Men of the Scarlet and Gray

Penn State fans demand Sean Lee win the Butkus

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ORLANDO, FL - Students from Penn State University entered their fourth day of protest outside the Downtown Athletic Club today, refusing to back down from their demand that Sean Lee, the school’s coveted linebacker, should win the 2008 Butkus Award.

“It’s not fair,” said Rufus Engolman, a freshman landscape architecture major. “They’re saying that just because he won’t play a down this year, he’s not eligible.”

Sean Lee broke his anterior cruciate ligament in practice on April 11, ending his chances of contributing this season. Fans say Lee’s status shouldn’t preclude him from being considered for the award, typically given to college football’s best linebacker.

Eighth-year senior Barney Slonicker agrees. “I mean, we’re Penn State, you know? Last year was the Laurinaitis travesty, and now this. Don’t even try to tell me there’s not a bias against us.”

In 2007, OSU’s James Laurinaitis won the Butkus over the favored PSU Linebacker Dan Connor. The consensus in the CFB community is that the award was given to make up for the snub that occurred the previous year, when PSU’s Paul Posluszny won the award over the future NFL Hall of Famer A.J. Hawk, an OSU graduate.

“Okay, maybe, just maybe, we’ll be able to compromise on Lee actually winning the award. His nomination had better be a given, though. Or maybe they could create a new award for him, something like the ‘Lee’s Knees Memorial Award’ or something like that. Understand? We just want someone to listen to us. And do what we say.”

The Downtown Athletic Club disagrees with Slonicker and the other protesters. Two days ago, the organization sent its spokesperson out to the crowd to read a prepared statement: “While we respect the fact that Penn State has, on occasion, produced a quality linebacker, we are unable and unwilling to make an exception for a player that will not play a down this season. Thank you for your interest, and we wish all of you a very exciting college football season. We’ll see you in December.”

The statement was not received well by the protesters, who drowned out the company official with profanity-laden chants and then attacked her with a violent flurry of beer bottles.

Big 10 commissioner Jim Delaney offered his own opinion on the events. “The sense of entitlement Nittany Lions fans have is shocking, and absolutely not representative of the rest of the Big 10 Conference. I’m starting to wonder how good of a decision it was to let them in. Our condolences go out to the victim’s family. We’re all praying for a speedy recovery.”

Don’t worry, Manningham can’t read this

Michigan’s proudest WR, Mario Manningham, managed to score a 6 on the NFL’s Wonderlic intelligence test.

6.

An average score on the Wonderlic is 21, right were OSU’s Vernon Gholston landed. That’s supposed to represent an average IQ. But how bad is 6?

“Charlie Wonderlic Jr., president of Wonderlic Inc., says, ‘A score of 10 is literacy, that’s about all we can say.’ ” (Link)

But wait! Manningham still hopes to earn a degree one day:

“That was kind of hard, leaving without getting my degree, but I’m going to go back and get it.”

Uh, sure. Best wishes with all of that.

And before someone posts “Reggie Germany 0.0 LOLLERCOPTERSeleventy!1″ in the comments section, note that there is a huge difference between getting a 0.0 for not showing up to class, and going to college for three years without becoming literate.

Link - “More Wonderlic Scores”

Congrats, Big Guy!

All of us (including you, our faithful readers and fellow Gholston man-crushers) at the Men of the Scarlet and Gray congratulate Vernon Gholston on his selection as the 6th pick in the 2008 NFL draft, traveling down the Columbus — East Rutherford pipeline.

Kids say the darnedst things

“Look, daddy, a girl football player”

- My five year old daughter, watching Sports Center with me, watching a bit on Jeremy Shockey with his golden locks flowing out from under his helmet.

Want to write for MotSaG?

Neither the sportsMonkey nor I will be able to make it to the Spring Game tomorrow, much to our chagrin, but we’d really like to have someone on the scene that could give us some first hand thoughts and remarks about what goes on during the game.

If you’ve ever dreamed of writing for Men of the Scarlet and Gray (and let’s be honest — who hasn’t?) then shoot us an email to motsag@gmail.com and let us know. I know it’s short notice, but we’d love to have some immediate feedback to post from the sidelines.

Also, if you’ve got pictures to share from the Spring Game, send them here, too. We’d love to see them!

Tell us something we didn’t already know

First, observe:

Second, get chills all over again.

Third, read this.

Finally, smile knowingly and nod.

