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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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.

“Emmert’s Ego Wouldn’t Allow It”

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“Emmert’s ego wouldn’t allow it.” That was what University of Oklahoma’s Professor Gerald Gurney said in a recent interview when asked about the possibility of the NCAA modifying Penn State’s punishment.

How many of you don’t  believe that Emmert’s ego is the most significant monkey wrench in the works? I don’t see many hands out there, Magic Mirror.

In fact, there is little hope of any abatement at all, even though it appears that the NCAA is “damaged goods” because of all the negative publicity of late. The NCAA has been under more fire recently than at any other time anyone can recall. Why not strike while the iron is hot?

Because they’re holding all the cards, that’s why, consequently furthering the notion that this post is a veritable bastion of mixed metaphors.

A gigantic cascade of improbable events would have to occur before any hope were to exist for reduction of the Penn State penalties, among them Louis Freeh admitting that his report was complete and utter bullshit for which he was paid under the proverbial table by the NCAA; the Tickle Monster making a complete, abject confession, explaining in the process the disappearance of former Centre County D.A. Ray Gricar, while exonerating all alleged participants in the cover-up; Curley, Schultz, and Spanier being acquitted; and, last but not least, Mike McQueary discrediting himself and his testimony by sitting on top of a flagpole for a few straight days doing his best Jonathan Winters impression. However, even if all that happened, if Emmert were still standing, his ego wouldn’t allow it.

But but but… I’m a pessimist, I know. I believe in Penn State exceptionalism — that our shit doesn’t stink while everyone else’s does, and they just don’t understand that WE ARE… PENN STATE!!! Yeah, well, that’s no reason to hold unrealistic expectations, especially because  aside from Penn State students, alumni, and fans, the whole, nasty mess at Penn State is viewed with a rather jaundiced eye. We’re just lucky that the furor has died down from active hatred to mere dispassionate apathy; however, let the debate come to the fore again and those negative sentiments will be restimulated.

In any case, there are lots of whys and why nots associated with the possibility of the NCAA reducing Penn State’s sanctions, which I believe is justified — and even justifiable, in theory — but I don’t believe there’s a snowball’s chance in hell of it happening in practice as long as Emmert is running the show. I am really not seeing any signs of the disentrenchment that some of you have noted, leading me to believe that you’re engaging in pie-in-the-sky optimistic wishful thinking, better known as mental masturbation. (And the metaphors spew on, but I digress.)

To further bring balance to the metaphorical equation, please take a gander at Charles Thompson’s position piece, “Why the NCAA isn’t likely to reduce Penn State’s penalties,” in this morning’s Patriot-News, sometimes known as PennLive.com. Thompson enumerates five reasons to support his conjecture, to wit:

  1. Self-preservation
  2. Wary of a new precedent
  3. Mark Emmert’s ego
  4. It could be dismissed
  5. ‘A cat with nine lives’

All except Number Three are pretty arcane, so you’ll have to read Thompson’s piece to get his perspective on the other bullets. Meanwhile, I picked the easiest of the five to hang my own birdbrain hat on, metaphorically speaking.

The original title of Thompson’s piece was “Could a chastened NCAA relent?”

Not, in this turkey’s opinion, at least not as long as Emmert is running the NCAA show.