On a happy day!
Ah, good old Appalachian State. My new friends -- gotta love that the first time a Div 1-AA team beats a ranked 1-A team it happened to Michigan. Couldn't have happened to a more deserving group of obnoxious Wolverines.
I actually got into an argument with a buddy after the PSU game (where tens of thousands of people stayed in the stadium after PSU's win to listen to the stadium announcer give minute by minute updates of the ASU win over UM) -- he was annoyed that I was happy that UM lost. His claim is that this is going to kill the Big Ten in the BCS standings, and if PSU has an identical record with a team from another conference in the BCS standings, PSU could lose out because of loss of strength of schedule points.
My feeling was then and is now, I don't care. UM and their fans are a bunch of arrogant underachievers, and they need to be knocked around. Yes, I know that PSU is currently 0-8 against them in their last 8, so by criticizing UM it is a knock on PSU. I wish I could say that our record against UM's was as good as ASU's, but I can't. Hopefully that will change this year. In the meantime, though, I'm going to continue to celebrate Appalachian State's win.
As long as it is officially college football season, I'm going to start one of my annual complaints. I know that sportswriters like to laugh at us poor, deluded college football fans. They are constantly accused by us of being biased, and they all laugh and say that no, they are never biased.
I will give them that the majority of them probably get accused of being more biased than they actually are. However, there are notable exceptions. One of them is Craig James, who never misses a chance to say something obnoxious about Penn State. Here is the first example of the season.
During the Ohio State / Youngstown State (that is, 1-AA YSU) highlights, James spoke highly of Ohio State's QB, and then said that since UM lost, maybe Ohio State would take the Big Ten. Thus, based on the OSU QB's performance against a 1-AA opponent, he was ready to anoint OSU Big Ten champs.
The highlight that immediately followed was the PSU / FIU (that is, 1-A FIU) highlight. I'll give you my impression of the game -- PSU looked like a team should look against an overmatched opponent. The final score was 59-0, and the starters were out by the 3rd quarter. The defense looked quick and strong, the running game wasn't great early in the game, but got better as FIU's defense got tired. One thing that impressed me was that Anthony Morelli looked sharp. He avoided defenders (something he didn't do much of last year), he was accurate and showed off the strength of his arm by throwing several deep balls. Several of his incompletions came because the receivers ran the wrong route or just dropped the ball. So I feel optimistic about the PSU season given how good Morelli looked.
Now, back to the TV highlights -- Doug Flutie said something like, "Morelli looked good and showed that he has improved from last year." Craig James then snorted in derision and said, "C'mon, it was just FIU.". Note the irony -- OSU's QB (whose name I don't even know yet) gets lauded for performing against a 1-AA opponent, but in Morelli's case the weakness of the 1-A opponent is good enough reason for discounting his quality performance.
Here is my second complaint of the night. I'm currently watching the Cal / UT game. Early on, they showed a highlight of the PSU win over UT from the bowl game last year. There was a pivotal play where the UT back fumbled, a PSU defender picked it up and ran it in for a TD. This was a critical play, but PSU had the game in hand for much of the second half. This is what Kirk Herbstreit said (and Kirk, despite his OSU roots, has spoken highly of PSU lately), "UT was going in for the win when the fumble won the game for PSU". That is *definitely* stretching the truth at least, but outright wrong at best.
Anyway, on a day when ASU beat UM, I can't complain too much, but I will continue to point out when announcers (especially that idiot James) are less than fair in their discussion of PSU.
I actually got into an argument with a buddy after the PSU game (where tens of thousands of people stayed in the stadium after PSU's win to listen to the stadium announcer give minute by minute updates of the ASU win over UM) -- he was annoyed that I was happy that UM lost. His claim is that this is going to kill the Big Ten in the BCS standings, and if PSU has an identical record with a team from another conference in the BCS standings, PSU could lose out because of loss of strength of schedule points.
My feeling was then and is now, I don't care. UM and their fans are a bunch of arrogant underachievers, and they need to be knocked around. Yes, I know that PSU is currently 0-8 against them in their last 8, so by criticizing UM it is a knock on PSU. I wish I could say that our record against UM's was as good as ASU's, but I can't. Hopefully that will change this year. In the meantime, though, I'm going to continue to celebrate Appalachian State's win.
As long as it is officially college football season, I'm going to start one of my annual complaints. I know that sportswriters like to laugh at us poor, deluded college football fans. They are constantly accused by us of being biased, and they all laugh and say that no, they are never biased.
I will give them that the majority of them probably get accused of being more biased than they actually are. However, there are notable exceptions. One of them is Craig James, who never misses a chance to say something obnoxious about Penn State. Here is the first example of the season.
During the Ohio State / Youngstown State (that is, 1-AA YSU) highlights, James spoke highly of Ohio State's QB, and then said that since UM lost, maybe Ohio State would take the Big Ten. Thus, based on the OSU QB's performance against a 1-AA opponent, he was ready to anoint OSU Big Ten champs.
The highlight that immediately followed was the PSU / FIU (that is, 1-A FIU) highlight. I'll give you my impression of the game -- PSU looked like a team should look against an overmatched opponent. The final score was 59-0, and the starters were out by the 3rd quarter. The defense looked quick and strong, the running game wasn't great early in the game, but got better as FIU's defense got tired. One thing that impressed me was that Anthony Morelli looked sharp. He avoided defenders (something he didn't do much of last year), he was accurate and showed off the strength of his arm by throwing several deep balls. Several of his incompletions came because the receivers ran the wrong route or just dropped the ball. So I feel optimistic about the PSU season given how good Morelli looked.
Now, back to the TV highlights -- Doug Flutie said something like, "Morelli looked good and showed that he has improved from last year." Craig James then snorted in derision and said, "C'mon, it was just FIU.". Note the irony -- OSU's QB (whose name I don't even know yet) gets lauded for performing against a 1-AA opponent, but in Morelli's case the weakness of the 1-A opponent is good enough reason for discounting his quality performance.
Here is my second complaint of the night. I'm currently watching the Cal / UT game. Early on, they showed a highlight of the PSU win over UT from the bowl game last year. There was a pivotal play where the UT back fumbled, a PSU defender picked it up and ran it in for a TD. This was a critical play, but PSU had the game in hand for much of the second half. This is what Kirk Herbstreit said (and Kirk, despite his OSU roots, has spoken highly of PSU lately), "UT was going in for the win when the fumble won the game for PSU". That is *definitely* stretching the truth at least, but outright wrong at best.
Anyway, on a day when ASU beat UM, I can't complain too much, but I will continue to point out when announcers (especially that idiot James) are less than fair in their discussion of PSU.
posted by Chris at 10:46 PM
1 Comments:
Not to deflate your paranoia, but I think this has more to do with the athletes involved. Boeckman (the OSU back) is considered an exciting newcomer. Morelli is perceived -- even by the PSU fans -- as inconsistent. Until he proves himself against a top team, he won't have the hype that an anticipated junior does starting for a team that made the Championship game.
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