It sounds like Penn State is going to get hit hard by the NCAA, but when the dust clears, the PSU football team will be playing this year:
NCAA president Mark Emmert has decided to punish Penn State with severe penalties likely to include a significant loss of scholarships and loss of multiple bowls, a source close to the decision told ESPN’s Joe Schad on Sunday morning.
But Penn State will not receive the so-called “death penalty” that would have suspended the program for at least one year, the source said.
The penalties, however, are considered to be so harsh that the death penalty may have been preferable, the source said.
The term “death penalty” in NCAA sports says a whole lot about NCAA culture. When being unable to play something as peripheral to the mission of a university as a single college sport is considered “death”, you see the mismatch between the expectations of fans and those of us who don’t care about college athletics. After reading about the decade or so that Penn State sheltered a criminal child rapist, shutting down the football program for a year or two, then letting it start again as, say, a Division III program on probation for a few more, seems to me like a pretty reasonable way to punish all of Sandusky’s enablers. Instead, it was an open question whether the NCAA would do anything (since, technically, no NCAA rules were violated — apparently child rape is outside the purview of the NCAA charter), and almost anything they do today, even though it approaches nothing like the life altering damage of child abuse, will be considered a jaw-dropping, unprecedented, draconian punishment.
I realize some semi-pro PSU athletes will have their careers damaged by whatever sanctions come down, but their careers were already damaged before this happened, since the next few years of semi-pro freshman classes don’t have any intention of being recruited to PSU if they can avoid it.
Update: As predicted, no death penalty, but a $60 million fine to endow external charities dealing with child abuse, no bowl games for 4 years, and all wins since 1998 are vacated. I’m sad to say that last bit will probably hurt fans the most.
JPL
Until 9 o’clock, we can only speculate. Pennlive mentions the possibility of a 30 to 60 million dollar fine in addition to everything else. Penn State won’t be able to compete for a long time and hopefully, the powers that be allow their football players to transfer to other institutes.
Cassidy
*This is speculation on my part, so if anyone who works at a university can tell me I’m wrong, I’d really like that.
Considering the amount of money that is lost, the “death penalty” metaphor is pretty accurate. Who do you think shoulders that responsibility? The Athletics Dept? Nope, tution rises, dorm fees rise, less scholarships are given for acadmeic and scholastic achievement, and just that many lower income kids don’t get to go to college.
Walker
@Cassidy:
Except that 9 times out of 10, these programs are actually money losers for the school. PSU might be one of the exceptions, but a lot of top programs out there are detrimetal to the university.
Tokyokie
I believe the NCAA is basing its penalties on its rule forbidding “loss on institutional control,” which is sort of the resisting arrest of college sports. (The NCAA tends to use it when a program stonewalls the investigation into the original allegations.) And although a lot of the loss-of-institutional-control cases have seemed a bit of a stretch to me, I have to say that allowing the guy who coaches the football team to decide whether charges against a former assistant against whom there’s credible evidence of serial child rape is about as severe a case of loss of institutional control as I can imagine.
MattF
We shall see. It wouldn’t surprise me if football disappears from PSU for a few years, regardless of what the NCAA does.
c u n d gulag
To punish the existing football players by shutting the program down this year, one month before the first kick-off, would have been a gross injustice.
THESE KIDS DID NOTHING WRONG!
Having said that, the NCAA needs to shut-down PSU’s football program for next year and the year after, and let the football players go to any school they wanted to – with PSU paying for their football scholarships.
The same goes for the all of the new coaches. Let them make a deal, and have PSU pay for their salaries until they can get a comparable one from another college or pro team – within limit’s of course – maybe give them a 2-3 year window to find a new job. Or, pay them to sit around PSU until the program can restart in 3-4 years.
The new coaches did nothing wrong, either.
Then, after a 2-3 year shut-down, no recruiting for the next 3 years after that.
Doing that will be a real lesson, because it will take PSU well over a decade to recover – which, I think, is a fair punishment, if there can be such a thing – short of shutting down the program for good.
Older_Wiser
Do we really think that big donors to the football program will actually put that money into academics, no matter how severe the punishment is for Penn State?
I’d like to see those students in academic programs get treated as well as those in athletic programs everywhere.
JBerardi
@c u n d gulag:
The NCAA doesn’t give a shit about “the kids”. They care about the loss of revenue for the teams that are scheduled to face PSU in the upcoming season. That’s to collateral damage they’re actually trying to avoid.
