Auric Rodents* (4-2, 1-2) vs. Penn State (5-1, 2-1)
Sciarocca vs. Yurcich in the Battle of Offensive Offenses
Can we say “white out” anymore without offending someone or adding the term “privilege”? Regardless, the annual game implementing the idea germinated by Guido d’Elia, deposed strategic Culture of Football marketing guru of the Paterno era, is here upon us. The Minnesota Golden Gophers invade State College on Saturday evening to face the freshly defeated gladiators of now #16 Penn State.
Why should “almost famous” Minnesota be thus honored? According to James Franklin, who always has something to say about nothing and never has anything to say about something, it was the game’s starting time that inspired the decision. I have something more to say about that. Had PSU beaten Michigan, the tOSU game a week hence would have been played in prime time and would have been a more intuitively logical choice for the White-Out. My conjecture is that before the season started, the Culture of Football Geniuses at Penn State had already figured that Michigan would be a loss and we’d be relegated to the noon time slot for the forthcoming loss to the Buckeyes. Thus, Minnesota got the nod.
Can History Repeat Itself?
If you look back through the annals of Penn State football history, you’ll find that the Minnesota game is often pivotal. For example, the 24-23 loss in 1999 by the then 9-0 Nittany Lions heralded the beginning of a slide into a form of purgatory known among PSU fans as THE DARK YEARS. (Cue ominous, minor key cello riff). Likewise, the Lions thought they were hot shit twenty years later, in 2019, when they were 8-0 going into the tilt with the Gophers. That year, they lost 31-26. The only other loss as the 2019 season proceeded was to Ohio State, so you could say that the Minnesota loss dashed any playoff hopes for the Nittany Lions. This year, the Penn State record is 5-1, and coming off a huge, embarrassing massacre by the winged weasels, a loss here could portend yet another slide to oblivion.
Fortunately, these teams don’t play each other every year. Who could stand the excitement, already?!
Talkin’ Shit…
If the trash talking bullshit in the Michigan tunnel is any indication, this group of Nittany Lions is already fragile. Trash talking when you’re getting your ass kicked reminds me of Anthony Morelli standing on the bench taunting Michigan fans in 2005, in a game Penn State lost. Bad form, to say the least. Now, PSU head coach James Franklin feels that the simple remedy for the trash talking problem is to impose a new rule temporally staggering the field exits at halftime when opponents share the tunnel to the locker room.
Such bullshit?! That’s like saying let’s avoid marital strife by living on opposite coasts, Hollywood style. Works for them, I suppose. But no, Franklin is in de Nile, like dem beeg crocodiles. Hey Franklin, how about controlling your team and imposing some discipline on the guilty parties instead of promoting misbehavior by externalizing the problem? Proximity ain’t the cause — it’s assholes acting like assholes. We mold men at Penn State, not overblown, braggadocious boys. Success with honor, Franklin! Set these guys back for fucking up, will you? Screw the suggestions that we need rules about who can go into the tunnel at what time!
At the very least, they must learn the lesson that they should put their money where their mouths are.
But I digress…
Recent Outings
Hell no, we’re not going to talk much about the PSU-Michigan game, which will be indelibly branded in your personal Hall of Shame for time immemorial. The stats were so lopsided that at one time, Penn State had two lucky touchdowns and only one first down. And the defense flat-out suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucked!
Moving on to Minnesota, the 4-2 Gophers are coming off a shitty 26-14 loss to the 2022 upstart Indigenously Pugilistic Illiniweks, now ranked #18 and rising under the adept tutelage of former pig farmer Brett Bulimia Bielema. The Natives thoroughly dominated the Rodents, ringing up 472 yards to Minnesota’s 180 and dominating the increasingly irrelevant time of possession (IITOP), 40-20. To compound the felony, the Burrowers threw three ugly interceptions. The Illinois game is surely one that Rodent fans would rather forget, but like Penn State’s abysmal loss last week, it will live on in their personal Hall of Shame forever.
So, both had shitty games last week.
Whoda QB?
Questions exist for both teams regarding who the signal callers will be when the Heap Big White-Privilege-Out game starts at 7:30 pm on Saturday. Minnesota sixth-year senior QB Tanner Morgan was punched in the head by a Fighting (literally) Illini freshman linebacker in the loss to Illinois and hasn’t been quite right ever since. However, as I write this, he has not been ruled out for the Penn State game. Meanwhile, our own sixth-year boy, Sean Clifford, is being evaluated for an undisclosed injury suffered in the horrible loss to Michigan. Franklin refuses to talk about injuries unless they’re season-ending, so I guess there’s hope for Clifford, because Franklin ain’t sayin’ shit!
