Over the last few years I've hiked Mt. Nittany and taken pictures in each season.  The winter picture is from 2003, before the baseball field was built.  It was February and I think there was 8-12 inches of snow on the ground.  The spring picture is from 2007 the Sunday after the Blue-White game.  The summer picture is the newest from this past July 2.  The fall picture is from the Sunday after last year's game vs. Ohio St.  Hope you enjoy.  Nothing special about the camera, just a digital (and rather old now) Kodak.  You can go to the Flickr link to zoom in more.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/28303662@N04/sets/72157624407831191/

Article in today's Pittsburgh Post-gazette about Big Ten expansion.

No new information here, but a nice summary of the issue with some analysis of the money thrown in. The .pdf's are worth checking out for an overview.  I found this interesting:

When Penn State joined the conference in 1990, Illinois president Stanley Ikenberry tried to persuade other university leaders to invite Pitt, Syracuse and Rutgers as well, according to a highly placed administrator at one of the Big Ten schools.

As you might guess I would have no problem if this is eventually what happens since I care nothing about any of the Big XII candidates that are rumored.  It would also make sense if the Big 10 can be taken at its word when they said expansion "would make sense geographically."

I could only pick three, Penn St., Iowa, and Minnesota.  The Rose Bowl looks like another train wreck.  Texas Tech's passing game vs. Sparty's pass defense looks like a 49-14 score waiting to happen.  Wisconsin and jNW games could be tossups, but nothing about either of those teams' body of work this year made me want to pick them. There's opportunity here for the Big 10 to restore it's reputation because no one is playing a great team, but they have to step it up.  

To hear Penn State's athletic department talk, you'd think they're barely scraping by in the funding of university sports.  But today there was very interesting data reported in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.  By law, schools that receive federal student aid programs must report athletic expenditures to the U.S. Dept. of Education.  In a nutshell, it is reported for Penn State:

Expenses:  $76,499,957

Revenues: $95,978,243

Revenue minus expenses:  $19,478,286

Link to PG article

Link to PG chart

Link to US Dept. of Ed. database

So it appears that the athletic department does quite well for itself, and maybe doesn't really need to schedule the likes of Eastern Illinois and Youngstown State for home games.  They're abusing the loyalty of the fanbase with these games.

One thing that's not in those numbers is debt service, which the Dept. of Ed. lists as $11,362,592.  (Interestingly, Pitt and WVU show no debt service.) But even with that there's still more than $8 million in the clear.  On the flip side of that I can't really tell from the data how private donations are accounted for.  But the revenue picture should get brighter with the new seat pricing that was recently announced.  The data is for  7-1-08 to 6-30-09.

PSU-OSU drive chart2 (via jjkjr2717)

PSU-OSU drive chart (via jjkjr2717)

Here's the flickr link, I created GIF's from a .pdf so I'm not sure how this is going to look.

<!--StartFragment-->

I went to the game and watched from the upper deck in the south end zone, and watched my recording when I got home on Monday.  I saw here a lot of discussion about playcalling, whether it’s too conservative or not, so I made a chart while watching the recording, to try to understand what was for me a completely unexpected final score.

I picked the 6 best and 6 worst plays of the game from the chart.  Of the six best (green & bold text, #16, 20, 27, 30, 40, 41 on the chart), five had the QB under center and four of those were passes, all had TE’s on the line of scrimmage.  The six worst plays (red italics, #1, 42, 48, 52, 56, 59) show more empty backfield and formations without tight ends.  Overall, there were five plays run with an empty backfield, and they totaled 10 yards gained, and incompletion, an INT, and no first downs.   So I think we can ditch the empty backfield plays. (I should note I didn’t tally anything after the INT.)  It reinforces my long-standing disdain for the empty backfield formation.

The Lions came out firing with six pass plays in the first nine, but nothing to show for it.  The scoring drive started with three straight runs and then the swing pass to Zug for a big play.  The scoring drive was run-run-run-passZug-run-run-run-passInterference-4plays to muck and grind into the endzone.  My impression in looking at this chart is that our offense is much better with DC17 under center and a threat to run behind him in the backfield.