There is a financial reason for everything.
IowaOldLady
I don’t know how to judge the football angle, since to me the most shocking part of this is that school officials covered up, and thus perpetuated, child rape. The prestige of the football program undoubtedly influenced their decision, but to me, this wasn’t a football problem the way, say, paying bonuses for heavy hitting might be. It was an institutional problem. So how come the NCAA is the strongest objector, at least so far? Where is the State of Pennsylvania, which is responsible for this university?
helmut
Punishment is obviously deserved. The question is who deserves it. The people involved in concealing the abuse are dead or otherwise no longer at the university. Everyone associated with the university – alumni, etc – continues to deal with the tragedy and shame. Punishing football players who weren’t even at Penn State at the time seems both sad and trivial.
It would be great if, instead of it being the standard retributive vengeance, it could be as a means towards some good. Have the university create and fund the preeminent research center studying the causes of child abuse and violence. Or permanently redirect a significant part of the university’s budget to fighting child poverty,….
c u n d gulag
@JBerardi:
Ooops!
How silly of me.
“Free markets,” and yadda-yadda-yadda…
IowaOldLady
@Cassidy: Football programs sometimes support other sports, depending on things like the size of the media market. But they don’t contribute to general university operating funds, so their loss wouldn’t affect tuition or dorm fees.
In Iowa, it’s against the law for tuition to be used for anything except academics. All other activities, such as the dorms, the bookstore, the parking facitilies, have to support themselves. Granted the accounting can be fuzzy, but that’s what’s supposed to happen.
gene108
As someone, who cares about college sports, it is one of those things that makes going to college interesting and keeps people bound to their schools, even after graduation.
@IowaOldLady:
That’s a big money question lying at the feet of Gov. Corbett.
Dave N.
Whatever the sanctions, PSU players will be allowed to transfer without losing any eligibility. That is part of the deal so they do not get punished for the school’s sins. Same thing happened with USC.
c u n d gulag
@IowaOldLady:
PA’s current Governor, Tom Corbett, when he as AG, was one of the people who delayed investigations and charges.
Btw – he’s a Teabagger hero, and he’s the one behind PA’s voter suppression efforts.
This guy’s a first rate scumbag.
reflectionephemeral
What an awful article at ESPN. He turned over about half the article to “a former chair” who didn’t like the decision. It read like a press release, not a news article.
Funny how he didn’t think to contact any victims’ groups for their thoughts.
My preferred solution would be “death penalty”, with liberal transfer provisions, but I guess that’s not happening.
Tokyokie
@helmut: My contention is that Paterno didn’t follow up on the allegations because he was obsessed with breaking Eddie Robinson’s record for career victories, but as Penn State slipped from a perennial national-title contender to a middle-of-pack team in the Big Ten, some program supporters were already contending that Paterno was getting too old for the job (which he probably was). Paterno blocked the allegations against Sandusky because such revelations probably would have forced him out, especially after coming off back-to-back losing seasons, and he wouldn’t get the record. But the only reason Paterno could even contemplate such action is because of the deity status with which the program’s loyal supporters imbued him. Penn State football sucking for the next several years will rankle the Penn State fans, and its their blind loyalty that made the situation possible.
aimai
I was listening to the NPR coverage of this just a few minutes ago. The (very young) sports reporter described the “devastating” effect that “not having a Saturday Football game” would have on the “entire community” and then, after a teeny-tiny pause said “of course, the scandal itself was already quite devastating.”
Ya think?
I went 4 years at harvard and umpteen years at Yale in grad school and never–once–looked forward to a Saturday at a Football game. Didn’t even register for fuck’s sake. There is something seriously wrong with our society when an entire community is considered “devastated” because it devoted itself to the sports equivalent of monocrop agriculture and it gets a totally avoidable case of the moral equivalent of potato blight.
aimai
Lee
People claim that the death penalty would punish the kids (who did nothing wrong). Except for the fact that one of the first accusers had to go into a witness protection program because kids were harassing them.
If they don’t get the death penalty then the NCAA is on record that paying players is worse than multiple instances of kid rape.
Brachiator
I would like to see some PSU officials go to jail, and lawsuits compensating the victims.
