There has been a number of quality candidates throwing their name into the ring, hoping to bring some sanity, clarity, guidance and transparency to what most of us think is a damaged Board of Trustees. The gentleman above is someone who brings a track record deep enough that he is not likely to get pushed around by the BoT power brokers. Please take a second to read the linked article to get a sense of who this man is.

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Is the little hamlet of State College a town full of self absorbed wierdos walled off from the rest of the world? Is The Village (of Penn State) like its namesake in the M. Night Shyamalan movie? Maybe. We've got walls, monsters and lots of secrecy. There's a few familiar names sprinkled in this article for extra pizzazz.

It’s no coincidence that they failed to act at the same time that they were working on this project," said victims’ attorney Jeff Anderson, who filed a civil lawsuit against Sandusky, The Second Mile and Penn State on Wednesday. Anderson called the $125 million project "another layer of motivation, individual financial stakes, in making sure that the stature of The Second Mile and Penn State remained intact."

Nothings gets me fired up like reading about a recruit that is so excited to play football for Penn State that he takes on the burden of spreading the gospel to other recruits.


This article in the York Daily record shares some of the efforts put forth by our newest Williams to buy into Penn State fully completely.

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Did anybody land the pretty girl - or just wake with a giant headache and nausea?

The kinks must have been worked out by the time my turn came, because I navigated the process frustration free.

I flirted pretty freely with a number of options, but I really had my sights set on the Prom Queen - WE Row 40 on the aisle. I knew it was a long shot, but if you don't call the pretty girl, she'll never have a chance to shoot you down. In this case, she didn't even pick up. WE & her twin sister, EE, were pretty well cleaned out by the time I arrived, save for some scattered singles still hoping that a random suitor picks them up.

Where I had been spending Filet and Lobster tail money on NEU (just below the new visitors section) - for that same outlay I landed WF on the aisle, a mere 3 rows lower than what I hoped.  It was glorious.

While in State College last Saturday I had a great dinner at Spat's and spent a week's pay on more PSU officially licensed gear.  During my cruise of College Ave. I noticed that Great Big Sea is playing the State Theatre on Wednesday, September 22.  I saw these guys for the first time sometime in the mid-90's at the Chameleon in Lancaster.  They. Were. Awesome. 

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When I was a student, I tried to attend as many sporting events as my drinking and er studying would allow.  Nowadays, I rarely get back to State College to see a football game let alone all the other sports.  I was curious if there are any non-student BSDers that are able to get back to the mother ship on a regular basis.  How much does it cost to attend the non-football/basketball/wrestling events?  Does a student get free access to the "other" sports?

I think one thing that PSU and MSU fans can all agree on is the sheer awesomeness that is our rivalry trophy.  But how did it come to be?  

Wikipedia bores us with tales of postage stamps and annoints George Perles as the sole designer.  Something this unequaled in beauty does not occur randomly in nature and is certainly not wrought by the hands of some middling football coach.  It must be molded, sculpted with intent, perhaps touched by the very hand of God himself. 

Since the true birth of The Land Grant Trophy has been lost to the annals of spacetime, it is up to us, good sons and daughters of BSD to reconstruct this very important legend.

The story determined most virtuous will be awarded a Reading Rambler Bobblehead.

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Since the initial post received some interest, I figured I would scan and post some of the more notable buildings in the book.

 Clicking on any of the pictures opens them up to full screen.

 

The Old, Old Main - makes sense that the building that replaced this one was just called Main building since it replaced Old Main, although the current "Old Main' name bucks the naming trend.

In the book, most every building's picture is prefaced with a description like the one below. 

A large and commodious structure if I've ever seen one.

 

The railroad tracks mentioned by Professor Cairo in the first post. 

Amazing that the Obelisk has stood the test of 100 years of virgins passing by.

There aren't any pictures of the men's lodgings, but perhaps to put some of the parents at ease, the college chose to include a picture of where the ladies live on campus.

 

Plenty of lawn seating
   

Nothing to see here, please disperse.  Wild nights on College Ave - not so much.

An unemcumbered view of Mt. Nittany.

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I bought a 1904 PSU (well, Penn State College) campus book on ebay about 10 years ago.   With all the nostalgic posts lately, thought I would scan some of the more interesting pictures.  The recent campus pictures in the Penn Stater and at http://live.psu.edu/stilllife/2285 that KevinHD posted give a nice comparison for how the campus has changed in 100 years.

 

The following images were taken "from the tower" - which I can only think is Old Main.

 

Anybody recognize any of these?

