It’s that time again, readers, and both of you should pay rapt attention to that which is about to follow, for The Nittany Turkey has never failed to predict how a season will go, regardless of whether he gets the wins and losses right. You can read other blogs to get quasi-analytical breakdowns of team strengths and weaknesses, pseudo-scientific statistical formulae, and pretentiously pedantic punditry. Here, we make no such pretenses. The Turkey slings his own brand of irreverent turkey poop, based on what he would do if you were sitting next to him at a sports bar and didn’t ask his opinion. (Remember: opinions are like assholes—we all get to have one and they all stink!)

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So, this Turkey tends to follow the machinations of PSU alumni in the NFL with bated interest. I suppose that the success of former Nittany Lions in the NFL is an appropriate penile prosthesis for one who never played the game and it can serve as validation of sorts for the so-called program. Today’s subject is one of the most successful of our program’s effluvia ever to land in the NFL, and predictably in today’s NFL “mo’ money” climate, he’s holding out for—mo’ money. Yes, my fellow Penn State fans, Larry Johnson holdeth out.

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Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany has made it clear that the Big Ten would be looking for a 12th member over the next year, to pump up the revenues of the fledgling Big Ten Network (BTN). A 12-team league, which could be organized into two divisions with a playoff game for the championship, would add a major TV market and one more big game, and that means big bucks.

Never mind that the existing 12 game schedule is already onerous for the players, some of whom actually do have to save time for academics. Nah, it’s all about the money. Why kid ourselves about academics not taking a back seat?

Hey, we’re not far from paying players to compete. With these sorts of big money machinations going on at the conference level, why bother with the charade about the players being amateur athletes? Might as well cut them some million dollar contracts and stop taking advantage of their indentured servitude.

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