I don’t care whether or not the football program is seriously disrupted.
aimai
@Tokyokie:
I’ve heard rumors that the real reason none of them touched the crime is that Sandusky was providing children as sex toys to wealthy donors and alumni.
aimai
Tokyokie
@reflectionephemeral: In a way, I oppose the death penalty, inasmuch as it provides a program’s supporters a dodge. The team going away for a couple of years isn’t as humiliating as losing by 50 to Indiana. I think it’s far better to cripple the program so that it has no real chance of being competitive for several years so that every lopsided loss reminds the boosters what happened under their beloved JoePa’s watch. Turn them into Kutztown State, but make them play a Big Ten schedule.
JBerardi
@Lee:
Worse? Well, it’s more costly… the “amateur” status of NCAA football players constitutes a billion+ dollar salary dodge for the college football industry.
There. Is. A. Financial. Reason. For. Everything.
robertdsc-PowerBook
Fixed.
Burn the stadium down. No teams should ever play in it again.
c u n d gulag
@aimai:
aimai,
Have you ever been out to that part of PA?
PSU is smack in the middle of dairy and farm country.
‘There’s no there, there!’
Without football, what are people going to do on Saturday’s?
Tip-over cows for sh*ts and giggles?
Without PSU football to distract them, the rate of ‘farm-hold’ and ‘barn-hold’ violence is likely to increase!
PS: You know I’m kidding you, right?
rikyrah
if a program that shielded a PEDOPHILE doesn’t get the death penalty
then I don’t wanna hear shyt about how bad it was for some booster to give a poor kid some money.
fuck that.
RossInDetroit, Rational Subjectivist
What if it wasn’t the Football program? How would this be different if a Foreign Languages instructor was the criminal and his superiors hushed it up?
I don’t particularly like college football (and I’m a Spartan) but I think the same standard should apply. Prosecute the guilty and rebuild.
Tokyokie
@aimai: I’ve heard that as well. I guess Sandusky could spill at this point, but I don’t think he’d be found credible. And although that would explain why authorities further away from the football program turned a blind eye, I still contend that Paterno himself was driven by his own selfish obsession with breaking Robinson’s record. Had he learned about the allegations after coming off a Rose Bowl victory, I think he would have fried Sandusky and powerful people connected to him without hesitation.
burnspbesq
@aimai:
Just curious: is there a shred of evidence, either in the Freeh report or anywhere else, to substantiate that rumor? I am not aware of any.
Villago Delenda Est
@JBerardi:
Absolutely true.
The athletes are, quite frankly, in the view of the NCAA, raw fodder for the machine. No one gives a flying fuck about them.
The NCAA is about protecting the golden goose. PSU has damaged the brand. They must pay for their negligence of protecting “our thing”.
Face
They just jacked every win Paterno had from 1998–2011. That’s got to be at least 110–120 wins taken away. Wow.
burnspbesq
A $60 million fine? Football boosters will put up the $ by lunchtime.
aimai
@burnspbesq:
No, no evidence. But it should be obvious from the Freeh Report that a whole lot of people knew, and had always known, about Sandusky’s proclivities and every single thing that powerful people said, particularly about the impossibility of Joe Paterno “knowing” about it or “understanding” it because he was so old and came from a time when no one knew about pedophilia was an out and out lie. Sex scandals and pedophilia have always gone hand in hand with sports and with “big brother” situations and set ups and older men involved in these things have always known about them. Are you so naive that you think prostitutes weren’t ever used to bribe/seduce/reward alumni? How about cuban cigars? Young boys are just another form of currency in this world. It would surprise me very much if Sandusky didn’t have some kind of sharing system going on.
aimai
Villago Delenda Est
@Face:
Yeah, but Paterno’s not alive to know that.
He’s out of the record books, though. That settles that. Robinson’s record is intact. It sends a message to the next Joe Paterno.
burnspbesq
Four-year bowl ban seems like a lot of $ lost, but the Big Ten has pretty liberal revenue-sharing rules. It’ll only really hurt if the conference says PSU can’t share in other schools’ bowl revenue.
It’ll hurt recruiting, but less than many will expect.
Losing 10 scholarships a year will hurt, but less than many will expect. Neither the bowl ban nor the scholarship loss did long-term damage to USC.
aimai
@c u n d gulag:
Hey C u n d gulag, yeah, I know. A friend of mine teaches in a very obscure field at State College.
