I've always been a huge Penn State fan, and Paterno was one of the big reasons why. I wish he would have retired, and the next few years could be awful. I hope her proves me wrong.
NYSSoftball, that travel point is an excellent one and it is something greedy-ass Boston College is going to have to deal with. They now have to travel to Miami, Fla St, Clemson, Duke, UNC, Wake Forest, NC State....all league games. Like you said before shuttle flights now become major flights. Also, their basketball team is screwed. All of their rivals (Georgetown, UConn, Syracuse) have said that they aren't interested in scheduling BC. The big one is UConn. The gates at a game in the Civic Center or the Fleet Center were big bucks for BC and now they won't get to make those gates. They will eventually forge new rivalries, but geographical rivalries are always better than phony "divisionally mandated" rivalries. We'll see how BC, Penn State and some of these other schools feel about their greedy decisions a few years into the move.
gilcintron: while I think BC did do it for greed, as did the rest of the ACC, and I think the ACC is destroying the best basketball in the country, BC will be OK on the basketball gate revenue front- Duke routinely sells out Fleet Center-sized buildings all over the country. Everyone is Duke's rival, basically. Last time Duke came up to play BC, you couldn't get a ticket to the game for less than $500. (I tried.) Tell me when the last time a UConn or Syracuse visit generated that kind of demand- I'm guessing not a while. UNC historically has similar gate impacts (though not quite as high in recent years.) And it is worth pointing out that the other alternative for BC was pretty bad- losing the gate from football games with UM and VT would be pretty devastating. You're definitely destroying traditional rivalries (which I think sucks, totally agreed there) but the money really isn't the reason why that's a bad thing. With the recent TV deal BC will be laughing all the way to the bank. That article suggests BC will be going from < $1m a year in their share of the football tv revenue to> $3M a year. And their basketball-related TV revenue will also increase drastically, though not that much. It is the fans, as usual, who will suffer. As far as PSU goes... I think JoePa deserves whatever he wants, period. It is probably in the school's best interests to try to persuade him to step down, but if he doesn't, they should be behind him as long as he wants them to be. Doing anything less (publicly) would be just utterly dishonorable.
Streed, PSU actually has a kid that may be their future @ QB -- Anthony Morelli. This kid is already 6'4", 210 and has a cannon of an arm. Pitt had him all but locked up and royally screwed up the situation, causing him to screw over the Panthers and go with the Lions. I guess it's payback for what Pitt did to PSU when recent QB and grad Rod Rutherford pulled one over JoePa's eyes right before him.
Rats. BTW, you dislike all the right teams. Also, in the "truly trivial trivia" category, I note that your usernumber is exactly half of mine.
So Rosey is only half the beast you are Jason?
Maybe more like twice the beast, given the hierarchies of community weblogs.