Beanie goes last in Spring Game draft

With the first pick in the 2008 Scarlet and Gray spring game draft Alex Boone and the Scarlet team selected sophomore Thad Gibson at Leo.

You can see the rest of the draft, along with the Scarlet and Gray line-ups here.

In a ceremonial move, echoing the Christian philosophy of “and the First shall be Last and the Last shall win Heisman Trophies”, Chris “Beanie” Wells was awarded the distinction of the last pick, going to the Gray team.

He will not, however, be allowed to play, in the interest of the safety of everyone on the Scarlet defense.

Spring rumblings

OSU’s offensive line has been hit with injuries… veterans Steve Rehring and Ben Person have been assigned no-contact status and will not be seen in the spring game. Superstar frosh Mike Adams has been sidelined with an injury as well.

Just as we were sharpening our pencils to tease Wolverine fans about Manningham’s problems with the devil weed, three members of OSU’s starting defensive secondary are being disciplined for the same thing. It is possible that Donald Washington, Jamario O’Neal and Eugene Clifford could be kicked off the team. As terrible as the news is, the 2008 Buckeye defense is still deeper than Friedrich Nietzsche reading the Mahābhārata inside a bathysphere lying at the bottom of the Marianas Trench, so the loss of these three should only move OSU’s defense from zOMG hide teh children to maybe we’ll let you score once per game status.

Quarterbacks coach Joe Daniels has been battling cancer, and recently had surgery to remove a kidney. He’s not expected to return full-time until the autumn. His replacement, backup QB coach Nick Siciliano, is stepping in to juggle the QBs - but has some juggling of his own to do as the proud father of newborn quadruplets. Still, with all of that on his plate, reports are positive that things are humming along efficiently.

The same is apparently not the case with the fullback position. With Dionte Johnson and The Tank gone, competition is fierce. Linebacker Ryan Lukens is moving from LB to FB. The same experiment is being tried with Austin Spitler.

The importance of getting the FB situation resolved soon cannot be understated. Beanie Wells, the nation’s best back, is set to begin a much-hyped Heisman campaign. His Stiff Arm of Tackling Fail^TM cannot do it alone; he needs a stud FB in front of him exploding defenders into tiny bits.

Tressel has hinted that the 2008 offense may feature less pounding I-formation and more two-back sets, with Saine and Wells in the backfield.

Where Tressel’s idea gets exciting is when one considers where Pryor may fit into this mix. As the spring progresses, the talk of Pryor redshirting is becoming less frequent, and is being replaced with a desire to see him in niche situations, not unlike what Urban Meyer did with Tim Tebow in 2006 (and Tebow wasn’t surrounded with the talent that Pryor might be).

Consider this for a moment: OSU has first and goal on the three yard line, and Pryor trots out as goal-line QB, with Wells and Saine in a two-back set behind him and three receivers at the line. It’s enough to make most defensive coordinators lose their water. It’s easy to see why Tressel doesn’t view the FB weakness as urgent as the rest of us. Still, the spring scrimmages should tell the tale. There’s not a lot of time left before USC, so experimentation will have to give way to in-stone game plans soon.

Monday Musings are swamped

Both the Monkey and I work in the same office, in an underground government facility deep within the bowels of the Marble Cliff Quarry. We are swamped with more work than either of us can handle. The stress is getting to us. I had to talk the Monkey off the ledge, telling he had so much to live for, that jumping wasn’t worth it. He would have only fell four inches (we are underground, afterall) but the kid has so much going for him. It would be a shame to see him throw it all away. He’s doing better now, but this is our way of saying that the blogging lightness will continue for a little while. You’d think we could blog from our Crays, but the powers-that-be kind of frown on that kind of online activity. So you get scatter-shot blogging for the time being. Apologies in advance.

We heard through the grapevine that Vernon Gholston was due to appear at a local Buckeye Corner this past weekend (wasn’t Easter a couple weeks ago?). Did anyone make it? I wanted to go, but I didn’t want my face to melt from the glory.

Hope everyone is having a good week. Mike Adams isn’t having one, but I’m optimistic. He’ll be pushing people around soon enough, making room for Beanie and his Stiff Arm of Tackling Fail. On his way to his Heisman.

On the blogging side of things, I recently upgraded to WordPress 2.5, which is a really nice improvement to the admin side of things for the blog. There is also a built-in image gallery, so I’ll be testing that out with all our pictures of our favorite #50. Look for that soon.

Our contact page is currently under repair, so if you want to get in touch with us, don’t hesistate to drop us a line at motsag@gmail.com!

