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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CBS Sports says Hitt, O’Leary must go; Paterno family called irrational

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Last week I gobbled quite a bit about the similarities and differences between the two schools recently sanctioned by the NCAA, namely Penn State and University of Central Florida. I felt that UCF got off easy, considering that it is a repeat offender, and that President John Hitt hired head football coach George O’Leary over protests from his faculty and the community, and that the two had presided over a program in which a player had died during practice, resulting in a civil judgment against UCF. Furthermore, UCF’s violations affected both the basketball and football programs. Finally, in contrast to Penn State, UCF’s transgressions involved recruiting, thus potentially cheating to create a competitive advantage, whereas PSU’s violations, egregious as they were, did not affect performance on the field.

Dennis Dodd, Senior College Football Columnist for CBSsports.com, is in accord with me on this one. In his article “Appeal of bowl ban (and other ills) should cost O’Leary, Hitt UCF jobs,” he writes:

Eight days after the nation decried the football culture ruling all at Penn State, football culture is ruling all at Central Florida. Have we learned nothing? We’re not comparing this bowl ban appeal to the horrid abuses at Penn State, but it certainly is another example of the tail wagging the dog. ??? ?????

In another post, Gregg Doyel, National Columnist, hits at the Paterno family for wanting to appeal the Penn State sanctions, about which I also opined last week. In his piece entitled “Paterno family pursuit of record goes from insulting to irrational,” he writes:

According to the letter, the Paterno family wants to soften “the enormous damage done to Penn State, the State College community, former and current students and student-athletes, Joe Paterno and certain others involved, as a result of the unprecedented actions taken by the NCAA.”

Let’s try that last paragraph again, because the part written by the Paterno family was misleading:

According to the letter, the Paterno family wants to soften “the enormous damage done to Penn State, the State College community, former and current students and student-athletes, Joe Paterno and certain others involved, as a result of the unprecedented actions taken by the NCAA.”

Doyel is a bit unfair, as he has nothing at all good to say about the Paterno family. He even gets in his licks at Jay, stating:

…how about a lifetime show-cause penalty for Jay Paterno? Don’t let him coach college football ever again. Part of me thinks Jay Paterno won’t coach again anyway, because who would hire such a dislikeable cretin? But the coaching community is a closed circle, and Jay was born on the inside. Someone would hire him, but not if he has a lifetime show-cause ruling that would force any potential employer to sit before the NCAA and explain itself.

Now I know you want to read the damn thing. You’ll be calling Doyel an Emmert lover, but sometimes it’s good to get mad. ???? ??????

Weathering the Summer in Central Florida

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Although June 22 is the official start of summer, we’ve had summer conditions here since mid-May, and I’m already sick and tired of it. It’s a long, hot summer here in Central Florida, extending from mid-May to mid-October.

We seldom get a break from the heat and humidity. No need to check the weather forecast. We can recite it from painful memory. It doesn’t change. High today, 95; low tonight 75. There’ll be a regularly scheduled thunderstorm at 4:00 PM every day, which sometimes, just for variety, bring damaging hail, strong winds, frequent lightning, and, once in a while, tornadoes. What they don’t do is cool us off. They merely increase the humidity, and hence, the discomfort level.

It is the usual thing to see the temperature-humidity index (THI) exceed 100. Bad things happen to humans at those levels—heat strokes, breathing difficulties, and heart attacks, just to name a few. When the ambient temperature is above body temperature (98.6F/37C), and the humidity is high, it is difficult for the body to employ the standard sweating mechanism to cool itself off. When you stop sweating, that’s the first sign of trouble. The blood flows to capillaries near the surface of the skin in a feeble attempt to radiate heat, but that mechanism is impaired, so major organs are deprived of blood, body temperature increases, and bad stuff starts to happen. [Read more…]

Absence Seizure

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The Turkey has been slacking. It’s the weather here, I think.

