Hey BSH faithful I have a question. I read everyday but I do not post as much.  For some reason the Flyers playoff games have been blacked out on CSN every game this week. The only one I've seen at home is the last game on Versus. I checked with my cable company again today and they said it would be blacked out again. If the games are sold out how can they black it out? Thanks!

Give me a siren! According to Rivals Penn State basketball has added another commitment to the class of 2011. Peter Alexis, a 6-11 center out of Holy Redeemer HS in Wilkes-Barre becomes the second player of the 2011 class with Trey Burke a PG out of Ohio. The 2011 class is really important to the development of the program with so many scholarships opening up. DeChellis got a much needed big man for the future today.

If one is supposed to go up delete this, otherwise. Who's in to talk about PSU's first game of the Charelston Classic. According to ED UNCW is the best team they will have faced so far. Sounds like JoePa speak to me. Last couple games Jeff Brooks and a few others have stepped up and played well. Hopefully they continue that success so that Battle doesn't have to do it all. I'd also like to see Jones improve his handling under the basket. Better hands will lead to more points.

Go State Beat the Seahawks!

Talor Battle is going to a training camp to compete for a spot in the USA Basketball Men's World University Games Team. 5 other B11 players were invited to this camp and Wisky's Bo Ryan is the head coach. I believe there are 12 spots and 15 players trying out so hopefully Battle gets a chance to show his skills overseas. This is quite the honor for a PSU player and this is indicative of how Big Eddy is increasing the talent level on the bball team.

This will likely not be a very widely reported subject but there are some new developments in PSU basketball's schedule for next year. Firstly, PSU will be playing at Virginia next season on Monday, Novemember 30th in the first game of the Big 10/ACC challenge. It sucks PSU has to go away two years in a row but now PSU is guaranteed a home game in the BT/ACC challenge after next.

The other positive development is that PSU will be one of the 8 teams in the Charlston Classic to be played from Nov 19th to Nov 22nd. 7 of the 8 teams have been confirmed and they are: USF, Miami, South Caronlina, PSU, UNC-Wilmington, Tulane, LaSalle, and one other team from the Southern Conference. This is a step up from the Philly Classic and hopefully PSU will fair better and gain some decent wins in the OOC.

According to Rutgers the series will occur during the 2014-2015 seasons. PSU will travel in 2014 and stay home in 2015. I'm not as big of a fan of this series now that it doesn't coincide with the UVA series. I'm kinda nervous about this series turning into a Syracuse type situation. Hopefully PSU keeps adding quality games because they really should have 2 BCS opponents per OOC at least.

But here is an article that states Graham Spanier is under consideration for the Secretary of Education in Obama's White House. Spanier is orginally from Illinois and he also holds a PhD from Northwestern so it's not illogical for him to have some ties to Obama and the Chicago education scene. Not to mention he's been active in various boards across education.

Some PSU alumni cabinet members are:

Barbara Hackman Franklin- Former US Secretary of Commerce

William Perry- Former Secretary of Defense

Richard Schweiker- Former Secretary of Health and Human Services

I know there are some divided opinions on Spainer but I think this would reflect well on the University. Thoughts?

JoePa visited my office today, and he was signing autographs and taking pictures. He looked good and I got the chance to talk to him for a little bit. I asked why he decided to stay at Penn State for so long and he replied,"I just really like it. Some people think that the grass is greener, but sometimes they end up wrong." I told him good luck with the season and to have a good one. He was in good health and spirits, telling jokes and stuff like that. I'm glad I got to meet him one last time before the contract he has with the company ends this year.

Everyone should head on over to www.everydayshouldbesaturday.com and donate to one of the various charities. I would like to see PSU well represented in the Top 10. The deadline is coming up today I believe so get your donations in.

A person can donate to the Red Cross and various other charaties. The directions will be on the first page of the blog. Michigan is leading right now, lets try to get on the board.

Thanks

I don't know how many students read (I know of at least one, haha) but the Collegian today had an article about the new plans that the University has for season tickets. Apparently all students will receive an email spelling out the new changes. There will be a pre-registering period for students that want tickets. Then the tickets will be divided up by class size and University Park, so the bigger the class the more tickets there are. The article also states that in 2009 they hope to have tickets attached to ID cards and create a loyalty system.
I think this is a pretty good step in the right direction, unfortunately I don't see how scalping will go down for this year, but it will help ticketmaster handle all the hits.

http://www.collegian.psu.edu/archive/2008/04/24/ticket_policy_changed.aspx

Jermaine Marshall from Red Land has just committed to play for Penn State Basketball. He had some pretty good other suitors like St. Joe's and Temple. He averaged 19.1 ppg. This is a good get for ED and I welcome Jermaine to the Penn State family. It seems like his star is on the rise too. I think he could be a real impact player.

6-4 175lb WR A.J. Price has committed to Penn State after his visit this weekend. He comes from South Lakes HS in Virginia. I'm not sure about the competition there but his highlight tape looked pretty good. His star value is also misleading due to some kind of snafu on scout. This is a great addition to our class. One more WR recruit and we can breathe a little easier.

Penn State will host Oregon State next year instead of Arkansas State in September. I don't know about you guys, but I'm excited. It will be a good game for the program, plus Ark. State would have been a boring game. I don't have access to premium material but I saw the headline on rivals.

