel like dancing.
He: Rilly.

She: So, like what’s your sign? I’m a Libra.
He: Rilly. Like, I’m a Aquarius.

She: Rilly. You wanna get out of here and have some fun at my place?
He: REALLY?! We’re outta here!

That was the 1970s, and this is now. We’re a less kind, more sarcastic genre of humanity a generation later. Now, we use the word to express condescension and derision in a unilateral conversation, as if we were commenting on something someone else said, only we said it. It works for both mocking agreement and mocking dismissal — you have to guess, but it’s usually directed at a knowing audience, so you’re supposed to know. This “Really?” thing has all but replaced the ridiculous, “Well, duh!” Here are some examples.

  • In The Weekly Standard: Cheney’s heart transplant won’t change his approach to work. Really? (Meaning: Wow! This guy is one tough cookie who is purporting to be able to handle a full schedule. ????? ???? ???? It’s going to be impossible and we don’t really think he can do it but it’s great that he thinks so.)
  • In the Daily Kos: Cheney’s heart transplant won’t change his approach to work. Really? (Meaning: Yeah, right. This guy’s heart was black to begin with and he’s a warmonger and that’s never going to change. His “work” is grabbing money and killing people.)

It plays equally well (???) in prosaically spoken prose, particularly on those 15 second sound bite laden news programs we no longer watch.

  • Channel 9 Eyewitness News: The Magic won’t be going deep into the playoffs without Dwight Howard. Really? Marla will have the story after the break…

I suppose that we’re stuck with the “Really?” crap for a while. Flare-ups of this kind usually die a slow smoldering death, smothered by overuse, but fanned by the minions of heartlanders to whom it remains a new thing for a while longer because it took a while longer to get there. Inevitably, however, it will be replaced eventually by something even lamer. ???? ??? ????

The Turkey has done written enough. Really?

 

Sudden Impact, Post BW Style

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We here at the Turkey sure hope y’all enjoyed the Blue-White extravaganza.

Hey, what’s with this “y’all” stuff? Ain’t no boats around here. No, Bubba, this Turkey is way south of the Masonic-Dixonial Line of Grammatical Demarcation. North of it, the word is “yinz”; south of it, we say “y’all.”

Problem is, there’s no separate plural form of “you” in the English language. We just use “you” for second person singular or plural. But if you’re from the South or from da Burgh, you can rectumfy that natural language deficit by creating your own plural, thus “y’all” and “yinz”. In Philly it’s more like “yuz.” But I sanctimoniously digress.

The Monday Morning reactions to the Blue-White Game seem to be concentrated in three major areas:

  1. McGloin is this Turkey’s presumptive starting QB unless Jones or Bolden suddenly develops. Jones looks like he might make it — eventually. Bolden does not. The latter exhibits the same flaws as he did two years ago.
  2. Bill Belton looks like a stud running back. His role will be backing up Silas Redd. Perhaps that’s not enough, given his solid performance.
  3. A hearty good riddance to the soft Sandusky zone, the vaunted BBDB, and the conservative, 1980s defensive schemes.

With the spring classic done, and Monday Morning sophomoric analyses complete, this edition of Sudden Impact takes another look at Paul Jones, assesses Penn State players’ chances in the forthcoming NFL draft, and elucidates the Paterno family’s ire over Penn State’s handling of post-firing details.

 

Jeremy Elliott of the Patriot-News reiterates the obvious: Penn State defensive players have had great success in the NFL, but of late (meaning from the end of the Kerry Collins era), we have seen scant few offensive players get drafted.

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Our old buddy Bob Flounders of the same publication has a more robust take on the NFL’s penchant for selecting Nittany Lions defensive players in the Draft. We all have high hopes for Devon Still this year. Separately, in Flounders’ blog, he lists Penn State’s NFL draft selections since 1992.

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Paul Jones has had a rough time since coming to Penn State. His high school grades and SATs were good enough to get him admitted to Stanford and Duke, but he came to Penn State and languished academically. Why? Rich Scarcella of the Reading Eagle shares the results of his digging into that matter.

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More fallout from the Sandusky scandal: Mark Sherburne, whom you might recall was the first appointee as interim athletic director when Tim Curley was placed on administrative leave, was fired for withholding documents relating to Curley, says Susan Snyder of the Inquirer.

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The Paterno family remains outraged about the University’s attempts to smooth things over, including dangling the notion of renaming Beaver Stadium as an appeasement. Sara Ganim, Pulitzer Prize winning reporter, has dug into this story.

 

That’s it for another edition of Sudden Impact. Well, it’s a long, long time, from May to December, but the days grow fun when you reach September. We’ll try to fill in some of the football withdrawal gaps for you with our brainless humor and occasional factoids.