Redshirt freshman Athan Kaliakmanis might get the nod if Morgan cannot start. Meanwhile, fickle PSU fans have been champing at the bit to get freshman sensation Drew Allar some playing time. This could be their wet dream, but then the honeymoon wouldn’t last awfully long because the problems of the Penn State offense run much deeper than who plays quarterback. Lotta fixing needs to be done there for whoever lines up behind the always questionable offensive line.
Morgan is the Gophers’ winningest quarterback in program history, with thirty-one victories, and he has thrown for 1164 yards and seven touchdowns this year. Without him, the Rodents might be screwed.
Da Wedda
Da weddaperson calls for a mostly sunny day with light winds, a high of 67 and a low of 38. Good football weather, but it might get a little chilly before the night is over. Let us hope that just refers to the weather.
Da Bottom Line
Time for the Official Turkey Poop Prognostication, as we all scratch our heads wondering which version of a football team will show up for Penn State. Will the Michigan loss throw a wet blanket on the season, to be exacerbated by a loss to Minnesota and a slide to oblivion? In my mind, that slide started with Northwestern, regardless of the win. Or will the team heed the words of the great sage PJ Mustipher who made the pronouncement, “We can’t let a loss create another loss.”? Will Betelgeuse explode and take us with it? These are questions that deserve answers that even I, the lesser great sage, cannot provide. You must wait and see.
The oddsmakers favor the Nittany Lions by merely 4.5 points at home. This is like the usual home advantage of a field goal plus a point-and-a-half for good measure. Hmmm, the Sanguinarians®, undaunted in the wake of the Michigan Massacre at Da Big House, must think that is a huge overlay. They’ll go all in on this one, needing to give up only 4.5 points. Hell, bet the house on it, for last week was an anomaly. No way this team could lose two in a row. Or could they?
I’m here to make a cold-blooded prediction, not to sing praises of nonexistent heroes, so here goes. The over/under is 44.5, so that says the gamblers are looking at a Penn State win of like 24.5 – 20. Can they figure out a way to score half a point? Franklin would have an answer for that. But their problems run deep, so these trash talkers lack the team character to avert post-massacre doldrums. Taking no credit away from Michigan’s complete domination, they just looked TOO BAD last week. Minnesota 24, Penn State 23 and it’s déjà vu all over again, 1999 style. (Cue Prince singing about partying). Take the over.
*Credit Big Al for the catchy Minnesota moniker.
I’ll return after the White-Privilege-Out to recap, excoriate, and castigate.
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Big Al says
You’d have to be a compulsive gambler to bet on this game with the uncertainty over who will quarterback each team. If my math is correct, there are different qb match up permutations and two of the four favor the Rodents. One is a push (Morgan’s back up vs Clifford) and one favors the Kitties (Morgan’s back up vs Aller).
State can win this game if Morgan can’t play and and State sells out against the run and packs the box – which they failed to do against Michigan. Despite Franklin’s whining about Penn State’s front seven being too small, the main reasons Michigan stomped them was that the linebackers didn’t maintain gap integrity and the team’s tackling technique sucked. Both of those of things are coaching failures.
In any case, I’m not convinced that this game will “make or break” the season like all the internet warriors are claiming. If State wins this game, they finish the season 9-3. If they lose, they finish 7-5. Four or five years from now (when Franklin’s buyout declines enough to fire his ass), no one will remember the difference.
The Nittany Turkey says
I probably wouldn’t bet on this game if I were a betting man, even if the QBs were known, but assuming I’m full of shit, I would take Minnesota and the points.
Whether the game will make or break the season is silly, binary speculation, which I am too intelligent to indulge in, unlike the typical vast unwashed universe of sports fandom, especially the vocal ones on the Internet. For them, a loss to Michigan would only be forgivable if the season ended 10-2 or better. A loss to Minnesota means a 9-3 season, which is already crying in their beer territory. There is no continuum — it’s either win completely or lose completely; those two equivalence classes partition the set into {12-0, 11-1, 10-2} for the set W and all other possible records for the set L.
Yes, I’m completely full of shit and I love it!
—TNT
K. John says
This one comes down to the quarterbacks. If Morgan plays, we lose, if Sean Clifford doesn’t, we lose. Allar could be good in time but right now, he is an immobile freshmen who would be in charge of an offense forced to play an opponent 11 on 11 within 10 yards of the line of scrimmage because that is how long the O-line will hold up if they do not have to respect the QB keeper and everyone knows we lack deep speed.
With Morgan
Minnesota 27
Penn State 24
Without Morgan but with Clifford
Penn State 27
Minnesota 24
With both backups
Minnesota 29
Penn State 12
The Nittany Turkey says
I like the Chinese restaurant approach. We’ll choose one from Column A and one from Column B and we get egg loll on side.
I’m thinking Morgan plays. After all, he just got punched in the head in Illinois. What do you expect? Peace and harmony on the South Side? Just being a dick. I’ll be in Chicago in a couple of weeks, so I hope I don’t get punched in the head.
