Photos & quick thoughts from the Pitt game

It's been almost a week, yet my heart rate is still a little elevated. The Penn State win over Pitt was one of the most exciting noon kickoff games I've experienced in a very long time, if not the most exciting ever. It was frustrating, for sure, but a tough win that Penn State probably needed more than it wanted. Games like that teach a team to take nothing for granted. Let's hope the young Nittany Lions learned from it and use this off-week to get themselves mentally ready for Maryland. 

Since this was the first game in a while that I've shot and have been able to process a few photos quick enough to be relevant, here are some shots of the day. The brightness could've been boosted in most of them, but honestly, I didn't have enough time to finely tune the final photographs. My favorite shot of the day is the one at the top of this post. But the rest are below, including the amazing-catch-that-wasn't by Dan Chisena. Oh man, did I want that catch to be ruled complete. It could've been, but we know the refs weren't giving anything to Penn State that day. 

One final update is that the stadium PA system music is still too loud, too annoying, and kills the atmosphere of the stadium more often than it helps. It even drowned out Dean's voice announcing relevant information about the plays. Not sure who isn't paying attention enough to stop this, but it's getting ridiculous. 

Big Ten Officiating at its Finest: Alabama Was Offside

If you were twitterizing this past Saturday night, you may have caught a small uproar among some of us Penn State bloggers and fans, centered around one play during the Alabama-Penn State game. Turns out, our outrage wasn't so delusional after all.

During Penn State's second long drive of the game, Rob Bolden had the Nittany Lions inside the red zone, ready to strike a blow to the Tide's 14-point lead. On the play, Bolden hit Chaz Powell for a simple swing pass. Powell ran for nine yards, but then Bama safety Mark Barron forced a fumble, which was promptly returned 89 yards to the Penn State one yard line before being fumbled back to the Nittany Lions.

The problem here isn't the fact that Powell fumbled, or that Alabama caused Penn State to lose 89 yards on a single play. The problem is that the play should have never even counted, as the Alabama defense was scrambling to line up, and was subsequently offside when the ball was snapped.

Courtesy of our bud, Ben Jones at VBR, this screen shot shows the instant the ball was snapped: