BSD Mailbag 6/3/2022

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Bet you I could hit a golf ball over them scoreboards

Do you have any thoughts on the new Saudi golf league? Do you see it succeeding? They have some human rights issues but they also have a lot of oil money to give out to the participants. I see it like the super soccer league that they tried to do in Europe and perhaps as some have commented could be a precursor to having a “super college football league”. Not the Saudi part, but the thought of getting as many blue bloods into one conference. - LarzLion

One of my favorite things about BSD is the fact that I actually learn stuff here. Not to say I don’t learn stuff elsewhere, but I get hit with the most random factoids here, moreso than anywhere else.

For instance! Did you know that there’s a new Saudi golf league? Neither did I!

Some intrepid research on my part shows that 42 players are set to take place in the inaugural event just next week! Though, strangely, the event will be played in London. C’mon, I want a golf course of nothing but sand traps!

But lack of sandy hijinks aside, I’m actually not all that opposed to the idea of a little competition. The PGA has run golf forever, and while I don’t think the product has suffered in any great way, a lack of competition is typically not a good thing. No room for innovation, things stagnate, etc.

Add in that some highly ranked players are joining, including Dustin Johnson, Talor Gooch (heh), and Louis Oosthuizen, and you’ve got at least an interesting challenger to the PGA. Will it take off? Who knows! But if it does nothing else but to mix things up a bit, I fail to see it as a problem.

Do you see a clear favorite in the Big Ten West or is it once again a crapshoot? - Jared Slanina

Give me a crapshoot every day of the week, and twice on Sundays.

Oh we’re talking the B1G West? Nevermind then.

I’ll believe that a team other than Wisconsin or Iowa will be considered the “favorite” when someone else actually shows semblances of a pulse. Every year there are a few “dark horse” candidates in the West, and that honor has gone to pretty much everyone at some point or another. And yet Wisconsin has won the West 4 times, and Iowa has won it twice. Northwestern did grab a couple nods, and given that it’s an even year, they’re due for a random upsurge. But the Badgers and the Hawkeyes are simply better than everyone else in the West.

Now, if the B1G comes out and does away with divisions and just selects the best two teams, then I think you can more or less kiss the current West teams goodbye for the foreseeable future.

What’s the most famous single game of any sport you’ve ever attended? - chulupabatman

I haven’t been to a ton of games in general, believe it or not. I would wager that the most famous game I’ve been to is the 2005 Ohio State Whiteout game, which certainly had some reverberations across college football, but I don’t know how many people would tout it as one of the most important historical games to have been played.

It did, however, give us this photo:

Are you upset and going to need years of therapy now that Mark Emmert has decided to step down as president of the NCAA? - LarzLion

I really think 2011 was a perfect storm of badness. The NCAA was largely viewed as having no real backbone, and teams could simply flaunt the rules keeping everybody in check. Penn State was having a good year, after having had a really solid run from 2005 to 2009. Paterno was rumored to be retiring. There hadn’t been that type of “incident” (for lack of a better word) reported on at a major collegiate institution to date.

It all just combined to a perfect storm where Emmert felt he had an opportunity to make an example out of Penn State, reestablish the NCAA as a powerful entity, dash Joe’s reputation, bring down the holier than thou Penn Staters, etc. It didn’t help that the PSU administration handled it just about as poorly as you could from start to finish.

Do I like Mark Emmert. Hell no. Is he the sole malefactor that was at play in 2011? Also, no. You would have liked to think that things got better, but given that more and more scandals are being discovered, I actually think the state of college sports is worse off in general. Again, not due to Emmert, but just a general slide into darkness it seems.

So apparently Beaver Stadium will briefly become a Topgolf facility next week. On a scale of “awesome” to “WTF,” where would you rank our stadium being used as a driving range? - NittanyPUMA

Given that Penn State finds itself in a situation where funding is a problem in general, I think any sort of new, fun idea can only be a good thing. If I had a chunk of disposable money sitting around, heck yes I’d go and schwack some balls across the Beav (don’t laugh at that you heathens). If a fun event like that can in turn liven up some more donor interest in the athletic department, all aboard baby!

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By: Chris Lucia
Title: BSD Mailbag 6/3/2022
Sourced From: www.blackshoediaries.com/2022/6/3/23151879/bsd-mailbag-6-3-2022-penn-state-nittany-lions-football-saudi-golf-top-golf-beaver-stadium-emmert
Published Date: Fri, 03 Jun 2022 12:23:00 +0000

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