If Penn State would like to make things easier on themselves, they should throw down a Rome-on-Carthage, empty-the-cartridges earth-salting on Ohio State Saturday. If there is a second left on the clock and they are up by thirty, they should throw. If there is a goal line situation with under a minute left with seconds on the clock, they should score, and then onside. They should behead the young Jedi without hesitation. They should ride behind British lines and kill the pages. They should, Tony Jaa-style, break limbs until there are no more limbs to break.

They should keep swinging until teeth fly from skulls, and then continue kicking ribs until the whistle blows.*

They should follow this pattern in the rest of their games because The Big Ten is playing several hands down in any national title contention because of the twin pillars of lack of a title game and Ohio State’s FAILboat Party** in the last two national title games…not to mention a crucial point Michael makes abundantly clear hyah:

With that caveat out of the way, the Big Ten and Pac Ten need to be punished for being the primary roadblocks against a plus-one playoff. Those two conferences will change their minds when there is sufficient pressure from their member institutions to do so. An unbeaten Penn State team sitting on the sidelines in January while Texas and Alabama duke it out for the national title would be exactly the tonic to cause the stodgy Big Ten to stop opposing evolution.

The Doomsday Scenarios are not limited to the aluminum headgear-wearers of our beloved blogosphere: Tony Barnhart outlined the same scenario this morning in the AJC.

1. Penn State gets left out: No. 1 Texas and No. 2 Alabama both finish 13-0 and win their respective conference championship games. Like Auburn in 2004, a 12-0 Penn State, which has not played a game since Nov. 22, finishes No. 3 because it played a weaker schedule. Joe Paterno, 81, is denied the chance to end his career with a national championship game. Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany, one of the strongest opponents to a four-team playoff, gets an earful from Paterno.

It could happen (then again, as Barnhart points out, so could every other scenario,) meaning the only recourse Penn State has any control over whatsoever is points, points, points, which have to happen frequently and without mercy for the remainder of the season. Ohio State could upset them straight-up, and will likely hold them under twenty (since your oft-repeated stat of the week is the “ten point max” that Penn State has scored at the ‘Shoe historically.)

Indiana, Iowa, and Michigan State best look into burn clinics, though; JoePa’s coming with a flamethrower-equipped Rascal in the best senior citizen revenge film this side of Death Wish 3 if Alabama and Texas go undefeated. With no conference championship to buffer the schedule, laying waste to their opponents is all Penn State has left to make their argument.

(P.S. Fuck Jim Delany in the ear. Again.)

*Thank you, Matt and Trey, for having us now imagining Butters yelling “Fuck ‘em up!” during every blowout from now on.

**Cartman is Ohio State. There’s little doubt of this: loud, powerful, profane, and ultimately slow in the clutch. Also: both are associated with shitting in inappropriate places.

“Death does not concern us, because as long as we exist, death is not here. And when it does come, we no longer exist.”

Joe Paterno is dying in front of our eyes, and that is no overly dramatic statement. His body is beginning the inevitable decline he staved off for so many year by running, staying involved in his job, and leaning on the good credit his robust genes advanced him in his later years. This is not a sentimental judgment: it’s fact, as clear to the viewer as the cane he now requires to get from point A to point B or as obvious as his absence from the sidelines when he takes to the booth in the second half of games due to hip pain.

Brent Musberger may be annoying, predictable, and prone to over-excitement on the smallest play, but give him due credit for honesty in discussing the factors motivating Paterno’s insistence on remaining on the sideline.

He is fearful — and he looks back at Bear Bryant as the example — he is fearful that he would not be with us if he stepped away. He is a man that doesn’t fish, doesn’t play golf…he has no other interest other than his family and football. And he’s just afraid what would happen with the rest of his life if he walks away from it.

“What would happen” here is cloaked language for what happened to Bryant: death. (more…)

1994: Fashion mistakes were made.

We hate split offensive play-calling systems. Despise them. Loathe them. Think they should be thrown into the flames with our old high school yearbooks and that collarless button-down we misguidedly purchased in 1994. (”Dude, it’s like a dai-shiki you can tuck in. Exotic, but still formal.”)

This likely comes from watching the [REDACTED]/Fedora/Locksley monstrosity at Florida in the early ’00s, which even to the untrained eye had an incoherence to it that, at critical moments devolved into dada. Our third bubble-screen in a row? Really? When they just stopped the first two? A draw on third down? Daring! Even when you’re working with top-grade quality, the gangbang approach to in-game strategy seems ineffective at best, especially in terms of setting up defenses for plays later in the game.

Enter Penn State, where Jay Paterno* governs the pass game, Galen Hall** governs the run game, and the end product sort of sits there and cooks at a lukewarm temperature the health department suggests is unsafe for human consumption. (more…)

Teams: there are a lot of them. In our effort to bring you the finest “bullshit” coverage of college football, our Visiting Lecturer Series today welcomes Penn State blogger and zombie aficionado Run Up The Score. He doesn’t choose Changes In Attitudes, Changes in Latitudes for the answer to the dreaded Jimmy Buffett Challenge, and for this we salute him already. Enjoy.

