[Promoted from the fanposts, because we know this is a very important issue to many of you. Please use the thread to discuss the issues most important to you, the strengths and weaknesses of the candidates, and so on. This is NOT the thread to re-hash the Sandusky affair, and any attempted derailing of this thread will be treated unkindly by the moderators. If any of the candidates want to stop by and make their case, here's your chance to talk to a few thousand voters. - CG]

I am honestly not sure if this kind of discussion is permissible here considering it is tangentially political, but I would love to have an open discussion on the current election for three of the alumni seats on the board of trustees.

We have until May 3rd to vote and as it stands now, I barely know anything about any of these candidates outside of Adam Taliaferro (who is likely getting one of my votes) and Anthony Lubrano (who likely isn't). Are there any candidates out there that you guys think are particularly deserving of the postion? Anyone out there that you would hate to see on the board?

I would love to hear about candidates who have something more to their campaign than a simple "the board firing JoePa was wrong" platform.

Not to speak for all Penn State fans or sound overly arrogant, but a lot of us like to think our team, university, and conference have a pretty high moral and ethical standard. The whole Paterno's Grand Experiment, Success with Honor, student-athlete thing, we eat it up. These principals are what carry us through those tough 7-6 seasons.

Because of these ideals, one topic that continues to surface in the lead up to the game with you guys is the practice of oversigning. A lot of us feel that this practice is unethical and flies in the face of what college football is supposed to be about. For those that don't know what oversigning is, you can check out oversigning.com.

Basically I want to give you Alabama fans an opportunity to voice your opinion on the subject. Do you dislike the practice as much as we do? Do you feel that it is a necessary evil in order to compete in the SEC? Do you think it's completely fair, allowing the best football players the opportunity to earn their scholarship? Or do you simply think us arrogant, elitist Penn State fans should mind our own business?

For the record, I know this might be a touchy subject, but I am not trying to troll. I hope we can keep this conversation rather civilized.

With Utah moving to the Pac-10, everything appears to have settled down on the expansion front.  Still I can't help but think back to Delaney and company at last week's press conference.  They stated multiple times that the Big 10 is still going to stick to the 12-18 month time frame; the addition of Nebraska was simply forced by outside circumstances.  So the question is simple, are we done yet?  Does the Big 10 sit comfortably with the addition of Nebraska or do we make a play for Notre Dame, Missouri, or any of the Big East teams?

We had an open thread for the sugar bowl, shouldn't we have at least an unofficial one for the orange bowl.  After all this game could show the Big Ten is an actual real conference that can win bowl games and everything. 

I was going to start one earlier but Iowa jumped out to an early 14 point lead.  Then Stanzi did what he does best, throw a pick six and get the other team right back into the game.

Penn State won the Lambert-Meadowlands Trophy, awarded to the best team in the east, again this year.  At this point they might as well rename it the Joe Paterno Trophy.  In his 43 seasons as head coach, Penn State has won the award 23 times.  Penn State also won the award once under Bob Higgins and 3 times under Rip Engle (with Paterno as an assistant).  In total, Penn State has won 27 times, 20 times more than the second place Army (who won their last before we won our second), and 21 times more than third place Pittsburgh (their last was 28 years ago).  While this award really doesn't mean as much as it once did, it is still pretty amazing the dominance Penn State has had in the eastern region, especially in the Paterno era.

Here is a link to the story

Sadly these are the type of people who decided who plays for the national title.  Pat Quinn, an 80 year old who retired from Oklahoma States sports information department 22 years ago and Harris voter replied the following when asked this weekend about the national title:

I think Alabama and Penn State will probably play for the national championship.  They’re the only undefeated teams, aren’t they?

When informed of Penn States loss, he replied.

Oh well, those Big Ten teams have a lot of votes.

How is this possible?  How can you let people who follow football as casually as this guy decided the national championship?

Here is a link to the article.

Great win tonight, but one thing that kind of annoyed me is the Paterno injury sistuation.  Honestly, I am kind of disappointed the way the media is treating it.  It seems like they are assuming that he is no longer coaching the team just because he is up in the booth during the game.  I heard a few times the ESPN anouncers referred to Bradley as the coach during the Wisconsin game.  This is in addition to a few times over the last week I have seen the national media referred to Paterno "watching" the game from the booth as apposed to "coaching" from the booth.  My question is, "Do you think the leg injury had effected the way Paterno has coached this team?", and if not "do you think the national media is portraining this injury the way they should be?"