Round of Reubens

Congratulations to Joe Alexander for making AP honorable mention All-America. Don't think too many people would have believed you if you had told them Joe would do that in mid-January. Even if they knew that 47 people made the honorable mention team. Damn that is almost is many as the All-Big East squad.

The football team is back to practice this week and Jarrett Brown has re-joined the team in time to start throwing bombs. Everything sounds like you'd want to hear coming from Stewart so far regarding the passing game:

“We haven’t been getting the ball on the deep-zone throws,” Stewart said. “We’re trying to get the ball down the field in the middle of the field as everyone has been harping on us to throw it down the middle like we did in the bowl game a little bit.

“When they go cover three there are deep seams in the back and we have not been attacking that area and I was really, really pleased to see Jarrett get in there and throw those,” Stewart said. “Pat (White) went in and had a couple of nice throws, too.”

Except maybe this:

“It’s really the same stuff but there is a lot of window dressing with our motion and movement that is new,” Stewart said. “The flood routes we’re doing; getting the ball out on the flanks with the blockers. We’re doing bubble screens with (Jock) Sanders and it’s like we’ve got trucks out there blocking for him. It’s a new screen offense and schematically a flooding zone new offense.”

Watch yourself Bill. It's a slippery slope. One day your throwing the ball all around and stretching the defense all over the field and then you mix in a bubble screen just to try it because all the cool kids are doing it. Next thing you know you're at a truck stop fighting trannies for the right to give truckers a handjob to make some scratch for the next bubble screen. Just be careful.

One team that may fall victim to many bubble screens is Liberty University. The Flames have been signed as the opening game for WVU football in 2009.

Liberty hasn’t won a game against an FBS opponent since beating Eastern Michigan in 1989. The Flames led Toledo 34-22 heading into the fourth quarter last season before losing 35-34.

Liberty is a fundamentalist Baptist university located in Lynchburg, Virginia. The Flames (great name for a religous school) went 8-3 last year and won the Big South Conference. Reasons for this game? Stewart might want attend a church service there in return? Home game? Oh yes, easy win in VA area. Of course recruits probably won't care too much about that, but maybe WVU coaches get down there to "scout" and do some recruiting on the way.

Finally, it appears that Joe Paterno has decided to keep coaching Penn State football. Even if it means he actually isn't employed by PSU. Paterno, on the last year of his current contract and being pressured for a succession plan, had this to say recently:

“If I’ve got to have a contract to keep my job here, I’m working in the wrong place”

Should Penn State bring in a new head coach next year you can bet he'll wake up from a nap on his office couch to see Joe rifling through the desk or calling up recruits on a rotary phone. And it will be awkward 10 years from now when the coach has to explain who the crazy old guy in knee pants (it might rain later) and glasses is giving a pep talk in the corner to stuffed animals before the game.