There's been a lot of discussion around how the sanctions are impacting PSU, which is a common thought, particularly from fans further away from the day to day PSU beat, which EMU surely is.

The quantifying of how many scholarship athletes we have, and have played is great by the PSU fan that supplied it. At a more conceptual level PSU still has pretty much all of the players, minus Silas Redd and Khari Fortt that would have had any impact on the 2013 team's roster. Would we be better with those two players, yes, but are we that much worse without them, no.

In coming years if we don't recruit high caliber players we will suffer. We will suffer by sheer depth, but if the 1st stringers still have 1st string quality PSU talent... then we are really just looking at how healthy we stay and how well we balance run-ons as O'brien prefers to call them. He's done a great job of accentuating the effort and heart from players, which can go a long way.

Will we compete with OSU and Urban Meyer year in, year out - in the way that I want... it's unlikely, but when it's you vs. the world - that's powerful motivation.

However, I don't see any chance we actually lose to EMU. The bottom line is that position by position, particularly in the trenches, we have players that would start for you - not players on EMU that would start for PSU.

That's always the telling way to look at it for me. I think EMU will compete and that we will rest some key guys because we have to gamble.

What I think you will see Saturday is that Allen Robinson is likely a 1st round draft pick that will be difficult for NFL defenders to cover, let alone college. So he will require a lot of attention opening things up for others. You will see us be more creative with running into stacked boxes, and you will see a few more audibles that will spring our running game.

Additionally, SU has a very good DL that played well vs. us and was aided, again, by a lot of blitzing that we just ran into. 5 can't block 8 - just can't.

So this week our team will face a lesser DL (just based on comparing SU to EMU's DL) and we will run better, check more, be at home vs. road, and have doubled the experience of our starting QB.

I hope you guys have a blast. How many of you are coming up for the game?