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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More on the UNC fiasco

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I missed this SI story by Michael Rosenberg, originally published on August 31, about the NCAA exonerating UNC because there was nothing wrong with giving phony grades to athletes pretending to be students. I’m kind of glad I just read it, because the readers’ comments add some insight, some spice and, of course, some Penn State hatred.

The story highlights:

  • How can NCAA justify its lack of action with UNC, but its punishment of others?
  • UConn admitted its academic failures, paid the price; UNC gets away scot-free
  • The NCAA has shown that it only cares about money and competition, in that order

The fact that UConn paid the price kind of shoots a hole in my theory that UNC got away scot-free because of the money they pull in for the NCAA basketball tournament, inasmuch as the UConn basketball program was also involved, and the punishment precludes the Huskies from participating in the 2013 tournament. On the other hand, one of the commenters stated that one of those making the decision not to do anything about UNC happened to be a UNC alum.

So, there’s a little more fuel added to the flaming NCAA saga.

Laser Focus: Catching Up!

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Holiday weekends, man! You feel like you’ve gotten a new week off and running, and you suddenly note that it’s Wednesday, 5:00 pm and you haven’t accomplished much of anything, and and and— Well, you all know the routine, and I’m certain that some of you are as deeply mired in it as is this Turkey.

I actually finished the t-shirt design for the Greater Orlando Heart Walk (click here or click on my widget on the right to make a donation to the AHA in support of cardiac and stroke research) for my insane cadre of local walkers. Moreover, I placed the order, so I can take that one off the deep procrastination list. Deep procrastination cost me an extra $35 rush fee, but you know what “they” say: haste makes waste.

One additional dubious accomplishment this week: I watched Sunday Night Football on NBC, which used to be Monday Night Football on ABC, on Wednesday night.

So, here I am cranking out the first halfway worthwhile post of the week sometime after midnight early Thursday morning, a Thursday that will feel like a Tuesday, and the Iraq and the South Africa, and yeah, some U.S. Americans don’t have maps…

This is LASER FOCUS, which means not much of anything, but it is a Peetzian term for which I have developed at least a short-lived affinity. Furthermore, after a turbid two weeks of perfidiously porcine platitudes from speakers at both Republican and Democratic conventions, celebrations during which the political piggies feigned laser foci upon the future, going forward, moving in the right direction, and so on, ad nauseam, instead of telling it like it is: “elect me, re-elect me, whatever — so I can cash in”, I felt that we should bring things into truly Turkeyesque focus, that is to say, into the quintessentially obscure circle of confusion.

“On Aug. 12, 2012, the Penn State Board of Trustees allowed nearly 9,000 of us to bear witness to their apathy…” —Jessi Lillo

Leading off this issue of Phaser Locus, or whatever the hell I said it was called (I’ve been forgetting a lot lately), is a plea from another local alumna, Jessi Lillo, a 1991 PSU grad who is one of the long-time mainstays of our Central Florida Chapter of the Penn State Alumni Association, as well as a dedicated disciple of PS4RS. She wrote a brilliant piece for StateCollege.com excoriating the media’s treatment of Penn State during our continuing credibility crisis, reflecting what many of us still feel and others of us who have displaced these issues with the bittersweet, nascent football season will be feeling around January. Buried deep in the bowels of StateCollege.com, it is entitled “An Open Letter to the Media” and it does not hold back anything. Dis babe says what’s on her mind and she can write, too. You’ll want to read it.

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From the sublime to the ridiculous, ESPN.com, one of the media megawonks to whom I impute that Jessi obliquely referred in her meta-rant, reports that Sandusky wishes that he had taken the stand. No, man. You’re not only sick, but you’re delusional if you think your story wouldn’t have been ripped to shreds by a skilled prosecutor. After all, look at what Costas did to you, man. Fuggedaboudit! Write your book and shaddup!

