Oy. This showed up on the official PSU College of Engineering facebook page and is impossible to comment on without being cruel:

So I won't. Aaaaargh yes I will. I ran an open-mic standup night* for a while, so I can say this with authority: there's but one thing sadder than arrogance from a man who only thinks he's funny.

*(into the ground.)

Scratch that. Remember "the Big Ten should nix this Indiana-in-Maryland thing"? Yeah, nevermind:

After Glass discussed the game with Lynch, Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany and Penn State AD Tim Curley, the league's athletic directors voted on the game during a conference call last week. It was approved by a unanimous vote of 9-0 (Penn State and Indiana abstained).

Why on earth would anyone vying for the Big Ten title approve this sort of thing? If you think the answer is green and floppy, you win a prize:

"With our revenue sharing, the Big Ten is going to make more money off this game than they would have in Bloomington, Indiana," Glass said.

Yeah, but how much is that going to be per school? It can't be more than a couple hundred K, and is that worth it if you're sitting on top of a pile of money and laughing a la Michigan or Ohio State? I bet the only people who think so are non-revenue coaches. If this game is actually close and Penn State wins the Big Ten next year, a lot of ADs are going to look dumb.

Point maybe? Ok, ok, lulz Ohio State is pleading with their fans not to act like jerks to the Navy, but why does this courtesy only get extended to service academies? I don't mean from an OSU perspective, I mean from a larger sociological perspective. It's always bothered me when the PA announcer asks Michigan Stadium to welcome Eastern Michigan or whoever and the response is booing. Really? Really we have a big problem with Eastern Michigan, or any MAC school, or most of the Big Ten?

I'd like to save it for actual rivals and maybe teams who are particularly annoying in a certain year. (Say, Wisconsin after that whole unpunished knee-twisting incident.) It means more that way. Right now we're just misanthropes. Boooo Ben Konop booooo.

Em. Er? Would you believe this is an attempt to debunk the idea that Mark Dantonio's offense is straight outta Pangea?

Michigan State, a supposed "run-oriented offense", ran the ball 56% of all plays from scrimmage.  By way of comparison, Michigan, a "spread & shred" offense, ran 57%. … Michigan State has a greater tendency to run when tied or leading (and an incredible 87.5% tendency to run when leading by 2 or more TDs).  This is is not necessarily some devotion to neanderthal, smash-mouth football.  Rather, it shows a deliberate, low-variance, ball control strategy, used to choke the life out of the game when leading and skewing the overall run/pass balance toward run.

I don't necessarily disagree with the rest of the points in that article; I do think it talks past the issue instead of really addressing it. The comments of that post point out that MSU's run-pass split on first down was 2-1, and that was with a senior quarterback (albeit not a very good one). And since Michigan State's runs were largely ineffective—MSU was 77th in rush yardage and averaged 3.3 YPC—that set up second and third and long situations that tilted the playcalling to the pass. Meanwhile, Brian Hoyer was not good but MSU averaged 7.0 YPA, and that was considerably better on first down.

Meanwhile, Michigan averaged 3.9 YPC and—ugh—5.1 YPA. Superficially, Michigan and Michigan State had near-identical run-pass breakdowns but… yeah, that's only superficial.

I watched this for years under Lloyd Carr, who once took senior Tom Brady, Marquise Walker, and David Terrell into a BCS bowl against a vicious run defense and horrible secondary and spent the first half plowing into the line for two yards a carry. Some coaches just want to grind into the line and last year is ample evidence Dantonio is one of them.

Aaaand nightmare fuel! LSUfreek is a terrible wizard.

[note: The OZone made a copyright claim on the hilarious opening still of the freekery. So it's down.]

I made the mistake of putting this in the post a half-hour before it was ready. It's now burned into my brain. God help me.

Etc.: I'm not going to belabor this any more than I already have—immensely—but DocSat is with me on Nick Sheridan as starter. Birkett runs down the position battles.