If anyone knows this I have no idea: Will Penn State then travel to Oregon State next year? I don't have any details on the contract. I'm just glad the home schedule will be better next year.

Penn State just need some work on their fundamentals. 11-19 from the free throw line, when you lose by 7? That's not going to cut it. You have got to make your shots from the charity stripe if you want to field a successful team. And did anyone see how many offensive rebounds we had? We missed too many close shots that were gifts from SC. Tip drills and tons of free throws for everyone!

Bright Spots: I thought Talor Battle played pretty well. He showed good hustle and athleticism. The only part of his game that suffered was his three point shooting, but I don't think anyone had a good day from behind the ark.

Jamelle Cornley: He provided a big spark off of the bench. Those were the first minutes of his season and I thought they went well.

The topic of Jamelle Cornley brings me to Geary Claxton. The kid is just trying to do too much. He was pressing when he should have passed he just seemed to hyped up. Hopefully the gradual return of Jamelle Cornely will calm him down and he won't feel like he has to carry the team.

This team has the potential to be good. But do they have the coaching and the discipline to be good?

     I've got an idea. After reading this, if anyone has any other information that would back up or change this idea in some way, go for it. I'm open to being wrong, since I'm wrong all the time.

Support Your Football Team: Go to Basketball games! (or any other sport for that matter)

     I'm sure that most of you know what horrible non conference schedules lay ahead. Power House programs like Eastern Illinois and Costal Carolina will descend upon Happy Valley to bore the crap out of 107,000 people. Our beloved athletic director Tim Curley is obviously looking for money. He has 29 Varsity sports to support. That's one of the highest numbers of sports in the country.  Penn State football pays for just about all of them.

     2004-2005 saw Penn State basketball only brought in 5.2 million dollars in revenue and incurred 2.5 million dollars in expenses. That's only 2.7 million dollars in profit. No Big Ten team made less revenue than Penn State. Even Northwestern made more money by taking in 6.7 million dollars and incurring 2.7 million dollars in expenses. NW made 4 million dollars. The top profits in the Big Ten that year were Indiana, Wisconsin, and Illinois, each raking in 8.1 million dollars. Unfortunately women's basketball loses money at a very fast rate. They were 1.76 million dollars in the red over the same span as the basketball team.

    Football on the other hand made tons of cash (for obvious reasons). The football team incurred 10.7 million dollars in expenses and took in 33.2 million dollars in revenue. That's 22.5 million dollars in profit. Overall Penn State athletics took in $60,785,497 and incurred $60,218,673 of expenses. That means that the athletics department was $566,824 in the black. I can see why Tim Curley is trembling at the thought of having a bad football season. A bad football seasons means that other sports get screwed, so Curley schedules teams that suck so that we have a good record, get to a bowl game and bigger TV games. He is desperate for money. He is desperate because he wants to keep all of the other sports programs up and running.

    So in order for there to be better games on the football schedule either: A) the cost of football season tickets must go up (they are already ridiculous from what I understand, I'm a student, but my father has season tickets), or B) other sporting events must pick up the slack. Ed DeChellis and Tim Curley need to get that basketball team in line. If they can pick up the slack and generate some interest in basketball here in Happy Valley then there will be no excuse for Curley not to schedule some better football games.

      You may thing I'm an apologist for Curley, however that is untrue. I think he could probably stay in the black with having tough out of conference games, but he obviously doesn't think so. I would love for him to have no other option than to schedule some great games. I think Penn State should schedule two crappy teams and two teams that are pretty good. Preferably the good teams will be some old rival from the independent days (which unfortunately I don't remember).

      The money has to come from somewhere and it's time for basketball to start picking up the slack. They have great facilities in a competitive conference. There really isn't a reason I can think of why the basketball team can't improve and help the athletic situation.

I've been to both games this year, but I'll be focusing on what happened yesterday with ND.

Scott has not impressed me through these first two games. He didn't have a run more than 10 yards for until the third quarter. I'm no genius, but we need more from the run game. Morelli has shown that he can't carry the offense. He needs a break, and Scott either needs to come up big, or let Royster and Kinlaw make something happen.

Morelli needs to learn how to hit a receiver in stride. Our great receiving core has allowed him to rack up yards with miracle catches. And, he's just plain inaccurate at times. There were 5 throws yesterday that made me want to tear my hair out. He should never have thrown that interception on the first drive, and he overthrew some guys. He's been starting for a year, I expect him to be better than this.

I'm confident that if we can raise our run game by a few levels then I think the passing game will improve. If our offense improves and has a good day against Michigan then I think that we could contend for a BCS win. If they don't I think we can still win the Big Ten, but we'll get smoked by a good defense. Here's to improvement.

Thankfully we have a killer defense and pretty good special teams. I think we will ride them to New Years Bowl at the very least.

P.S. The White House was an amazing spectacle. I was in the student section, and I loved every second of it.

The Big Ten just took a major hit thanks to their loss. What are the ramifications of their loss. If we run the table, will we have the schedule credibility to get to the title game? This is terrible. I hate Michigan as much as the next guy, but this shouldn't happen. I hate them, and I hope every Michigan fan is embarrassed to be alive.  

A.J Alexander

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If anyone cares at all Lavar Arrington was seriously  hurt during a motorcycle accident.

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http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/columns/story?columnist=schlabach_mark&id=2903926

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