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Home Archives for Joe Paterno

Sorry, Bobby – St. Joe Rules

Posted on January 16, 2015 Written by The Nittany Turkey

Joe Paterno Wins Over NCAA Posthumously

Hot flash! The NCAA announced that pursuant to an agreement being hammered out between the parties, Joe Paterno’s 111 vacated wins will be restored. They’ll give one back to Scrap Bradley, too.

He’s Real Fine, My 409!

So, St. Joe now has 409 wins again and Bobby Bowden has fewer. Pffffffffffft!

So, Why Is This Happening?

The NCAA fears what might come out of the pending trial, that’s why. And I don’t blame them, because what they did to Penn State bordered on criminal. No doubt, there are other skeletons in their closet that Mark Emmert and company are loath to have exposed.

While we’re at it, Louis Freeh ought to be afraid — be very afraid. I want my $6 million buy tramadol with paypal back.

And now, what about the statue? LOL! Is it in Franco’s basement? Is it stored “in a safe place” like one of those abandoned Pennsylvania Turnpike tunnels? Enquiring minds want to know. Will this settlement clear the way for the Penn State administration to begin restoring the glory of St. Joe, like PS4RS has wanted all along?

Name the stadium Paterno’s Beaver Stadium. Hell, call the University Joe Paterno Culture of Football University, for that matter! St. Joe is Back!

While we’re at it, USA Today published a piece giving a good timeline on how Penn State was coerced into signing the consent decree.

Read About It

ESPN Story

USA Today: Did Penn State really face the death penalty?

 

 

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Filed Under: Penn State Football, Penn State Scandal Tagged With: Joe Paterno, NCAA sanctions

Paterno Statue Proposal Reprise

Posted on April 23, 2014 Written by The Nittany Turkey

Joe Paterno Statue ProposalAlmost a year ago, I posted a proposal concerning creating a memorial statue of Joe Paterno in downtown State College. I’ve had people ask me where it came from but I never really knew. Now, this idea is heating up again, and as one would expect, not without its share of controversy, vitriol, and dare we say warm acceptance.

The proposed location for the $300,000 statue, which will be created by the sculptor Zenos Frudakis, is outside The Tavern restaurant, an old eatery and watering hole we used to reserve for special dates or otherwise for rich kids back when we were students. It is centrally located on College Avenue, a focal point for returning alumni. The target date is 2015. Funding will be generated through Kickstart.com, among other sources.

(Now I launch into a tangential rant about “alumni“. You are not “an alumni“. Alumni is the plural of alumnus, the Latin masculine noun. Alumnae is the plural of alumna, the Latin feminine noun. Do we want to get into neuter? I guess so — we have to be all-inclusive, for diversity’s sake. Alumnum would be the singular and alumna would be the plural, the same as the feminine plural, if there was indeed such a thing as a neutered alumnus or alumna. However, to describe a mixed collection of masculine, feminine, and neuter ex-students, we use alumni, because the Romans hadn’t yet been curtailed by the Feminazis into butchering their language for the sake of so-called political correctness, as it were. End of grammar Nazi rant coupled with male Chauvinist piguousness.)

But I digress. 🙂

Here are some links where you can view various versions of this story.

  • New York Daily News
  • Washington Post
  • Sports Illustrated
  • Onward State
  • Daily Collegian
  • StateCollege.com
  • PennLive.com

That’s enough, already!

If I could get Twitter to do its thing properly, I’d show you some of the negative reactions I observed there, but I cannot seem to get it to generate the “embed” code today.

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Filed Under: Penn State Football Tagged With: Joe Paterno, statue

Aha! I always thought so!

Posted on March 7, 2014 Written by The Nittany Turkey

Mike McQueary
Former Penn State wide receiver coach and recruiting coordinator Mike McQueary.

Back in 1995, when former Penn State assistant coach Mike McQueary, of Sandusky incident fame, was a backup quarterback, Big Red came in to clean up a blowout win for Wally Richardson and with about a minute left completed a 60-yard touchdown play that seemed a bit odd to all observers. Rutgers coach Doug Graber was incensed and at the end of the game, instead of shaking hands with St. Joe, he hurled epithets at him, to which The Sainted One responded with a hearty “Bullshit!” Although the play was subjected to the usual fan and media commentary back then, only recently has anyone concocted the notion that McQueary, who suffers from a notable gambling problem, had bet on the game and needed the touchdown to cover the spread.

Graber thought at the time that Paterno was deliberately running up the score to lobby for recognition in the national poll, having been snubbed in favor of Nebraska the prior year. Paterno says he had called a short pass to the tight end for a first down, but that the home run receiver was wide open, so McQueary chose him.

I pointedly asked McQueary about this at an alumni association meeting several years ago. As I started my question with, “Flash back…” I saw him wince as I uttered those words, but he seemed relieved when I went on with, “…to 1995 when you were backup QB. You came in late to clean up a game and wound up throwing a home run ball. What the hell were you thinking?”

McQueary explained that he checked off the tight end because he was covered and when he looked next at the receiver running the deep route he saw he was wide open, so he went for it. He then added that Joe was OK with that and he didn’t catch hell or anything. I thought otherwise, because the TV camera caught St. Joe shaking his head on the sideline. Furthermore, he had to take all that shit from Graber.

My colleagues criticized me for asking such a softball question then, because McQueary was at the meeting to discuss his recruiting efforts. I didn’t care about McQueary’s recruiting. That play stuck in my mind as a “need to know more” kind of thing. It seemed so atypical on so many levels.

Well, someone else has apparently picked up the ball that I dropped there. David Purdum of Betting Talk came up with the possibility that McQueary had bet on the game and needed the touchdown to win his bet. I’ll let you read his story and you may draw your own conclusions.

Far fetched? Maybe, maybe not. I think many of us are getting the impression at this point that McQueary is somewhat less honorable than we might have thought in 1995 or 2005.  His gambling issues have been reported and documented. So, plausible — yes, it certainly is. I didn’t believe McQueary back then when he told me that he didn’t take a beating from Joe for doing it, and I still don’t. I guess we’ll never know.

However, we are all aware of St. Joe’s game philosophies. In games that were won and just being played out, how many times have we seen the offense take a knee on the 2 yard-line. I can’t count those occasions, even with my shoes off. The very least we can conclude about McQueary’s dumbass gambit is that it certainly wouldn’t have met with St. Joe’s approval.

I was just staining a door and my knuckles feel sticky. So I’ll go fix that now. Let me know what you think.

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Filed Under: Penn State Football, Penn State Scandal Tagged With: Doug Graber, gambling, Joe Paterno, Mike McQueary, Rutgers

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Whodat Turkey?

The Nittany Turkey is a retired techno-geek who thinks he knows something about Penn State football and everything else in the world. If there's a topic, we have an opinion on it, and you know what "they" say about opinions! Most of what is posted here involves a heavy dose of hip-shooting conjecture, but unlike some other blogs, we don't represent it as fact. Read More…

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