Well, that was fun. Now back to football. Sort of. Let's backtrack to the Big Ten Media Day.
An interesting (but also potentially meaningless) quote from Jim Tressel about the future of Penn State football:
Is this Penn State coach Joe Paterno's last season?
"If I were a betting man," Tressel said, "I'd bet he'll be back in 2009."
It's hard to say why he feels this way, but interesting comment from a guy who says almost nothing you can't read in a PR textbook.
From the same story, more of Tiller being Tiller:
So how do you stop Big Ten criticism and those who see the league as postseason fodder for the likes of the SEC and Pac-10? Simple, the Purdue football coach said during Thursday's Big Ten football platform.
"Short-circuit all the bloggers in the world," he said. "Everybody wants to weigh in on everything. You have a lot of people expressing themselves through foot or horseback. You get some comparisons that are really out of whack."
That's it Joe, blame it all on the bloggers and their complex circuit boards. Gosh darn blog mobs...
I have mixed feelings about how Williams sees the quarterback competition panning out:
"I think they're going to go with whoever is the best," [Derrick] Williams said. "I think they're going to make the decision and stick with one quarterback."
If this is true knowledge into the process I doubt he would share it, but then again it sounds like a fairly honest opinion from a guy who sees the whole thing panning out every day in practice. By most accounts Clark is getting the majority of the 1st team action. I like the idea of playing both quarterbacks because it seems to give the offense more options. But at the same time, those types of systems often have a hard time holding onto momentum, something Penn State hardly need to be sacrificing.
Tim Brewster has lofty plans for his football team:
"We've committed to being a better defensive football team."
Good thing, too, because it's going to be hard to get worse. Minnesota gave up a universe-worst 519 yards per game and ranked 103+ out of 119 teams in Rush Defense, Pass Defense, Pass % Defense, Scoring Defense, Sacks and TFLs.
You may have heard that Brian of MGoBlog made the trip to Chicago and acted all reporter-like for two straight days. I'll believe this line from the new Michigan coach when I see it:
"I used to yell at them a lot when I was younger, but then I figured out they aren't going to change the call so I stopped."
Rodriguez was also asked about any insight Tressel might have gained when he visited his new rival back when he was still at West Virginia:
"There's no patents on schemes. We never give them everything. Like we never tell people why we call this play in a certain situation."
While it's not good news for Michigan fans to hear that Tressel was given behind the scenes access to their new offense, I think they can take comfort in the fact that Rodriguez will be required tweak his system quite a bit simply because of personnel issues. Yes, it's the run 'n gun, but the Salesman has never been one to remain static anyway, and he already hinted at some dramatic changes to the way he will use his TEs and slot receivers.
This whole thing is coming to an end because I'm getting really tired of reading non-answers to questions. They come in so many varieties and generalities, but I think it's important to give credit where credit is due: I don't think I've read a better completely empty response quite like the one Dantonio gave to...well I'm not even sure what the question was but it could have been just about anything:
"We're on first base trying to get to second," Dantonio said. "First base was a bowl game for us. It's important to take a step forward, not a step back, and move forward with a quest for a championship, and I do believe that that's where we're headed."