A wise man, the late Arnold Addison, former mayor of State College, once told me:  “Sometime in life, you have to do things just to p— people off.”

In the context of our conversation 30 years ago, I completely agreed with him.

I get the feeling the powers that be in the Big Ten adhere to this idea, too, when it comes to their fans, and indirectly, to college football fans in general.

Even as the moribund BCS has been dragged kicking and screaming to the precipice of a real, actual, bona fide college football playoff, Big Ten commissioners just had to come out full steam this week and say they want the playoff kept within the bowl system, and want to keep the conference’s relationship with the Rose Bowl.

I’m all for having the playoffs in the bowls, which I actually think is preferable to having the games on campus sites.  You can have three bowls involved every year–two for the semis, one for the championship in a four-team playoff.  My preference, an eight-team field, would allow seven bowls into the party annually, but that’s another story.

Still, the Big Ten honchos affinity for the Rose Bowl must be because of all the perks and sucking up they get from the bowl committee.  The game is a very long and expensive trip from any Big Ten school.  It’s a home game for the Pac 12 if USC or UCLA is involved.  And the whole thing was set up as a way for rich people from the midwest to hop on the train and take a nice week long holiday over New Year’s to sunny LA back in the day.

The time for this tie-in is long past.  Let the bowls take whichever teams provide the best matchups, within the playoff system, and for those teams outside the playoff to face the best opponent available.

The Big Ten, due at least in part to its infatuation with the Rose Bowl, was one of the last holdouts against the playoff.  Even now, when fans want to bask in something we’ve wanted for decades, the Big Ten people just have to say something to p— us off.

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As my good friend Steve Heiser says, now that the May flowers are emerging from the April showers, it’s time to talk Penn State-Pitt football.

And, as Steve also notes, both the Pitt and Penn State coaches are now publicly in favor of renewing the schools’ once superb yearly rivalry. 

There is no doubt in my mind Joe Paterno did hold a grudge against Pitt for scuttling the eastern conference JoePa dreamed of in the early 80s.  So, that osbstacle is gone.

Steve is also correct the other, and proabaly larger, boulder in the way, is the asserted need for Penn State to play seven games, and thus three of four non-conference games, at home every year.  This, claim the athletic department leaders, is necessary to fund all the varsity sports at Penn State.

Here are two reason things can be different now, and an annual Penn State/Pitt game can happen.

First, in the Sandusky aftermath, Penn State’s honchos are going out of their way to say we’re concerned about things other than just the glamor and dollar signs associated with the football program.  People matter.

Okay, how about the fans and the players?  Both would love a renewal of the Lions/Panthers rivalry.  It’s an away game fans of both teams can get to, and there are, and likely always will be, high school teammates and high school rivals, especially from the vaunted WPIAL in southwestern Pa., on both squads.  Let’s consider these folks for a change.

Reason number two is the also recently-stated desire of Coach Bill O’Brien to have a “marquee” game to open the season on a regular basis.  Penn State isn’t currently the gem it once was for top teams from other parts of the country, but it’s still pretty good.  So, this could happen.

What else needs to occur then is the schedulers with Penn State and Pitt need to work out a way for the Lions to have the big name home game in the non-conference schedule at Beaver Stadium the years the Pitt game is in Pittsburgh.  When the Panthers come to town, the other big game can be outside of Happy Valley.

It won’t be easy, and over a decade there may need to be a couple years when Penn State has six home games, and fits in eight contests in Beaver Stadium in two other seasons to make up the difference.

This can be done if both schools really want it to.  If, in the case of Penn State at least, the powers that be start lisetning to what their constituents would like to see happen.

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Here we go again.

 

Every year about this time, the subject of the Penn State-Pitt football rivalry

sprouts like May flowers.

 

Just less than a year ago, then-Pitt coach Todd Graham said he wanted to

renew the once-bitter rivalry with the Nittany Lions. Graham’s gone now after

a rocky one-year tenure, but his replacement, Paul Chryst, expressed similar

sentiments during a stop in York last week. So did Pitt athletic director Steve

Pederson.

 

Of course, that’s nothing new. Pitt officials have long expressed a desire to play

Penn State on an annual basis.

What is new, however, is the fact that Bill O’Brien, Penn State’s new head football

coach, agrees with the Pitt folks. He said so last weekend in an interview with a

Pittsburgh newspaper.

 

“I would love to see that game played on an annual basis,” O’Brien told the

Pittsburgh Tribune-Review on Friday. “I have a tremendous amount of respect

for Paul Chryst and their program, and that’s a great rivalry. For the fans of

Pennsylvania to be able to see that game every year, I think that’s pretty neat.”

