The Nittany Turkey

Primarily about Penn State football, this is a tale told by idiots, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

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Archives for July 2012

Going… Going…

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Happy Sunday morning, folks. It looks like this could be it for the Paterno statue. The action started around 6 AM, much to the chagrin of the Physical Plant workers and University Police who had to get up early. The Turkey awoke on a premonition, or perhaps because of AS’s snoring.

Penn State President Rod Erickson has issued a statement, in which he defends his decision to remove the statue because it has become a source of division. He said he felt strongly that the Paterno name should remain on the library.

Tweets from people on the scene report that police have set up roadblocks with university garbage trucks and heavy equipment has moved into the statue area. A construction fence covered with blue tarps for privacy is being erected around the statue. No protesters were there. The alleged people who actually were there to observe were purportedly news people.

Obviously, there won’t be any on-site meltdown. I’m pretty sure that the statue will probably be moved to a well-known secret location for a while. Whether that location is secure enough to resist pranksters and protesters is not known at this time. If I were calling the shots, I’d warehouse the thing far away from campus, perhaps in one of those PENNDOT sites next to abandoned Pennsylvania Turnpike tunnels.

Joe Paterno died exactly six months ago and Jerry Sandusky was convicted on 45 of 48 charges involving sexual abuse of minors one month ago to this very day.

The Penn State Board of Trustees directed President Rod Erickson to make the decision regarding removal of the statue. As rumors piled up, most of them pointing to this weekend, Erickson gave the go ahead.

Erickson will retire next year.

The Centre Daily Times reported that PSU spokesman Bill Mahon and three others, as yet unidentified, are viewing the scene from a skybox inside Beaver Stadium. Workers with yellow and green safety vests and hardhats are busily preparing for the statuary rape.

Sorry for the crappy humor. I haven’t yet had any coffee.

One of the best pieces of irony I encountered was from a reader of one of ESPN’s sports blogs who suggested that instead of removing the statue, they should rotate Joe 180 degrees so he’ll be looking the other way.

Some Tweeters are bitching about “so much for our new era of transparency”. So, what did you expect? Wait for fall semester and announce the event two weeks in advance?

I’ll watch the scene unfold via Twitter, and I’ll be back this afternoon with a recap of the day’s statuetory activities unless something totally weird happens.

Here’s a live TV feed from the statue, courtesy of Centre Daily Times.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Statue will/will not be torn down this weekend

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Jeez. I thought it would be a peaceful Friday. Went out this morning  to try out a couple of kayaks. Wound up buying two. Had a nice lunch with AS. Came back home. Read the news. What? The statue is coming down? The statue isn’t coming down? People thinking they know what they’re talking about not knowing what they’re talking about? WTF?

Some are saying that the issue has already been voted on. Others say that only Erickson is involved, not the BOT. Erickson said that he knows nothing about no steenking statue comeen down.

Well, if I were Erickson, I would do two things. First, I would decide to take the statue down. The reason is simple: appease the NCAA. For if Penn State doesn’t jump through enough hoops before the beginning of the football season, the NCAA is liable to ensure that there will be no football season. Second, I would swear everyone to secrecy. It seems that secrecy is an ambiguously implemented concept on the Penn State campus. A child rapist can be kept secret for 16 years, but at other times the ivory tower seems to leak like a sieve. This is one instance in which a leak to the ever hungry media could be  dangerous.

If the statue does come down this weekend as the leaks suggest, you can be sure there will be an organized protest. That’s a good enough reason for secrecy. Hell, we students used to guard the Nittany Lion shrine all night to protect against marauding Orangemen from Syracuse. I think we should expect that if the approximate timing — or even the date — of the statue removal is known, there will be a contingent of students to conduct an “over my dead body” vigil on the statue site. It could get ugly.

The argument in favor of removing the statue is that it will be a show of earnest intent by the sitting administration to absolve itself of the sins of the past. Coupled with the resignation of former trustee Steve Garban, the gesture might be enough to avoid the so-called death penalty. Or not. But Penn State has to make some visible progress beyond the sordid past of the Sandusky scandal.

Garban was chairman when the Sandusky scandal broke, so his resignation is a logical step. He still holds the title of Senior Vice President of Finance and Operations/Treasurer Emeritus at Penn State. His term would have ended in 2013. Garban was captain of the Nittany Lions football team in 1959 and worked for the university for 33 years. He was senior vice president for 12 of those and he was elected trustee in 1998. Many thought that he and Paterno were good friends.

Back to the statue, to leave it stand is to send a message of defiance to the NCAA. That’s perhaps the last thing Penn State needs to do right now. While this Turkey had recently advocated keeping the statue and moving it to a proposed Paterno exhibit in the All Sports Museum, it occurred to me that the NCAA might be specifically looking for this kind of symbolic “sacrifice” to appease the gods on high.

Will a Garban sacrifice and a posthumous Paterno defilement, along with implementation of the recommendations of the Freeh report, be sufficient as a show of good faith for the NCAA? This Turkey thinks that with a little more housecleaning on the board of trustees, it just might be.

Somebody needs to caulk up Old Main to plug those damn pesky leaks. The statue take down needs to happen under a cloak of secrecy to avoid a riot similar to that which occurred after Paterno’s dismissal last November. Students really don’t need much of an excuse to riot, but the statue removal would be a definite trigger.

Still, Penn State can’t allow itself to be held hostage by the threat of a student revolt, so it must act as Rod Erickson decides, and not change course in mid-stream.

Decisive leadership is essential at this juncture.

