A Tale of Two Programs or, Good Germans at State College

There were two football games last weekend involving two programs who are going through two scandals of two different kinds, in two different states, and in two different conferences.

The first is Penn State, which has been in an ongoing controversy about Joe Paterno and the way the coach who won 409 football games for the Nittany Lions handled the fact that his longtime defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky was molesting children on the Penn State campus, starting perhaps as early as 1976.

For some incredibly tone deaf and stupid reason, Penn State chose to honor the late Paterno at Saturday’s game against Temple. The presumed goal of this tribute was to remind everyone of the good things Joe Paterno did, like donating to the school library, making sure his athletes graduated and got degrees, and of course, the winning of all those football games.

At What Cost, Victory?

By now the story of the fall of Joe Paterno is one familiar to both college football fans and casual observers of the sport. Paterno was the popular and successful head coach of Penn State’s football team, renowned both for his on-field success and his unusually high graduation rates for players. He also is in no small part responsible for God-knows how many instances of child abuse, if not directly than through a crime of omission.

New court documents were unsealed yesterday that showed, among other things, that Joe Paterno may have known about Jerry Sandusky’s sexual abuse of children as early as 1976, when a boy attending a football camp at Penn State told Paterno that Sandusky had assaulted him in the shower. Paterno allegedly brushed him off, telling him he “had a football season to worry about.”

That was the first in what appears to have been a long string of instances where Joe Paterno prioritized winning football games over the safety and security of children on the Penn State campus, attending football camps to try and better themselves and instead having their lives forever shattered by a predator who could have, and should have been stopped.

Baylor Probably Deserves the Death Penalty

Just when I thought I couldn’t be shocked anymore by scandal in college athletics, Baylor came and proved I was wrong. I believed that Penn State had been the nadir, that I would never see a scandal that heinous in my lifetime, at least not related to college football. But here we are.

Cotton Bowl Recap: An Alabama Ass Whuppin’ and A Season in Review

 

I’ve been sitting for a week stewing about the outcome of the Cotton Bowl (Alabama 38, Michigan State 0), which could be charitably described as an Alabama Ass Whuppin’ (to steal a phrase from the Drive-By Truckers). It’s one of those games that is better not to dwell on too much, or else you start to think that things like T.S. Eliot’s “The Hollow Men” are relevant to your circumstance:

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang, but a whimper

The gunpowder plot, World War 1, the H Bomb, getting curb stomped by Nick Saban. These are all basically the same thing (or at least, the temptation exists to believe that they are).

The Case for a Six Team Playoff

This is the second year of the college football playoff, and despite the incessant doomsaying during the BCS Era proclaiming how a playoff would ruin college football, it has generally been very well received in the first two years of its existence.  Unlike last year’s selections for the four spots in the playoff, there was little controversy this season about who the final four should be, with the only real debate concerning whether Michigan State should be seeded 3^rd or 4^th in the final committee rankings.

Hotty Toddy Gosh Almighty A Yankee in the Grove

It’s somewhere around 2:00 PM, Central Time.

My parents and I arrived on the Square, later than we’d expected because I had forgotten my wallet in the car and had to go back for it. That was fine, we still had about three and a half hours until kickoff. We stopped off in a bar to grab a drink or two and something to eat before heading into the Grove proper. This is my parent’s gameday tradition, apparently, because they like to see the other games going on that day, and are not trying to be falling down drunk walking into the game. The same cannot be said for everyone in Oxford, MS, and it becomes clear as Arkansas and Auburn enter their 4th overtime in Fayettville that some of our fellow bar patrons are not likely to make it until kickoff for the game tonight between the Ole Miss Rebels and the Texas A&M Aggies.

Make the Big Ten Great Again

The Big Ten has been roundly mocked year after year for being a soft conference, a conference of pretenders. Last year’s bowl victories and National Championship did little to dispel that notion. One great postseason, it seems, does not a conference reputation make.