Sure, actually being at Beaver Stadium Saturday night to watch Penn State beat-up on Notre Dame was probably pretty fun. But, really, worth $1,100 a ticket? Not likely. Plus that means you missed the horror show that was the Big Ten Network's ESPN's coverage of the game. Your loss.

If you weren't one of the 110,078 people bouncing around to Zombie Nation, chances are you were within earshot of a TV that was tuned into the game. Really, what else would you have been watching, America's Next Top Model Marathon on MTV, not likely. Anyway, ESPN had audio problems from the start of their coverage, with play-by-play guy Mike Patrick often unintelligible when they would go to him after commercial. And the music montage as they went to commercial was messed up all night. Not sure who was supposed to be doing the singing, or what the song was but it was sped up every time, sounded like Alvin and the Chipmunks all night.

It seems that for each of ESPN's prime-time college football coverage they have a special someone announce the starting lineup for the team. So for Notre Dame, famous old **** ND alumnus Regis Philbin read the starters on offense and defense. For Penn State, equipment manager Brad "Spider" Caldwell. OK, a nice gesture as "Spider" is celebrating his 25th year with PSU, but come on, they had Regis! We couldn't get a famous Alum? You're saying Jonathan Frakes (Commander William T. Riker thank you very much) had something better to do?

But maybe the best part of the coverage was analyst (and former PSU quarterback) Todd Blackledge's "Todd's Taste of the Town," a segment he films at an eatery at each college campus ESPN visits. Blackledge, obviously not an avid reader of OTR, choose to film at The Diner, and focused on their grilled stickies. If Todd did read our blog (come on Todd, you can get it sent to your e-mail now, that's just laziness) he would have seen that The Diner was shut down over the summer for health and code violations. Surprisingly that wasn't brought up during the coverage.

Although Blackledge seems OK during the game, keep an eye on him next week in Tallahassee, that tapeworm he got at The Diner should be catching up to him by then.