"Sadness surrounds us, isn't that right, Err?"

"SADNESS IS FOR POOR PEOPLE"

--An exchange between those two fictitious prophets of the modern age, the Mooninites (Ignignokt and Err), on Aqua Teen Hunger Force

Sadness surrounds us and it sucks.  We're sad that no matter how this ends, it can't possibly end well.  Unless you're one of those people who enjoys bad things happening to PSU.  If you are one of those people, I recommend therapy.  Or suicide.  Whatever will make you stop faster.

There was a time when things weren't so sad.  A time when we were visited by another prophet of the modern age.  I speak of the one, the only, Skins4ever.  Skins4ever touched our lives in a special way.  He loved the Redskins.  And Tennis.  He thought Ed DeChellis should be fired.

But like most truly awesome things, he was gone before we realized just what, exactly, had happened.  I don't know if we've recuperated from that moment in time, but I do think we're all better for it.  Or crazier.  Either way, more awesome for having witnessed Skins.

Revelation left to us by Skins4ever:

dont mean to be ass but i dont need people to know my business

by Skins4ever on Feb 3, 2010 9:32 PM EST up actions  

Skins, if you meant to be ass, you would be ass better than anyone, ever.

What im leaving this blog for a long while

by Skins4ever on Feb 3, 2010 9:35 PM EST up actions  

Say it ain't so, Skins.

yes i came here to talk penn state sports, and i thought people would talk it but you people dont ever talk sports so im done!!!!!!!!!

by Skins4ever on Feb 3, 2010 9:37 PM EST up actions  

Amen, brother. Apparently a long while is 2 minutes.

ok how bout how many wins will the football team have and their shot at a rose bowl? please im sick of sarcasm in this blog

by Skins4ever on Feb 3, 2010 10:17 PM EST up actions  

At Skins demand, sarcasm immediately died at BSD, and nothing but football talk ensued.

THIS IS SKINS4EVER SIGNING OFF FOR TONIGHT WONDERFUL ON BSD, HAVE GREAT EVENING EVERYONE BE BACK BRIGHT AND EARLY

by Skins4ever on Feb 4, 2010 12:16 AM EST actions  

Signing off for tonight wonderful indeed.

So go ahead.  Cast your sadness to the Ohio State and Nebraska fans poor people.  Click the link.  Get lost in a better time: http://www.blackshoediaries.com/2010/2/3/1291439/is-it-time-for-ed-dechellis-to-go

A Fera jersey.  I can't find one. Does anyone know where I could get one?

The backstory: as most of you know, I do not hail from PSU country.  Defiance, Ohio is pretty much equidistant from Ohio State, Michigan, and Notre Dame, and as such, is pretty much equally divided amongst fans.  Furthermore, it's 100% college football country.  There is no divided attention with the NFL.  Summary: all rabid college football fans, no Penn State fans.

Both myself and my sister chose to attend PSU.  After doing so, a younger cousin of ours (from the same area) chose to be a Penn State fan out of loyalty to us.  She will not be a PSU alum; she is severely autistic.  She does not speak well. Her linguistic and mathematical skills are about that of a 2nd grade student. 

She wore Mills and Robinson jerseys through the tail end of the Dark Years.  She wore her Morelli jersey every week, and every week reminded me that he's good sometimes and could get better.  She, like the rest of us, suffered through last year with pride in a program that was young, injured, but committed to doing things the right way.

I got a phone call from her after the Purdue game.  Play by play, we talked about what worked and what didn't.  I use the DVR.  She used memory.  This is customary.  Then she drops a request on me, "I want a #30 jersey.  The punter.  He's good."

"Yes, he is, but most people don't get the punter's jersey."

"And he's cute."  She is a teenage girl, after all.

I searched tirelessly and fruitlessly for a Fera jersey.  To the nether regions of the internets.  No avail whatsoever.

