Billy Paultz Reconsidered

First of all, it was a great football game. Before we get caught up in the quarterback controversy and the analysis and whether the Patriots were overhyped, can we at least acknowledge that?
Thank you.
One thing I love about Andy Reid is that he always believes in himself, and he never cares what everybody says, what […]

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In retrospect Penn State’s season might have begun to wobble as early as week three, when Buffalo scored three TDs in the fourth-quarter dregs of a blowout, badly victimizing the Lions’ secondary and pre-season All-American CB Justin King in particular.
The Penn State coaches had apparently figured they could leave wideout coverage to their corners, man-to-man, […]

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In defending Jimmy Rollins’ MVP election Tuesday, Bill Conlin of the Philly Daily News took on “Baseball Abstract” guru Bill James re Rollins’ fielding on Comcast SportsNet’s “Daily News Live,” Tuesday, then expanded his argument in today’s paper.
Background: James is arguably the most important sportswriter ever (granted that’s not saying much, but who else has actually […]

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Penn State DT Chris Baker, LB Navarro Bowman and DB Knowledge Timmons were hit with criminal charges Thursday stemming from an Oct. 7 fight on the Penn State campus.
Baker, who also faces charges from his role in an April fight in State College, was charged Thursday with felony aggravated assault. So was Bowman.
Timmons, from York will […]

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An important piece for Michigan State, C John Masters, left last week’s Purdue game with a leg injury. He’s questionable for Saturday.
As far as pro-Penn State factors in this matchup, that’s about it.
Michigan State has a history, or at least a reputation, for playing good opponents tough and then collapsing against people it should beat.
But […]

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In football, Michigan State has long been the infuriating problem child of the Big Ten family.
The Spartans are, or have been, talented and occasionally brilliant. They’ve also been wildly erratic, prone to off-field issues, underachieving and in general need of a Ritalin prescription.
At least that’s the educated perception.
Maybe that’s over with, or at least changing, […]

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On Sept. 15, Temple trailed at UConn 22-17 with 40 seconds left when, on a fourth-down play, the Owls hit a wide receiver-to-wide receiver pass that would have given them the lead.
The receiver was ruled out-of-bounds in the end zone. He wasn’t. The play somehow wasn’t overturned on replay. UConn this survived, 22-17. It is […]

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I think the deal here might be that Indy ran out of gas.
Joseph Addai has some history, by his own admission, of being wiped out late in games. The Colts’ defense is so reliant on quickness, and played with so much energy early, that maybe they just couldn’t physically sustain it for four quarters. […]

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I’ve gotten a few e-mails deriding my mention of the possibility of Penn State finishing third in the Big Ten, as in, “Ooohhh, third place in a league that has two good teams, wow, how impressive…”
OK, but the point is third place matters for bowl positioning. If Penn State had lost to Purdue, it would […]

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Scoring margin as a method of evaluating football teams has become as devalued as neoconservatism. Or maybe communism.
Giving weight to scoring margin encourages bad sportsmanship and general ugliness, the thinking goes. The Bowl Championship Series directed the people who do its computer rankings to remove any consideration of scoring margin from their formulas in 2005, […]

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