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While we’re on the subject of the despised, erstwhile Tickle Monster, ESPN was also the first bearer of the news that the scandalous schmuck known as Jer cost Penn State nearly $17 million thus far. Think of what that could have done for the university, for the victims, and for extortion money to keep me from writing bad stuff about Vickey Triponey. (This is the first time I’ve seen Triponey’s first name spelled with an ‘e’, on the official website of The College of New Jersey, where she is V.P. for Student Affairs. Ah pity da poor damn fool student who spelled it wrong on that page, if it is indeed spelled wrong.)

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 Just to keep you alert, let me just throw in that at this moment, Virginia is a 10 point favorite over PSU, with an over/under of 44½. Oh, and on the injury front, Bill Belton hasn’t practiced at all yet this week but Hodges and Morris have. O’Brien says Belton is day-to-day.

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The Patriot-News reports that lawyers for Tim Curley and Gary Schultz are pursuing the trial judge for dismissal of the “failure to report charge”, because the statute of limitations has expired for that 2001 offense.

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Did you know that Penn State actually could win the Leaders Division of the B1G this year, next year, …, 2017, … etc.? Well it is true. They can win the division and they can get a division champ trophy. So can Ohio State. Our friends at BSD have the story.

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In our “Duh, No Shit, Sherlock?” Department, the ever vocal Bob Flounders takes a big risk of being way wrong when he writes “Unhappy Returns: Penn State linebacker Gerald Hodges may get pulled from return duty.” I think that any one of the McCabe Sisters could have been a better kick returner than Hodges. I thought O’Brien had given up on him after the fumble. Why would he want to push that project any further? It subjects a starting linebacker to injury, and frankly, he stinks at it. Aside from the fumble, nothing he fielded went anywhere. So, IMHO, Flounders is floundering around stating the obvious or the oblivious, depending on what you think of Flounders.

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Bring on the gallows! Bill O’Brien showed remarkable restraint and patience in the post-game press conference, calmly discussing issues involving play execution while blaming problems on himself, which brought to mind a press conference retort by the legendary John McKay, who was coaching the winless Tampa Bay Buccaneers at the time. After a game, a reporter asked him, “Coach, how did you feel about your team’s execution?”

“Execution?” responded the quick-witted McKay. “I have to say that I’m completely in favor of it!”

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Speaking of Vickey with an ‘e’, which I still think should be Vicky, and that’s how I intend to continue to spell it, a recent study of Penn State athletics concluded that Dr. Triponey was blowing wind in asserting that the “football culture” at Penn State is all-pervasive. Anne Danahy of the Centre Daily Times reports on this one.

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I usually try to find a humorous piece for my last focal point but instead today, I give you a head-scratcher. Hell, if that’s all this makes you do, you’re coming out way ahead, even if you scratch bloody furrows all the way down to your dura mater. The title of the article I present to you from the Raleigh News & Observer is entitled “The NCAA’s clean bill for UNC brings howls” — that should give you an idea of what you’re in for. Recall that for over five years, hundreds of UNC so-called student-athletes in two major money sports, football and basketball, received phony grades for phony classes in African and African-American Studies, which was revealed in UNC’s internal audit. Just before the holiday weekend, our capricious and arbitrary friends of the NCAA told UNC that they didn’t do anything wrong. Exonerated! Forgiven by the same yo-yos who landed so heavily on Penn State. Oh, hey, tell me another whopper like that! Surely, the NCAA couldn’t let UNC go Scot free! No way! Academic fraud committed to favor sports programs by enabling gorillas with half a brain to be eligible to play, and some of this while on probation for recruiting sins? Nothing wrong with that? What a strangely dichotomous system of rules invented for any occasion does the good old NCAA live by!

OK. I’m going to go break into a drug store and steal some oxycodone. If anyone asks, I’ll refer them to Emmert. WTF!?

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Sorry that I couldn’t find anything better than that with which to wrap this up, but it’s worth reading and pondering.