On the question of whether an entire field of study, such as a foreign language, should be shut down because of malfeasance by one or two top teachers of course the field shouldn’t be shut down. But you can bet your boots that if, say, a top teacher of Italian had been taking children on trips with grad students to Italy and selling them for sex the foreign exchange portion of the Italian language program would be shut down, scholarships in the name of the teacher would probably be ended or changed, the grad students involved would never have been coddled and rewarded by the University Leadership etc..etc…etc… If Football doesn’t want to be treated differently from academic disciplines then it might want to stop dominating university policies and demanding special treatment and special laws for its students.
aimai
Punchy
Please politely go fuck yourself. College sports is HUGE in rural states, especially those without pro teams (Nebraska, Iowa, Alabama, Arkansas, etc). Football is what brings people from all over the state together for an entire weekend. Tailgating and rooting for teams brings communities of people together. Get off the goddamn Least Coast and you’ll understand it better. Nothing is “seriously wrong” with people’s devotion to a university’s sports teams. Quite fucking normal, actually.
burnspbesq
@aimai:
“No evidence” would have been sufficient. So people are making shit up and you’re eager to believe it because it’s consistent with your prejudices. Good to know.
Cassidy
CNN Commenter re: PSU Sanctions
God these people make me sick. What the fuck is wrong with their wiring that causes them to always go to the booga-booga shit. Some people just need a mallet to the testicles and a bullet.
Peter
It always kind of wigs me out how Serious Fucking Business college sports are in the US. Up here in the Great White North, absolutely nobody who isn’t actually part of a school gives a shit about them, and only a pretty small portion of that.
Cassidy
@Punchy: Yeah, nothing wrong with rioting because a guy who let children get raped to cover up for the football team got fired. Nothing wrong with that. Just part of tailgating amirite?
Villago Delenda Est
@Cassidy:
The irony here is that dumbshit doesn’t get why the NCAA is coming down on Penn State like the wrath of Zeus: Penn State has damaged the college football brand through their actions. It means the other members of the clan will suffer some impact because of Penn State’s facilitation of Sandusky’s predations in the name of “protecting the school and the program.”
They’re being punished for damaging “our thing.”
Cassidy
@Villago Delenda Est: Oh definitely. I’m lauging now because of all the people in these comments who were saying that the NCAA didn’t have the authority to impose any fines and stuff like that.
Amanda in the South Bay
@Peter:
Its because even otherwise smart, rational people lose their fucking mind when it comes to sports. College sports is rapidly becoming like conservatism or gun control-it can’t fail, it can only be failed.
burnspbesq
@Peter:
We have college sports, you have junior hockey. Different cultures evolve differently.
Woodrowfan
@Cassidy:
hey, you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, etc, etc.
Snark aside, OK, football is important in lots of the country. So? Why does that excuse the absolute worship that many in these same areas direct towards coaches and players??
Amanda in the South Bay
@burnspbesq:
I remember DougJ asking is you were a paid troll back during the Sandusky trial. I mean, even now do you believe Sandusky is guilty?
Cassidy
@Woodrowfan: That’s a FREEDOM OMELET!
Peter
@burnspbesq: Nobody really cares about junior hockey either, except for hardcore NHL fans who keep an eye on it for promising new players.
Robin G.
I’m hearing from fans that this is worse than the death penalty, and the equivalent of slowly tearing off a Band-Aid instead of ripping it. If that’s true, good.
I like the removal of Paterno’s wins the most.
Now, time for the US DoE, PA AG, and civil lawyers to fire up *their* wrecking balls.
burnspbesq
@Amanda in the South Bay:
What I believe is completely irrelevant. He was found guilty. End of story.
What’s your fucking point?
Punchy
There’s enough straw in your bullshit comment to feed a farm. Who said anything about riots?
I forgot to stick to the script. My bad. Penn State succors! K#ll every assistant coach! Skin the AD alive!
Villago Delenda Est
Now, according to the ESPN article on the penalties, it’s possible they may be appealed.
Interestingly, I don’t think the loss of the wins will be part of that. Paterno is dead. Perhaps there will be an asterix next to his name in the record books. After all, making history “unhistory” leaves a bad taste in everyone’s mouth, or should.
But the scholarships? The fine? Oh, they’ll react to that.
The NCAA relied on the Freeh Report, they didn’t conduct their own investigation, and Penn State is retaining counsel who has severed on the NCAA sanctions committee, so knows the bureaucratic ins and outs. The NCAA itself admits that this is new territory for them.
How this plays out over the next six months to a year will be interesting if you’re in to this sort of thing.
