Archives for 2023

Ole Miss 38, Penn State 25

The vaunted Penn State defense broke down big time against the Ole Miss Rebels in the Peach Bowl on Saturday. Although missing some key components due to the pecuniary vagaries of college moneyball in the Twenty-First Century, the vaunted D proved it wasn’t all that. Defending against a bunch of stiffs all year long is an effortless way to look good, ain’t it?

Moving right along, I’ll give K. John full credit for hitting the nail on the head in his comments to my pre-game post. If you haven’t read it, read it. It was prescient.

Ole Miss Offense Got the Job Done

I also will hand out kudos to Ole Miss head coach Lane Kiffin for knowing how to adjust to the flow of a game and exploit opportunities as they present themselves. Ace quarterback Jaxson Dart combined with tight end Caden Prieskorn, wide receiver Tre Harris, and running back Quinshon Judkins, to run roughshod over the vaunted D, a 540-yard performance that more than doubled the unit’s yards-against average for the season. Dart was 25-40 for 379 yards and 3 TDs. Judkins ran for 106 yards. Prieskorn had 10 receptions for 136 yards and two TDs and Harris had 7 catches for 134.

Prieskorn did not stand out in the season stats, but he sure looked like an NFL tight end in the Peach Bowl. Penn State could not defend against him. You would think that once it was clear he was the go-to guy, some adjustments would be forthcoming, but none were apparent. Dart to Prieskorn looked like Tom Brady to Rob Gronkowski all day. And the good news for Ole Miss fans is that Prieskorn will be returning next year. Hotty toddy.

Penn State Had a Bad Day

Drew Allar had a dreadful day. The running game was going well at the outset, but the Penn State coaching geniuses decided to mix it up. The passing game suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucked. Allar was either off target or, on a couple of occasions, throwing up wounded ducks (and throwing up was what the Penn State loyals were doing while watching this ineptitude). However, his stats wound up “not too bad.” He was 19-39 for 295 yards with two TDs and one INT (on one of those wounded ducks). Scramblingwise, he ran five times for 40 yards.

The wide receiver corps didn’t make the trip, or so it appeared. They have not been able to get open all year, so Allar has been relying primarily on tight ends Tyler Warren and Theo Johnson, along with Nick Singleton out of the backfield. In this game, we had to wait until the second half to see a wide receiver targeted. Of the wide receivers, Harrison Wallace led with 4 for 67 and a TD, while Sean Clifford’s little bro Liam was next with three catches, all in the second half. Warren had five for 127, and Singleton had four for 86 and a TD.

At the outset, it looked like Penn State would exploit Ole Miss’ season-long weakness stopping the run. Early success in the running game was not good enough for our offensive brain trust. They wanted to mix it up. Nothing succeeds like success, and if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. You get my drift. Kaytron Allen wound up with ten carries for 51 yards and Nate Singleton had eight for 50.

So, Ole Miss outplayed and outcoached Dear Old State. No surprise to K. John, and should not have been a surprise to the rest of us.

Outlook for 2024

Next year will be interesting, with the new, coast-to-coast Big Ten. Penn State will be losing some significant pieces in both the offense and the defense. With USC, UCLA, Washington, and tOSU on the schedule, the defense will have at least two fewer stiffs on the schedule to pad their stats.

And the offense? Drew Allar did not improve between the West Virginia game and the Peach Bowl — the entire season. Blame it on having crappy receivers who cannot get open, blame it on Yurcich, or just blame it on Penn State’s penchant for taking five-star high school quarterbacks under its wing and ruining them (c.f., Morelli, Hackenberg, et. al.) — whatever. Looking at his body of work over the year, Allar is still exhibiting the same deficiencies as at season’s outset. The spring competition should be revealing. Will Franklin leave the position open or stubbornly leave Allar in the starter slot?

We’ll have new offensive and defensive coordinators. What changes will they bring? Will one of them be fired before the end of the year? (For their sake, I hope their agents are competent).

The offensive line will lose Olu Fashanu, who was the Big Ten’s best offensive lineman. Who will fill that gap? The rest of the Penn State O-line was up to their usual low standard of non-excellence.

