I grew up in Altoona in the '80s. If you're not familiar, Altoona is made up of a bunch of hard-working, hard-drinking fools that love footbaw. The town is divided (literally by the railroad) on who to root for during the weekends. Obviously on Sundays, it's either the Stillers or the Iggles. But on Saturday--1/3 Penn State, 1/3 Pitt (i guess they were good back then...but nobody really can remember that...48-14 suck it Pitt), and 1/3 Notre Dame (damn there are a lot of Irish Catholics...they're like drunk angry rabbits!).

My family was split, 1/2 of them Nittany Nation. The other 1/2 liked the Irish didn't like football. When I was growing up, my dad trained me how to answer the question: "Who do you root for?" And he prepped me with this: "Penn State, and whoever's beating Notre Dame. And Pitt sucks."

So, other than Penn State, who do you root for?

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Let me preface this rant by saying this:  I'm not usually the one to gush about my experiences--good or bad.  But sometimes, enough is enough, and i have to vent it.  This is one of those classical "if the shoe fits" kinds of rants.  I trust you guys, so I'll put it out there.

PS, if you were involved in any of this, let me know.  If you started any of it, and are reading this, then I'm mad at the system.  Because you, friend, should be in the clink.

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I was bored at work, so I put these together.  Some of them are common knowledge.  Others maybe aren't.  Either way, it was fun to put together.  I hope you enjoy.

Facts about the 2011 Season

• Indiana State fans will pay more for a ticket to the Penn State game ($70) than they will for season tickets to all of their home games ($45).

• Indiana State returns top 5 defensive performers from last year

• Average margin of victory when Alabama visits Penn State is 7 pts. Bama is 3-2 in Happy Valley.

• Penn State has won 819 games all-time. Bama had won 823, but vacated 21 from '05-'07.

• 9 of Temple's top-10 most attended home games, and only sellout, are against Penn State.

• Bob Higgins is the only Penn State coach to lose to Temple. He did it 3 times.

• Penn State has outscored Temple 176-22 over the last four games.

• Penn State's 28-game winning streak against Temple is the longest active streak in college football.

• Eastern Michigan has not won 5 games in a season since 1995 (they won 6 that year).

• Penn State beat Eastern Michigan 52-7 in 1992.

• Indiana has not had a coach with a career winning record since Bo McMillin in 1934-47 (.561)

• Indiana has never beaten Penn State.

• Believing that the Iowa Hawkeyes must dress like winners to play like winners, Hayden Fry gained permission to mimic the uniforms of the Pittsburgh Steelers in the 1970s.

• Kirk Ferentz became the Iowa coach in 1999, holding the 2nd-longest active tenure in the B1G.

• Purdue has knocked off the #1 ranked team 7 times; only Notre Dame and Oklahoma have done it more.

• Penn State's 21-pt comeback against Northwestern in 2010 was great, but in 2006, Northwestern blew a 38-3 lead to lose 41-38 to Michigan State, the biggest comeback in NCAA history.

• Penn State has played Illinois 18 times (4 as an independent). Only 5 contests have been decided by a single score ('54, '60, '94, '01, '07). Illinois is 3-2 in those games (W '60, '01, '07).

• The 2010 Illinois game is the only occasion when Illinois defeated PSU by more than one score. It is also the only game that Illinois has won at Beaver Stadium.

• Nebraska has the most wins and highest win% in the Paterno era. PSU is 4th behind Nebraska, Ohio State, and Oklahoma. Michigan rounds out the top 5.

• Tom Osborne won at least 9 games in every season as head coach (1973-1997). By contrast, Paterno had 8 seasons under that mark over the same span.

• Ohio State sucks.

• The Wisconsin Badgers are not named for an animal; rather it describes the living conditions of the first prospectors to settle in the state in the 1830s.

• The Penn State-Wisconsin series in the PSU-Big Ten Era is tied, 6-6. Each school is 3-3 at home.

• The '95, '02, and '03 PSU-UW contests are the only games in the series to be decided by a single score.

I just accepted a job in Roanoke and will be relocating in the next week or two.  Does anyone on here live in the area?  Does anyone know of any Penn State-friendly bars around there?  Or about the cable companies down there--do they carry BTN?

To get the appropriate arbitrary number of words here, I can open this discussion up a little further.  This is the HEART of Hokie country.  Anyone have any personal history with VaTech?  I know Paterno has never played them.  Have we ever played them at all?

Looking forward to the feedback on this one.  And maybe a drinkin' buddy for Saturdays.  Thanks, all.

 This expansion talk is getting out of hand.  I have been scratching my head for months trying to figure it out, to be the one that can say 'I told you so' to my football family when this whole thing shakes out in 1 (or 3 or 5 or 20) years.  But quickly I'm realizing that this thing has transformed itself more times than Optimus Prime during a cocaine-induced seizure:

via www.fistofblog.com

I've realized that getting this right can only happen two ways:  guessing every possible scenario so that one of them has to be right, or actually being that autistic kid from Chicago that picked the first two rounds of his 2010 March Madness bracket correctly.  

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My TV didn't work on Saturday.  A major storm knocked out my cable, and i was left to frantically refresh my blackberry for PSU updates.  This afforded me plenty of time to let my mind roam a little bit.  And I may have come up with a few hypothetical topics for discussion.  I'll air them out there and see what you all think about it.  Here we go...

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So I'm alum '07, and I've managed to miss the past two seasons to military duty.  Baghdad is a little sparse on the Nittany Lions football updates, so I've got a few questions about next season.  I miss the games, and it's killing me not knowing who all these kids coming in are, and not knowing which ones are capable of "being legends."

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