They took down the statue of that enabler Paterno on Sunday, and kids who care more about fucking football than the victims were moaning and whining.
aimai
Yes, I’m not sure why a gross appendage, a tumor on the educational function of both private and land grant colleges, should be considered a meritorious social function anymore than witch burning or 4H clubs. Not that I’m saying 4H clubs or state fairs are bad things–I think they are great. But needless to say a shitload of activities and shared goals can bring people together in both rural and urban areas. If the side effects (permitting gross abuse of power, encouraging a climate of fear, refusal to report the crime of child abuse and rape because it might damage the careers of career sports people) are substantial then, obviously, the university should reconsider how it handles a particular sport/department. There is nothing elitist about that observation.
If the State College Football team had been a free standing private football team the people of the area might have been just as enthused and happy about it, travelled just as far and cheered just as loudly. But at least the crimes commited by its managers would not have been paid for by the taxpayers nor would the monies from its coffers been used to bribe or bludgeon public employees (like the University President and even the Governor) to turn a blind eye to something for which they were trustees.
aimai
Gin & Tonic
I asked in the other thread, but realized it’s more appropriate here. Negating all the victories – what the fuck does that mean? How is that unlike Romney’s retroactive retirement? A football game was played 10 years ago. Say Penn State won. Now the NCAA says no, it didn’t. Who the fuck cares? How is this any sort of punishment? The game was played, those who care know who won on the field, it’s long gone. End, no?
Punchy
Let’s see….record high B12 TV contract signed, insane SEC TV contract signed, flat crazy PAC12 contract offered (dont know if signed), stadiums sold out, ESPN offering games on all eleventeen channels they host every Saturday, StubHub ticket prices obnoxious per usual….
I’m not seeing “damaging the brand” in the slightest.
Gin & Tonic
@burnspbesq: Don’t want to extend this unnecessarily, but is there a difference, in your or any lawyer’s mind, between saying “he is guilty” and “he was found guilty”? Seems notable to me that you wrote the latter and not the former.
Ash Can
@Punchy: Oh yes there is something seriously wrong with allowing a source of entertainment to become so important that it screws up basic principles of human decency. The proper response to this is, “There are other things that are more important than our college football team” and “We’ll find other reasons to get together for the weekend,” not “Fuck you, we need our sports!” Get a grip.
Cassidy
@Punchy: Oh grow up, son. You want to tell someone to “go fuck yourself” for commenting on the rabid behavior of fandom which helped to birth an environment where a pedophile could function for years and then get your panties wadded when I draw a conclusion from that?
Why don’t you, unpolitely, go fuck yourself. I gives a flying monkey’s fuck about your tailgating and your rural, community togetherness. I don’t give a shit if your wet dream of saturday afternoon wings, brats, and beer is tarnished because people deign to wonder why such mindless infatuation with young boys beating the fuck out of each other and ruining thier bodies for no pay is more important than stopping a pedophile from raping children. I got a smashing idea. How about you use some of that rural community togetherness to say fuck the football team, let’s educate more of our children? I get it, less wings and brat time, but wouldn’t that be grand?
Todd
@Gin & Tonic:
I have no idea what happens to bowl gate and advertising money that got paid out to a school that had wins vacated, if it is within a limitation period.
I’m sure there is some case law out there, somewhere, that covers this.
geg6
@Cassidy:
THIS.
This punishment is going to fall upon students. All of whom had absolutely nothing to do with any of this.
I have no problem with the athletic-related punishments. But students will pay the price of this ridiculous fine. The same students who work their asses off every year to raise $7+ million for pediatric cancer.
I couldn’t care less about the football team. But punishing every student at the University for this, by a corrupt organization like the NCAA, is beyond pissing me off.
WJS
@Punchy:
Unfortunately, the people’s devotion to this university and coach created a situation where too much power was concentrated in the hands of an especially amoral old coot who couldn’t bring himself to tell anyone to get rid of the child molester in his showers.
Please to go fuck yourself, and soon.
Villago Delenda Est
@Gin & Tonic:
Well, the “official record” will not reflect Paterno’s wins.
I know, it’s a fiction. It’s making Paterno an “unperson”. It’s like Roger Marris’ home run record. The asterix.
And Paterno’s not alive to feel the pain of it. To see his obsession denied. He died with the record. He can’t be punished now for what he did.
So others have to pay for his actions.