Gotta be something. Hell, I love to write and I love to inspire controversy. I haven’t been doing much of either lately.

In the immortal words of Governator Arnold Schwartzenegger, “I’ll be back!” Well, in a little while, anyway.

For those of you who have not experienced the Central Florida summer firsthand, let me give you the forecast for today, tonight, and tomorrow, ad infinitum. Morning sunniness, giving way to afternoon thunderstorms (some of which are violent tornado spawners, replete with hail in excess of one-inch (25 mm) diameter) between 3:30 and 7 PM (just in time to screw up rush hour). High in the mid-90s (that’s around 35C to those who use modern temperature scales). Overnight lows in the upper 70s (mid-20s for you of the metric crowd*). Relative humidity 80%, replenished daily by the thunderstorms. That’s the forecast from mid-May to mid-October, our Central Florida summer.

Enough to curl your hair, ain’t it?

As I write this, AccuWeather says that the “Real Feel” is 102F (in metric terms, that’s friggin’ hot!).

Although the 2004 hurricanes remain a thoroughly unpleasant and not too distant memory, by mid-July each year Central Floridians long for a break in the weather pattern, even welcoming tropical cyclones for variety. While no one wishes for the destructiveness of the nefarious troika of Charley, Frances, and Jeanne, a named (albeit not Saffir-Simpson categorized) tropical storm serves to create a buzz for a while, clean some dead wood off the trees, and bring a crisp freshness to the air for a day or two. ????? ????? A side benefit of a tropical storm incursion is in replenishing the drought stricken and development depleted Florida aquifer with 10 or 12 inches ( 25 – 30 cm) of rain on storm day, which also serves to extinguish various and sundry vestigial wildfires started during the dry season.

Major storms are the only break in the summer monotony for Central Floridians. ????? ????? ?? bet365 Otherwise, it is business as usual, which means slow business or no business, a veritable May to October siesta.

Indeed, the writing business is slow here in Turkeyland. It is hard to be creative when you must endure the constant harangue of the air conditioner bitching to you that it intends to go on strike if it is continually pressed into oppressive service in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act. Why does my air conditioner object to a 168-hour work week? Sweat shop, indeed! Perhaps Barack Obama can figure out how to return it to a 35-hour week while increasing its pay and giving it free filters (paid for by some “rich” person making ,000 per year) for the rest of its life. ????? ??? ????? ?? ??????? He seems to be good at that and his diatribe is convincing to the masses. But I digress. (Notice how I worked irrational Obamamania in here so subtly. This could be a portent of future Turkey rants — hell, I can promise that it will be.)

This Turkey will be taking another heat escape vacation next weekend and the following week. This time, it will take me and my favorite mother hen, Jenny, to the mountains of North Carolina. Upon my return, and after shoveling the inevitable shitload of stuff that arrives in my absence, I’ll be ready  to resume my odoriferous fuming, including the Official Turkey Poop Prediction for the forthcoming Penn State football season, an Official Nittany Turkey endorsement of a presidential candidate (or perhaps, of no presidential candidate), and a few words about why our health care system sucks so bad and why increased socialization of it will put the final nail in its coffin. I just want to give you something to look forward to while I break my metallic neck hiking in the mountains.

So, please stay tuned.

*The metric system is officially mandated in every country except the United States of America, Liberia, and Myannmar. Despite acts aimed at adoption of the worldwide system passed by Congress in 1975 and 1988, and a similarly intended executive order by President George H. W. Bush in 1991, the metricalization of the U.S. was finally torpedoed by Congress in the waning days of the Clinton Administration in 2000. We were all set to go metric, but then the usual political machinations involving the desire to please everyone in return for their votes got in the way, thus ensuring that we would remain in the ranks of the backwater tin-pot so-called republics which lack the wherewithal or the conviction to complete the changeover. It seems that we as a nation are no longer capabable of swallowing a bitter pill that will make us better in the long run.