Well, THEY are, anyway!
One of my early memories as a kid in Pittsburgh was going out to dinner with my parents during a Pitt-WVU weekend. A bunch of drunks were sitting at the next table loudly singing, “We are the Mountaineers. We are the Mountaineers. We don’t give a damn about the State of Pennsylvania: We are the Mountaineers!” Over and over and over, annoyingly repeated. Well, that was 1953, when WVU had beaten Pitt two years in a row. Seventy years ago! I remember it like it was yesterday, but I don’t remember what I did on the real day yesterday. But I digress. We’re not here to talk about Pitt — under the arm! We’re here to talk about Penn State and its first opponent of the year — yep, West Virginia.
We move forward a decade to my time in Happy Valley in the 1960s. West Virginia was then an Eastern independent, just like Dear Old State. Year in and year out, we played the likes of WVU, Syracuse, Maryland, and, of course, Pitt, regularly. Back in the Rip Engle years, the Nittany Lions consistently kicked Mountaineer ass both at home and in Morgantown. In fact, from 1960 to 1983, Penn State won every game except 1980. That year, the two teams didn’t play. So, that’s right, twenty-three straight wins for PSU! In fact, going back to the Bob Higgins Era, the streak is even longer: twenty-eight straight wins from 1947-1983.
Penn State leads the all-time series 42-6, with the most recent game having been played back in October 1992. Yea, verily, it has been over thirty years since the last game, a 40-26 Penn victory in Morgantown. Of WVU’s six wins in the series, only two have occurred in the Post-World War II modern era, those being in 1984 and 1988.
Then and Now
Well, shit, things have sure as hell changed since that last game between the two. West Vagina is now in the Big 12 (which was originally the Big Eight and I’ve lost count of the real number of teams, given all the recent money-motivated bullshit). Penn State joined the Big Ten, which became eleven when Penn State entered the conference, if you don’t count the University of Chicago with no football program since the Jay Berwanger days, which I remember well. The Big Ten has fourteen teams now after adding Rutgers, Maryland, and Nebraska, and will be up to eighteen with the addition of UCLA, USC, Washington, and Oregon over the next few years. So much for a midwestern academic alliance. More money-driven bullshit. But the real change, which I am sad to have read about, is that Penn State Football, is academically in the Bargain Basement of Big Ten Infamy. That might or might not be the subject for another column, but it distresses me. It is like the Mighty Dollar Denouement has been completed, and college football is laid bare as a fraud.
But I digress painfully.
West Virginia Woes
West Virginia (5-7, 3-6 Big 12) finished tied for next-to-last in the Big 12 last year. Of the three teams who joined them in that ignoble position, they were the only finisher with more points against than points for. However, it is remarkable that they beat Virginia Tech, Baylor, and both Oklahoma schools. That ain’t too shabby for a next-to-last place team. However, their hotshot quarterback transferred to Rice and their hotshot running back transferred to Houston. Fucking transfer portal! Yet another manifestation of the pecuniary world of modern college football! They really aren’t looking very good this year.
About Penn State, we don’t know much. So, I shouldn’t be writing much, or I’ll expose my ignorance concerning this year’s team. I frankly don’t know what to think or say. Drew Allar has been pronounced “ready” by the pundits, who know more than I do, but not much more. The defense is highly questionable, and when will we ever see an offensive line not composed of traffic cones? I’m still saying we must carefully observe what happens Saturday night, lest we think we know more than we do. Of course, all the while, the Sanguinarians are all gaga about a potentially perfect season and a Still Somewhat Mythical National Championship. The perennial pipe dreams are in full force before the season opener.
Oh, and one more thing. The idiotic publications who post those stupid-ass jersey number photos in social media counting down to football season should be sent to journalism jail. Year in, year out, they do that hackneyed, banal, trite, overused nonsense, making the high school newspaper look innovative in comparison — not to mention eclipsing those so-called sports media’s collective writing skills. I don’t bother reading those damn things anymore, as I deserve to be the only fake writer that I appreciate reading. Those other pretenders just piss me off with their grammatical atrocities, poor usage, and just plain bad writing.