See You in 2024

Well, then. We’re done with the 2023 Penn State football season. I’ve enjoyed writing these examples of shoddy journalism all year, the twentieth year of The Nittany Turkey. It’s been a fun ride. I hope I can return next year with more of my drivel. In the meantime, I wish all six of my die-hard readers a very healthy, happy, and prosperous New Year!

See you next year!

Penn State (10-2) vs. Ole Miss (10-2)

The final game of the 2023 season is upon us. The #WhoCares Nittany Lions (10-2) will face off with the #WhoCares Rebels (10-2) for the first time ever in the Lions’ first Peach Bowl appearance. The Rebs have played in Peachy Atlanta twice previously, in 1971 and 2014. The bowl game is now played in Mercedez-Benz Stadium, a state-of-the-art NFL indoor venue with a big three-pointed star on the roof, just in case anyone flying over is ripe for a subliminal message from the Stuttgart automaker.

Everything is coming up peaches. Georgia is the Peach State. Did you know that there are seventy-one street names containing the word “Peachtree” in Atlanta alone? Did you know that peach pits contain a chemical that produces hydrogen cyanide? Yes, they do! Peach pits contain a potentially dangerous chemical called amygdalin that can create poisonous cyanide when digested. While swallowing a single pit is unlikely to cause cyanide poisoning, consumption of several unprocessed pits can produce symptoms. Sayyyy, who eats peach pits? They’re tough on the teeth and you cannot swallow them whole. Can you? But I digress.

Hotty Toddy

Inasmuch as Princess Nee-tah-nee’s Lions have had no prior encounters with the Losers of the War of Northern Aggression (aka, the Rebels), our diligent research department here at The Nittany Turkey is here to offer you some suitable bullshit that makes you wonder whether we did any research at all. Such is the way of The Turkey.

Just Like Us… or Not!

Our exclusive information reveals that Ole Miss is the mirror image of Penn State, albeit through a shitty polarizing filter. Both share identical 10-2 records (even though Penn State homeys say PSU’s record is better because we didn’t beat Ohio State or Michigan —whaaaaa?). Ole Miss finished second in the SEC West, while Penn State finished third in the Big Ten East (again, a better finish for PSU homeys because Ohio State and Michigan are in that division). A little two’s-complement mathematics tells you that the Rebs are what Penn State ain’t on offense, while the Nittany Lions are what Ole Miss ain’t on defense. In simple terms, those Ole Missians have the vaunted SEC speed on offense, but they sorta suck on defense. Nevertheless, that fair-to-middlin’ defense might be good enough against the anemic Penn State offense. Although they gave up 52 points to Georgia and 35 to Texas A&M, they held Alabama to 24. They rank 58th in total defense.

As for total offense, the Rebs are 15th, so how will they fare against Penn State’s #1 defense minus Chop Robinson? Junior QB Jaxson Dart has just shy of three thousand yards passing with a 65% completion rate this year, a slight improvement over last year’s 2,974 and 62.4. Dart, who transferred through the bullshit transfer portal from USC in 2022, has twenty TDs and five INTs. Sophomore running back Quinshon Judkins will give Penn State all they can handle. After a spectacular 2022 season, he settled down to just breaking 1,000 yards on 237 carries in 2023, an average of 4.4 with 15 touchdowns. Leading senior receiver Tre Harris had 47 receptions for 851 yards, an average of 18.1 ypc with eight TDs.

The Ole Miss offensive line might be a weak point, as Jaxson has been sacked 26 times this year.

Opt-Outs

What would Bowl Season be like without opt-outs? Yes, the influence of NFL money rears its ugly head again. Players don’t want to hurt they asses in a meaningless college game because it might reduce their future paychecks. So, playing for your school is not really playing for your school. You’re playing NFL futures and Bowl games may be fun, but this is business. It’s about money, and it sucks, but it has gone too far to change at this point. Now coaches are talking about putting the squeeze on college athletic departments to divert more of their revenue to players. So, all pretenses of college football being amateur athletics evaporated long ago. Total bullshit, I might add, but let me reel in this tangential nocturnal emission.