So now I appeal to you, fellow rabid PSU fans, for help.  If anyone knows where I could come across one, get a custom one, or anything else of that nature, please leave that drop of wisdom in the comments or email me at pjb927@yahoo.com. It will be much appreciated.

update:  Got a custom made from pennstateclothes.com. It was delivered today.  It lacks the Nike logo, but other than that (and some may prefer such an adjustment) it's great.  Thanks to all who helped, especially whiteout1.

It's the opening weekend.  Lots of cupcakes and lots of new faces.  That's the grain of salt for what you are about to see.  That being said, it was real college football.  So how did each league do?

1. Big Ten: 10-2

Games they could have won but didn't: Minnesota 17 USC 19, Indiana 20 Ball State 27

Games they won but could have lost: Purdue 27 MTSU 24

Most impressive win: take your pick between OSU 48 Akron 0, Wisconsin 51 UNLV 17, and Penn State 41 Indiana State 7.  OSU and Wisconsin both played their starters much longer than PSU did, all had their fair share of miscues, all had "this game was not in doubt late in the first quarter" wins over cupcakes.  Difficult to be impressed by any of it, but there's something to be said for taking care of business easily against a vastly inferior opponent.  DO YOU HEAR ME MICHIGAN STATE?

Overall impression: There's a handful of top 10 contenders in this league.  Purdue and Indiana are bad, but even Minnesota looked like a very solid team on the road against a talented top 25 team.  This league is probably too brutal for anyone to go undefeated, maybe even finish with only 1 loss, but there are about 8 legit top 25 contenders in this league and about 4 or 5 top 10 contenders.

2. SEC: 10-2

Games they could have won but didn't: BYU 14, Ole Miss 13

Games they won but could have lost: Auburn 42 Utah State 38, Kentucky 14 Western Kentucky 3

Most impressive win: LSU 40 Oregon 27, more dominating than the final score indicates

Overall impression: Auburn is 16-0 in their last 16 games but could easily be 6-10, and that's infuriating.  LSU and Alabama are legit MNC contenders.  Other than that, there's a handful of legit top 25 teams and a handful of bad teams. Same old SEC.

3. Big East: 6-0 (2 games yet to come)

Games they could have won but didn't: none

Games they won but could have lost: USF 23 Notre Dame 20, Syracuse 36 Wake Forest 29 (OT)

Most impressive win: Syracuse over Wake Forest.  A team most pick to finish in the middle of the Big East overcoming a ton of early miscues to get a win over a BCS school.  Not bad at all.

Overall impression: solid.  No real MNC contenders here, but a very solid overall performance.  Even the games they could have lost were fairly impressive, with a great comeback and a road win over a top 25 team.

4. Big 12 9-0 (1 game yet to come)

Games they could have won but didn't: none

Games they won but could have lost: Baylor 50 TCU 48, ISU 20 UNI 19, KSU 10 Eastern KY 7

Most impressive win: Baylor over TCU.  Gritty win over a good team

Overall impression: Meh.  Could easily be 9-3, and a couple of the wins by alleged good teams (Mizz 17 Miami U 6, Ok St 61 ULL 34) were just not impressive.  No defense, very little good offense, but inexplicably undefeated.

5. ACC 8-2 (1 conference game yet to come)

Games they could have won but didn't: Syracuse over WF in OT, Richmond 23 Duke 21

Games they won but could have lost: none

Most impressive win: VT 66 App St 13.  Start to finish domination over a very good 1AA team. 

Overall impression: Duke is Duke, so losing to a good 1AA team is kind of whatever.  Nothing impressive to see here, but could still be 10-0 at this point with a little more luck.

6. Pac-12 8-4

Games they could have won but didn't: Houston 38 UCLA 34, Sacramento State over OrSU in OT

Games they won but could have lost: USC 19 Minnesota 17, Washington 30 Eastern Washington 27

Most impressive win: Stanford 57 San Jose St. 3.  The only game where a Pac-12 team took care of business on both sides of the ball from start to finish.

