Everyone's favorite WWL in sports asked a bunch of hacks...I mean, analysts, to come up with their Preseason Power 16.

Check out the overall rankings here, and the individual ballots here.

Somehow PSU is ranked 13th overall, and 4th in the Big 10. The more interesting part to look at is, of course, the individual ballots. Like Chris Fallica, "ESPN college football researcher", putting us 5TH for some reason. Yes, 5th, ahead of even Michigan. Bruce Feldman ranks us 7th, while some of the better known names (Forde and McShay) do not have us in the top 16.

More interesting stuff: 6 different teams (counting the suspect Kiper pick of USC) are ranked 2nd. Michigan is ranked anywhere from 2nd to 8th, and behind Wisconsin in a couple ballots.

Do you take any stock in the picks of ESPN's college football lifers? Or is all of the preseason ranking stuff a major waste of time?

Live.psu.edu should really start just coming out and saying "This is a press release for the Big Ten Network and the suits in Chicago. If you have Comcast, you can stop reading right here."

Today's nugget of "tempting goodness": some Friday Night Tailgating!

Personally, it doesn't really compare to either your traditional Friday night lights, or your Saturday all-day tailgating, but as a title, I guess it passes.

The best sentence of the whole article, by the way, explains what will actually be taking place in the show:

Blending X's & O's with a light-hearted look at what it's like to be on campus the night before the big game, Friday Night Tailgate delivers the true Big Ten Football weekend experience.

I am so ready for FNT on the BTN, live from Evanston, as Northwestern takes on Indiana!

Oh, were you expecting the BTN to show real programming all the time? Unfortunately that only really would work if they operated one day a week. Heck, ESPN shows 7 repeats of SportsCenter every morning and national thumb-wrestling championships every afternoon.

Right now, it just seems for me to be another opportunity to be featured on television, albeit a television program that about 15 people (give or take 12) will be watching on any given Friday.

I'm back from the beach!  That in itself is most certainly not news, but it was nice to take my one final vacation before gearing up for a Central Pennsylvania summer/fall/winter combination.  I also had my last day of work before I left, where I received a downright tantalizing offer for a certain football ticket.

Poll

What should MP do?

7%

Other (leave comment).

2 votes

57%

Do nothing, aka keep the ticket and turn down the offer. Be thankful that I have a ticket.

16 votes

32%

Sell the ticket and buy a replacement for much less. Capitalism rules!

9 votes

0%

Sell the ticket for a little more than the replacement price and buy a replacement. Notre Dame fan or not, everyone needs some morals.

0 votes

3%

Sell the ticket and forgo the game. Watch it on TV with other friends without tickets.

1 votes

28 votes | Poll has closed

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No blogging today. I'll explain later. In the mean time, thanks to rctbone for this timely diary.

I'm still pumped over Sheldon Brown being on the cover of Sports Illustrated...which leads to me crossing my fingers that no jinx will occur to anyone on this Eagles team. The Phillies have been absorbing enough bad luck recently.

Anyway, enough about Philadelphia sports - we're here for Penn State! So to honor the changing of the calendar to August, here's a couple articles for reading that you may not have caught:

Paterno takes the wait and see approach to disciplining Scirotto and Baker. We've gone over this time and time again, but here's the latest report on the topic from the Philly Inquirer's perspective.

That story was also mentioned here, along with the shrewd observation that watching a game from the press box is more comfortable than watching it from the field. ESPN also put up a piece on this "story", which led to some fierce "debate" (or what I call Paterno-hatin) in the comment section. What else is new, eh?

By the way, on the page in the Inquirer across from the article on Penn State yesterday was a full-page (that's right, full-page) ad promoting the Big 10 Network. They're still trying to encourage people to call Comcast. I'm impressed that they are still trying.

Finally, from the alumni department, Tony Hunt has been receiving generally positive reviews as a rookie at Eagles training camp, except from this dude who may just be bitter about being blown off for an interview. He's been practicing with the second team, which is a great sign for a rookie. I still remember NFL Draft night when the Eagles signed him - half of my dormitory hall erupted in cheers, while the other half started booing the cheering people. Sorry, Giants and Steelers fans.

30 more days to football...

[Late update at noon EDT: if you missed last night's "Around the Horn" on [WORLDWIDE LEADING SPORTS NETWORK NAME REDACTED], you missed some Joe Pa references at the beginning. They covered that same story about Paterno in the box; for the record, Paige supports the "idea", (calling himself WoPa in the process), Mariotti's worried that he won't get Gatorade on him and that the Beaver Stadium press boxes are "too high up", Plaschke smacked down Mariotti, and Blackistone's worried that the *bloggers* are taking up too much space in the press box, so there's no more room for Paterno. Seriously, guys? That's the best you could come up with? For the record, I have no problem with Paterno in the press box at away games, but there's something about seeing him lead the team through the tunnel onto the magnificent green of Beaver Stadium that you simply can't mess with.
Download it here.]

Thanks to reader rctbone2009 for this great diary!

I subscribe to a large number of RSS feeds. (Helps pass the time as I'm working.) One of them, the one I'll be drawing your attention to today, is the Penn State Live feed, bringing anyone with an interest in Penn State information the latest in medical breakthroughs at Hershey, pictures from State College events, and of course those friendly tuition increase notifications. (By the way - $7,000 a semester tuition now for upper division students. Add in room, board, activity fee, "information technology fee", and the bill ends up right about 12 G's. PER SEMESTER.)

