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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Home Archives for 2013

Archives for 2013

We Are!

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Folks, I’m coming at you today to ask you to back our friend Mike Pettigano, the founder and erstwhile chief writer of Black Shoes Diary (c’mon — you all read BSD and you all know Mike, so he really needs no introduction). Mike has assembled a brilliant team of writers including Lou Prato and  the current BSD team, as well as Chase Stuart and Ben Jones to produce a 2013 Penn State football preview, and he needs your help to make it happen.

If you recall the “We Are Penn State” preview magazines from 2009-2011, published by Maple Street Press, that’s the type of publication you’ll be supporting — something you’ll want to gobble up before fall rolls around. Unfortunately, Maple Street Press went belly up, so there was no 2012 edition. Now, Mike & Co. want to print a 112-page 2013 edition.

I was quite taken aback to see that Mike has only managed to get 180 backers thus far, and is less than one-third of the way toward his goal of $35,000, most of which will sucked up by printing expenses. I know that the Penn State community can and will do better than that. I will do my part to get the word out and I just donated a C-note to the cause. Come on, Nittany Lions! Let’s do this thing!

Even a skinny, little $5 donation will help get the project rolling, but you Turkey readers are upper crust (because the Turkey himself is pretty crusty), so I’m certain that Mike can count on you to go the extra mile. You can find all the information you’ll need at KickStarter.com.

O! Holy Night

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Take it to the hole! Tonight is the holiest of nights for the NCAA and its college basketball equivalent of WWE. On center stage in Atlanta are the Cardinals of Louisville and the Wolverines of hated Michigan in a tag-team match to the death.

“Now that the money’s in the bank, why not? Let’s watch our sharecroppers play basketball.”  —David Jones, Patriot-News

Regardless of who wins and who loses, the NCAA comes out a winner. The annual self-affirmed lunacy known as March Madness now extends into April prime time and generates some 81% of the annual revenues of the promoting organization (hitherto known as the rule-making body) from the television deal alone.

How do the so-called student athletes fare? Well, they’re amateur athletes, so the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat constitute the only above-board recompense for their efforts. One could point to the promise of great NBA careers, but the NBA, with an entry age limit of nineteen, has already snarfed up the talent before they become pretend upperclassmen. ???? ????? So the winners get the glory and the girls, but the NCAA gets the money.

For this reason, March Madness should be called the March Charade, a tournament of left-over talent peppered by the occasional superstar with enough foresight to eschew a couple of years as a millionaire for some essence of education. Brackets and pools are cool, though, and I suspect that most of those who gamble on the tournament don’t really give a rat’s ass about who’s playing, other than as it affects their choices and their chances. Cinderella teams make great stories, too, and gee whiz, wasn’t Florida Gulf Coast’s run really way cool?

Yeah, well, who cares.

Follow the money. See Mark Emmert? Emperor Mark. Total revenue for his organization for the current fiscal year is projected at $797 million. You would think that being responsible for that size budget would make him a target for all kinds of questions and revelations. Well, not by watching the Teflon Don of Collegiate Athletics operate in public, but just by virtue of the situation.

So, last Thursday, in the wake of allegations by USA Today that, among other things, he mismanaged a construction sildenafil online india project at the University of Connecticut to the tune of $100 million in slush while he was president there, Emmert showed up at the NCAA tournament press conference with a filibuster for an opening statement. His withering soliloquy was perhaps designed to bore the media representatives to tears or just outlast them, but it didn’t work. The media slung arrows and Emmert raised his shields. But the first chink in the heretofore impenetrable armor bearing the Emmert coat of arms has been realized.

I won’t be watching the NCAA tournament final match tonight, much the same as I haven’t watched a single tournament game along the way. It’s kind of the American Idol of college sports, and I gave up on American Idol many years ago, even before Simon Cowell left. The last NCAA tournament final I got excited about was 1979, when Magic Johnson’s Moo U. Spartans clobbered Larry Bird’s Indiana State Sycamores or perhaps 1982, when Michael Jordan’s Tar Heels (with James Worthy, Sam Perkins, and Matt Doherty) edged Patrick Ewing’s Hoyas. I can watch recordings of those games if I really want to see some basketball. I’m not going to generate a penny more revenue for the NCAA then they’re already getting.

I bet David Jones of the Patriot-News will be watching, because it’s his job, but maybe he actually cares. Who knows? Jones wrote about Emmert last week in none too flattering terms. ????? ????? It’s worth a read. He “breaks down” Emmert’s press conference soliloquy, and with his usual sarcasm, he coins a new term: studentathleteservants. I think he wanted to write studentathleteslaves, but his editors wouldn’t have allowed that. In any case, he hits the nail on the head. Underneath the charade of the student-athlete, the NCAA is putting a bunch of performers on stage to rake in megabucks and maintain its stranglehold on collegiate athletics.

Furthermore, as the USA Today article brings out, its leader is anything but a pristine example. This turkey gonna love to watch him squirm. Will he be able to squirm out of this dark, cold cavern of disdain? Damn, I hope not!

Lest you think I’m hitting Emmert while he’s down, I am. ?????? ??? ???? ?????

 

Good God, Rod!

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The Centre Daily Times  happened into some emails between former NCAA Chief Investigator Ameen Najjar and Nevin Shapiro, the jailed booster of University of Miami scandal fame, in which Najjar blasted Penn State University President Rod Erickson for handing Mark Emmert the dagger to do what he would.

“The Penn State deal is a travesty. The NCAA did not impose anything. Penn State agreed to and self-imposed the penalties, waived all due process and waived any right to appeal. The NCAA has/had NO authority to impose any penalties in that situation and PSU’s president sold the school down the river.”

Of course, we all know the story of how Erickson claims to have been threatened with the death penalty before he rolled over for Emmert. He said his hands were tied and it was either agree to the draconian sanctions or lose the football program completely for a long time.

But was it really that cut-and-dried a negotiation?

Najjar’s email might be the rant of a guy who had sour grapes for the NCAA, having been fired as the anointed scapegoat in the Shapiro case; however, what does he have to gain by demeaning Penn State’s president? By the same token, one has to question what Najjar really knows about the Penn State situation, as he was not involved in the (non-) investigation.

Nevertheless, if he is right, who knows how far back the deal goes? The Freeh Report led to the NCAA sanctions. Perhaps the whole course of affairs was a pre-ordained deal to hang Curley, Paterno, Schultz, and Spanier while saving the hides of the Board of Trustees and diverting attention from the sordid workings of Pennsylvania government and from the Second Mile. If anyone was following the money, they were headed off at the pass.

Meanwhile, Erickson saves his own ass by saying he had no choice.

So, our friends at PS4RS have requested transcripts of communications between the NCAA and PSU. As you might recall, Ed Ray, president of NCAA’s executive committee, claimed that PSU was never threatened with the death penalty. Later, he recanted somewhat, but this is enough to cast doubt on exactly who did what to whom.

Saith PS4RS spokesbabe Maribeth Schmidt:

“If the deal indeed went down the way Rodney Erickson has explained, then there should be nothing to hide. However, we now have two different representatives of the NCAA asserting that there was no such coercion as Dr. Erickson has described.

“Should we ultimately find that Penn State was complicit in the imposition of the sanctions, or that President Erickson misrepresented the events that led to the execution of the consent decree, then it is reasonable to conclude that the Board of Trustees and administration have been dishonest with the Penn State community and have failed wholly and completely in their fiduciary responsibility to the University.”

None of know what really happened behind those closed doors and secured telephone lines. It’s about time we did.