The Lions' Pride

Greetings from the press box at Memorial Stadium, everyone. It is brilliantly sunny here as we are about 40 minutes from kickoff.

Couple of quick notes:

-- DE Pete Massaro did not make the trip. No real surprise. DaQuan Davis, Eugene Lewis, Steven Bench, Jordan Lucas, Jesse James, Trevor Williams, Akeel Lynch, Charles Idemudia, Brent Wilkerson and Austin Johnson are the freshmen who made the travel squad.

-- RB Michael Zordich is likely to see some action today, but probably on special teams or as a fullback. Maybe a couple of carries at tailback. He's moving pretty well on warmups.

-- As if the Nittany Lions needed more motivation, the sports front of the hometown Champaign News-Gazette had a story titled "Who Are These Guys?" accompanied by a photo of Penn State from Media Day. A lot of the players are sweating and wiping their faces (it was pretty warm that day), so it's not real flattering. Neither is the story, which chronicles the players that left as well as the players who stayed. Heard that it didn't sit real well with some of the team this morning.

I do ESPN streak for cash with a group of friends. If you are not familiar with it, you basically have a variety of games across all sports that you can pick from and the goal is to get the longest winning streak. We do it for dinner once a month.

Well I went in to make my pick and 63% of the people are picking Illinois. I know they are a slight favorite by Vegas but still there is just always this ignorance towards us. Like we are down and we must not be good because of what Cowboy Joe did to us. I like this chip on the shoulder thing. I took PSU and I am looking for revenge today.

I'll be honest...I'm a little worried. I think we absolutely should win this game, but you never know. Being an away game makes me wary as well.

Wish we could see less of Gress.

Walk-on...linebacker? IIRC.

I think it's been an issue everywhere this season. Can't wait to see how sparse the bowl games are.

Jenn will be changing her name to Mrs. Philafan soon!

I saw that they aren't expected to play but some people have just said that Potic? will play. So I don't know.

Thanks, I know Illinois fan was really worried about playing without them.

everybody on gameday just took PSU to win.

Mike Farrell and Adam Gress get the start at the tackles for Penn State. Belton is the starting tailback.

That was awful