Tonight, you can find my first blog entry over at PhilSteele.com. Many of you have already read it, as Steele told all his bloggers that cross-promotion is perfectly fine. But head on over anyway and check it out on Steele's Penn State team page. If you like Phil's magazine, you'll love his web site!
◊ Here's a couple of links to note this week.
Penn State...
Interesting news on Jerome Hayes, via FOS (Scout.com):"[Jerome] Hayes plans on petitioning the NCAA for a sixth year of eligibility."
I don't think he qualifies under the rules. But we can always hope for the exception.
In the blogosphere...
• Was Terrelle Pryor secretly hurt during the Fiesta Bowl? I don't care, but Eleven Warriors does. "Shortly after the Fiesta Bowl loss to Texas, rumors began sprouting up about Pryor possibly having an injured shoulder for the game. After all, how else to explain the all of the ducks and the times he ran out of bounds early to avoid contact."
• BSD gave us an early look into Penn State's roster/scholarship situation for 2009 and '10. Great read. "We have 16 kids that can't come back. But we're already over the 85 scholarship limit by three or four. We'll undoubtedly lose a few kids between now and August due to transfers or, God forbid, dismissals. And keep in mind the staff always has the option of oversigning in the next class and hoping to shed a few next spring too."
• Buck Bravo breaks down the Big Ten recruiting classes with some nifty charts. Gotta love charts. "What has been frequently overlooked is the average quality of incoming classes. Class rankings typically weigh both quantity and quality of recruits."
• A Bleacher Report story looked at the integration of the spread offense in recent years. Apparently, they didn't watch college football prior to 2000. Otherwise, they'd know plenty of teams ran the spread. But, who cares about history or research. "The few powerhouses that don't run it are USC and Ohio State, at least not yet. Other powers such as Texas and Florida run pure spread attacks, while other teams like Oklahoma and Penn State run hybrid offenses with some spread principles... Other teams have adapted either the spread or at least a form of it. Most notably this year is Penn State's Spread HD, featuring underrated back Evan Royster and three talented senior wideouts... The spread came in to the 2000s as a gimmicky-type offense. But as the end of the decade nears, it has become one of the most revolutionary systems in the history of college football."
In the national media...
• Mark Schlabach has his revised top 25 rankings. Penn State jumped from No. 11 to No. 9. "9. Penn State Nittany Lions The Nittany Lions expect to return only 11 starters from the team that lost to USC in the Rose Bowl, but quarterback Daryll Clark and tailback Evan Royster will give them a chance to compete for the Big Ten championship in 2009. Three very good offensive linemen, including All-Big Ten center A.Q. Shipley, will have to be replaced. So will standout receivers Derrick Williams, Deon Butler and Jordan Norwood. Coach Joe Paterno probably isn't counting on incoming freshmen Justin Brown and Shawney Kersey to help right away, but they might have to play immediately. Losing All-Big Ten defensive end Aaron Maybin to the NFL draft will hurt the defense, but linebacker Sean Lee will return from a knee injury that caused him to miss all of last season."
• Pete Fiutak took a shot at college recruiting, including the idea that negative recruiting, particularly against a coach's age, doesn't always work. "5. Are the coaches going to be around? … The prospects don’t seem to care... The odds are overwhelming that more than half of the current head coaches won’t be at their current schools five years from now, when this year’s recruiting class is set to graduate. Of course, there are always some shockers in the mix, no one ever thought the tremendous Penn State recruiting class of 2005 was going to finish its career with Joe Paterno at the helm."
• Dave Curtis voiced many fans' sentiment that the bowl system is becoming just plain gluttonous with 34 games set for 2009-10. But he's hopeful the economy can help..."The trickle down to college football is inevitable. How long can GMAC continue to sponsor a game featuring Conference USA and MAC teams in Mobile, Ala.? How valuable is Citi's investment in the Rose Bowl in this sort of market? What about hotels (Gaylord, Sheraton), auto-related companies (Meineke, AutoZone) and other financial institutions (Capital One, San Diego County Credit Union)? ... The interest in even the most insignificant bowl games isn't dying. So, for now, our only hope for a contracted bowl season might be a poorer economy. Come on, recession. Don't let us down."
That's the spirit. Let's hope the economy completely bottoms out! Yay America!
• And remember, tomorrow morning I'll have the Big Ten Bloggers Roundtable wrap up post.
I wanted to spruce things up a bit here at Zombie Nation. The most obvious is the new header. I figured that since 2008 was over, it was time to move on. And while we're all still very happy about Penn State's BigTen title and Rose Bowl berth, the team we have right now didn't win anything yet. I hope they do, but until then, no trophy, no roses in Zombie Nation's header.
I'm also working on some other smaller things to make this site looking and functioning better overall. So stay tuned through the off-season.
Unless you're blind, you've already noticed Zombie Nation's new layout and style. Please feel free to send me your thoughts on how thinks look; like it, hate it, whatever. Just a few real major changes:
1. Most of the links are on the bottom: I did this for space, mostly. Plus, all the links will be in a central location, rather than being spread between two sides of the Web page. (Ed- Any blogs/sites out there that I forgot to add, just shoot me an email and I'll fix it ASAP.)
2. More compact face: Again, for space and easy browsing. How many times were you sick of scrolling forever just to find something. Or even worse, having to scroll left and right to view the whole page. That's very troublesome at work when time is of the essence. Now everything should appear on screen from the first click.
3. Header/Logo: This is only temporary. Actually it's as temporary as you-the readers-make it. I'm inviting everyone to chip in ideas for a new Zombie Nation header and logo to go up top. Parameters: The header image must be 938 pixels wide, and can be any length, in order to fit snugly. Send all ideas to ZombieNationPSU@gmail.com
Not much will change in regards to content. I'd like to get more reader-involvement going. So look for more polls and stuff. But like the header/logo call, if anyone has ideas, thoughts or questions, shoot them my way. I hope everyone enjoys the new look ZN.