Da Wedda
Saturday promises to be a great late summer football night, mostly sunny with a high of 81 and a low of 59. Little wind and rain expected. Go git ’em boys!
Da Bottom Line
So, it’s crazy. Penn State football is starting up already. Wow! It’s a big kickoff weekend, if you don’t count Navy’s ass being kicked by the Irish in Ireland last weekend. This weekend includes the monumental Big Ten matchup of Northwestern vs. Rutgers, which I’m certain will be played before an audience of 750 in Piscataway on Sunday Sunday? What did you just say to me? Moneyball strikes again! The NFL schedule doesn’t start for a week, so let’s leverage Sunday for more college football revenue. The NWU-Rutgers game is the first game of a Sunday, September 3 triple-header, also featuring Oregon State vs. San Jose State and LSU vs. FSU. Big moneyball on Sunday! But you wouldn’t see Pat Fitzgerald, if that was your only interest in watching Northwestern.
Back to prime-time Saturday, Penn State is favored by 20.5, with an over/under of 50.5. I’ll cut to the chase, because you all want to know whether I’ll continue to think that if the Lions screw up, they lose this one. Yeah, I think they’ll screw up all right. First games are never perfect. However, my gut feel is that they will win handily, but only a damn fool (which I am most days) would ever expect PSU to cover that large a spread. I’m going with Penn State 38, West Virgina 20, and I’m taking the over.
I’m taking a couple of weeks off, but I might be back here to recap this Saturday night game. My hiatus will then encompass the Delaware and Illinois games. See you in late September!
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Todd Allen Sponsler says
As far as the bargain basement academics, Brandon Short claims our numbers are in line with our historic performance but skewed by how the NCAA evaluates them. https://www.on3.com/teams/penn-state-nittany-lions/news/penn-state-trustee-brandon-short-defends-football-programs-academic-record/
The Nittany Turkey says
Todd,
As logical fallacies go, appeal to authority where Brandon Short is the authority is completely bankrupt. One would certainly expect anyone with a personal stake in the program’s reputation to defend it; however, no matter how many different degrees of spin you put on this news, it is distressing to me, and it is certainly indicative of the decline of values throughout the system.
All are guilty. Without ranking relative degrees of transgressions of the various participants in the Big Ten, especially in football and basketball, the concept of the student-athlete has been a myth for at least a generation. Couple this with the decline of university undergraduate programs, such that now large universities are money driven diploma mills, jacking up tuitions and fees in exchange for which one receives a substandard education, replete with revisionist history, wokeness, and penalties for not toeing the liberal line, and what you have is a thinly-veiled play-for-pay scheme where academics — indoctrination is a more precise term — takes a distant backseat to putting asses in seats in the stands, obtaining lucrative TV contracts, and peddling branded merchandise.
The Big Ten has sold out. It’s now in the mergers and acquisitions game. Let’s grab the crown jewels of the PAC-12 and bury them. We’ll get the big TV contract; they’ll be relegated to the secondary substratum of FBS college football. Moneyball is here to stay, and it will get worse; the FBS is the NFL minor league, like it or not. The future will see more infamously illiterate so-called college graduates like Dexter Manley, but the difference between now and a generation ago is that they will become so commonplace as to be unremarkable. They’ll be accepted as the price we pay for superior entertainment.
Put a compellingly entertaining product on that field or that hardwood at all cost!
Tradition? Boola boola? Academic prowess? Success with honor? All gone down the tubes as we worship the money god. Big-time college football is an entertainment industry, and God forbid that academic priorities should ever get in the way.
—TNT
drozz says
i agree: 20.5 is quite a bit. PSU at half by -11.5 is much more attainable.
The game line just screams backdoor cover.