Overall impression: Terrible.  I think Iowa's about the 6th best team in the Big Ten, and they would be no worse than the 3rd best team in this league and could win it.  Just terrible.  Colorado lost by 17 to Hawaii.  I'm not sure Colorado is better than Indiana State right now.

Coaches preach taking care of the football.  There are a couple reasons.

The first is that regardless of the relative talent level of the teams in the game, the turnover battle is the easiest thing to control.  Hang onto the football.  Protect the QB's blind side.  Don't make dumb throws.  Be opportunistic when your opponent fails to do the same.  Seems pretty simple.  In theory, it is.  In execution, not so much.

The second is that it matters to winning the game.  Maybe that's the first.  Either way, how much does it matter?

Continue reading this post »

BSD: Bumped for effort...

So I was thinking about the 2010 Michigan State game for some reason.  In that game, Penn State had over 60 more yards, fewer turnovers, more points off turnovers, and was playing at home.  PSU had more scores (4, 3 TD and 1 FG) than MSU had red zone trips (3).  Both PSU and MSU had 3 red zone trips.  PSU trailed by double digits most of the game and lost. 

Sure, there were a couple questionable spots that resulted in MSU first downs (MSU also only had 1 more first down, 21-20), and yes, I do believe that if PSU recovers the onside kick at the end of the game that PSU wins.  This fails to explain the fact that MSU was up by double digits most of the game.  This fails to explain the fact that PSU needed late-game heroics by McGloin (yes, it happened) and Moye just to make it interesting.

It got me thinking: what wins Big Ten football games?

Continue reading this post »

Phil Steele has released his all-Big Ten projections for 2011.  I did some analysis-like stuff based on what I saw in it.

Image and tea leaf reading after the jump.

Continue reading this post »

How exactly does one go about judging a team's NCAA Tournament resume?   Most established bracketologists (especially Bracketology 101) are extremely accurate.  Jay Coleman's DanceCard algorithm does a very good job also.  But these only tell you who will get in, not who should.

Computer rankings are OK, but all they really give you is a very macroscopic snapshot of a team's body of work.  They don't comb through the fine details, and it's those fine details that are necessary to separate the >9 seeds from the NIT teams.  Also, most of the major ones (Colley, Sagarin) give a team more credit for beating #300 than a narrow loss to #3.  RPI does the opposite.  Both have their merits and demerits. I'm not trying to debate them.

Something I've done for a few years now is a method that I call "real record."  I've found it useful for three things: determining what teams / leagues the committee was overly kind / mean to and picking "upsets" in the NCAA tournament.  Real Record is over .700 when it picks an upset in the last two years.  Just sayin'.  It's good.

Continue reading this post »

Penn State Basketball has a chance to get an at-large berth in the NCAA Tournament.  A probable chance? A realistic chance?  That's what I'm trying to find out.

Assumptions:

--16 or less wins gives PSU a 0% chance to make the tournament
--17 wins gives PSU a 10% chance to make the tournament
--18 wins gives PSU a 50% chance to make the tournament
--19 wins gives PSU a 90% chance to make the tournament
--20 or more wins gives PSU a 100% chance to make the tournament
--PSU's chances to win any given game on a neutral court are proportional to the team's Colley Matrix rating and are calculated as (PSU's rating) / ((PSU's rating) + (opponent's rating))
--Home court advantage is worth a 5% boost in a team's chances to win
--The Big Ten standings will remain the same for the sake of seeding in the Big Ten Tournament.  This means Penn State will be the 7 seed and play Indiana followed by Purdue.
--If Penn State goes into the Big Ten Tournament needing more than 2 wins to get to 17 wins, PSU isn't getting in.  This means at a bare minimum, PSU must finish 5-6 down the stretch.

