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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Postseason Bowl Ban Lifted

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Well, the NCAA did what lots of pseudo-pundits thought they would — lifted the bowl ban on Penn State this year. Also, full scholarship numbers will be restored for 2015-2016 and the $60 million dollar fine can remain in the Commonwealth.

Meanwhile, Scott Paterno said that the Paterno family lawsuit brought against the NCAA and Penn State will continue, and Jay Paterno says that relief of the sanctions because of the Mitchell Report is a cover for a faulty Freeh Report. We’ll let them continue to grouse about it.

Meanwhile, we’ll get back to football. The sky’s the limit. Or at least the mythical Toilet Bowl in Kohler, Wisconsin is.

Details as they surface. Back to your local programming.

Sudden Impact: Layin’ Low

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The high drama of replacing a hastily departing head football coach at Penn State has concluded with the hire of James Franklin for about $4.5 million per year plus or minus. So, with the winter doldrums upon us, here is a potpourri of articles that will serve to avert bore-dum.

We start with Franklin’s announcement of his full staff, which most of you probably know of by now. Here at the Turkey, we believe in not going off half-cocked, so we wait for official announcements before jumping to any half-assed conclusions. This is also known as laziness and procrastination. So, without further ado, here is the official announcement.

If you’re too lazy to click that link, here is the rundown:

– James Franklin, head coach;
– Bob Shoop, defensive coordinator/safeties coach;
– John Donovan, offensive coordinator/tight ends coach;
– Charles Huff, special teams coordinator/running backs coach;
– Brent Pry, assistant head coach, co-defensive coordinator/linebackers coach;
– Josh Gattis, offensive recruiting coordinator/wide receivers coach;
– Herb Hand, run game coordinator/offensive line coach;
– Ricky Rahne, passing game coordinator/quarterbacks coach;
– Terry Smith, defensive recruiting coordinator/cornerbacks coach;
– Sean Spencer, defensive line coach.

WTF. I don’t see Vanderlinden or Bradley in there anywhere? And where’s McQueary?

Seven of these guys were on Franklin’s staff at Vandy.

Franklin also announced that Dwight Galt has been named Director of Performance Enhancement and will supervise the Nittany Lions’ strength and conditioning regimen. Barry Gant, Jr. and Chuck Losey, former members of the Vanderbilt staff, have been named assistant strength and conditioning coaches. Brian Bell and Galt’s son, Dwight Galt IV, will continue in their roles as assistant strength and conditioning coaches, having joined the Penn State staff in 2012.

Several of the coaches have Pennsylvania connections.

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At the risk of beating a dead horse, Bill O’Brien’s departure still has some people scratching their heads and some others pointing fingers. The famous “Paterno People” interview by David Jones revealed that O’Brien was conflicted about some issues within the administration and athletic programs at Penn State.

John U. Bacon, author of the college football exposé Fourth and Long, opines on reasons in his article “Penn State’s Administrative Dysfunction Pushed Coach Bill O’Brien Back to NFL.”

Bacon blames much of O’Brien’s discontent on the BoT and Dave Joyner. He even touches on the botched president hiring in November 2013.

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Another favorite topic around here is the NCAA. Any proposals regarding restructuring it are certainly welcome. And thus, it was that when reader Joe turned up some evidence of a current proposal, I took notice. If you read it with a jaundiced I (as I did), you’ll see it as a bunch of rebureaucratizing gobbledygook, but perhaps you can cut through the crap better than I. Perhaps you can find redemption somewhere.

Joe sent me a link to an article called “NCAA Proposal Focused on Short-Term Repair, Not Long-Term Improvement“, which presents its anonymous author’s opinions on the proposal.

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Last, and probably least, we whisk you away to the fantasy land of Hollywood. The film “Happy Valley”, a documentary by Amir Bar-Lev about the happenings at Penn State during and after the Sandusky Scandal, has been presented at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival. Entertainment Weekly interviewed Bar-Lev about the making of the film and his interpretation of the events of the time.

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We’ll be back sporadically during the off-season when we have something to say about anything.

Scholarship Playaz

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Here’s an interesting post from NittanyNick over on in the premium board at FOS detailing the number of scholarship players on the Penn State squad, the years they were recruited, and their star ratings. I thought I’d re-post it here without permission because it’s widely available information, except for Nick’s synopsis, which is better than anything I could write. This demonstrates how hard we’ve been hit and will continue to be hit by the NCAA sanctions — not only in terms of the scholarship reductions imposed by them, but also because of the potential top-notch recruits driven away by them.

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Lot of talk about the impact of sanctions and our talent level compared to other teams. As best I could I looked back at our recruiting classes. Below are the players still on our team from the 2009-2013 classes. The star ratings are from 247. Just used them because you can do a couple of different sorts with their rankings.

2009 2010 2011 2012 2013
Carson 4* Baublitz 4 Zettel 4 Lewis 4 Hack 5
Gress 4 Zwinak 3 D. Smith 4 Wilkerson 4 Breneman 4
Urschel 3 Bars 3 Barnes 4 Lynch 4 Sickels 4
SOA 3 Diff 4 Belton 3 Wartman 3 Nelson 4
Howle 3 CJ 4 Kline 3 Gaia 3 Ferguson 4
Gilliam 3 Kenney 4 ARob 3 A. Johnson 3 Hamilton 3
Willis 3 Daq. Jones 3 Carter 3 J. James 3 Mahon 3
Felder 3 * Amos 3 Dowrey 3 J. Smith 3
Shrive 4 * Matt Z. 3 Daq. Davis 3 Bell 3
* * Alosi 3 Lucas 3 Cothren 3
* * Mangiro 3 Golden 3 Cothran 3
* * Wooten 3 Williams 3 Anderson 3
* * * Laurent 3 Hartman 3
* * * Kiley 2 Gaines 3
* * * Warner 2 A. Smith 2
9 7 12 15 15

That is a total of 58 players brought in on scholarship. We are red-shirting 8 players and we have 2 out for the year, which leaves us 48 scholarship players for this year. To make matters worse from the 2009-2011 classes we have 28 players. We barely have enough scholarship players to field a 2 deep. Plus just like every team we have our share of busts still on the team (Shrive and Kenney for example)

For most teams the 2 deep is made up of players who have been in the program 3-5 years. We only have 28 scholarship players who have been in the program 3-5 years. Freshmen often don’t play not because they don’t have talent. Some need to mature physically and mentally, it takes time to learn the system and sometimes there is someone better playing ahead of them. We may have more “star” talent then some of the teams we lost to but more goes into that than just looking at the stars.

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So what do you think, hot shots?