Hand me a fork and a knife. A glass of water -- preferably a big one -- would be nice.
I'll also probably need the salt and pepper shakers, and a dash of ketchup can't hurt.
This meal will be a bitter one because it's never easy to eat your words.
Yep, it's not yet two games into the football season and all ready I've been wrong. Not like misspelling the seventeenth word in the fourth paragraph of my story in last weekend's stadium magazine -- actually, I checked, and I did get the "Bryant" in Bryant Johnson right -- but like the two-plus-two-is-five kind of wrong.
I was the one who tried to go out on a limb and ended up plummeting to the ground by picking tailback Austin Scott as the Penn State football team's most overrated offensive player.
Think sun revolving around the earth wrong.
Think Corey Feldman's attempt to be a legitimate actor wrong.
But before I break out the good champagne in praise of the true freshman, which I will do unashamedly in several paragraphs, I have to at least make my case first.
Coming into his first year with the Nittany Lions, there was no possible way the prep star, who rushed for 3,853 yards and 53 touchdowns -- both Pennsylvania state single-season records -- could live up to the hype.
It's the same hype that crushes high-profile recruits every year. It's the "Sure, they're good, but that was high school and there's acclimation time and the game's different speed and blah, blah, blah" hype
Then there was the offensive line which was about as sure as Dennis Rodman's next hair color, neither of which looked very good beforehand.
And, if -- and this is an enormous if -- if both Scott's adjustment to the college game and the offensive line's adjustment to something other than garbage time somehow came together, there was still the train wreck that was the Lions' tailback position.
No one really wanted to acknowledge the smoking metal that was left in the wake of Larry Johnson's departure, but no one could really look away, either.
It was a position battle that seemingly was, and remains, about 87 players deep.
There was Ricky Upton. There was Mike Gasparato. There was Tim Shaw. There was Donnie Johnson, who I, gulp, picked to see the majority of the carries by the end of the season.
And then, after all those guys got their shot, it was supposed to be the three-headed Austin Scott-Tony Hunt-Rodney Kinlaw true-freshman tailback monster that could scare the bejesus out of coaches.
So, in review: too much hype for Scott, too much uncertainty for the O-line and too much depth at the tailback position.
It was supposed to be, "Thanks for coming out Austin, we'll see you next season."
But, if things turned out the way I thought, I would be right too often to be comfortable.So Austin darted, dodged and dashed for 12 carries on 69 yards, looking surprisingly smooth in his first-ever Beaver Stadium experience last Saturday. He bounced off, slid around and ran through tacklers on 11 second-half rushes for 64 yards.He had the patience to wait for a hole to open up on several carries and didn't try to create too much when the play wasn't there. Even more than that, though, was his uncanny ability to create a buzz.You didn't have to see No. 22 on the field, you just sort of knew when he was there. And, from those few moments, you got a fleeting sense of his talent, but with an eerie sense that he had just begun to scratch the surface.That is the essence of making predictions. You have a lot of facts, some good observations and possible scenarios and, from there, you make an educated guess. That's all it is, nothing more, nothing less; just an informed hypothesis.And when things turn out another way, you end up eating an extremely sour meal.
