Land Grant Week Mailbag

Mr. Grizz: How many wins does Matt Campbell need in year one to keep PSU fans ha— forget it, how many for an objectively successful season?

BoilerUp89: Happy? 16. Successful? 8?

Transient Buckeye: Looking at the schedule, I'm only seeing three games (USC at home, on the road at Michigan and Washington) where PSU is likely to be an underdog. If he wants to maintain goodwill, Campbell really needs to avoid taking an unexpected upset. If he does, he'd better pull an upset in one of the three tough games. I'd say that 9 wins would be an objectively successful season.

Kind of...: I'm going to say 8 because I think there is the realization that 1) Franklin took a lot of talent with him, and 2) Campbell was hired pretty late and the portal run wasn't quite what it could've been.

Rubber Duck: Which coach will stay at their new school longer? Which coach would you rather drink a beer with?

BoilerUp89: I'm not drinking with Fitz. The man has not publicly shown remorse for what happened under his watch.

Transient Buckeye: I know nothing about Matt Campbell, but I have nothing against Iowa State, and he hasn't been at Penn State long enough to make him feel like a bad guy yet. So I'd be open to having a drink with him. Fitzgerald seems like he'd probably be an asshole, so no thanks.

Kind of...: Definitely Campbell. Both because I have no desire to have a beer with Pat Fitzgerald and because I think Campbell is a pretty genuine guy. He was at Iowa State for 10 years. This wasn't his first chance to leave. I've been to Ames, Iowa. I think he's a pretty good dude, by CFB coach standards.

AlmaOtter: Campbell has spent a lot of time in Iowa, which means his beer of choice is probably Busch Light. That said, Fitzgerald's an asshole and I'd constantly be afraid of him putting something in my drink. Campbell, no question.

waw: Why is the ice cream from the PSU creamery so vastly inferior to the ice cream from the MSU dairy store?

BoilerUp89: All dairy is bad. Signed, lactose intolerant bot.

Kind of...: The concept of inferior ice cream amuses me. You'd have to try pretty hard to mess it up. At the same time, I guess I'm contractually obligated to say the neither compares to the Babcock Dairy in Madison...

Transient Buckeye: It's been decades since I've been able to sample the offerings at either the Creamery or the Dairy Store, but I remember both being quite satisfactory.

MiddleWestAverage: Better intrastate rivalry within the “rivalry”: Penn State vs Pitt or MSU vs Central?

BoilerUp89: Penn State v Pitt. Believe it or not, lowly PSU leads the all time series 76-72 in men's bball.

Kind of...: Penn State/Pitt was, from, say, '76-'82, a top 5 rivalry nationally. That was a long time ago. (And Beano Cook is dead.) But Central really doesn't bring much to the party. So let's stick with PSU/Pitt. After all, I know Pitt fans who STILL derive joy from having kept PSU out of the playoff in 2016.

Transient Buckeye: During my undergrad days in the early 1990s, MSU lost back-to-back games to Central Michigan. Since I was a Michigan fan at the time, this was hilarious. After one of those defeats, George Perles attempted a master class in rationalization, stating in the postgame press conference "We're still 0-0 in the Big Ten." To this, some wit from the Detroit Free Press responded in a column the next day "Yes, George, but you're 0-1 in the MAC." As amusing as that was, though, Penn State-Pitt is clearly the better intrastate rivalry.

Which new coach is most likely to reach the (grossly expanded) college football playoff in the next three years and why?

Kind of...: Campbell. Better program. Better financial setup. Better ability to relate to players today.

Transient Buckeye: Definitely Campbell. With a few lucky breaks, it's not inconceivable that PSU could make the playoff this year. It's unlikely, but it's certainly not impossible. MSU making the playoff anytime in the foreseeable future would require a Cignetti-at-Indiana level turnaround, and I don't think Fitzgerald has that in him.

Thump: So Michigan State’s athletic director shackled the football program to Horse Teeth O’Callaghan and then dipped.

My question is, have you ever left an upper decker at a party?

Transient Buckeye: I'm not the sort of person who gets invited to parties, and I'm far too much of an introvert to try to crash one. So, no.

Kind of...: No. I'll own up to a range of other party-related questionable choices, but not that. I do wonder if Thumpasaurus knows where J Batt was born, though.

AlmaOtter: Thanks to this question, I had to teach OhioOtter what an upper decker was. To which she said, and I quote: "If anyone did that to me, I would cut their balls off."

DtownK: While the ‘rivalry’ has fallen off, there was a time when this actually was a game you’d like to see. What’s your favorite game between them? 

Transient Buckeye: For as much as these teams have played, I have shockingly few memories about individual matchups. I think that's because this game usually falls into the time slot immediately after The Game, so I'm generally either basking in the glow of victory or marinating in the sticky miasma of defeat. Looking back at the series results on Wikipedia, one of the most surprising ones was Michigan State walloping the holy hell out of Penn State in 1997 (49-14!), a game where PSU came into kickoff ranked #4 in the country. Again, I have literally no recollection of that game. Time to go hunt for highlights on YouTube.

Kind of...: The 90s this was a helluva matchup. The '97 MSU walloping that Transient Buckeye notes was cathartic for Sparty. Consider: the first matchup with both teams as B1G members, in 1993, saw PSU win 38-37, erasing a late third quarter deficit of 37-17. In '94, PSU rang up 59 points in George Perles's last game as MSU head coach. In the 24-20 win in '95, PSU scored a TD with less than 10 seconds to go. In the 32-29 win in '96, PSU kicked the winning FG with less than 30 seconds to go...after MSU had missed a go ahead FG in the previous drive. Yeah, things had built up for MSU. The '99 game was also great. PSU had been 9-0, but came into the game 9-2, with their CFP, and then Rose Bowl, dreams ruined. They fell behind 28-7, rallied to tie it, fumbled, and saw Sparty win 35-28.

Since then, it hasn't quite been the same. PSU 61-7 in 2002. MSU 41-10 the next year. Maybe the most memorable was 2017. In my opinion, this was Franklin's best team at PSU. But, ranked #2, they gagged away a 38-27 lead in the last five minutes in Columbus, and then were flat the next week in a "classic Dantonio" win. PSU.

wankerman: Better coach nickname: Fat Pitzgerald or Dark Mantonio?

Transient Buckeye: Dark Mantonio, and it's not close. "Fat Pitzgerald" just doesn't work, because while I can think of plenty of adjectives that could be applied to Pat Fitzgerald, "fat" isn't one of them.

Kind of...: Agreed. Dantonio never seemed like a very happy, light-hearted person. It really works.

AlmaOtter: I'm taking the other side here. Maybe it's because my humor ranges between Old British Man and Sugar Rush 12 Year Old, but Fat Fitzgerald makes me giggle every damn time I see it.

BoilerUp89: How do I build my own Land Grant Trophy? Will Penn State ever care about basketball? What is the airborne velocity of an unladen swallow?

Transient Buckeye: Taking these one at a time. 1) Go back to your old high school, and ask the wood shop teacher if you can borrow his tools for an hour. 2) No. 3) What do you mean? African, or European?

Kind of...: 1) However you want! Does it really seem like there was a lot of thought to the original? 2) No. Just too hard to crack the fertile Philly recruiting grounds. Plus, wrestling is really big there. And they just had the #1 overall NHL pick. 3) I don't know. Aaaah!