Anyways, this morning the RSS feed sent me yet another article from the administration pimping the forthcoming "Big Ten Network", discussing just how much PSU programming will be televised in the network's opening year. What caught my eye, however, was the third paragraph:

"To get the Big Ten Network, Penn State fans should visit http://www.BigTenNetwork.com and enter your zip code, which will then provide a link to the cable providers in your area, as well as DirecTV and Dish Network, to make a request for them to carry the Big Ten Network."

Well, sure, I thought. Why not. I had heard about the troubles with the BTN and Comcast getting together, but I wondered if any of the small, still-existing cable networks around the state of Pennsylvania had decided to hammer out something with the BTN themselves. So I clicked the link, and started entering some ZIP codes with the help of your friendly neighborhood Postal Service.

First comes my home area (in the vicinity of 19401). 4 different Comcast providers show up, all with large "NO"s next to them. Also getting a NO, as we all well know, is Dish Network. In fact, the only YES shows up next to DirecTV.

19101 (Philadelphia)? Same story.

18101 (Allentown)? Nothing, except for DirecTV.

18501 (Scranton)? Nada.

17101 (Harrisburg)? No. Beginning to see a pattern?

16501 (Erie)? Uh-uh.

15201 (Pittsburgh)? Sorry.

16601 (Altoona)? NO BIG TEN FOR YOU. (Unless you have DirecTV.)

Rather depressing, hunh? To top it all off, I put in 16802, also known as the on-campus ZIP code for Dear Old State. Take a wild guess what the results were.

No local cable operators. Not even the on-campus cable feed for Penn State dorms.

Now, I understand we are still a good 6 weeks away from the launch of this network, and things are still subject to change, but seriously. The network is not scheduled to even be on the cable network of one of the participating schools!

Is this a case of "If a team plays a game, but nobody can watch it, does it make a difference?"

Sure, with blogs and sports radio and everything, people will be able to keep up with the sports that mean something to them. In the world we live in, though - if you don't actually come up to a college campus to see a game (in any sport), you'd prefer to see it on television. And now the Big Ten Network will be sending all of our games into space, and back down to, at maximum, about 16 million US subscribers.

On a whim, I decided to check out the other college areas in "Big 10 Country" to see if anyone would be able to get the Big 10 Network at a hotel before a game.

43201 (Columbus, OH)? Nope. Glad about that one?

48103 (Ann Arbor, MI)? Also no.

46601 (South Bend, IN)? No way.

55401 (Minneapolis)? No...

60601 (Chicago)? Both Comcast and RCN say no.

So even though the BTN says "we have over 40 deals with local cable operators", it doesn't seem like they are talking with anyone actually near the Big Ten universities in question.

So take the poll.

Poll

What will happen with the Big 10 Network over the next few months?

2%

Cable networks celebrate students returning to school, add channel around August 22nd.

1 votes

46%

BTN folds, and Brian Roberts adds another notch to his belt, then buys the network to launch in '08.

23 votes

18%

11th hour deal gets worked out, Dave Revsine talks to a sizable number of people August 30th who just got the channel.

9 votes

6%

Revsine talks to himself, but fans start clamoring - channel gets added quickly during the first week of September.

3 votes

2%

Didn't you hear? They're settling with Comcast...uh, this Friday!

1 votes

6%

Entire month of September goes by before Comcast backs down.

3 votes

0%

Baseball trade deadline helps BTN settle up with everyone; cable networks tell everyone August 1st.

0 votes

18%

Entire football season goes by before Comcast signs to get lucrative wrestling shows on the BTN.

9 votes

49 votes | Poll has closed

I'm surprised that there's actually things to talk about, but lo and behold.  I like posting some link posts every once in a while, because that's one of the best ways to find out about some of the other great blogs and news sources out here on the "Internets".

So here we go:
Live blogger tossed from NCAA baseball regional.  What happens as a result of this could be very big for future "citizen sports journalism".  While I can't see anyone dragging a laptop into the student section of Beaver Stadium (in fact, I'd strongly recommend against it), it's the rights that someone should have to do so that count.  (By the way - the game finished 20-2 in favor of Louisville.  I'd want to share that with EVERYONE, and as soon as possible, if PSU ever pulled that off.)

Paterno's aiming to lead PSU's charge, via There Is No Name On My Jersey.  You cannot imagine how amazing that will be if that happens, and I hope it does.  I mean, if McNabb can get back from a knee injury ahead of schedule, why can't Joe Pa?  He's only, what, 50 years older?  Seriously, though: what a great start to a national championship run that would be.

And speaking of Mr. Paterno: he's starting to feel the burden of the already covered ridiculous student ticket sale.  At least, he's saying that.  I don't believe it.  The man only concentrates on what is important, and that's what's kept him relevant all these years.

Turns out "the news watch never stops", even for college football in June.  Either way, football is still taking a back seat for me, at least while the Phillies are still in contention.

Go State!

What's happening, BSD. My name's MP, and I'll be a junior in the fall at U Park. I've been reading this blog for quite a while, and finally decided to contribute to the discussion on a post about the 2007 student ticket sale. You can read that whole thing here, then join me after the break for a little more about me.

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