 

Blair Thomas will be in Williamsburg Virgina July 20-24 as a coach for the above camp. 

As a Williamsburg resident I know James City County has some nice facitilies - two nexturf fields, 10+ multi-use grass athletic fields and a nice stadium in the same complex, but I didn't realize there wasn't anything comparable on the east coast between Florida and Canada.  Not bad for a little 40,000 population area.

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In one of Cael Sanderson's recent blog posts, he discusses two former ISU wrestlers who are continuing their training in State College.  Cael mentions building up the Nittany Lion Wrestling Club with world class wrestlers.

Cael's Blog

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There's been a number of good threads discussing the positives and negatives of State College's restaurant offerings but most were tangents and I can't recall a dedicated post.  What I'm looking for in this post is not a look at any of the great bars in SC, but instead places where someone has had a great meal.

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With Saturday right around the corner, it seemed like the right time to try to pimp my unused Syracuse tix to the masses.  It is "Classic Day" afterall and as sad as I am that I can't be there in person to represent, I've got 4 tickets with a picture of a guy holding a leather helmet that would be very upset if they spent the day in my desk instead of giving you the opportunity to see Greg Paulus get sacked 10 times.

 

What's available?

Row 75 Seats 17 & 19

Row 76 Seats 21 & 23

e-mail is in my profile, drop me an inquiry.  They are posted on the PSU ticket exchange and can be forwarded to you. 

I also have yellow & orange parking available, but I don't see an electronic sending option.  Let me know if you want them and have a scheme to get at them.

Sadly I don't.  Zugit, I don't even have a five point plan. 

But what I do have are tickets to games I can't make this year.  I posted them on the PSU ticket exchange: http://www.gopsusports.com/tickets/m-footbl-tickets.html

Available are the following:

9/5/09       Akron         Section NEU  Row 76 (2 seats)
9/12/09    Syracuse   Section NEU  Row 76 (2 seats)  Row 75 (2 seats)

9/19/09    Temple      Section NEU  Row 76 (2 seats)  Row 75 (2 seats)
10/10/09  E. Illinois   Section NEU  Row 76 (2 seats)  Row 75 (2 seats)

11/14/09  Indiana      Section NEU  Row 76 (2 seats)  Row 75 (2 seats)

Shoot me an e-mail if any questions - address is in my profile.

I'm on my second reading of "What It Means to be a Nittany Lion". 

 

via amazon.com

 It has a nice forward written by JoePa, then gets right into the players talking about their experiences being recruited by and eventaully playing for PSU.  It starts back in the 30's and 40's and ends up around 2006.  I think what I liked most was the pre-Paterno insight into the building of the football program.  I forgot the administration removed athletic scholarships from around 1930 or so until Rip Engle took over.

After reading this I just can't imagine a non-PSU guy being brought in when Joe is gone.

Has anybody else read this book?  Any other PSU related books that really moved you to read multiple times?

 

I started visiting their site a few  weeks back to read about their team and hoped to see a little activity in regards to our upcoming game - their opinions on PSU.  The holiday may be causing a posting hangover, but not much activity yet.  Of course there hasn't been much Beaver talk over here yet either. 

They seem like a civil lot.  So I did put out an open invite for some Beavers to come to BSD for some game talk.  Hopefully we get some thoughtful opposing viewpoints.

 

I think a combo of the two works nicely - however a little more Blue Band and a little less (i.e., none thanks) Bon Jovi and Journey.

If you were Guido, what would you play.

1.) More blue band - fight song

2.) Something like the Bouncing Souls "Ole' " 

or (as goofy as it is) Andrew W.K. "Party"

 

I was wondering what the 75 word talk was all about and here we are killing your brain cells with filler to made the deadline.

Can anyone give me an experienced opinion of CSTV.com?

Living in Virginia - out of B10 country, my local cable provider pretends to have never heard of the Bi10 Channel.  i'm not going dish or DirectV, and Fios is a ways off. 

Reluctant to sit in a bar for this beatdown, I'm looking at my 5th option to get access to the game - CSTV.com.  At only $9.95/month it is affordable.  So far just audio - no game streaming video.

How is the game coverage?

 

 

I'll be patiently waiting for tWWL to run a hit piece on this bastion of higher education.

As a Virginia resident, UVA has a beautiful campus, a great reputation for academics and the students an unbecoming self-importance. 

Read this article and feel better about our Nittany Lions.

UVA Football Beer Gay Bar

This recent news led me to a google search for UVA Football arrests.  Looks like we somehow let a few thugs slip through our fingers.