 

On the surface, O’Brien’s support would seem pivotal in rekindling the rivalry on

an annual basis. That’s because O’Brien’s predecessor — one Joseph Vincent

Paterno — was long considered a major hurdle to the Lions and Panthers

renewing their cat fight. Paterno, it’s believed, held a grudge against Pitt for a

variety of reasons, most notably the fact that Pitt helped to scuttle Paterno’s

plan for an Eastern all-sports conference in the early 1980s. 

 

Whatever, the reasons, the two Pennsylvania rivals haven’t met since 2000.

Last June, however, the two schools announced a two-year series in 2016 and

2017. Now both head coaches have publicly come out in support of an annual

Penn State-Pitt game.

 

Now O’Brien just has to convince his bosses, but that could be problematic.

Penn State’s bean counters have long insisted that the Lions must play three of

their four non-conference games at home each season in order to keep the

athletic program afloat. If that remains the case, it would be difficult to squeeze

in an annual home-and-home series with Pitt. Playing Pitt each season would

severely hamper PSU’s scheduling flexibility. It could also hurt the athletic

program’s bottom line, if it forced PSU to play two non-conference away games

in a given year.

 

An occasional two-year Penn State-Pitt series, like the one planned in a few

years, seems much more likely.

That may not be enough to satisfy most Penn State or Pitt fans, or the Penn

State or Pitt coaches. But it will likely have to do for now.

 

Reach Steve Heiser at sheiser@yorkdispatch.com or at 854-1575, ext. 455. 

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Since there isn’t much else to do in the time between the Blue/White game and the opening of fall practice, we speculate wildly on any utterance from Coach Bill O’Brien, or anyone else who supposedly has inside knowledge of what’s going on with the new regime in Happy Valley.

And so, I dwell at this time on what I find a curious comment from Coach O’Brien, that he knows how the quarterback situation is going to play out, but he isn’t telling anyone.

By all accounts, this guy knows quarterbacks, and that should be good news for Penn State fans.  But, is it wise to say you know who will be your starter, after saying all spring it was an open competiton among three QBs in the fold, and giving no indication during or after the spring game where things were headed?  Does it motivate the guys to work hard over the summer, when two of them know they aren’t going to be the guy, though they don’t know which two?

My thought is this was not a wise comment for Coach O’Brien to make.  If he does indeed know how things stack up, why not just keep it to himself until he’s ready to tell the team, and by extension, the rest of us, because sooner or later it will get out.  Who does that help?

It also makes me wonder if he’s considering handing the reins to Stephen Bench, the guy from Georgia who will enroll in July.  O’Brien also said he doesn’t place a lot of value on seniority, but believes in playing the best guys.

Could be he likes what he’s seen in Bench, and hasn’t seen any of the three players on the roster take the reins of his new system, and figures he’ll be ahead of the game with a guy who isn’t trying to forget the old playbook.

Or it could be none of the above.  But, these are the days of idle speculation, and so we indulge.

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In yet another sad irony in all that has befallen the Paterno family and Penn State in the past year, it appears the assanine BCS may finally be on the verge of yielding to a playoff.

The college football powers that be and the bowls (one and the same, really) look set to screw this opportunity up, though, by going with a four-team playoff rather than eight teams, which would allow use of the top-tier bowls in the process.

But, that’s for another day.  A four-team playoff is better that what we have now.

Paterno advocated in favor a college football playoff for decades, in later years more for the benefit of the Boise States, TCUs, and Tulanes of the world than Penn State.  Though the Lions would have benefitted from the system several times since the 60s.

Joe often recited his list of grievances with the polls and later computers, and famously in 1969 President Richard Nixon, deciding who should be the national champion.   Joe would tick off his list of undefeated teams that did not have even a chance for the ultimate reward:  “Won ‘em all in ’68, didn’t get it; won ‘em all in ’69, didn’t get it; won ‘em all in ’73, didn’t get it; won ‘em all in ’94, didn’t get it.”  Only the unbeaten 1986 team and the one-loss 1982 squad got the titles.

Major college football is virtually the only team sport that does not decide its champion on the field.  No, the BCS does not do that.  As noted above, limiting the playoff to four teams will still offer the possibility of a team with a realistic shot at a title being left out, whereas eight would not. 

Let’s hope we can eventually get to the right number, but if that means starting with four and finally having a real playoff, then I’m all for it.

Somewhere JoePa is smiling.

 

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