What follows is a spreadsheet calculating the odds of winning any individual game and the likelihood of any given record in the last 11 regular season games:

Continue reading this post »

Thanks to the football gods' hatred of Indiana, PSU's chances of winning the Big Ten's automatic BCS went from "this could really happen if PSU just wins out" to awful on Saturday, but the mathematical possibility still exists.

To earn the auto BCS bid, PSU must either win the league outright, or PSU can tie with other teams for the conference title and still get the BCS bid provided PSU played and beat all of those other teams.  Other than that, it can't happen.  Here's how it could happen:

1A or B. PSU wins out.  This must happen in all scenarios* due to the Alabama game.  Yep, a road game against an OOC opponent may cost us the Big Ten's Rose Bowl bid.  If it's any consolation, Iowa feels the same pain.

Continue reading this post »

Penn State is 5-3.  All three losses have come against teams in the Sagarin top 26.  All 5 wins came against teams ranked lower than that.

The following is a list of teams ranked in the AP Poll who have not beaten a team in the Sagarin top 26:

12. Utah
17. Arkansas
19. Oklahoma State
20. Virginia Tech
21. Mississippi State
22. Baylor
24. Florida State

Since none of these teams can honestly claim to have a win better than PSU's worst loss, let's compare our best wins:

Unranked and not getting any votes Penn State:
Wins over teams in the Sagarin top 51: 2, Michigan (#46) and Temple (#51)

#12 Utah:
2, Pittsburgh (#37) and Iowa State (#45)

#17 Arkansas:
1, Texas A&M (#34)

#19 Oklahoma State:
3, Texas A&M, Kansas State (#35), Texas Tech (#49)

#20 Virginia Tech:
1, #30 NC State

#21 Mississippi State:
1, #31 Florida

#22 Baylor:
2, Kansas State, Texas (#39)

#24 Florida State
1, #32 Miami-FL

So out of the 7(!) teams ranked in the AP top 25 who are in the same boat as PSU in terms of lacking a top 26 win, only 1 has more wins against numbers 27-51, and 4 have less.  I'm not out to say PSU should be ranked.  What I am out to say is that our resume is not that much, if any, worse than several teams that are ranked.  It might actually be better.

Did I choose arbitrary cutoff points? Yes. Does that matter as far as illustrating my point? No. And my point is this: this team can be decent.  Maybe it already is.  Top 25 decent.  On a team that (1) had to replace as much as PSU did from last year, (2) is as young as PSU is, (3) got as injured as PSU did, and (4)had as brutal of a schedule as PSU did.

That is not a disappointment.  That's good.  So when PSU is down at halftime tomorrow and the FIRE JOEPAs of the world come out of the woodwork to rear their ugly little internet faces once again, just remember: PSU is doing as well as could possibly be expected under the circumstances, and better than many who are currently ranked.  If PSU finishes this year 9-3 or even 8-4, this is exactly the type of season an average coach would've gone 4-8 in.

...of conference realignment (and it seems to be for the time), let's examine the winners and losers:

The Clear Winners: The Big Ten, Nebraska, Texas, TAMU, Oklahoma

These are the groups that came out of all the expansion hoopla better than how they went in, and they know it.

The Big Ten got its 12th member, a probable championship game, and a school that in terms of academics, athletics, tradition, and TV ratings is a great fit and a boost to the league.

Nebraska ended up a winner too, in terms of both money and getting out from Texas' oppressive rule.  Also, they'll join the CIC, which will be a huge boost to the school academically.

Texas got exactly what it wanted: a conference full of loyal subjects and big time money.

Oklahoma and Texas A&M may not have gotten everything they wanted, but they do come out with more money, and didn't have to leave for the more competitive pastures of the SEC to do it.

The Clear Losers: The Big 12

The Big 12 loses its conference championship game (NCAA rules state a league must have 12 members) and a lot of credibility, even if the efforts to save the league in some form were eventually successful.  Perhaps the Big 12 will add Houston or Tulsa or Rice or someone of that ilk to salvage the conference championship game, but trading Nebraska for Tulsa is a clear loss regardless.