I have to get started “breaking down” Virginia. I’ll be back soon with the preview of the big Rodney Dangerfield Memorial “We Ain’t Got No Respect” Bowl in Charlottesville, replete with a level of sarcasm that fully depends on the mood I’m in at the time I write it. Catch you then!

Mark Emmert, Hypocrite

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It doesn’t require much more digging than is possible with a cheap computer and an Internet connection to find a plethora of reference points calling out Mark Emmert’s hypocrisy.

Take Ken Armstrong’s op-ed in the Seattle Times, for example. In essence, he opined that the culture at the University of Washington that Emmert walked into was just as corrupt, as would be just about any big-time football school.

Then, there was Emmert’s famous quote, “Simply put, success in LSU football is essential for the success of Louisiana State University.”

In 2010, Mark Emmert called Joe Paterno “the definitive role model of what it means to be a college coach.” He sang a much different tune on July 23 this year.

Then, there’s Ty Duffy’s piece, in which he states:

The punishment and the manner of its delivery, though, still carry the whiff of catering to the prevailing wind and charging triumphantly into an already razed village to plow salt into the fields. The true work has been and is being done and this distracts from it. The NCAA piled on, largely because it can right now with impunity.

Or, Bob Kravitz, of the Indianapolis Star:

It’s as if the NCAA looked in the mirror, didn’t like what it saw and reacted by lashing out at Penn State.

Of course, an equal number of writers have excoriated Penn State for its transgressions, stating that the penalties were deserved and appropriate. It is hard to fight public opinion where child victims are involved, where rationality and reason often take a backseat to emotion. Who can argue with the fact that children were mistreated and nobody did anything about it? Anything up to and including revocation of Penn State’s charter is on the table when child protection hysteria sets in.

Mark Emmert viewed this emotional climate as the perfect opportunity to pile on in order to show that the NCAA was “doing something” about the ignominious influence of football over academics, exceeding his authority by making Penn State the poster boy for all formerly good universities that have become vacuous football factories. If he could, by virtue of the unfortunate Sandusky scandal, make a negative example of Penn State, a purported paragon of athletic cleanliness and academic excellence, then other institutions would quake in their boots. No one was safe. Moreover, the public’s thirst for blood would be assuaged and the NCAA would be viewed as the hero.

A hero hiding a dirty not so little secret: that it actively promotes the football culture it condemned so visibly with Emmert’s Penn State grandstand play. To paraphrase Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel: never let a good crisis go to waste. Emmert hopped onto Penn State; it was his perfect “wag the dog” opportunity.

One problem with this approach, aside from its dishonesty, vindictiveness, and inappropriateness, is that throwing all the heavy artillery fire Penn State’s way left the ammunition locker empty. Having described Penn State’s issues as “unprecedented”, calling for maximum punishment, Emmert gave himself no leeway for penalizing schools that transgress in the areas of his purview, the confluence of athletics and academics.

That leads us to the University of North Carolina, a classic case of a big-time athletic program making a mockery of the so-called student-athlete. As you may recall, an internal audit revealed 54 ghost classes that never met yet yielded credit-hours and grades for the lucky students, most of whom were athletes steered to them by academic advisers. The university has expressed a reluctance to dig deeper, afraid that what its investigation revealed is only the tip of the iceberg. Chancelor Holden Thorp is hoping this will all go away, but he is pledging his support to whomever cares to get involved. He has now asked for a former state governor and a national management consulting firm to investigate the scandal.

But where is Mark Emmert? Having lunch with Vicky Triponey?

The NCAA has been mum on the subject.

Isn’t this the type of scandal that is completely under the NCAA’s purview? When will we see some action on this, Emmert? I want to know when the NCAA takes on the basketball and football culture at UNC. Shadenfreude perhaps, but I’m willing to bet that UNC gets off easy.

What’s your next move, Mark? The clock is running.