Just Peachy!

Two tackles named Cedric plus two tight ends with unpronounceable names will enter the transfer portal and are thusly out of the game for Ole Miss and its offensive line. In all, twelve Ole Miss players are headed down the pneumatic tube of the transfer portal. Where they will land, no one knows. Another issue might be the backup QB situation because second-stringer Spencer Sanders flunked out. They better hope that Dart more closely resembles the feathered flying object of the same name than Artificially Sweetened’s old Dodge Dart, which broke down on the Eisenhower Expressway.

Defensively, yet another blow to a defense that already blows came in the form of the opt-out by studly edge rusher Cedric Johnson, who articulately declared, “I optin’ out.” Johnson had 19 sacks and 22 TFLs in his time in Oxford. (The one in Mississippi, that is. At Oxford in England, they don’t say, “I optin’ out.”). Penn State QB Drew Allar, who won’t have the protection of All-Everything Left Tackle and Big Ten Lineman of the Year Olu Fashanu, must be feeling relieved. His receivers characteristically cannot get themselves open, so ol’ Drew becomes a sitting duck back there in the collapsing pocket. Let’s move along.

OMG OMG Silas Redd Revenge!!!

Much a-doo-doo has been made of the coaching matchup, which pits two peaches against each other. Will it be the pits? Some of our colleagues hope so, as they attempt to fan the long-extinguished flames of the Silas Redd Affair (not related to the Thomas Crown Affair).

Grudge-holders continue to revile current Mississippi head coach Lane Kiffin owing to his part in the Silas Redd fiasco. What, you don’t remember? Good for you! It’s trivia from the past. Back when Kiffen was the head coach for USC, he “poached” running back Silas Redd from Penn State in the wake of the Sandusky Scandal. Turns out that Redd wasn’t all that, but he and Kiffen were just doing what was best for themselves and their team. What did Penn State fans want, undying loyalty when the chips were down for the team and sanctions were in place? Later, the bullshit transfer portal came along, so “poaching” became legal. So, who cares?

Does anyone care about Redd now? He was signed as a UFA by the Washington Redskins in 2014, but never did anything. Injuries and violations of the NFL substance-abuse policy ended his career. After that, he played professional rugby in Australia, but never amounted to anything. So again, who cares?

The Fast Lane

Kiffen is the son of longtime NFL defensive genius Monte Kiffen, who invented the Tampa Two defense. Although he sucked as a player for Fresno State, his dad wouldn’t let him quit the team for lack of playing time. So, he bacame a coach instead. Since then, Kiffen Jr. has gone far, moving up quickly despite his youthful age, through coaching stints in the NCAA and NFL. His current contract at Ole Miss is worth $21 million.

So, no, I don’t think anyone gives a damn about Silas Redd anymore. I mentioned it only because I want to evoke visceral reactions from other bloggers who still want to nail Kiffen to a cross. That shit is fun to watch!

Distinguished Alumnus

Ole Miss has produced many famous and infamous people. I could mention James Meredith, Archie Manning, Kate Jackson, or William Faulkner. No one would argue about their worthiness to be covered in this vignette. However, with the game being played in Atlanta, one Atlanta-born Mississippi grad stands out as an overachiever. Our Distinguished Alumnus is Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy (2227-2364), who became chief medical officer of the U.S.S. Enterprise, and later, Starfleet admiral.

Born in Atlanta in 2227, McCoy attended the University of Mississippi. No one is certain whether this was his undergraduate or graduate alma mater. Divorced from his first wife and seeking adventure, McCoy became chief medical officer of the U.S.S. Enterprise in 2266. His nickname “Bones” allegedly arose out of a conversation with Captain James T. Kirk, when McCoy described his divorce settlement: “All I have left is my bones!”, although “Bones” had been a well-worn nickname for surgeons even back in the 19th Century. The moniker staged a comeback around the start of the 23rd Century; therefore, I submit that Kirk’s explanation is complete bullshit.