You lost, even if it doesn't feel like it or you don't know it yet: Colorado, Notre Dame

Colorado left a league it had a great deal of history with for less money in the Pac-10, a league that still doesn't have the requisite membership for a conference championship game.  It probably will soon, but they get a giant Fail anyways.

Notre Dame is still making less money from television than Northwestern and Vanderbilt.  That sentence never gets old.  Also, with the prospect of 2 more superconferences around than when their deal was last negotiated (assuming the Pac-10 and Big 12 gobble the requisite number of mid-majors, which will lead to greater competition for TV time), combined with more of the same on the field, does ND really think their TV deal with NBC will be better next time around?

You didn't lose, even if you don't feel great right now: Missouri, The Pac-10

Mizzou, you're basically in the exact same spot you were 12 months ago.  You weren't unhappy about your lot then, why would you be now?  I know you were led to believe that the Big Ten was a done deal, and that sucks, but in the end, you're no worse off than you ever were.

As for the Pac-10, you gained Colorado and will probably add Utah, BYU, or some other Western mid-major and get your conference championship game, which will add money, and in terms of academics and competition, basically amount to par for the course in your league.  You missed out on Texas, but Texas, if you couldn't tell by this whole process, is a total jerk, and was making you take Oklahoma State and Texas Tech too.  Even then you know they didn't want equal revenue sharing.

The jilted and confused: The SEC

Apparently Texas A&M would rather get treated like garbage by Texas, for less money, than go for a huge win-win and join the SEC.  Texas A&M is like the woman who chose her poor, abusive husband over the suave billionaire who promised her happiness.  It must be confusing and a little insulting.  For what it's worth, SEC, you were too good for her anyway.

Remarkably unscathed: Big East

Wait, wasn't the Big Ten supposed to absolutely raid this league?  Or wasn't the ACC supposed to do the same after the SEC raided it?  Didn't Troy Nunes is an Absolute Magician tear the conference commish apart because the league was being destroyed and he stood by and did nothing?  The Big East was by far the weakest prey of any league, and has a handful of desirable members, and it remains intact?  HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?

I'll be headed to Iraq for approximately one year starting in early September in support of GWOT Contingency Operations, and I'd just like to know if there are any other Nittany Lions (or Big Ten fans in general) around. 

I realize that Iraq is not exactly a small place and even if somebody else is there and reasonably close, there's no guarantee that we'd be able to catch PSU's upsets of Alabama, Iowa, and Ohio State, I just thought I'd get a feel for who all is out there.

I'm not going to talk about my specific locations and orders over BSD (I doubt Leman and Stanzi would approve), but if somebody responds to this, I'll try to figure out a means to be in contact with you.

Since it was brought up in the comments of my last post, I decided to compare leagues based on NFL draft picks.  Data was available on NFL.com for the years 2008-2010 and not earlier, or I would have gone back a couple more years.  I also subtracted a team from the top of each league (with the exception of the Big East)  to compare leagues a bit more fairly (for example, USC had 28 picks over that span.  Ohio State and Texas combined for 29.).  Here's the data:

via i40.tinypic.com

I arbitrarily moved one team out of each league from the top.  Oklahoma might have had more picks than Texas, I really don't know.  I just subracted the picks of one team that was bound to be close to the top of the league in picks.

Every BCS league is within .91 draft picks per team of every other during that span.  That's right, less than one draft pick per team.  On teams with 85 scholarship players. I'm sorry if this bursts any "OMG the [Midwest / South / East Coast / West Coast / Plains / Southwest / Alaska / The Moon] has the best talent EVAR" bubbles out there, but it's true. That being said, I'm about to read way too much into these numbers.