Clifford — who da hell knows? Franklin playing the injury situation close to the vest as usual.
Fans always want something new. The quarterback bullshit at PSU goes back a long time. “Put in Hostettler!” “Get Sacca out of there!” Fans always know best. They lament Will Levis departing and blame that on Clifford getting the PT. They didn’t cry that much when Rob Bolden bolted to play backup at LSU. I’m seeing the same crap with the Steelers, as 95% of the fans want Kenny Pickett in there because they know nothing about football or how long it takes a rookie to get up to speed in the NFL. They just know Roethlisberger stepped into a game when Tommy Maddox was hurt in 2004 and went on to be their starter for 17 years. But Roethlisbergers are not born every minute and Pickett is not the Second Coming of Big Ben. Enough of this rant.
So, your first option looks like a winner to me, with Morgan playing against either PSU quarterback and prevailing by a FG.
I saw a YouTube video posted with the teaser, “Has Everybody Figured Out Penn State’s Offense?” I chuckled at that one, because the answer is obvious. They have figured out we have none.
And that ain’t won-ton soup!
—TNT
K. John says
Don’t forget that Bolden transferred from LSU to play at EMU, which is in Ypsilanti, Mi, home of the Brick Dick, which is not something you can unsee. But I digress. Yes, everyone has figured out our offense. People figured it out when Yurcich was at Okie State. And the best DC during that era of Big XII football wouldn’t rank in the bottom half of the Big Ten then or now. On top of that, throw in the fact that the offense doesn’t work all that well without a Chris Godwinesque receiver and a line that can execute the complicated spread gap blocking scheme…
The Nittany Turkey says
Who can forget the illustrious Rob Bolden, but I clearly blocked on his wonderful career at The Brick Dick. I remember Rob from his PSU days, when he once gleefully tweeted, “Gonna get a new car when my Pell Grant comes through.” I retorted, “I thought the Pell Grant was for books and tuition.” Rob’s response, “No, you can use it for anything.” I’m now wondering whether he got anything resembling an education while playing student at three distinguished universities. Anyhow, I hope he enjoyed the car — which didn’t have the longevity an education would have. But I, too, digress.
Regarding Yurcich, I didn’t think they believed in defense in the Big Twelve, so why would DCs bother trying to figure out offenses? In the words of [anyone you wish to falsely attribute the quote to], “The best defense is a good offense.” That’s the watchword in the Big Twelve.
A Chris Godwin or a Bobby Engram would give Franklin the deep threat he so desperately craves. But could Clifford hit them? That is moot if the OL doesn’t give him enough time for the deep play to develop.
—TNT
Michael H. Geldner says
The Turkey’s prognostication looks unfortunately reasonable to me, particularly if Clifford is injured.
As for figuring out a way to get half a point, what if the ball got stuck half-way through the goal posts during an extra point? You know… maybe it has a blow-out during flight and just flops across the goalpost’s horizontal bar and stays there! I think it would do it, but it would require an amendment to the “Dawson Rule” (see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=en65Ws1FNxE )
The Nittany Turkey says
Pretty funny.
Coincidentally, Chris Boswell had a slightly less billiard-like FG, but still funny, this past weekend in the Steelers-Bucs game. It was a 55-yarder that barely had enough steam to make it to the crossbar, which it hit on the downward trajectory of its ballistic curve. It then bounced straight up with the slightest amount of forward bias, and barely limped just over the bar, where it fell to its death like a wounded pigeon. But three points is three points.
Speaking of the Steelers and pigeons, what was it with the intransigent flock of pigeons who would not leave the field in the Steelers-Bucs game? Every time the play moved down the field, the flock moved to another location. The referee tried to chase a couple of them off the field, but they acted like city pigeons who don’t give a shit what anybody wants. So, the rest of the game was played in peaceful coexistence with the avian co-residents who apparently thought that the freshly sown grass seeds were intended for their dining pleasure.
https://triblive.com/sports/faster-than-a-steeler-or-buccaneer-a-flock-of-pigeons-stayed-in-the-game-sunday/
Dunno whether Clifford or Morgan will play. Both coaches are playing this one close to the vest. Well, Franklin always does. In fact, he told the press that people wanting Allar to start “sends the wrong message.” My feeling is that both coaches will play their sixth-year starter if at all possible. Even so, I still think PJ Fleck’s Minny will “row the boat” tomorrow.
Enjoy your trip — or if you’re back home, enjoy your brother.
—TNT
The Nittany Turkey says
Oh, yeah. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. It has come to light that in addition to the trash talking, our genteel “student athletes” threw PBJ sandwiches at the Michigan players in the tunnel. How classy. It takes all the restraint I can muster not to call them what I think they should be called. Don’t give a shit whether they’re on our team or not — that misbehavior should be punished to teach they hoodlum asses a lesson they won’t forget!
—TNT