“Larry Fitzgerald is a good receiver.
Joe Paterno has a reputation for benching freshmen.
I have to write 15 more inches to satisfy my contract, so here goes…”

It’s been said before on BSD, but it always bears repeating- ‘…and the newspapers all blame their failure on the interweb’.

He always carries himself well. It would have been awesome to have had him at PSU and lay claim to an upstanding citizen.

RUTS – while PennLive.com is the online source for The Harrisburg Patriot and and few other area newspapers, not all of the content comes from these periodicals. It appears that the writer of this piece works for PennLive.com, not any of the newspapers – he’s “just a lowly” blogger. If he continues to re-write history to enforce his arguments, he may have a future at the newly-Mexican owne NY Times.

…where they replace the words “Larry Fitzgerald” with “LeSean McCoy” and focus on 2006 & 2007. It will be equally as ridiculous.

You are holding a writer (who gets paid to do such) accountable. Back in the good old days we would all have to be happy reading the paper, nodding and deciding Joepa really is a scoundrel. Sure you could have written a letter to the editor, which most likely would have been forwarded to the trash can. So thanks lowly blogger.

of when JoePa apparently turned down Archie Manning’s request for his boys to attend PSU. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A05E1DC143EF93AA1575BC0A9629C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=4

When Archie Manning, the former N.F.L. quarterback, pleaded with Paterno to recruit his son Peyton, Paterno declined. When Manning pleaded with Paterno to recruit another son, Eli, a few years later, Paterno again declined. Peyton went to Tennessee and is now a superstar in the N.F.L.; Eli went to Mississippi and was selected by the New York Giants as the first pick in this year’s draft. Paterno explained his reason for not recruiting either of the Mannings to a Penn State magazine: ‘’I didn’t want to waste my time. I knew they’d play in the South.’’

Though of course those weren’t “academic” reasons. But imagine Eli passing to Fitzgerald (or Peyton!). I doubt we would have had quite as dark a period. Of course Paterno makes a good point that they probably wouldn’t have come anyway (Archie was probably just trying to raise national interest in them)

Check out the glorious Wikipedia article for the 2003 Pitt football season.

Apparently they played 2 games, lost to Toledo, and then called it quits. That’s fan dedication right there.

The bottom line is this: Coaches make mistakes all the time, especially in recruiting. It’s a messy business and the only people who know how things really went down are the people involved. You can sit on your high horse all day and second guess Paterno’s methods — and often you’d probably find some legitimate criticisms… But right now it’s 2009 and we’re recruiting well. We are coming off another successful season and have high hopes for the next. This article in PennLive is pointless and worse — poorly written.

I was also staring curiously at the content of the article, I even forwarded it to a Pitt alumni and “aquaintance”, we know they aren’t really friends…Anyway, what is the purpose of the story? Is it to tip off Penn State fans on Joe’s high standards of recruiting players, or that he should make exceptions if the player, 5 years down the road, is a total FREAK in the NFL? (Didn’t ESPN have an orgasm over this?)

It just seems like another quick stab in the back towards the local powerhouse football program. A program and a coach who has outlasted dozens of “writers” and continues to win, and win often. I’m still confused…

(it’s much better for my blood presuure), but this one still has me laughing: “I can’t believe someone actually wrote an article trying to pretend what would have happened if someone else went to another school WOW. Why stop at Larry Fitzgerald? What if Reggie Bush went to Penn State? No no…what if Barry Sanders went to Penn State OMG!?!? What if [insert name of college star here] went to any other freakin’ school? Hey…what if Joe Montana could’ve built a time machine, gone into the future, transferred to PSU, and joined Fitz at Penn State?”

How much of those NYT and Star-Tribune articles he actually read? And I like how he slips in that jab about how Larry’s mom was struggling with cancer. Yes, JoePa is evil and hates people with cancer.

I smell it, though I definitely do NOT want to see their talkbackers on this board, the “HJs” and the “SJs” …and the whole bit…

Playing devil’s advocate here: The spirit of this “article” is that Fitzgerald’s a PennState fan and the grades dropped when his mother was diagnosed with cancer, which seemed like an injustice I guess when JoePa put the clamps on him. And even if he were accepted, he wouldn’t have played his freshman year.

Yeah, who cares?

Why don’t we talk about a real Nittany Lion like Kerry Collins, who will start next year after a great regular season? Proof positive – for now – that performance trumps phenom superstardom.

Whoever did this, we all owe him a beer.

…who doesn’t understand the “Wlat Harris” misspelling thing? If so, sorry, but could someone please explain this to me?

This article makes me mad, sad, confused and other emotions I can’t name. What if Larry Fitgerald broker his leg in his first game? What if Zack Mills evolved into a Heisman winner? What if monkys flew out of JoePa’s butt and carried the cheerleader off?

Here is a thought, has there ever been a hot prospect that Pitt rejected and came to PSU that went on to star in the NFL? I dunno, but if there was I want to write an article about how Wannstache or whatever coach screwed up.