Conclusions:

• Yup, the SEC is that good at producing NFL draft picks.  The 2010 numbers were insane (4.08 picks per team) and greatly skewed all of the others (between the '08 and '09 drafts, the SEC averaged 2.96 picks per team), but the numbers still are what they are.
• The Pac-10 minus USC, ACC minus Va Tech, SEC minus LSU, and Big Ten minus Ohio State all average more picks than the Big 12 with Texas. Texas, leave your garbage league for the Big Ten, which is obviously a better fit both academically, athletically, and fiscally.
• In spite of the fact that the ACC is a league that has produced only 3 BCS participants in the past three years (2 of them being Va Tech) and one winner (Va Tech over Cinci, 2009 Orange Bowl), NFL scouts like the ACC just fine.  The ACC minus Va Tech ranks 2nd in draft picks when the top team is removed.
• In the 2009 draft, the Big East averaged 3.38 picks per team, higher than any league averaged over the 3 year span (as a whole), yet over the 3 year span, the Big East finished 5th, with 2.67 picks per team.  That's the danger of reading too much into any one year.  SEC, I'm looking at you and your fancy 2010 draft class.
• Tales of the Big Ten's demise, lack of speed, lack of pro talent, and how high academic standards are killing the league have been greatly exaggerated.
• Texas, are you tired of keeping the Big 12 respectable?  With you, the B12 finishes dead last amongst BCS leagues at producing draft picks.  Without you, it's almost sad.  Just think, Texas, the Big Ten is better without Ohio State than the Big 12 is with you. Leave your garbage league and join the Big Ten.

I was thinking about the Pac-10, and how for the past decade it's been USC and 9 teams named Fred (or so it seems).  So I decided to compare each conferences' performance in the last decade (2000-2009 regular seasons) by the number of different teams that made it to a BCS bowl game, and by the number of different teams that won a BCS game.  Here goes:

Big Ten: Made it: Purdue, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio State, Iowa, Penn State (6/11).  Won: Ohio State, Iowa, Penn State (3/11)

Big East (current members): Made it: Pitt, WVU, Louisville, Cinci (4/8). Won: WVU, Louisville (2/8)

ACC (current members): Made it: Miami, FSU, Maryland, Va Tech, Wake Forest, Ga Tech (6/12) Won: Miami, Va Tech (2/12)

SEC: Made it: Florida, LSU, Georgia, Auburn, Alabama (5/12), Won: Florida, LSU, Georgia, Auburn, Alabama (5/12)

Big 12: Made it: Oklahoma, Texas, Colorado, Kansas State, Kansas, Nebraska (6/12) Won: Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas (3/12)

Pac-10: Made it: Oregon State, Washington, Oregon, Washington State, USC (5/10) Won: Oregon State, Washington, Oregon, USC (4/10)

Conclusions:

• When it comes to getting the greatest percentage of different schools into a BCS game over the past decade, nobody tops the Big Ten at 54.5%, and every other league except the SEC (41.7%) was at 50%.  Everyone loves to talk about how top-to-bottom competitive the SEC is, but by this metric, it ranks as the single most top-heavy league.  By contrast, the Big Ten ranks as the most competitive, amplified by the fact that each team that made it to a BCS game made it to at least two, with the exception of Purdue.
• The Pac-10 and SEC win BCS games like it's their job. 41.7% of SEC teams and 40% of Pac-10 teams won a BCS game in the aughts.  The closest league to them was the Big Ten, where 27.3% of its teams won a BCS game in the same decade.  Granted, the last time a team not called USC won a BCS game was Oregon in the 2002 (2001 regular season) Fiesta Bowl. Regardless, those 2 leagues have clearly had the widest variety of excellent (as measured by BCS game winning) teams in the aughts.
• The Big East compares well to the other leagues, even after the ACC allegedly raided its best teams. 50% of its current membership has been to a BCS game in the past decade, which is worse only than the Big Ten, and 25% of its current membership has won at least one BCS game, which is only worse than the SEC, Pac-10, and Big Ten, and much better than the league that supposedly took all of its best teams, the ACC (16.7%).
• The top of the ACC stinks and lacks variety.  It was better than only one league (the SEC) at producing a variety of BCS paricipants, and dead, distant last at producing a variety of BCS winners.
• Congratulations to the Big 12 on being average at both producing a variety of BCS participants and BCS winners.  You are the Big East.  Don't you forget it.  Now fork over Texas.
• Michigan didn't win a BCS game this decade?  And Louisville, Kansas, WVU, and Oregon State did? Find somebody who would've predicted that before the 2000 regular season.

