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Would you rather PSU had beaten Oregon or landed in this bracket? Lions face far easier path to national title after loss

Ho ho ho, Merry Christmas, Penn State. Your early present: The easiest playoff path for a No. 6 seed in the history of sports! Heck no, Penn State would not have been better off beating Oregon and winning the Big Ten title. The reward for being the No. 1 overall seed would have been a potential matchup with Ohio State in the second round of the College Football Playoff. Everybody should know by now that Penn State should never, ever, ever want anything to do with the Buckeyes when it comes to trying to win a championship. Unless a miracle occurs on the field, like it did in 2016, I ...

Teams try to stay healthy for playoffs

Patrick Mahomes is battling another ankle injury. Josh Allen has a banged-up shoulder. Geno Smith is dealing with a knee issue. Those are just the quarterbacks who got hurt in Week 15. The Detroit Lions keep losing players at an alarming rate. Other teams are dealing with injuries to key players. It’s often not the best team that’s standing at the end, but the one that was healthiest going into the playoffs. Mahomes has a mild high-ankle sprain and plans to play Saturday when the Chiefs (13-1) host the Texans (9-5). Mahomes has played through a high-ankle sprain before, ...

Player, coach movement kicking in

Some notes to digest as the Nittany Lions gear up for their first College Football Playoff appearance: n This is attrition season in college football, and it started for Penn State on Thursday with the announcement that safety Kevin Winston Jr. will enter the NFL Draft. Winston missed almost the entire year with a knee injury that required surgery after he left the Bowling Green game on Sept. 7. He was voted a team captain as a junior after a strong 2023 season, and his presence with Jaylen Reed gave the Lions two dynamic safeties. Winston’s absence was particularly noticeable ...

Football characters were full of quips

In last month’s column, some of baseball’s funniest and most colorful characters were explored. It’s time to give equal billing to a handful of football’s wild, witty, and wonderful characters. Start with a former Pittsburgh Steeler (1961 and 1962), Pro Bowl defensive lineman Gene Lipscomb. He wasn’t called “Big Daddy” for nothing — he went 6-foot-6, and he made scales groan under his 284 pounds. This was back in an era when players anywhere near 300 pounds were pretty rare. One-time Baltimore teammate Raymond Berry said, “He was quick with great upper body ...

Looking at economics of hunting in state

While doing some internet research for a future article, I came across a news story posted just before the start of deer season. The focus of that story was that many rural businesses would like to see the opening day of deer season moved back to the Monday after Thanksgiving rather than the Saturday after Thanksgiving as it has been since 2019. This response seems strongest from some businesses in the sparsely populated northcentral region of Pennsylvania that benefited from a large influx of deer hunters coming there to spend the weekend before the opener at a hunting camp or other ...

Guilfoyle shows it’s truly a band of brothers

By Michael Boytim mboytim@altoonamirror.com MECHANICSBURG — When teams talk about being a family, it’s usually used in a figurative way. For many of the players on the Bishop Guilfoyle Academy football team, it’s literal. There are five sets of brothers on the Marauders’ roster — ...