Archive: March, 2013
Joe Juliano
Penn State signee Zayd Issah, a highly sought-after linebacker from Central Dauphin High School in Harrisburg, has been arrested and charged for allegedly attempting to pass counterfeit money to buy food at a McDonald’s restaurant.
Issah, who is 6-foot-3 and 210 pounds, was one of 12 players who signed a national letter of intent with the Nittany Lions on Feb. 6 to play football. It is not yet known how the arrest will affect Issah’s career at Penn State, where coach Bill O’Brien had expected him to compete for a backup role in his first season.
A request for comment from Penn State spokesman went unanswered Thursday.
Joe Juliano
Bill O’Brien will take to the road for the second straight year when the Penn State Coaches Caravan embarks on a two-week tour to 12 cities beginning April 30.
Philadelphia is scheduled to be the second stop on the first day of the caravan. The location and registration process for that event and for the other cities are still to be announced.
The caravan will visit nine Pennsylvania cities along with Baltimore, Washington and New York. At each stop, O’Brien, who led the Nittany Lions to an 8-4 record last fall in his first season as head football coach, will be accompanied by at least one other head coach of a Penn State athletic program.
Joe Juliano
Earlier this week, Penn State quietly replaced Dr. Wayne Sebastianelli as head physician for the football team after 21 years in that job, but the reaction by a family member of one of his prominent former patients hasn’t been quiet.
On Thursday, the father of Adam Taliaferro, the former South Jersey high school star who was nearly paralyzed after suffering a spinal injury in a 2000 game against Ohio State, spoke out in support of Sebastianelli in a letter to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.
Andre Taliaferro said that without Sebastianelli coming to his son’s aid immediately upon sustaining the injury, the younger Taliaferro “could have died or been a lifelong quadriplegic.”
This season is Joe's fourth season on the paper's Penn State beat. He previously covered the Nittany Lions for United Press International from 1976 to 1984.
Emily Kaplan is the Inquirer’s fall intern covering the Nittany Lions. She is a senior at Penn State and has covered a variety of sports for the university’s student-run paper, The Daily Collegian. Over the last two years, she has reported for The Associated Press from State College.
A Montclair, N.J. native, she has also interned at MLB Network, NHL.com and covered the 2012 Olympics in London. Follow her on Twitter here @EKaplan24.
