What'll They Do to Joe Paterno: Embalm Him?

We'll bite: we don't know how Joe Paterno did it. We're baffled. Everyone (including us) had him written off for dead at Penn State and officials in Happy Valley looked for graceful ways to remove the body from the scene of the crime and somehow a student must have done something and now the program and the man have been invigorated again. They stand as the last serious challenge to the inevitable USC-OSU one-loss-palooza national championship game. We salute you, Joe Patern... we say, WE SALUTE YOU, JOE PATERNO... yes, we love those butter cookies from Salerno, too. sigh. As always, C'lay did yeoman's work prepping you for today's action, so we'll just speak briefly to those bits of college football goodness that gather on our lapel as we cram a whole box of those butter cookies down our gullets (and seriously, we didn't know they were only in Chicago; we're heartbroken this morning): • What if the Big Ten had succeeded in pulling Notre Dame into the Big Ten instead of Penn State? Does it fall behind the Big East in relevance? Does it raise the Dame to Penn State standards instead of leaving them as an afterthought this evening against... what's this.... Willingham vs. Weis? Pure sideshow material. • We admit it: we're tuning in to the Texas Tech Kicker Sweepstakes just to see if Leach found someone that could kick a ball hard enough to circumnavigate Mark Mangino. • Does it feel a little early for Michigan State-Michgan or has the college football season really gone by that fast? • LSU was national champion last season? We still can't get our heads around that one. What, did it wash ashore with the last hurricane and finders keepers? Enough of that nonsense. We're at "The Hugh Johnson" on AIM. Tell us how you bullet. No, we said BULLET... don't send us those pictures we can't unsee. Tyrone Willingham Vs. Charlie Weis - [Black Athlete Sports Network]