@Punchy:
The point is, the brand is damaged. Other schools have to be put on notice that they can’t be allowed to sully the “integrity” of college football. Because if nothing is done to Penn State, others might very well calculate that they, too, can cover up a Jerry Sandusky and get away with it. That’s corrosive, and will damage the brand in the long run.
Cassidy
@Gin & Tonic: It’s a very simple screw you to PSU and Paterno. He’s out of the record books. So yeah, people can go around saying he’s the GOAT, but it will never be official. Compare to the asterisk next to Roger Maris and Pete Rose not being in the HOF.
geg6
@IowaOldLady:
You have no idea what you are talking about. None.
burnspbesq
@Villago Delenda Est:
Yup. There’s only one remotely similar case. The NCAA imposed no sanctions of any kind on the Virginia men’s lacrosse program in the Huguely matter. This, despite the fact that UVa head coach Dom Starsia seems to have been the only person in the entire college lacrosse world who didn’t know that George Huguely had an alcohol problem and was a violent drunk.
The two cases are easily distinguished, because there is no evidence that UVa did anything other than co-operate fully with the investigation.
But anyone who wants to complain about lack of due process has ample room to do so.
Cassidy
Unfortunately, as Punchy is showing us, this isn’t entirely true. They didn’t want to know this. They still want their Saturday afternoon tailgating and red cup gatherings. It’s the students who were never really drawn to sports in the first place that are most likely to feel the money pinch.
WJS
@geg6:
Then choose an institution of higher learning that is not beholden to Division I football.
Really, these things aren’t that complicated. No one is forcing you to howl with pain because you chose to tie your wagon to Penn State. You should have gone with a school not run by a demented old coot with a child molester for an assistant coach. These are decisions people make every day.
Want to go to Kentucky? Well, you have to contend with the fact that men’s basketball runs the place. Don’t like it? Go to another school. Want to go to Duke? Don’t go there expecting a men’s football program that will be worth a damn. But, if you are naive enough to think that the men’s basketball coaches at those two schools aren’t powerful individuals who protect their programs, to the detriment of the interests of the school, you’re living in a fantasy land.
The students will be fine. Most of them should be in a community college anyway.
Ash Can
Someone, yesterday or the day before, commented here that the PSU football program should proceed as normal, with every penny accruing from ticket sales, broadcasting deals, merchandise sales, concessions, etc. going not to the school but to compensating the victims and to supporting anti-abuse programs in general. That struck me as a great idea, but the NCAA’s decision isn’t bad. What happened to PSU is exactly the sort of thing that should happen to the Catholic Church; the situations are virtually identical. Too bad there’s no NCAA overseeing the Vatican.
Gin & Tonic
@Cassidy: Don’t know why people are comparing this to Maris’ asterisk. Roger *did* hit 61 HR’s. Nobody is saying he didn’t. There’s a big difference between noting what the historical length of a baseball season was, and saying no, you didn’t win that game that you actually won. Like taking away Alberto Contador’s TdF win — everybody knows he won.
Whatevs. This is all some obsession that I don’t get.
Legalize
@Gin & Tonic:
I believe that Paterno was the winningest coach of all time prior to today. Now he’s not. Prestige thing. Hurts recruiting.
debit
@Legalize: I’m guessing that recruiting was going to take a hit anyway.
burnspbesq
@Gin & Tonic:
The jury had better access to relevant information than you, me, or anyone else on the planet. They made the findings they made. I firmly believe that juries get it right far more often than they get it wrong. They said he did it, and that’s good enough for me.
Unlike far too many people on this blog and elsewhere, I’m not afraid to say “I don’t know” when I don’t know. I’m puzzled as to why this is an issue.
What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us? (formerly MarkJ)
I agree that the NCAA is all about the Benjamins. That’s all they care about, and why students who generate literally billions of dollars a year in revenue for the NCAA, athletic programs, college athletic conferences, and coaches (whose salaries are exhorbitant given that they’re coaching amateurs) are only given a scholarship, room and board. It ain’t nothing, but it’s pretty small beer compared to what the coaches, conference bigwigs, and NCAA get for running the enterprise.
If PSU’s football program got worse than the death penalty it deserves it. I’m familiar with the State College area and the economic impact of not drawing for football weekends will be pretty severe – there are lots of hotels and restaurants that will see their biggest weekends get a lot smallter. I think that’s what is meant by devestating to the community – not that football is so important that there will be psychic damage, but that a lot of businesses depend on that revenue and will be going without of it. Some of them will probably fail.
