News You Might Have Missed While You Were Down the Shore

Penn State Head Football Coach James Franklin is so pleased with the positive response to his decision to take players’ names off their jerseys that he has decided to take his team-first idea one step further.

“We are going to go with the no-names look this season,” the second-year coach announced at a news conference, “but next year we are going to return football to its earliest days and take the numbers off the jerseys as well.”

The problem with uniform numbers, Franklin said, is that they still enable any fan with a program to distinguish one player from another. “Going numberless is the logical next step if we’re serious about putting team success ahead of individual accomplishment.”

The coach acknowledged that serious students of the game will still be able to distinguish players by their gait and body type, but he and his staff have designed a rigorous pre-season training regimen aimed at reducing size and motion differences among the 100 members of his squad.

“Quite frankly, it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if we got some of the guys on the O-line to lose a little belly fat and some of those speedy running backs were to bulk up a bit,” Franklin said.

He hinted that such standardization might be a first step toward replacing human athletes, with their susceptibility to life-threatening head injuries, with robots.

As for the officials’ need to identify players who commit infractions, Franklin suggested that a little confusion on the refs’ part might result in fewer penalties going against the Nittany Lions.

“One of our goals this season is to be the least-penalized team in the Big Ten,” he said. “Maybe this will help us achieve it.”

In a related development, the Penn State Creamery will roll out a new flavorless ice cream in time for the start of football season.

“Penn State uniforms have long been described as ‘vanilla,’” said Creamery manager Tom Palchak, “but in light of the proposed uniform changes we think even vanilla might be too intense. An ice cream that truly reflected the spirit of our football program would have no taste whatsoever.”

Natural food coloring will be used to make the new non-flavor Penn State Blue. And the name?

“We’re thinking of going with ‘Blue Bland,’” Palchak said, “but we’re open to suggestions.”

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Former Penn State President and amateur magician Graham Spanier has made all the incriminating evidence against him disappear.

In light of the latest delay in the slow-moving case, Dauphin County’s president judge set a new tentative trial date of the 12th of Never.

“Of course, we may have to push it back if Dr. Spanier is unable to recall the magic words he used to dematerialize the documents,” Judge Richard A. Lewis said.

Spanier insists that he did not deliberately tamper with the evidence.

“It’s a little embarrassing to have to admit this,” he said, “but I was playing the washboard and singing the Penn State Alma Mater in Pig Latin when I saw a little puff of smoke, and, poof, the files vanished. Believe me, no one wants this matter to be resolved any more than I do.”

Meanwhile, Spanier’s attorneys have filed a motion to delay the trial until all the state’s witnesses have begun to suffer memory loss.

“The witnesses’ ability to recall past events will clearly put our client at a crippling disadvantage when he has his day in court,” the filing said. “Justice will be best served by waiting until everyone has forgotten whatever they knew.”

Spanier was charged almost three years ago with – well, no one actually remembers what he was charged with.

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Out-of-work sports commentator Keith Olbermann is going into the piñata business.

Now that Olbermann has been cut loose by ESPN, he plans to manufacture and sell papier-mâché likenesses of himself.

The outspoken Olbermann said he expects to do an especially brisk business in State College, where he’s betting that Penn State fans would like nothing better than to bash his face in with a baseball bat.

After last February’s Dance Marathon, Olbermann incurred the wrath of Penn Staters when he completed the popular rallying cry “We are…” with the word “pitiful” in a Tweet.

A month earlier, Olbermann devoted his “The World’s Worst in Sports” segment to the NCAA’s decision to restore wins it had previously subtracted from Joe Paterno’s total. Olbermann ranted that nothing can “lessen the guilt…or ever reduce the disgust which the names Penn State football and Joe Paterno will produce for decades to come.”

At the launch of his new venture, Olbermann said, “Look, I know I’m not wildly popular around Penn State, so why not cash in on it while I’m between gigs? Who knows, maybe I’ll set up shop outside Beaver Stadium before games — as long as they swing at the piñatas rather than at me.”