Thursday Linkage is full of meaningless predictions

The main stream media is now rolling at full throttle, as we were blessed this week with their infinite wisdom in the form of predictions, power rankings and Heisman talk.

• ESPN has put together an "expert" panel to begin voting on the 2009 Heisman Trophy race. Naturally, the big three -- Tebow, Bradford and McCoy -- lead the way. But then there are the picks that you know are just made to piss people off, like Tennessee SS Eric Berry, USC Safety Taylor Mays, and TCU DE Jerry Hughes. I just wonder, if they're good enough to get votes now, where are those votes in December?

• Staying with the whole best-in-America theme, NBC Sports released its All-America teams for 2009. While Penn State didn't get any first-team nods, Evan Royster and Navorro Bowman were both named to the second team. Stefen Wisniewski and Jared Odrick landed on the third team. Not bad, especially considering Wiz has never started a game at center prior to this season.

• Preseason rankings are the lifeblood of college football in August; SI.com and NBC Sports are right there with the pack. Penn State comes in at a respectable No. 11 at NBC, and a bit disappointing No. 14 at SI.com.

• ESPN's Mark Schlabach and Bruce Feldman both like Penn State to return to the BCS circuit; Schlabach pegs the Lions for the Orange Bowl vs. Virginia Tech, while Feldman sends JoePa back to the Rose Bowl for a USC rematch.

• Adam Rittenberg says otherwise.

• Today is Penn State's media day, but if you didn't want to pay 10 bucks (!) to watch Joe Paterno's presser online today, you can see a replay of it later on the Big Ten Network, along with other Penn State goodies this evening.

• Jay Paterno would rather have his players practicing than talking.

• The always entertaining BlogPoll is reving back up.

• Just a reminder, the Buckeye Battle Cry was kind enough to stop bashing Michigan for a few minutes, and answer a couple questions for this week's First Look '09. I'll have the post up later today, so be sure to check back for it!

• And lastly, my copy of Sports Illustrated just arrived. While I'm still not crazy about the positions they placed the players, it's nice to see Daryll Clark and Wiz on there.

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Red meat Monday: Important vs. Interesting

Every web site, preseason magazine and talk show host is breaking out the war drums. But just what are they beating? Well, our heads in with outrageous and sensationalist predictions and analyses. I'm not going to spend the next 3,000 words trying to pick out every shallow pitch thrown by the college football punditry the past few weeks. You can bet there will be more of that to come, much more. So, to start off this week right, I picked out this one example of pure, shameless hit generation:

"Both the Big Ten and Big East figure to be in a season-long tussle for least relevant conference from a national title perspective." - NBC Sports' lead sentence on Penn State vs. Ohio State, part of the 'Top 20 important games' list for 2009.

I told you it was shallow and shameless. Oh yeah, and also outrageous and sensationalist.

If the two leagues have no place at the BCS Title table, then why is this game on the "most important list?" If the game doesn't matter, then it's not important.

I'm not so sure NBC followed its own story pitch. This is the next portion of the game analysis, after the lead I quoted above:

"Still, this matchup, always highly anticipated, gains extra heft as Terrelle Pryor’s Keystone State homecoming. The Buckeye sophomore grew up in Jeannette, Pa., a two-hour drive southwest from Happy Valley."

That's where NBC lost me. (turning to the invisible, unnamed NBC writers) Fellas, when a game has -- as you yourselves put it -- no relevance to the BCS Title Game, but an interesting storyline, that means the game belongs on the "most intriguing," or "most interesting," or even "the best" games of the season lists. Pick any one of those, but not "most important."

And how about this, for sh*ts and giggles... Ohio State vs. USC is No. 2 on the list. Penn State vs. Ohio State? No. 15.

Let me get that straight. A game that has no affect on either the Big Ten or Pac 10 title races is more important than what most rational people consider to be the Big Ten title game itself. Yeah, that makes sense.

Even Tennessee vs. Florida is way up on the list, and the best thing NBC could come up with was that Lane Kiffin is going to be on the sideline. Again, that's "interesting," not "important."

Logic doesn't always flow through college football writers' veins, but sometimes I wonder if it ever flows at all.

*I included the Mountain West in there because BYU has a very real chance to make the BCS Title Game

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Nice Article on Charlie Jones

Unless you've been around college football longer than I've been alive, you never really knew how important Charlie Jones was to the sport, and the bowl game in which Penn State has had so much success, the Fiesta Bowl. (For those PSU-history-challenged, it's 6-0 all time in Tempe) CFN does a real nice job paying tribute to Jones, and much to Penn State fans' delight, Matt Zemek focuses on Jones' infamous calling of the 1982 and 1986 Fiesta Bowls. It's a very good read.

-CFN pays tribute to Charlie Jones, and his work in making the Fiesta Bowl one of the "Big Games."

By the way, my "longer than I've been alive" statement wasn't completely true. I was born in 1984, so I was in fact 18 days away from my third birthday when Penn State embarrassed Miami for the national championship.

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