Joe Pa's Legend Status VS Hurricane Katrina

I'm afraid that if this scenario arises that the East Coast bias, which includes voters and the ESPN folks, will push hard for Joe Pa and the Nittany Lions.

 

Thanks for an actual opinion.

:thumb:

 

Ditka!

 

haha, maybe he got this idea from me?


Rabalais: LSU or Joe Pa?

By SCOTT RABALAIS
[email protected] Advocate sportswriter

The debate was predictably brief and had a predictable outcome. Washington Post dueling columnists Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon, who have sold their souls to TV and thus make a heck of a lot more money than I do, took up the question during the lightning round of Tuesday's "Pardon the Interruption":
If USC or Texas loses, who should replace them in the national championship game, LSU or Penn State?
Kornheiser, the East Coast guy, went with Penn State.
"I'll take Penn State, but that's more from my heart," he said. "But LSU is very, very good."

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Wilbon went against his Big Ten roots and took up for LSU in point-counterpoint fashion.
"LSU is from a better conference," Wilbon said. "I'm a Big Ten guy, but the SEC is a better conference."
Both were actually arguing the wrong end of the question.
First of all, unfortunately for LSU, the SEC is not the best. Not statistically, anyway.
According to Jeff Sagarin's rankings in USA Today, the SEC is the No. 5-rated conference, ahead of only the Big Least among the BCS big six.
The No. 1 conference? That would be the Big Ten. The one Penn State just won.
As for Kornheiser and certainly other national sports-media types being drawn to the flame of one more big one for Joe Pa -- eager for the Nittany Lion in winter to have another January day in the sun -- that's also predictable. Paterno and Penn State combine to make a potent story considering how both looked so old and feeble lately.
Now that the 78-year-old paragon of college coaching is on his game again, it's not surprisingly that the Kornheisers of the world want to see him plant his flag at the summit. It's the feel good story of the year.
Still, I say if you want feel good, or a region and bunch of people who need to feel good, look no further than LSU.
If the Tigers get to ascend the summit of the BCS championship game in the Rose Bowl, they will be carrying with them the hopes of a state of tired and poor huddled masses. The ones Katrina and Rita left behind.
It's LSU's banner to bear. The Saints can't do it, one because they're terrible and two because their owner has forced them to recite "Remember the Alamo, forget the French Quarter." The Tulane Green Gypsies can't do it after a season of touring the country on the football frequent-flyer plan.
An LSU trip to the Rose Bowl would play pretty nicely in Venice and Slidell and Kenner and Cameron and Lake Charles. If people in those places have a place to gather and watch the big game, that is.
The problem, as ESPN BCS analyst Brad Edwards pointed out Monday, is that the hurricane sympathy thing has pretty much played out on the national sports media scene. Paterno -- though he has been at Penn State since Heisman was a toddler, not a trophy -- is the "fresh" story now.
To me, though, LSU is still the better story. There is no way the delight of seeing one man in the ultimate game compares to the delight an LSU title run could bring to thousands who have had little to cheer about the last three months.
And if LSU got to the Rose Bowl and lost, well, a lot of displaced Tulane fans would have something to cheer about, too.
It's nice to speculate, but LSU and Penn State don't really have a chance, do they? I mean, USC and Texas are mortal locks, right? Just like Oklahoma was two years ago, I believe.
The feel good story of the fall may just have a chapter left to be written yet. Either for Joe Pa or Average Jeaux.

 

Why nobody took this thread as a joke and as serious is because it's nothing really to joke about. Take the Katrina shirts that some Bama fans had on when LSU came to town...They didn't want to make fun of you because a disaster, it was supposed to be in good fun--but it wasn't taken that way.
.
.
.Same with this poll.

 

The poll wasnt meant to make fun of the hurricane situation.

It WAS to make fun of the media for choosing an old coach's fresh story about playing freshman to a winning record, compared to a natural disaster that killed many people. I was making fun of the whole situation, not hurricane victims.

 

Applesauce!

 

grape jelly!

 

Light weights! Tenershee moonshine!:shock: