Lions’ roar couldn’t help Penn State

Penn State might have lost its Sept. 26 game against Iowa, but it wasn’t because of the home crowd’s lack of effort.

Engineers in Penn State’s graduate program in acoustics are measuring the sound generated by the crowd at the Nittany Lions’ home field, Beaver Stadium.

At points during the game, the sound levels reached 110 decibels.

Andrew Barnard, a senior research assistant at the Applied Research Laboratory, told the Penn State Daily Collegian, “You know if you’re at a rock concert? If you’re standing right in front of the speakers -- that’s how loud 110 decibels is.” Barnard said the game noise level can be predicted by whom the team is playing and how well Penn State is playing.

“That’d be so cool if it got louder,” freshman Hollis Leidy said. “It really gets you into it.”

Trivia time

What Penn State player was stopped short on fourth and goal in Alabama’s famous goal-line stand in the 1979 Sugar Bowl?

No tweeting for him

Don’t expect Charles Barkley to endorse Twitter or Facebook any time soon.

Barkley said on Dan Patrick’s radio show that he is not a loser and that he doesn’t tweet. “I think twittering and all that Facebook [junk] just makes you a loser. I’ve never said to myself, ‘I wonder what what’s-his-name is doing today.’ Shaquille O’Neal is one of my favorite people, I love him like a brother, but I’ve never said to myself, ‘Let me twitter Shaquille O’Neal. I wonder what he’s doing today.’ ”

Barkley added, “People who sit around and worry about what some celebrity is doing, that’s just ignorant to me. I truly believe that. I’m not trying to be funny or anything. Somebody has no life when they’re sitting there worrying about what somebody has to say. Like, ‘Oh, yeah, I’m at this place eating or I’m at this place today.’ That just makes you a loser.”

Deal-breaker

Some Chicago officials, still hurting from their city’s first-round ouster in the race for the 2016 Olympics, are pointing fingers at the person they believe cost them the Games: George W. Bush.

“There must be” resentment against America, the Rev. Jesse Jackson told the Chicago Sun-Times. “The way we [refused to sign] the Kyoto Treaty, we misled the world into Iraq. The world had a very bad taste in its mouth about us. But there was such a turnaround after last November. The world now feels better about America and about Americans. That’s why I thought [President Obama’s] going was the deal-maker.”

Trivia answer

Mike Guman.

And finally

Tiger Woods, to PGATour.com, when asked about the difference between watching Peyton Manning and Michael Jordan: “Well, no one’s trying to rip Jordan’s head off, maybe unless he’s playing the Pistons.”

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