Columns
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Battista: ‘This Is More Than A Race. This Is Talladega!’
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I found myself in very unfamiliar confines a couple weeks ago surrounded by 120,000 sports fanatics in a southern state dominated by college football loyalists. But I wasn’t attending a Crimson Tide football game in Tuscaloosa or a Tigers game in Auburn. I was in NASCAR country in Talladega, Alabama, a town that sits roughly…
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Can Penn State Win Out? It Would Help Future Payrolls Grow Forward
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Four games in 22 days. Penn State’s season has come to that. Nittany Lion football has reached an inflection point. Again. Terry Smith pulled Penn State out of its six-game morass in 2025. Now, can Matt Campell do the same thing? He is 1-0 on that journey. The Nittany Lions’ 31-17 victory over Purdue was…
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For Penn State, No Sowell or Howard? No Problem
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Adversity, thy name is Chase Sowell and Koby Howard. The news came down at 2:15 p.m. Eastern time, when the Big Ten Conference posted the latest and final availability report for the Purdue at Penn State football game on its website. It read, under the Nittany Logo:OutWR #0 Chase SowellWR #6 Koby Howard Howard wasn’t…
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Paterno: The Campaign Speech I Want to Hear
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Living in the Nittany Valley in the fall is to grasp a piece of heaven on earth. The late afternoon sunshine on the mountains casts an airy glow to colorful leaves that no camera can truly capture. The trees on the mountains and across the valley’s floor are painted from God’s palette of yellows, reds,…
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Matt Campbell Says Help Is on the Way for Penn State’s Linebackers
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Penn State’s depleted linebacking corps is finally getting some reinforcements. Coach Matt Campbell said on Wednesday the Nittany Lions have shifted safety Marcus Neal Jr. to linebacker in time for their game Saturday against Purdue in Beaver Stadium. Neal started at safety the first four games of the 2026 season, but the Iowa State transfer…
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Frank: I’m Air-Sick and, No, the Sack in the Seat Pocket Won’t Help
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The driving distance from State College to Dallas is 1400 miles. That’s 24 hours behind the wheel — longer if you want to eat, sleep and not wear a diaper. This makes the Big D a highly impractical weekend destination for a road warrior from Central Pennsylvania. Fortunately, there are flying machines. So it was…
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Amid Tumult, Injury and Defeat at Penn State, Tony Rojas Continues to Tackle It All
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Penn State linebacker Tony Rojas, a midseason All-American, is the shining star of a defense — and a program — in flux as it struggles with being in the midst of a four-game losing streak wrapped around a roster and staff that have been totally rebuilt. Rojas is a bit rebuilt himself. He started all 16…
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Hook: Forget Football. Let’s Talk Cookies
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How is it that a simple game has such an outsized effect on many of our lives? Football, a game that was created right here in the United States of America back in the late 1800s by transforming two sports – soccer and rugby – into a new contest. First played by college students for…
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The Cheap Ticket Dollars and the 82% Betting Sense of Penn State vs. Purdue
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All is not lost for Penn State football as it comes off a bye week to play host to Purdue this Saturday in Beaver Stadium. In fact, for the Nittany Lion fans who have not jumped ship since the team’s ohfer-4 start in the Big Ten Conference under new head coach Matt Campbell, there are…
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Penn State’s Rocco Becht on Backup QB Alex Manske: ‘I’m Excited About His Future’
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Penn State quarterback Rocco Becht has at least five more games left in his college football career. Maybe more, if the 3-4 Nittany Lions can turn things around and make it to a bowl game. And in the mind of his head coach, Matt Campbell, Becht will be the starter the rest of the way,…