The Nittany Turkey says
Damn early season games with so many unknowns are hard to get right, especially for this Turkey. Given the favorable weather prediction, at least that’s one variable that won’t get in the way, but there are too many others for me to have great confidence in a prediction. However, one thing is incontrovertibly true: Penn State has historically sucked at covering big spreads. Hence, I’m playing the odds, not the team.
As for the latter, we’ll see.
—TNT
K. John says
I don’t know a lot about West Virginia but I do know they played a more difficult schedule than we did in 2022. They went 5 and 7 losing two games on pick sixes, one to Pitt, the other to Kansas. The league largely was populated by evenly matched teams that round robined each other into mediocre records. WVU features an unproven quarterback and a lot of questions. From Penn State’s perspective, there are two knowns, they have better receivers and more talent overall at the position but less talent overall. Otherwise, they are largely an unknown.
On the other hand, WVU is all too familiar with the offense we run as Okie State has used that offense essentially unchanged since Mike Gundy installed it under Les Miles way back when. Mike Yurcich added a couple of tricks to it when he was there but those tricks are largely still in play and WVU plays it every year. The big difference is play calling.
Now what does all this mean, well, I think this game is going to be a lot closer than most. The question to me is WVU’s pucker factor. With their coach’s job on the line, do they play with their hair on fire and take a lot of chances or do they try to keep it close and hope for a mistake by a rookie QB that has played few meaningful snaps, to include high school. While I fully expect us to come out ahead in the end, I think this one comes down to the fourth quarter. Honestly, I have no idea.
Penn State 17
West Virginia 12
Big Al says
Turkey, it’s good to see you’re still blogging. Like you, I’m starting to lose interest in college football in general and Penn State football in particular. College football has become little more than a free minor league for the NFL. And the spread offenses that nearly everyone runs are monotonous and basically nothing more than basketball on fake grass.
I won’t make any prediction about this season’s record until after State plays Illinois – other than to state that a 10-2 regular season and a win in the bowl game is the ceiling for every Franklin coached team. Whether this year’s team reaches that ceiling depends upon how well Allar and the defensive tackles play.
There is good reason to be concerned about both of those areas. If Allar lives up to the hype, he will be the 1st highly touted Penn State quarterback recruit to do so. Nearly every successful quarterback State has had in the past is somebody no Division 1 team wanted – like Zack Mills and Trace McSoreley.
I think K John is basically right about the West Virginia game. Penn State will win but won’t cover the spread. And both offenses will have extended periods of futility, but it won’t be an offensive shit show like the Nebraska-Minnesota game was. Penn State 24 WVU 14.
The Nittany Turkey says
Welcome back, Big Al! Good to hear from you, even though you share some of my cynical views regarding the manufactured entertainment world of college football, where the existence of the transfer portal stands as an antithetical symbol to the concept of loyalty (best described by The Beach Boys in “Be True to Your School”).
Rah-rah rah-rah sis boom bah!
We want rings, not degrees. The ring is real. The degree don’t mean shit. As best stated by tOSU quarterback Cardale Jones a decade ago, “We ain’t come to play SCHOOL, classes are POINTLESS.” Cardale’s dream has long been a reality.
OK, so anyway, I also agree that Illinois will probably be the first test unless West Vagina shows up with a mission (to save its coach? to avenge old rivalry losses?) and at the same time PSU tanks, Pretty sure win, but who knows? At this juncture, we know very little.
McSorley got cut by New England, but he’ll likely show up on the practice squad. Clifford looks like he landed the backup job in Green Bay. Yeah, we’re good at producing second-tier and lower quarterbacks, who were highly touted prior to their arrival in Happy Valley. The much-maligned Kerry Collins was the exception, but we must look back a whole generation to find him. And then, there was Anthony Morelli and later, Christian Hackenberg. The old maxim was “PSU ruins quarterbacks”.
OK, so I’ll sit back and enjoy the game, if I can. NBC managed to get Todd Blackledge (speaking of second-tier quarterbacks of the past).
Have a good season, regardless!
—TNT