Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1476228
W W W . B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M By The Numbers 4th MICAH PARSONS' spot on NFL.com's list of the league's top 10 "disruptors" heading into his second pro season. Using data from Next Gen Stats, writer Nick Shook noted that the former Penn State All- America linebacker made the most of his opportunities as a part-time pass rusher for the Dallas Cowboys last year. "Parsons fell short of the gross totals posted by most of the players listed here when it came to quarterback pressures, but he led the league in quarterback pres - s u re ra te a t 2 1 . 1 p e rce n t ," S h o o k n o te d . " He f i n - ished with 13 sacks, getting home on 4.7 percent of all pass rushes — good for third-best in the N F L . A d d i n the 4 turnovers caused by pres- sure, and Par- s o n s p rove d to be quite the disruptive de- fender in his rookie season." 6 Consec- utive seasons in which Penn State has begun its Big Ten schedule with a road game. The Nittany Lions opened at Michi- gan in 2016, Iowa in 2017, Illinois in 2018, Maryland in 2019, Indiana in 2020 and Wis- consin last year. The streak will soon grow to seven when the Lions begin their 2022 season with a visit to Purdue. Asked at Big Ten Media Days about the team's anomalous run of road openers, new PSU athletics director Patrick Kraft had a blunt response. "It stinks," Kraft said. "I called the conference office and said this is unacceptable. This shouldn't happen at Penn State." Maybe not, but the league had no ap- parent qualms about keeping the streak going. The Nittany Lions had been slated to open their 2023 and 2024 Big Ten seasons on the road, with a visit to Illinois set for Week 3 next year and a trip to Rutgers in Week 3 the following season. However, the impending ad- dition of USC and UCLA has put those schedules in limbo. 22 Number of Penn State stu- dent-athletes who earned a 4.0 grade point average during the 2021-22 academic year. The women's soccer and women's track and field teams had the most student-athletes with perfect GPAs. Three women's soccer standouts —forward Kerry Abello, midfielder Cori Dyke and for- ward Ally Schlegel — earned 4.0s, as did three members of the track and field team — pole vaulter Kaitlin Jones, hammer thrower Gianna Rao and middle-dis- tance runner Victoria Tachinski. 77 Number of Penn State players who have been taken in the Ma- jor League Baseball Draft since it was first held in 1965. That total includes the dozen players who have been se- lected during Rob Cooper's nine-year tenure as head coach of the Nittany Lions. The most recent of those play- ers was catcher Matt Wood, chosen in the fourth round by Milwaukee in July. With his selection as the 132nd pick overall, Wood became the highest- drafted position player in Penn State baseball history. The highest-drafted player overall is pitcher Nate Bump, who went in the first round (25th pick) to the San Francisco Giants in the 1998 draft. Bump went on to spend three years in the majors and was a member of the Florida Marlins' 2003 World Se- ries championship team. $550,000 Corner- back Joey Porter Jr.'s name, image and likeness valuation according to On3.com. The redshirt junior is the top-rated Penn State player in On3's NIL tracker, which uses a proprietary algorithm to assess a player's market value, taking into account his social media fol- lowing, athletic accomplishments, media presence and endorsement deals. Porter, who is considered a potential first-round NFL Draft pick next year, is 46th in the On3 NIL 100, a national ranking made up of current college athletes and recruits in the revenue-producing sports. S E P T E M B E R 2 0 2 2 17 PHOTO COURTESY DALLAS COWBOYS