(NOTE: the information in this article is incorrect. Please read the correction here.)
I guess we should have suspected that this would happen, but maybe this Turkey couldn’t add two plus two. Channel 21 News, somewhere in the heart of Pennsylvania, is reporting that an NCAA spokesperson confirmed to its news and sports director Jason Bristol that Penn State must return the trophies won during the period of vacated victories to whomever runs the bowls.
So, this will mean that the six bowls that PSU won during that period will have to be erased entirely from the records, or what? Will those years in which the Nittany Lions won two Outback Bowls, two Alamo Bowls, one Orange Bowl, and one Capital One Bowl show up with a blank line on the organizers’ web sites’ listings of winners, or an asterisk, or what? Will the NCAA perform some hasty accounting to make PSU give back its winners share of bowl proceeds for those wins, or is that covered in the $60 million they’re otherwise extracting?
Once again, the players whose glory derived from those bowl wins will be pawns, the memories of fine efforts in bowl games no longer represented by trophies in the lobby of the Lasch Football Building, trophies they could have shown their children and grandchildren on family visits to Penn State.
Man, I’m tired of this. It wears us all down. What a mess!
Enough is enough! At some point this has to awaken the sleeping Popeye being beaten unconscious by Bluto. Pass him the spinach! I am what I am and dat’s all what I am! We are what we are! WE ARE…
…PENN STATE !!!
[the refrain from “Fight on State” plays while spinach can opens and is guzzled by Popeye O’Brien]
Oops. I guess I was daydreaming there. We have to keep a laser focus on the future, says Obergruppenführer Peetz. No one is fighting. Bluto wins. Shame on me for thinking the outrage would finally impel someone to get up off the damn canvas.
One good thing, though: because we don’t get to play Moo U. for the foreseeable future and because the Spartans won last, they get to keep the ugly-ass Land Grant Trophy in East Lansing in perpetuity!
We have to be thankful for small miracles at this point when all the chips are down.
And big thanks to Joe, for pointing us to the original news story.
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Joe says
This just in!!!
UPDATE: 5:15 p.m. – WHPTV’s Jason Bristol is now reporting that the NCAA did not direct Penn State to return the trophies, but that each bowl operator and PS must decide what is appropriate.
So another case of our journalist friends not doing any fact checking before publishing the story-why am I not surprised at this.
I would think that the bowl committees could care less about PS packing this stuff up and sending it back.
It would be nice if someone could confirm whether they are still on display or off to some secret spot to be buried with the Paterno statue.
I would not be surprised if in the context of moving forward with laser focus, they have already been picked up by FedEx and they are on their way to the land of garish sport coats.
The Nittany Turkey says
I’ll have to issue a retraction! Such fun! Thanks for the update.
I think someday in the distant future, if we on Earth are still around (or if not, perhaps aliens will be interested), someone will do an excavation that reveals an old, abandoned PA Turnpike tunnel where they decided it would be cheaper to add extra lanes going around the mountain than blasting a second tunnel. There, the lucky archaeologist will find a bronze statue of an ancient god with finger pointing skyward, surrounded by urnlike offerings, and next to a shallow grave containing a tribal elder known as a “district attorney”. Meanwhile, Corbett has sealed the crypt.
—TNT