Pepper

With nothing in the baseball world to attract my attention I remain "focused" on other local teams and sports for now.

Penn State got walloped by Indiana yesterday.  I mean destroyed!  This is the first time the Nittany Lions have ever been beaten by the Hoosiers and when they finally got around to losing they didn't pull any punches.

Among other things the loss underscores how much the sanctions and penalties of the Sandusky scandal have hurt Penn State.  They cannot recruit easily when prospects know there won't be any post-season play. There won't be any post-season play with the kind of numbers the Penn State defense is allowing anyway, but you get the picture.  It's a vicious circle.

Meanwhile, Peter Laviolette, the Flyers coach, was listed by Vegas bookmakers as the first NHL coach likely to be fired.  He's on target, friends.  The Flyers are 0-2 and have looked very beatable.  By the time they've lost their fifth game of the new season, sometime in the next week or two, the coach will be out.

The Eagles are hoping to win a game against the winless NY Giants.  Some odds-makers don't see that happening.  When you face an 0-4 team, even at the opponent's home field, and are the underdogs it tells you a lot about what you already knew.

Go ahead, name five players on the Sixers.  OK, that's three.

Temple has proved a few things already this season.  One, they definitely are not ready for prime-time. Two, rapid turnover of their head coaches does not make it easy to recruit.  They've lost to some real powerhouses and they've lost to some beatable teams.  But they've lost them all.

Speaking of losses, how about the University of Maryland?  In their last year in the ACC, and a year before they join the Big Ten, the Terps have had an impressive start, winning their first four games (and matching all of last year's win total) to break into the Top 25 at number 25.  Then, they faced 8th ranked Florida State in Tallahassee and suffered a humiliating thrashing, 63-0.  When the polls come out early this week Maryland fans will be lucky to find their team ranked in the top 2500.

Back at the ranch, Penn won their home match against Dartmouth in triple OT.  Penn was predicted to win the Ivy League championship this season, but if they take four hours to beat Dartmouth the odds appear much longer than first projected.