McCoy was a xenophobe and a technophobe. He disliked and distrusted Spock, who was Vulcan by heritage. “God knows, you can’t trust a Vulcan, Jim.” Due to his technophobia, he would not use the transporter unless someone held a phaser to his head. Tough to get around on a bicycle in deep space in the 2270s!

Good to know that Ole Miss was still around in the 2240s.

How did McCoy die? The record shows that he died of natural causes or by eating too many peach pits, in 2364 at the ripe old age of 137. His tombstone, fabricated from dilithium crystals, bears the simple inscription, “He’s dead, Jim.”

Da Wedda

Who cares? It’s indoors. That having been said, just for the hell of it and for those of you who will be driving to Atlanta (and back), AccuWeather says it will be 43 and rainy at gametime, which is noon (shitty). Could be equally shitty driving — especially in Atlanta.

Da Bottom Line

The last Official Turkey Poop Prediction follows. What is it, you ask? It is our unseemly, weekly, prognostication straight from the giblets of The Nittany Turkey. We’ll be playing another nooner — no respect from the schedulers — which means another sluggish start for the PSU awfense.

Unlike most bloggers and some serious sportswriters, we at The Nittany Turkey recognize the existence of the future tense, and we use it liberally in our prose. Why? Because things that will happen in the future are not happening now. Get it? We differentiate between the present and the future with the facilities provided by the English language. So, the sentence, “In the Peach Bowl, Penn State wins if it scores twenty-seven points.”, is bullshit. You’ll never see garbage-mouth crap like that here unless we’re ridiculing the idiots who write that way. Why is the auxiliary verb “will” so hard to write? Are you a bunch of willophobes?

Around here, we also pepper our prose with liberal sprinklings of the very descriptive Anglo-Saxon compound word “bullshit”, which serves us well as a noun, a verb, an adjective, or an adverb. Therefore, we are icons of grammatical purity.

Shakespeare is rolling over in his grave. He’s dead, Jim. Choked on a peach pit.

OK, so I’m shoveling out my final dose of bullshit for the year and I’m going overboard. So, sue me! I just don’t want to end this!

The bookies are looking at a close one here, giving Penn State the edge by 3.5, with an over/under of 48.5. Well, I picked PSU in Todd Sponsler’s pool, so I better stick to my guns. Penn State 27, Ole Miss 20. Take the _under. (That makes you an undertaker).

I’ll be back after the game for my final pseudo-analysis/commentary of the year unless I get some other bug up my ass. Stay tuned.

If you hadn’t heard, #10 Penn State will take on #11 Ole Miss in the Peach Bowl on December 30. Penn State will play in the Peach Bowl for the first time, and this will also be the first game ever between PSU and Mississippi. Accordingly, this Turkey felt it was appropriate to acquaint his six readers with the cultural aspects of the Ole Miss Rebels’ fans.

So, it is time to repost this collection of video vignettes from the tailgate preceding the Ole Miss vs. Texas A&M game played in Oxford, Mississippi ten years ago. A fine representative of the University of Mississippi, who might have imbibed a little too much, especially given her status as a professional in that regard, was the featured interviewee. She delivered an incisive summation of the campus experience at Ole Miss. Play it to the end. You won’t be disappointed!

Ole Miss Miss Doesn’t Miss

Now that you are in the Ole Miss spirit, I’ll give you both versions of their fight chant, which is much more imaginative than WE ARE … PENN STATE!

Are You Ready?

Hell, Yeah! Damn Right!
Hotty Toddy, God Almighty,
Who the Hell Are We? Hey!
Flim Flam, God Damn,
Ole Miss
BY DAMN!

That’s an older more offensive version of the Ole Miss fight chant, long ago sanitized for social acceptability in non-redneck society. The “official”, sanitized version, published in the Ole Miss Orientation Handbook, titled “This is Hotty Toddy.”, is:

Hell Yeah! Damn Right!
Hotty Toddy, Gosh Almighty,
Who the Hell Are We? Hey!
Flim Flam, Bim Bam
Ole Miss
BY DAMN!