A (very brief) look at the man behind the blue and white Web page.
Even, after spending a good several months writing professionally, I won’t be the first one to say I’m a “veteran” journalist. But I did learn a few things. One, that a common “work week” is never less than 50 hours; Two, that people will absolutely hate your guts; Three, that people will then turn around and be your best friend, when it suits their agenda; Finally, that no matter how hard your work, or how good you are at what you do, you’ll never make a lot of money being a journalist. Don’t take that the wrong way. Writing books, making TV appearances and giving a speech or two to a group of students will always grab you some extra dough. But unless you’re working at ESPN, SI or other major sports news outlets, you’re not going to have a lot of time to do those other things I mentioned.
There is a funny aspect to all of this. Like most other careers in a capitalist economy, the more you make, the less you do. It’s no different in sports journalism.
When you’re trying to make it for yourself in this business, you’ll do anything to get your name out there. That means you’ll cover anything, any time, anywhere, usually with little or no reward, other than logging one more clip into your record. I wasn’t willing to do that. No; not after seeing people like Jeff Rice and Jenny Vrentas go from The Collegian to lucrative careers with the CDT and Newark Star-Ledger, respectively. Don’t get me wrong. I like them. I’ve never met them, so I don’t have anything to go on, but I don’t care either way for them. To me, they’re just products of the system we’re in.
I was a music major through my sophomore year at PSU. I then realized that you have to be wealthy to be a music major. I wasn’t wealthy, so I switched to a major that required little financial burden—journalism. Yes, that magical discipline, in which you only need a note pad, a pen, and maybe a digital recorder for $49.95. Compare that to what I needed to start my music performance major: Instrument (Euphonium), $5,500; Instrument maintenance/equipment, $300; Sheet Music, $50 per week; and most costly of all, practice time: 6-8 hours per day, minimum. You can’t hold a part-time job when you’re stuck in the basement of Music Building II for 40 hours per week. So, I switched.
It was a really good feeling when I graduated only one semester late. I could even say I graduated in the year I was supposed to. But that joy was short lived. I was soon working for my father (home improvement business), helping one of his friends flip a house in Paramus, NJ. (Remember, at that time, the housing market was still OK.) Meanwhile, other students were working for papers, news stations, and other actually journalism jobs. When Jeff Rice first started at the CDT, getting the PSU football beat the moment he stepped into their building, I realized my dream was doomed. I would never become PSU’s beat writer in the home-town paper every fan reads on game days. Oh well, poor me.
So I got a job with a paper in VA to pass the time. My beat was local government and civic events (basically homeowners’ associations meetings and grand openings of prestigious businesses like SUBWAY). The closest I got to covering sports was a few higher-profile high school games in the area, as the paper didn’t even really have a sports page outside of what I threw together as an experiment. My now-fiancé graduated from PSU in 2005, and was already down here teaching, which all worked out for us job-wise in the end.
Then I got real sick from my Crohn’s Disease, needing a Laparoscopic Ileocolic Resection at Mount Sinai in NYC. So I was out of work from the paper, with no health insurance (I was still on the company’s “probationary” period, which meant no benefits yet) and no income for more than a month. That was fun. Now, $75,000 later and still not back up to my starting weight of 162 lbs before the summer, I’m at a new job working for Loudoun County Public Schools. Unfortunately, one of the worst things for Crohn’s Disease is stress, and being a no-name journalist comes with a lot of that.
That’s where this blog comes in. I know, I took the longest possible route to get to my point, sorry. The beauty of today’s society is that anyone can strike gold at any point. No, I’m not going to quit my job and try to live off of Zombie Nation. That’s just plain idiotic. But why kill myself so that maybe, just maybe I get my résumé noticed by some paper or station in PA that needs a PSU beat reporter? Unless you’re someone like Rice or Vrentas, or don’t want any kind of life outside of your budding career, you’re doomed down the path I once thought promising.
This leads me back to the “system” we’re in. There are a few necessities that will land you the sports-writing job of your dreams: start early, and get in good with the right people. I cannot stress that first point enough. That’s actually my whole point. I didn’t start early enough. I remember walking into the Collegian offices in James Building for my interview/tryout. I said I wanted to cover PSU football. I’m surprised they didn’t just burst out laughing at me right then and there. The two editors at the time basically told me that I wasn’t next in line to cover PSU football, so I had no chance. Nice. So that’s how real newspapers are run, seniority over performance? Maybe I was working in another universe, but performance is everything in journalism. Apparently, the Collegian’s “club” mentality takes the former approach.
What was once a nice little writing career crashed and burned (partially my fault, but mostly not). So now I’m left with a regular 40-hour-per-week job and a nifty little sports blog on the side. That doesn’t exactly put me above the dozens of other whipper-snappers who think they know more about PSU football than the next guy. But I’ll be the first to admit that being a sports writer isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. It’s very nice to dream of working for the ESPNs, SportsIllustrateds and CDTs of the world, but we have to remain grounded and realistic. Yes I would still take one of those jobs in a heart beat. I’m not that much of a hypocrite. Joe Paterno has told the media a thousand times that he stays in it because it’s fun. Being a sports writer is no different. I wasn’t having fun at a local paper in northern VA. So I got out. I might try to get back in someday, maybe if I end up in PA. But for now, I’ll just leave it to the ones who are willing to sacrifice so much to make it in that world.
Yup, that's something (however petty) I'm pretty proud of right now. In the past two days, ZN has gotten more than 400 unique visitors, blowing past the 10,000 mark for this blog's existence. Not bad for only six months old. Keep coming, and thanks to everyone.
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