I feel I have to. From this piece that is otherwise unquestioning acceptance of everything Paterno said as to why Penn St. is unable to play Pitt, you get some quotes from PSU players. You know, the ones whom Joe Pa is always so concerned:

For Thursday’s festivities at the Duquesne Club in Pittsburgh, Paterno brought along with him a few of his players, including linebacker Paul Posluszny of Hopewell and center A.Q. Shipley of Moon.

Both Posluszny, one of the Nittany Lions’ three co-captains, and Shipley would welcome a chance to play Pitt someday, although neither are optimistic of that happening any time soon.

“I would love to see Penn State play Pitt again, just to renew the rivalry,” said Shipley, who redshirted last season as a freshman. “I’m hoping that before I graduate, I’ll get to play Pitt at least once.”

“We’d all like to see it happen. It would be great for both schools,” said Posluszny, who’ll be a junior next season. “But it doesn’t look like it’s going to happen … not at least while I’m at Penn State.”

And in the heart of Penn State country, Ron Bracken takes his shots at Penn St. for not playing Pitt.

You knew, you just had to know, that when the NCAA voted to allow its Division I-A football playing schools to add a 12th game to their seasons, Penn State would go looking for its long lost friend and doormat to fill that opening.

Instead of breathing life into the dormant rivalry with Pitt, or going after an attractive inter-sectional opponent, Penn State looked eastward where it found a willing partner in Temple.
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And doesn’t that just make you want to whip out your checkbook and double your contribution to the Nittany Lion Club so you can get choice seats for those showdowns?

Assuming the 2006 Temple game is slated for Beaver Stadium on Nov. 11, which is currently an open date, that would give the Nittany Lions a home schedule of Akron, Louisiana Tech, Northwestern, Michigan, Illinois, Temple and Michigan State.

If this was the verbal part of the SAT test, the question would be which one of those schools does not belong with the others? Hint: Think helmets. Or better yet, think frequency of Rose Bowl appearances.

Can anyone, being in good health and sound state of mind, actually say that Penn State football is better served by playing Temple instead of Pitt?

OK, there is the risk of losing to Pitt to consider. But isn’t that what makes a game entertaining instead of one where the Nittany Lions pull the wings off another MAC fly?

It’s time to put away the tired old complaints about how Pitt used to demand that Penn State play every game in the series in Pittsburgh, about how Pitt’s fans treated visiting Penn State fans shabbily when they ventured to old Pitt Stadium.

Those bleatings are deader than good intentions. In the period from the 1930s through the 1950s, Pitt was the stronger program, had the bigger stadium and more national championships than Penn State. So it had the leverage to demand an unequal number of home games in the series.

And for every Penn State fan who complained about how he or she was treated at Pitt there is a Panther fan who was treated equally shabbily at Beaver Stadium. Remember the “S–tt on Pitt” T-shirts or the “Under the arm, Pitt” chants?

And while it’s those types of things that make a rivalry what it is — you have to have some good old fashioned animosity toward the other guy — there also has to be someone who can see the issue clearly and understand that raw emotions and petty jealousies should never be allowed to cause the demise of something as special as the Pitt-Penn State rivalry once was.
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Myopic Penn State fans take the stance that Pitt is in trouble with the demise of the Big East and can see no reason why the Nittany Lions should help the Panthers by playing them.

Let’s turn that around. Why shouldn’t Penn State play Pitt and help itself by playing a better opponent than Temple, which almost lost its Division I-A status for failing to draw an average of 15,000 fans per game? Temple’s last winning season was in 1990. Pitt went to a bowl game last year.

You would think that Penn State would have learned its lesson during the 1970s when too many Temples, Rutgers, Ohio Universities and Kent States on its schedule cost it national respect and at least one, if not more, national championships.

That last part is kind of hard to buy right now, PSU just wants to get back to a winning record.