I have a vague idea of what criteria the selection committee uses to determine what teams get into the dance at best.  What I do know is that Notre Dame got a 6 seed, which means they were very, very comfortably in, and Illinois did not get in.  Notre Dame must have a much better resume than Illinois then, right?

Notre Dame was 23-11, with 5 wins against the Colley Matrix top 50, but 6 wins against teams ranked #235 or lower.  3 of their losses were to teams ranked #28 or higher, but another 3 were to teams that finished #80 or lower. 

Illinois was 19-14, with 5 wins against the Colley Matrix top 50, but only 3 were against teams ranked #235 or lower. 8 of their losses were to teams ranked #28 or higher, but another 4 were to teams that finished #80 or lower.

So removing completely understandable losses (#28 or higher) and complete garbage wins (#235 or lower)  changes things a bit.  Notre Dame is now 17-8 with 5 quality wins and 3 bad losses.  Illinois is now 16-6 with 5 quality wins and 4 bad losses.

I'm not here to tell you which resume is better.  I'm not trying to say that ND didn't deserve in or that Illinois did.  I'm sure that if different arbritrary cutoff points were used in the Colley Matrix (or any other rankings) this could tell a different story.  What I am trying to say is that a reasonable person could look at objective, reasonable, unbiased, wins-and-losses data and think Illinois had every bit the season Notre Dame did, if not better. 

One is a 6 seed; one is not in.

 Data and Charts with MS Paint drawn trendlines.  Let's do this.

 The following are the KenPom ratings for each PSU basketball team in the ED Era (2004-2010), with a 2 year running average inserted: 

And a chart of the 2 year running average KenPom: 

It's worth noting that the 2004 rating is not a 2 year running average; it's just the rating for 2004, as that was ED's first year.  All of the data is taken from the end of the season, including postseason tournaments, and 2010 is not over.  Also, the trendline was drawn in MS Paint and is therefore nothing more than a rough approximation.  What it does show is that PSU has gotten consistently better over the ED Era, even if the wins aren't necessarily rolling in just yet.

As for 2011, the trend predicts that PSU's running average after next season will be #35, meaning next year's KenPom will have to be #-12.  Last I checked, you couldn't do any better than #1, so the trend won't continue next year, but it does say that very big things are on the horizon.

As of right now, according to this website:

http://www.collegefootballlocks.com/college_football_point_spreads.shtml

the Nittany Lions are 3 point favorites at Michigan.

On one hand, I think that's a bit low.  Michigan's defense sucks big time, and PSU is averaging over 40 points per game.  Even the shutout of Notre Dame was FAR more ND offensive ineptitude than Michigan defensive expertise.  Michigan's offense consists of Michael Hart and....that's it.  PSU is only giving up around 18 yards per game on the ground.  It's easy to say, "I see neither how Michigan will score on PSU or how Michigan will stop Penn State."

On the other hand, the PSU offense is very different than those that dominated the Wolverines: PSU does not run anything close to a spread option attack.  PSU hasn't won at Michigan Stadium since 1996 (though one could easily argue that PSU was robbed in 2002 and 2005).  Michigan is PSU's first road game and easily the best team PSU has played so far. 3 points seems entirely reasonable from that perspective.

So, basically, what does everyone think about the point spread for the Michigan game? (Hey, at least we're not underdogs like we were in '05)