On Tuesdays and Thursdays I'll be bringing you links with a Penn State focus. These posts will mainly cover Penn State sports, but you may see some news that concerns the school as a whole here or there. However, with sports news being a little slow right now, these next few weeks may have less of a Penn State focus.
45 Nittany Lions named to the Big Ten's Distinguished Scholar list - This award is given to athletes that finish the academic year with a GPA of 3.7 or higher. Four athletes finished with a GPA of 4.0: Miguel Pineda (men's gymnastics), Katherine Pulos (women's swimming and diving), Rebecca Snyder (women's swimming and diving) and Erin Thomas (women's swimming and diving). Pete Massaro and Nate Stupar were the only members of the football team to make the list. The entire list of athletes can be found here.
Penn State Hockey picks up another commitment - Defenseman Connor Varley who currently plays for the Des Moines Buccaneers of the USHL will be joining Penn State in 2013. He's a local kid from Lansdale, PA and should fit in well with Guy Gadowsky's up-tempo system.
Meet Dominique Gonzalez she'll be a freshman on the Women's Volleyball team this fall. Fun fact: she's never seen snow before.
It looks like Penn State pulled Jamil Pollard's scholarship offer. Jeff covered the news of his decommitment in his FanShot, but it appears that Penn State is now saying that Pollard hasn't qualified academically for the school. It will be interesting to see how this plays out moving forward.
Ranking the Big Ten Specialists - Adam Rittenberg breaks down the top 5 Big Ten players at kicker, punter and returner. Anthony Fera comes in at #2 for punters. Devon Smith doesn't make the list for returners, despite the fact that he finished 2nd in the conference in yards per attempt last year.
Q & A with JoePa - Chris already posted a link to this yesterday, but in case you missed it it's a great read. Rittenberg throws up his take on it here.
In an interesting twist in the Reggie Bush Heisman saga, his trophy from 2005 is now with... his parents? Bush had said back in September that he would return the trophy to the Heisman Trophy Trust. That apparently never happened, and on Friday Bush's parents took the trophy back from the San Diego Hall of Champions.