Best Homecoming Money Can Buy

Penn State 63, UMass 0

Penn State spent a million and a half to buy themselves a guaranteed homecoming win, so it was no surprise that the purchase worked out well. Choosing a team that was 1-11 last year and on pace for a similar finish this season was a good bet, and the 63-0 final score made Pat Kraft and Company look smart. Wouldn’t want to have a competitive opponent to possibly spoil homecoming and the Nittany Lions playoff hopes, just in case they can manage to beat Ohio State or Michigan and not lose to Indiana or Maryland. Yeah, that’s the damn point.

And now the braggadocio…

It was a rout.

You want more?

It was a rout, already. Not unexpected. Why bother with meaningless stats. Just go to a Penn State bar and the guy sitting next to you will be spouting them off. So, I won’t bother. They mean squat.

You want highlights? They’re meaningless, too. What does it matter who does what against such a seriously deficient opponent. It would be like bragging about your Kentucky Derby winner beating a $3,500 claimer, whose next stop is the glue factory, in a match race walkover. They’d never schedule it in horse racing, and they shouldn’t do it in college football, either. I don’t care to watch recaps of foregone conclusions (with all due respect to Forego, the great thoroughbred gelding of the 1970s).

And, you know?

The first quarter was shaky offensively — yet again. The offensive line was not effective. Both Ohio State and MIchigan will be noon starts. Will the offense be asleep for the first quarter in those games? Will the offensive line show up awake and alive? Better wake up soon, buccos!

Oh, there will be fanboys who excuse the performance by saying that they were merely looking beyond this walkover to next week’s game at the Horseshoe. Used to be that good teams wanted to do their damage early and make the opponent chase them. (I guess some recent results have favored the chaser, most recently Stanford coming from 29 down to beat Neon Deion).

But I digress…

A win is a win and we went 1-0 this week and all that jazz. So celebrate while you can. The stakes increase next week as your 6-0 Nittany Lions face their toughest test thus far. More correctly stated, their only test thus far, and one of the only two they’ll have during the regular season.

I was thinking…

PSU needs pass receivers. So, while they’re spreading money around, why not make a deal with Ohio State for Marvin Harrison, Jr. Would $12 million and a future 4-star recruit get Harrison to consider the transfer portal? Just in case you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m cynical about the descent of college football during my lifetime from a pristine extracurricular pastime for academics to the pecuniary pit of an NFL Lite. I probably won’t live long enough to see the FBS major conference consolidations result in two organizations resembling the AFC and NFC, but I firmly believe that’s the ultimate progression. (Unless, of course, the coming financial collapse results in values being put back into proper perspective. Right now, people who rent housing they cannot afford and are upside-down on auto loans will happily pay hundreds for college football tickets and thousands for the pros. That shit needs to change, but it will only happen if the fucking federal government curtails its complicity).

Watchin’ TV

I did spend much of Saturday glued to the tube watching football. What pissed me off was that I couldn’t watch Ohio State at Purdue because it was on fucking PEACOCK, and I don’t subscribe to fucking PEACOCK. I watched Indiana stay competitive with Michigan for about ten minutes in their noon start, and I caught the end of the non-bellicose Illiniwek upset of the Turtles. The best one was Washington pulling out a win in an exciting, see-saw battle with their canardian rivals.

Now, I’m watching hockey. Go Pens! They’re down one with Calgary through two.

I would love to see USC beat Notre Dame tonight. A three-loss Notre Dame — think about this — will be difficult for even biased sportswriters to include in the Top 25. Alas, they’re up 17-3 in the game Knute Rockne first scheduled a shitload of years ago when they had to take the train from South Bend to LA. I know that because I saw the movie with Pat O’Brien.

Speaking of polls, they…

…are fucking meaningless this time of year, as I keep repeating like the curmudgeonly old fart who I am. They just don’t matter until week eight, except to brag to the guy sitting next to you at the bar and to TV networks, like NBC and its fucking PEACOCK streaming service that holds football for ransom. I guess highly ranked teams playing each other generate greater commercial revenue, so they need to rank everything for hype purposes to promote each week’s “Game of the Century”.

I got a flu shot, so…

…I’m going to veg out for a day or so, because as one of my former doctors once said, “It is better to be sick for three days than for three weeks.” Now, I have all my immunizations up to date. I’m clearly not a crackpot antivaxxer and I ain’t voting for Trump or Biden. Maybe I’ll vote for RFK, Jr. who running on the Antivax Party ticket with Jenny McCarthy as his running-mate, serving as my protest of the two leading candidates, who are both completely unsuitable to serve as President. I might be delirious from the flu shot.

Well, I’m tired of writing and I must concentrate on beating the Flames. Third period coming up.

I’ll be back with my overview and snarky bullshit in anticipation of Saturday’s Game of the Century with Ohio State.