July 19, 2010

Royster, Wisniewski, Lynn picked for Big Ten Kickoff Days

It's a no-brainer that Wiz will be one of the 2010 captains, but going into late July, nothing has yet been made official by the team.

Seniors Evan Royster and Stefen Wisniewski, and junior D'Anton Lynn have been selected to represent Penn State at the 39th Annual Big Ten Kickoff, August 2-3 in Chicago.

In case you're not familiar with what goes on at these things, here's the lowdown:
The Kickoff activities will include news conferences with every Big Ten head coach and players from each squad. Interviews with print and electronic media will take place on both days. The Kickoff Luncheon is August 3, with a crowd of more than 1,500 expected to attend.

The Big Ten Network will provide extensive coverage of Big Ten Kickoff activities. The network is available to 75 million households on 300 cable and satellite providers in the United States and Canada, but is not available on Adams, Armstrong, Blue Ridge and MetroCast cable in Pennsylvania.
So now you know.

But there's something else of interest in this announcement...

Penn State still hasn't announced its team captains for 2010. It's kind of odd, as usually we know some time between April and June. So is today's announcement able to help us predict which players will get voted in as team captains this season? Possibly, as there is a very strong correlation between the team captains, and which players go to Chicago for the Big Ten Kickoff activities. Let's go to the video tape...

2005: Paul Posluszny, Alan Zamaitis, and Michael Robinson are voted captains on May 11; those three go to Chicago with Paterno.

2006: Paul Posluszny and Levi Brown voted captains on April 22; Poz and Brown go to Chicago with Paterno.

2007: Similar to 2010, captains aren't named until late in the summer. Dan Connor, Terrell Golden, and Anthony Morelli attend the Big Ten meetings with Paterno; on August 20, those three are voted captains by the team.

2008: Josh Gaines, Anthony Scirrotto, A.Q. Shipley, and Derrick Williams voted captains on April 29; Shipley, Williams, and Gaines go to Chicago with Paterno, but keep in mind that Scirrotto was still finishing up his legal issues from the 2007 off-campus brawl, so it seems logical that he would be left behind.

2009: Sean Lee and Daryll Clark are voted captains on May 19; Paterno then picks Jared Odrick to join Lee and Clark for the Chicago trip.

So only one of those years, 2007, can we directly compare to this year's situation. That season, Joe picked his players for the Big Ten Kickoff before the team voted in its captains. But whaddya know, the same three players are named captains three weeks later.

But in all those other years, Paterno has taken the very players who would be later voted in as team captains. Coincidence? We will find out, when the team takes it captains vote, whenever that may be.

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2 comments:

  1. Royster and Wisniewski are painfully obvious choices but Lynn's name is somewhat interesting, he must be showing something to the coaches. Either that or he's a good PR man, Joe loves players that can say the 'right' things.

    ReplyDelete

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