The play that made me most furious was #56, the wide pitch to Royster that was stuffed.  Has this play been run all year? I can’t remember seeing it any other time, maybe some of you can.  Is there no trust in your senior QB here?  This is where I thought about one of the Iowa posters that said our offense doesn’t have an identity, and I wonder if it’s true.  If we’re tied in the 4th quarter at Michigan State and it’s 3rd and 3, what’s the call going to be?  Sometimes I wonder if there's a federal law against running the same formation twice in a row.  Maybe simplification would be better against better teams.

I would recommend a trip to Champaign if you have the opportunity.  For me it was a relatively easy 8-hour drive, though the gameday weather certainly could have better, it was easy enough to get around campus and get parking for the gameday.  The tailgaters were a bit subdued, probably a combination of the weather and the failboat that is Illini football this year.  The retiring of Chief Illiniwek in 2007 is still a simmering controversy.  I chatted with Matt Suhey's and Dennis Landolt's parents while they were waiting at the bar for a table at Buffalo Wild Wings.  They still can't believe they lost to Iowa.  They have an RV and have traveled to away games in the last couple of years.  There's a place called Radio Maria downtown where the hot chicas salsa dance on Saturday night.  The local yokels hang out at the Esquire Lounge, where one guy admitted that he was once tackled in a hospital.  I didn't press for details, we were busy watching the Steeler game Sunday night.  The pictures linked show, among other things, John Black, JoePa during pre-game, and DC17.  All in all it was a good weekend, and I managed to keep expenses relatively low.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/28303662@N04/sets/72157622594603288/

This will be my first PSU road trip since Michigan in 2002, I'll arrive in Champaign Friday night.  I'm a little bummed about the weather, because it's supposed to average a high of 70 this time of year, but I'm hopeful there won't be much rain.  I have a seat in section 207 row B.  I plan on checking out the alumni tent.  Hopefully the Lions can cut out the turnovers and get the win.

I'm curious about the breakdown of NFL fans among the Penn State nation.  Do you go to more college games than pro or vice versa?  How much money and/or time do you spend on either college or pro?  One of my favorite things about State College was going back and forth with sports fans from the other side of the state. I've listed the teams in the order I'm guessing will have the most fans on Black Shoe Diaries.

Don't write the "Penn State can't play for the National Title" headline just yet.  Last year 2-loss LSU got into the title game.  All of the 1-loss teams have some very lose-able games over the next four weekends, with end-of season rivalries and conference championships games.  We get to be Bobby Bowden fans when they play Florida at the end of the year.  USC still has games with Cal, ND, and UCLA.  Texas Tech will lose somewhere along the way.  Texas has a noon kickoff at Kansas next week.  Somebody in the Big 12 will lose another in their title game.

I know it sucks right now but there's a lot games left over the next month. It's hard for a team to run the table in a BCS conference, nobody did it last year.

For any who may be interested in reading:

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08011/848406-365.stm

Looks like he's milking the process for all it's worth, and somehow got Charlie Batch to go with him.  He's visiting Penn State Jan. 18, and I wonder how good of a fit he will be.  Is anyone else getting a prima-donna feeling about him?  To wit from the diary:

"I'm going to go where I can feel comfortable."

"I didn't think I had anything to prove down there. I was just out there having fun."

"I know I'll have some words for the dude that wrote it, if I ever get to talk to him."

Personally I'm not real crazy about the overall attitude he's showing, too much "me" and not enough team.

Continue reading this post »

Dan Connor was quoted post game saying:

"This was like a home game for me... It was awesome.  It was so much fun to play out there in front of my family and friends."

This illustrates a problem with not playing a game in Pittsburgh every other year.  My sense is that Penn St. has lost ground recruiting in Western Pa., and I think this is one of the reasons why.  If they're not playing games at Pitt, from the point of view of a western PA recruit it's not any different than another Big 10 school, and it's actually worse than WVU who does play at Pitt every other year.  By my count there are eight western PA players on WVU's two-deep.  Among other reasons I think Penn St. needs to resume playing Pitt to bolster their recruiting in the region.