Sudden Impact: Channeling Rahm

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Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel once opined succinctly about political opportunism: “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.”

In the wake of the Penn State debacle, the Big Ten appears to have taken Rahm’s advice to heart, if we are to believe a breaking AP story:

The Chronicle of Higher Education is reporting that the Big Ten is considering a plan to give its commissioner the power to fire coaches in the wake of the Penn State child sex-abuse scandal.

An 18-page plan being circulated among Big Ten leadership would include giving Commissioner Jim Delany the authority to levy sanctions including financial penalties, suspensions and termination of a school employee. The Chronicle said it had obtained a document laying out the details.

The Big Ten did not respond to requests for comment today.

So, now the Big Ten presumably wants to gain the power to usurp the authority of member university presidents in order to make its own personnel decisions on their turf? What’s next? The Big Ten has to be involved in their hiring, too?

That 18-page plan better damn well provide some extreme circumstances for triggering the removal of a coach by the Big Ten. Certainly a criminal act should result in the coach being dismissed, but that’s a no-brainer. No university president would ever allow a convicted criminal to coach. So, what circumstances would prompt a coach’s dismissal by the B1G? Should we judge someone before he is tried in a court of law? Should we react based upon Freeh Report allegations? I’m laughing.

Sanctions and financial penalties I can see. Personnel actions, no way.

Perhaps the NCAA and the Big Ten should spend their time developing a plan to divorce big-time football programs from universities and run their own NFL farm systems. The concept of a student athlete who performs at the highest level is in serious doubt at the Turkey coop. Yes, there are a few — damn few — who turn out great, but come on. Listen to some of our own Nittany Lion seniors talk. They’re barely literate, ya know what I’m sayin’? The charade of supposedly providing poor, minority lads a free education in return for representin’ on da field is a joke. In most cases, da kid is an indentured servant who winds up with a half-assed education. If he’s good at football, the gods will go to great lengths to make him appear to be a scholar. You know dat.

I know, I know. Penn State has always been the model, graduating more football players than anyone else and producing guys like Mike Reid, etc. Yeah, I know. A lot of good ones would have succeeded with or without football. However, would Penn State (or anyone else’s) football be successful without coddling some hard-core functional illiterates through their so-called education while they major in Parks & Recreation Management? This Turkey does not think so.

I say to the NCAA and the university presidents, either spin off the Junior NFL for some sort of annuity from the lucky purchaser, or raise the academic standards so that “student athlete” is no longer oxymoronic. Incorporating high-priced entertainment into the higher education milieu promotes corruption and distortion of values. That’s why football coaches are more powerful than university presidents in some cases. Not to mention any—just sayin’.

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Some more stuff in the same vein to ponder while you wait for the whistle to blow and you don’t feel like shooting any more paper clips at the ceiling. (You should be ashamed of yourself! There are loads of unemployed people out there who would love to be shooting paper clips for their meager penance.)

Remember Pat Forde? He has turned up as Yahoo Sports’ expert. Pat thinks it’s time for schools to seize control of athletic programs (novel concept though it is), and guess who should lead the way?

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Meanwhile, Ray Ratto writes that Peterno [sic] put the brand ahead of human decency. Ray’s about as subtle as a two-by-four between the eyes, and maybe he can’t even spell Paterno, but this is worth a read. Thanks to reader Joe for digging it up.

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Here’s one that will piss you off. Alabama Crimson Tide head football coach Nick Saban calls the Penn State scandal “A very, very criminal situation.” (I previously thought that that particular label should have been hung on that jackass on Jersey Shore, but that show has been cancelled, so I don’t care anymore.) Saban, in his articulate, cogent manner (note irony, please) added, “… that reflects poorly on a lot of things.” He’d like to tax the tickets and give the proceeds to some child abuse organization. He claims that he could have never gained as much power at Alabama as Paterno had at Penn State.

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Wow, thanks and a big tip of the helmet to David Regimbal of Land-Grant Holyland, an Ohio State Buckeye blog, for his sensitive and objective article, “When Penn State Comes to Town.” You’re used to sarcasm from this Turkey, but I’m swallowing the vitriol to state unequivocally that this piece deserves your attention, especially if you think everyone out there is using Penn State’s scandal to take potshots as anything even remotely associated with PSU. Good job, David!

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Back when the Turkey was a mere fledgling, Penn State freshmen had to learn the words of the Alma Mater. For some reason, and at some point in history, things got pretty loose and irreverent in Happy Valley, somehow causing the mutation of the Alma Mater’s opening line from “For the glory of old State” to “We don’t know the g*ddamn words”. In this time of Penn State soul searching, it is particularly important for students and alumni to carefully consider the real words. Justin Cortes of Onward State wrote a good article on the subject, interpreting and commenting on each line.

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In our final impactful piece of the day, the editorial staff of the Collegian asks Penn State president Rodney Erickson to give up the open records exemptions granted to the university by the state, and permanently maintain the transparency that he promised for the investigation.

Well, that’s all she wrote — he wrote — for this edition of Sudden Impact. I didn’t touch at all on the potential “death penalty” for Penn State by the NCAA, as it is all speculation at this point. It is not looking good, though, based on the hints and quips one reads. The NCAA wants to see documentation of substantive, positive, preventive change in Penn State’s response, which is forthcoming next week. It would be an excellent show of good faith to the NCAA if somehow between now and then, Erickson would take the open records issue seriously and perhaps three or four trustees would admit to malfeasance and resign. In my mind, that’s worth a stay of execution.