One: what color is your season? In other words, please explain the metaphorical state of your program through the metaphor of color:

Hunting jacket orange, the unofficial color of Pennsyltucky and Penn State fans who either forget or refuse to wear blue and white. Orange like the sunset of Joe Paterno’s coaching career at Penn State, which by practically all accounts seems destined to end after the 2008 season. Orange like the brilliant dawn of both the post-AnthonyMorelli era at quarterback and offensive [sic] coordinator [sic] Jay Paterno’s “Spread HD” offense. “HD”, presumably, an abbreviation for “Hilariously Disasterous.”

The last time Joe Pa had horses on offense: either 1994, or in his immortal quadri-car race with Bobby Bowden.

Two: What historical nation and period do you resemble most right now?

Canada, whenever. Always present but only occasionally entertaining. Happily and drunkenly punching around the periphery of relevance, desperately in need of a rival to provide moments of passion.(We respectfully disagree, sirs. Yours, the Canadian Foreign Ministry-ed.) (more…)

Class is in session. (HT: BlockU.)

The E’ers are pulling e’er closer to Missouri in the Fulmer Cup, something we’ll summarize in a Fulmer Cupdate as soon as we get in touch with Boardmeister Brian, who is hung like Reggie F’n Nelson.

In the meantime…JoePa’s teaching media relations, and you know what that means. No, not detailed discussions of the possible effects the telegraph could have on coverage, and how William Randolph Hearst’s massive media empire is poised to take advantage of it like no other robber baron can!

No, it means this reality altering concept: JoePa, the metamedia lecturer.

“It’s impossible to tell the difference between a good blogger and a bad blogger,” he said. “The media has to figure out a way to teach students about the impact of blogging on legitimate journalism.”

It makes fun of it for the most part, Joe. It also gives an opportunity to use profanity and photoshop, and to put down all the thoughts someone else might not be able to fit in an 800 word column or bland game summary. Outside of that, there’s not much else to it, Joe, and need not be anything more than that.

Oh, and sodomy jokes. Those are crucial, too.

I want a playoff! Dammit, how else you gonna find out who the best team if we just, you know, all sit around at the end of the season and stare at each other’s asses like a bunch of Roman bathers? Let ‘em play. I’m tired of this.

ROAR! PLAYOFF!

I also want a simple phone bill. You used to just get a bill, and there was an amount, and you paid it to Ma Bell. Now there’s numbers, and more numbers, and a lot of the time it’s the same number all over the place. Just tell me what I owe! I make four phone calls a month! The rest I do by post, just like ya should if you really care. The wax seal tells them you mean what you’re saying. Mine’s a minotaur with a lion on its back. That’s how you know if it’s Joe.

I also wish men and women had more conventional roles, you know? I have to talk to mothers like they’re fathers, and fathers like they’re mothers, and to the kids like they’re men. In my world women worked at home, men wore short ties, and gay men worked retail or in the theater. I know I’m old, but it’s not too much to ask for when I want a gay guy to tell me if my shirt looks good. They know better than we do. It’s because of an extra gland they have in their neck.

You know what I like, though? Velcro. Everything just comes on and off now. I can put a pair of slacks on in three seconds now thanks to these custom slacks with velcro seams. Hey, I see that look on your face. That’s between me and Sue, though I’ll tell you: I’d probably tear a rotator cuff trying to pull a fancy exotic dancer move like that. I do everything slow these days.

Reader Dan points the way to a startling occurrence: Joe Paterno, after years of closed practices, has opened up practices to the prying eyes of the media, and has gone so far as allowing video streams of exactly what’s going on inside Penn State’s practices. It’s not quite “Kim Jong-Il: Cribs” level access, but for spring football it’s damn close.

What’s going on, you ask?

–Joe Paterno scaring the crap out of a linemen by rushing at him and into a blocking pad in an effort to show him proper pad level and attack angle. (Mind, read: “Please, please don’t let him die right here.“)

–JoePa screaming at a lineman to “PULL YA SHIRT DOWN”

–Further installation and use of the zone read in the Penn State offense, a look that proved quite effective for Michael Robinson two years ago and was as effective in the Anthony Morelli era as bowling with cinder blocks.

Freedom! JoePa jumps in.

Joe Paterno, ah, that funny old guy! Just joshing on about how he could coach another 10 years, ho-ho! What drollity!

“I don’t even care if I get a contract. I’ll be very frank with you,” the 81-year-old Paterno said Saturday in his first meeting with reporters in three months. “I think the university will do what they think is right, whenever the time comes. Right now, I’m very comfortable.”

“What do I need an extension for?” he asked before joking that he could coach “just another 10 years.”

Blind peasant, you don’t even see what’s coming your way, do you? Paterno will survive to see the singularity on his Mediterranean diet, lack of exposure to radiation from portable electronic devices, and healthy insistence on not using horseless carriages to get everywhere. Then, just as Ray Kurzweil predicts will happen, he’ll have all of his organs replaced and coach Penn State football for hundred of years barring severe catastrophic bodily injury or murder.

That Little Rascal: Paterno to coach until molten lead rains from the sky.

Somewhere in that house are bags and bags of blue and white Nittany vitamins. We’d bet our head in a jar on it.