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ESPN’s Peter Burns compares top B1G football programs to ‘sprinters’ & ‘joggers’
By Dave Holcomb
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The term “home run” is one of the more popular sports terms applied to other sports outside baseball to describe a big play. On Monday, ESPN’s Peter Burns used track terms — sprinters and joggers — to make a point about the upper echelon college football programs.
“To me there are sprinters in college football and there are joggers, and I think Ohio State’s a sprinter, LSU’s a sprinter, Alabama’s a sprinter, Oklahoma’s a sprinter,” Burns said on Sirius XM ESPNU. “The joggers are Clemson, the joggers are Florida, the joggers are Penn State.
“Like, they’re quality teams that they could give a run. But I think in 2019, football’s about sprinting. So, what Georgia was able to do once they stopped messing around against Tennessee was impressive.”
Ohio State has certainly sprinted out to huge leads in games this season. In Ohio State’s six wins, the Buckeyes have outscored opponents, 296-53.
Penn State isn’t all that far behind that margin of victory, as the Nittany Lions have beaten opponents 235-37 in five contests. Ohio State has posted a 40.5 margin of victory while Penn State sits at 39.6 in that category.
But Burns included Penn State among the “joggers.” The Nittany Lions play two ranked opponents the next two weeks, but Burns probably wouldn’t consider No. 17 Iowa and No. 16 Michigan “sprinters” either, so Penn State is probably going to have to wait until Nov. 23 when it faces Ohio State to prove it can keep up with the B1G favorite.