William F. Yurasko

WWN PENN STATE PREGAME #2

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by

wfyurasko

VS.

#14/15 Penn State Nittany Lions vs. Notre Dame Fighting Irish

LAST WEEK

Penn State played sloppy and still won 59-0.

THIS WEEK’S OPPONENT: NOTRE DAME FIGHTING IRISH

The perennially overrated Notre Dame actually comes into this game completely unrated. In the beginning of the season, I thought they might actually be underrated, but after they got crushed by Georgia Tech, 30-3, in Indiana I no longer believe that to be true. This kind of scares me, because even though they are down, Notre Dame can’t really be that down, can they? Well, maybe.

Instead of pretending to break down the matchup, I’m just going to list why this game is really important for me and other Penn State fans.

  • Notre Dame, regardless of record, gets shoved down the nation’s collective throat even though they haven’t won a bowl game since the the mid 1990s.
  • Most of all, it is the obnoxious subway alumni who make me want Penn State to crush Notre Dame. All over America and especially in Northeast Pennsylvania (where I spent the first two years of college at Penn State Hazleton) “die-hard” Notre Dame fans go on and on about a glorious heritage that they were not really alive to remember. The social contract has rules for basking in the reflective glory of a college team:
  • Earn degree from it or at least attend it (online courses do not count)
  • live near it
  • immediate family member attended it

    The first point is obviously the most important and trumps the other two.

    Few if any subway alumni come anywhere close to meeting that criteria and may not even know what state Notre Dame is located in. Having an Irish grandparent or celebrating Mass twice a year doesn’t make the cut either. The logic of adopting Notre Dame is spelled out below:


    Click to enlarge (Notre Dame fans: that means “make big”)

    Okay, enough subway alumni bashing (until I find the MS Office ClipIt graphic on RUTS), you get my point. Let’s bash head coach Charlie Weis a little, shall we?

    Today, somebody found this site by Google’ing “Charlie Weis egomania.” No other PSU blog can make this claim (at least on page 1 of the results). I consider this an honor and a privilege to be there, hopefully, I cab boost my ranking with this post. Okay, I’m sidetracked again, back to the point. Thus far, Charlie Weis is really overrated. That’s great he won Super Bowl rings as an assistant coach in the NFL, but that doesn’t make him a genius as a college coach. By those standards, we could argue Norv Turner is a genius. There are probably even better examples. To date, he has yet which the last three Notre Dame coaches can claim. People can start thinking he is a genius when he gets a couple of January wins.

    Alright, that’s enough of that. Notre Dame will probably come out and play a lot better than they did last week unless Penn State gets to their offense early and often. Just by virtue of being Notre Dame, they should have decent enough athletes to be competitive if they are not completely overwhelmed by the Penn State defense and crowd. They have a highly recruited QB in Jimmy Clausen who has thrown about seven passes. He’s the one who showed up for his announcement in a Hummer limo, so he’s easy to hate. He clearly had talent in high school, but is raw and should be very “impressionable” to a hostile environment.

    RANKING

    #14 in AP, #15 in the USA Today Coaches Poll.

    PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT

    Here is the official Intercollegiate Athletics transcript of Tuesday’s press conference.

    TELEVISION

    You can watch this one! ESPN at 6 p.m. That’s how I’ll be seeing it :(. Oh and if you are at the game, give Notre Dame fans a hard time, but don’t malign them too much, particularly actual Notre Dame alumni. I can’t begrudge them following the Irish.

    PREDICTIONS

    37-16. Notre Dame puts up more of a fight and keeps itself in the game into the second half. Penn State will likely lead from the 1st quarter on, but hte offense will not really start having its way until the second half when it pulls away. On paper Penn State should dominate this game, I just don’t think they will.


    GO STATE, BEAT IRISH!

    ©MMX William F. Yurasko