September 24 - The Good, The Bad, The Ugly - Penn State Recap

Welcome to this week’s edition of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. It’s my weekly critique of The Ohio State University football performance.

I went to Columbus for the week-end to take in all pre and post game activities.

In the game, OSU beat Penn State 28-6 to maintain it’s #1 ranking and improve their record to 4-0.


THE GOOD

• Scoring Defense – OSU held Penn State to 6 points. It should have been three points except for a horrible call at the end of the half. The scoring defense is only giving up 8 points per game through the first 4 games.

• James Laurenitis – He has put up great numbers in every game. He had 10 tackles and his third interception of the year against Penn State.

• The Secondary – Two late interceptions were returned for TDs to seal the victory.

• The Fans – 105,000 fans responded to Tressel’s request for everyone to wear red. I haven’t seen this much red on my TV screen since my picture tube blew.

• My Benevolence – I gave my two game tickets to my brother and nephew. I watched the game on the hotel TV. During halftime, I was able to coordinate a Love Connection between an Iraq War veteran (Scott) and an OSU co-ed. Scott is about to be redeployed to Tikrit. Scott and co-ed are pictured below.

THE BAD

• Troy Smith – He had two interceptions and only 155 passing yards.

• Slow starts – OSU played like a John Cooper led team for the first half. This happened last week as well.

THE UGLY

• Penalties – OSU continues to be out-penalized more than their opponents.

My WTF moment came in the first half. Joe Paterno, Penn State’s head coach made a beeline for the locker room with the game in progress. He was wearing black pants. Joe returned later in the second half wearing tan pants that were two sizes two big. (See time stamped pictures below.) The ABC announcer, Brad Nessler, would later comment, “Joe Paterno had the longest run today.” Come on Brad, WTF, the man is 79 years old. When you got to go, you got to go.

This week, Ohio State travels to Iowa for their third top 25 showdown in the month of September.

The early line has Ohio State favored by 7 points. Should OSU prevail, the path to a November 18 blockbuster with &ichigan has been cleared of a major hurdle.

GO BUCKS.