It has been 114 years since Duquesne Athletic Club beat the Nittany Lions 65-5. No one has come close to scoring that many points against PSU since — until last night.
Absolutely the most humiliating loss of all time and Urban Meyer is a prick for running up the score and the officials threw it to Ohio State and they cheated. Get it out of your system. Purge it. Take a good crap. You’ll feel better.
But in the end, it was a loss we all expected and Urban Meyer did no more or less than coach his team to kick ass, which is what he’s paid to do.
I hope the young team got a dose of humility, but more importantly, I hope they don’t hang their heads after being outclassed by a better collection of football players. I think that there is a danger of memories not being instantly erased, although O’Brien has been posturing publicly that they will. No, these guys remember, and some of that is due to their meandering leaderlessness.
The leadership vacuum was no more evident to me at any time than it was when Zach Zwinak left the field after carelessly fumbling the ball away to the scarlet clad enemy. He turned his back to a furious fusillade from O’Brien and sat down at the end of the bench, somewhere around Port Matilda, with no teammates coming over to console him. Sean Lee would have been over there in a heartbeat, dressed out or not. This team just doesn’t have that kind of presence. And that’s a morale problem right there in a fancily wrapped box.
But, of course, that’s only one rant. I could kick myself for not seeing this as a blowout, thinking PSU could be competitive for even the first half. After all, OSU let Northwestern and Iowa hang around well into the second halves of those games. I guess they were just fooling around with them, like a cat playing with a mouse. Or are the Nittany Lions really that bad?
It seemed like everything that the Buckeyes threw at them worked well. Of course, if you’re going to play Sandusky/Bradley pass defense, you expect to give up some yards. The deal was “bend but don’t break” (to which the latter day Sandusky lent a whole new meaning). Alas, the defense has to have the capability of not breaking once the bending is done. Last night, Penn State’s slow and inept defense did nothing but bend over. After their cherry was popped on the first series, they just lay down, moaning, “Bring it on, big boy!”
Six hundred eighty six yards. At the end of the day, when all was said and done, in the final analysis, that was the number. Bottom line. Of the 686, 408 were on the ground. Miller got to rest his arm, throwing only 24 times, but completing 18 of those for 252 yards and three touchdowns before his backups came in for mop-up duty. When your running game is averaging eight yards per carry against a porous defense, your worries are few and you see bluebirds and butterflies. Oy vey!
The offense didn’t win an academy award, either. Hackenberg’s throws were off target and he got picked twice. Everything had to click for this game to be competitive, but after early hopes were dashed by Corey Brown’s interception in the end zone on Penn State’s opening drive, they were clunking, not clicking, for the rest of the game.
Sanguinarians unite! Bill Belton had a great game, so there’s something positive for you. The offensive line did half a job, too! Thinking back to St. Joe’s old bromide, “You’re never as bad as you think you are when you lose.” Yeah, and patsy Illinois is coming up! Yeah, we’ll clean their clocks. We can still have a 9-3 season! Hey hey hey!
Wake up. Not with this defense, they won’t, and not without some leaders to scrape these guys’ faces off the locker room floor.
Here’s a bright thought. RD and I actually attended a 63-14 game that went the other way at Beaver Stadium back in 1994. So, they owed us one. I didn’t hear anyone bitching about PSU running up the score back then. Not in State College, anyway.
Yeah, the bitching about Urban Meyer started before the game even concluded. Do I blame him for going balls to the wall against PSU? Hell, no! There’s nothing wrong with humiliating one’s opponent. Who needs pussification and politeness on the field of combat? You play to win and don’t let up. BCS rankings being what they are, higher point totals can mean the difference between being in the SSMNC and being in a lesser bowl. PSU is not in that situation, and I think those of you who are whining are jealous of OSU for being there.
I guess I could give Meyer a little heat for challenging that spot late in the game after PSU’s fate had long been sealed (that happened before halftime), but I won’t. When you play to win, you don’t let up.
So, go ahead and hate the opposing coach. That’s part of the game, too. We have nothing to celebrate, so we might as well bitch about trivialities that wouldn’t have affected the outcome in the slightest. Complain about OSU being treated less harshly about Tattoogate than was PSU about Sanduskygate, but don’t complain about a coach doing his job. If the tables were turned, O’Brien would be piling on the points, too, and you’d be cheering for his ass.
In fact, there was nothing but gloating when PSU beat Illinois 63-10 back in 2005 (remember Arrington pancaking the punter?), completely humiliating their opponent. How about the 81-0 shellacking of Cincinnati? Success with honor — or not? I guess if St. Joe felt like doing it, it was OK.
So we’re embarrassed and humiliated. But in our hearts, we knew we didn’t have a competitive team this year. Yeah, the sanctions hurt and the breadth and depth of talent is not there. What’s more, the leadership isn’t there. We knew these would be problems at the beginning of the season. The defense has been showing its ineptitude the whole year. So, yeah, be embarrassed, but don’t be surprised. The Nittany Lions played a top-ten team and lost. Get over it.
Or did the Buckeyes cheat?