LOLBucks

I tease because I love.

Congratulations, Buckeyes!

Speaking of chafing…

That sound you hear is the sound of a million groans as Jason Bourne Justin Boren considers transferring Ohio State.

(On a side note, and not to jinx ourselves, but we Buckeye Fans are setting ourselves up for a major Schadenfreude-laden fall if (and that’s a mighty big freaking IF) things don’t go our way with Michigan this year.

Monday Musings are late again

… For which it apologizes.

Who says the NIT isn’t exciting? I was at the Quaker Steak last night with my bro-in-law, having my way with a basket of chicken wings with the UMass/Syracuse game on in the background. The BIL commented that certainly UMass couldn’t come back from 20 down, right? I mentioned there were ten minutes left, anything can happen, but probably not. We watched in awe as UMass did the pretty much impossible.

It was a lot more enjoyable to watch than Duke embarrass itself last week.

Let’s hope tonight’s game is just as exciting.

Sometimes I wish I could be adopted in the Tressel family. Just kidding mom and dad!

One of my favorite stories about Tressel is when he explained to his kids what it means to take the OSU job, and said, “when dad lost games at Youngstown State, eighty thousand people would say he was an idiot. Once I’m at Ohio State and I lose a game, eight hundred thousand people would say I’m was an idiot.” I think he underestimated.

No one likes the Knicks. And no one likes desperate fans. This is just sad.

For your OSU football fix, Sunday Morning Quarterback preps you for a season of smack talk from fans of teams from other conferences. No matter how irrational or ignorant we all know this kind of talk is, be prepared to listen to it all season long.

It is going to chafe so many people’s hides when the Buckeyes are in the BCS title game yet again. I can’t wait.

I don’t talk much about the Indians here, but I couldn’t pass this up. When The Dugout did their thing with the Indians, I almost died laughing. This is probably only funny to me, but man are those guys good.

Pronky_Kong: then we could talk about how my dog and I can do the Fastball Special like Wolverine and Colossus and how Casey Blake is totally screwed

That, my friends, is absolutely pure genius.

Finally, your new blogs are: Our Honor Defend and Dotting The “I”

Go Buckeyes! Beat the Flyers.

It’s a boy!!

JEANNETTE, PA — OSU football coach Jim Tressel gave birth to a healthy, 6′6″, 235 lb., 4.4 forty-runnin’, dual threat quarterback this morning.

Dad and baby are doing fine.

Paternity tests have confirmed that Rich “Enrod” Rodriguez was not the father as had previously been alleged.

Link

Monday Musings are sad

The Buckeyes aren’t in the tournament? That makes MM muy sad.

But that’s just the tip of the old iceberg. What else is happening in the world of sports in the Ohio?

Anything you can do, we can do better: There’s a brief article in the FreeP about Ohio State (and Minnesota) sending some of its defensive position coaches down to South Florida to get some pointers on stopping the Rodriguez Spread Express. The USF Bulls shut it down two years in a row, they must be doing something right. Unfortunately, it looks like they’re rather tight-lipped:

Burnham said, though, “There are a few subtle things I keep to myself. We don’t give away all our secrets.”

Punks.

Terrel Pryor watch: The blogs were abuzz late last week with the announcement that Pryor would be making his decision this week, as he had narrowed his choices down to two schools. I think there’s a 98.43% chance he’s a Buckeye. 11W are a little concerned about him throwing around the word “just” as in “I may just play basketball” as in “I may just go to Memphis.”

Nah, that ain’t happening.

I’m majoring in Quarterbacking: I mentioned yesterday about the academic shenanigans going on up north. Part two of the story is up.

Roll the Bones: Don’t forget about joining us in our Yahoo Tournament Pick’em.

New blogs: Jim Tressel’s Head (They’re on top of the preemptive smack talk going down at USC) and Cleveland Frowns, who gets a big old tip-of-the-hat for a most excellent blog name.

And finally, because it’s been a while, it’s your Vernon Gholston shot for the week:

MotSaG’s Pick’em as ya see’em

I know it’s not as fun to play the brackets without our beloved Buckeyes, but that won’t stop us from holding the second annual Yahoo Pick’em Tournament contest!

Due to circumstances outside our control, last year’s prize was not redeemed. I guess that means we’ll just have an even bigger prize now.

If your interested in participating, email us at motsag@gmail.com or use the contact form and let us know you’re interested. We’ll send the invite along straight away.