Catching up sends everybody to Happy Valley

Obligatory Penn State update: I'm not sure why this was even in question, but Mike McQueary won't be on the sidelines Saturday against Nebraska. Penn State started receiving threats Friday and placed him on administrative leave after deciding that he "could not function in this role (receivers coach) under these circumstances," which duh. My question: How does McQueary still have a job? IMO, his lack of legal action was just as egregious as Paterno's. How do you witness a child rape and not tell anybody for almost 24 hours or go to the police at all?!? This is particularly disturbing:

Described in court papers as distraught about witnessing the 2002 attack, separate newspaper accounts from the time indicate McQueary appeared in the months and years that followed in charity events that Sandusky also took part in, or were to benefit Sandusky's group The Second Mile.

Ugh. If Paterno deserved to go (and he did), McQueary does too. One possible caveat (and an answer to my earlier question): The Associated Press says McQueary might be protected as a whistleblower. Since I'm not a law-talkin' guy, I'm not entirely clear why that status would apply to McQueary but not Paterno, altough I suppose McQueary was the actual witness and is therefore directly relevant to the federal investigation. I dunno. I can't imagine he'd wanna stay at Penn State after this season anyway.

AP sends the house: According to the budget I saw earlier today, the Associated Press will have six writers at the Penn State game. That seems a tad excessive, yes? I'm not sure how many stories are left to be written dead horses are left to be beaten.

Because you can bet on anything: Bodog has released the odds on various guys becoming Penn State's next coach. You'll never guess who the favorite is oops you did you win:

Urban Meyer 2/1
Al Golden 4/1
Mike London 9/2
Kevin Sumlin 5/1
Pat Fitzgerald 6/1
Kirk Ferentz 15/2
Dan Mullen 8/1
Chris Petersen 10/1
Greg Schiano 25/1
Jon Gruden 50/1

Insert stuff here about "too soon" and "focus on the victims" and blah blah blah; I can only write about awful things for so long. As for the numbers, I'm lovin' Greg Schiano at 25/1 and would put Kirk Ferentz and Pat Fitzgerald somewhere closer to 1,000,000/0. I didn't understand the Mike London listing until I saw this Washington Post story about Penn State actually trying to hire him before firing Paterno. London definitely seems plausible since (IMO) the job isn't gonna be nearly as attractive as people think given the difficulty of (a) following Joe Paterno and (b) walking into a totally devastated and emotionally scarred program. Notably absent: Tom Bradley.

The Notre Dame helmets are going over well: The House Rock Built FTW:


"I need something snappy, snazzy and snaztacular!" Awesome. And of course absinthe was involved. BTW, "Stuffing the Passer" is one of the more underrated running features on the interwebz. Getting consistent and laughably easy-to-work-with material this year has probably helped, kinda like when SNL had the Bill Clinton/George Dubya/Sarah Palin continuum.

More helmet insanity: For the record, these aren't as illogical as the Notre Dame ones but are still kinda weird. Tulsa is wearing this plain-sided thing ...


that made no sense at all until I saw this picture ...

... that pretty much explains everything. Meanwhile, Rutgers is going ALL-OUT PATRIOTIC WOO AMERICA for its right-after-Veterans Day game against Army:

Solid.

The good ol' days: Remember when Miami-Florida State used to mean something and "Wide Right" was a legitimately agonizing and dream-destroying thing for a program that didn't lose a conference game for like eight years? Me too. Good times.

Mind-blowing stuff that must be shared: A couple ridiculous Oregon-related stats popped up Friday in ESPN blogger Ted Miller's mailbag, which was intended to be about the Oregon-Stanford game but obviously devolved into a discussion of how he's a moron for picking whichever team he picked. Anyway, LaMichael James leads the country in rushing yards per game and could become the first player to do that in back-to-back seasons since LaDainian Tomlinson (!) in 1998 and '99. That's 12 years! Also, Oregon has not lost a game under Chip Kelly against a team that played a game the week before. That is truly ridiculous. He's lost five games overall: two bowl games, two season openers and the 2009 game against Stanford, which was coming off a bye. FYI, Stanford played Oregon State last week.

Mark Richt doesn't appreciate your partially sarcastic questions: This is a few days old but no less hilarious. The question: "Just to get this out of the way, are there any suspensions we should know about?" The answer: "GTFO."


"To answer your question, I'm not gonna answer your question, because I don't like it." Pure gold.