The Loss That Felt Like a Stomach Punch

Philadelphia Phillies' great Mike Schmidt once said, "Only in Philadelphia can you experience the thrill of victory one day and the agony of reading about it the next." Well, after Penn State's last second loss on Saturday, I'm going to change this quote around a little bit. Only in football can you experience the apparent thrill of victory at one moment and the agony of defeat 50 seconds later.

I was looking for the Bill Simmons article about the 13 Levels of Losing, where he defines the various levels of defeat by correlating them to famous games in the past, however I was unsuccessful in accessing the article (Way to go, ESPN.com, for putting all of Bill's old articles in ESPN Insider, which I refuse to pay for). Anyway, the category that comes to mind is the "Stomach Punch" loss, because that's exactly what it felt like when Michigan WR Mario Manningham caught that ball on the last play of the game. I mean, honestly, how else can you describe it? We can sit here and argue about the game all we want... about how those 2 seconds that Lloyd Carr pleaded for actually made a difference. How the decision to kick the ball directly to Steve Breaston gave them the opportunity for decent field position, when a squib kick to a lineman would have pinned them back further. How the defense played a little more cautiously and was in "touchdown prevention" mode on that last drive. Even with how great the first 6 wins were, this one loss stings pretty badly. We all wanted to see the Nittany Lions win in Ann Arbor for the first time in 9 years...and they were so damn close. Soooo close.

The team can regroup and come back strong in facing a seemingly easier opponent next week when they travel to Urbana-Champaign to take on Illinois. But the loss on Saturday proved to be even more costly as freshman sensation, Derrick Williams, broke his arm in a 4th quarter kickoff return and is now done for the year. Definitely a bad break (unintended pun) for the team as this kid was something special, and provided a spark that the offense hasn't seen since the days of Larry Johnson a few years ago. Just means that everyone else has to step it up a notch.

Not sure what else to say about the game. What started off as a slow game, had about as an exciting of a finish as you can get, just a shame that PSU couldn't come out on top. They are still in decent shape in the Big Ten, but have to finish the last 4 games very strong.

In the other news, the weekend was pretty calm as the Jessica paid a visit to the Stamford. We hung out and relaxed for the most part, ran some errands, watched the television...you know, lazy weekend stuff. Finally got ahold of Entourage, Volume 1, Disc 2 from the Blockbuster, so we're now all caught up on Season 1. I did some research and found out that HBO is re-airing Season 2 in just a couple of weeks, so I can continue catching up. I have to say that it's an absolutely excellent show. Great writing, great acting, love the subplots, the celeb cameos, and of course, Jeremy Piven's character. Again, not sure how it took me this long to get into the show, especially since every person who watches it was saying how great it was from Day 1.

Not much else to report on from the weekend. For now, I'm gonna pack it in. Even though it's Monday, enjoy it the best you can.