Unverified Voracity 10/18

Michigan Monday Catfight Part III! Er... no, not really. Here it is. I was going to disagree with him about his main thesis, which is this:

This looks like a completely different team from week-to-week, half-to-half and sometimes even play-to-play.

But upon watching about 2/3rds of the game I have to say that this:

The offensive line is so porous that it looks like even mediocre opponents are holding a Tupperware party in the backfield, then the line turns into a cohesive unit against a solid defense.

is both true and utterly mystifying. Michigan still had its issues but if you were to scale the problems they had against Minnesota to the talent level on the PSU line you would get total disaster, which didn't happen. Tamba Hali did nothing all day save for one admittedly badass sack. Lentz had a couple instances of really poor pass protection, but other than that they did a very good job against a very tough defense. Who knows why? [OMG HOLDING!!! -PSU ed. I'll get to you and your crazy ass in a second.]

Iowa has also been smote by Angry Michigan Safety Hating God. Iowa's "possession" (read: white) receiver Ed Hinkel has a broken arm and is out for the year. Defensive backs Antwaan Allen and Charles Godfrey also missed the Indiana game, both with sprained ankles. Both are questionable against Michigan.

Right. Yeah... uh... well... you PSU guys are crazy. Like the guy who gets caught outside in a nuclear holocaust crazy:

Our biggest rival is, and has been since we entered the Big Ten, the referees. Their colors are white and black. Their mascot is a zebra. And they are unbeatable. No amount of talent on the field or coaching on the sideline can stop them.

This continues for a long, long time, if you're interested. PSU fans have gone beyond the standard "the refs are dumber than seahorses" fan bitching and gone into a place where logic does not exist. If the referees were actually out to get PSU, why the tetchy PI call on Hall at the end of the game? Why rule the Henne fumble a fumble when it was so close? Why make an incorrect call in PSU's favor that is overturned by review? The sense, it no make. Not to mention that the refereeing conspiracy is pretty crappy when all your efforts only get the favored team a single shot from the ten with one second left. We need to pay these guys more next year... and include the ND game in the package.

You can check the fan comments on the next post to confirm that this isn't the delusion of one man, but rather an entire fanbase. It's uniquely paranoid. All fanbases have a litany of terrible calls that went against them. Only Penn State thinks that the referees are out to get them.

I almost felt badly for the deranged visitors who flooded Ann Arbor until I walked into Michigan Stadium and immediately got told that Michigan sucks by some cocky students. Cocky! Sure, Michigan was 3-3 and PSU 6-0, but it's amazing what a last second win over Mighty Northwestern and a squeaker in the annual PSU-OSU Worst Game Ever Played will do for your confidence. Ann Arbor was overrun with these guys who had forgotten eight years of total futility. Make it nine. I hope you had a safe trip home.

Also: your band plays nothing but that "hey" song and that song they play at NHL playoff games in Canada. You also have a four word fight song: "We are Penn State."

Yes, yes you are.

He could go to the hizzle shizzle. Odd article in the NYT about ESPN-speak drifting into sports writing, but I think the major problem is with incredibly annoying sportstalk radio phrases drifting into the common discourse. I'm not sure if everyone knows this, but two incredibly annoying phrases in specific, "drinking the Kool-Aid" and "thrown under the bus," are banned here. Any attempt to use them in a non-ironic fashion will result in your post being edited with [I AM A JIM ROME-LEVEL TOOL] replacing the offending phrase.

(Via Romenesko.)