There’s a lot not to like about college football and basketball, but God help me I still like it. I’m not a PSU fan (grew up in Michigan and attended Michigan State, so that’s where my allegiances lie). Not every program has to wind up where PSU did, and most of them won’t. In fact only one of them has so far. Given that, I don’t see anything wrong with college athletics as a form of entertainment – at least nothing more wrong than professional sports as a form of entertainment. Athletic programs shouldn’t be allowed to dominate the university but saying someone is warped because they like to tailgate and attend the football games of their favorite college is a little extreme, don’t you think?
Cacti
@Cassidy:
Punchy was probably leading the rioters across campus when the octagenarian leader of the football cult was finally terminated by the Trustees.
geg6
@aimai:
The problem with your comment is that you are 1) talking about the most academically elite institutions in the US, which also have pretty shitty football teams; and 2) you are ignorant of the culture here in PA. Football, high school and college and pro, are community events, almost the biggest community events we have. Friday night high school games, Saturday college games, and Sunday Steeler games are how we build community around here. One of the best and most fun weekends of my life was an “all football weekend” I took with some high school and college friends. We went to a big local high school game Friday night (the “Little Brown Jug” traditional rivalry game between Beaver Falls and New Brighton), the Pitt game on Saturday, and traveled to Cincinnati for the Steelers v. Bengals on Sunday. This is what we do. This is where the lion (wingnut) lies down with the lamb (liberal). This is where the richest guy in town hangs out with the poorest people in town. This is where we build our sense of community. This is where our traditions come from. This is a blue-collar state, for the most part (Philly is the exception that proves the rule). No one with your background can possibly understand it because you have never lived it and never will.
I’m refraining from a lot I want to say about this sort of attitude you have shown in this comment because, in ever other way, I really like you a lot. But this is some elitist crap, this comment.
Robin G.
@geg6: I read somewhere that last year’s PSU football profits were over $100 mil. (Which staggered me.) Can’t they absorb this fine without passing on the cost to the students? This isn’t a snarky question, I’m genuinely asking. I don’t know how university money works.
In the grand scheme of things this is just the first blow, anyway. The civil suits will make $60 mil look like chump change.
Gin & Tonic
@burnspbesq: So you should have no trouble saying “child molester Jerry Sandusky,” and yet you seem to resist that by a construction such as “Jerry Sandusky, who was found guilty of sexual abuse of children.” As you say, the verdict removes doubt, and we can all call him that which it was obvious to many from the beginning that he was.
Cassidy
@Gin & Tonic: Well, as someone who doesn’t get it, I am happy to explain it. The point of the asterisk next to Maris’s name was to make it less legitimate. No one ever said he didn’t hit the homeruns. They did say that it wasn’t quite as good as Ruth’s. To this day, Maris has never really been recognized for that feat.
Ash Can
@What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us? (formerly MarkJ): I don’t see anyone here saying that people are warped for enjoying college football and tailgating. I do see a lot of people here, including me, saying that people are warped for letting college football and tailgating become more important to them than seeking justice for child abusers, their enablers, and their victims.
Punchy
So the FANS are now at fault. Fucking christ I’ve heard everything.
And I love how one school screwing up becomes the norm for how all of college sports must be operating. Nice.
burnspbesq
@WJS:
President Brodhead has shown by his actions that he disagrees with your assessment of the relationship between the Duke men’s basketball program and the university as a whole, and I respectfully submit that he is in a better position than you to make that call.
Seebach
@geg6: Build a better community.
Punchy
@geg6: Thank you for saying it much more eloquently than I did. Looks like half the board here just doesn’t get it.
geg6
@Brachiator:
I am completely on board with this.
Cassidy
@Cacti: I’m a dick, but I wouldn’t go that far. Punchy is illustrating the downside to rabid fandom, though. Geg6 is doing the same, just more eloquently.
I’m sorry, and maybe it’s just teams from PA, but what’s the deal with covering for people who are sexual predators? Sandusky, Roethlisberger? Does someone have to rape a child on the 50 yard line at halftime on live telelvision with Christina Aguilera singing the Star Spangled Banner off to the side before someone says “Hmmm, maybe this is a little much.”?
lamh35
Being from Jaguar and Tiger country, it has always been a sore point the Paterno beating Eddie Robinson as “winniest coach”. It really pissed people off here. It was seen as favoratism, so having Eddie Robinson back at number one is bittersweet, but I bet Grambling and Southern fans will be happy.
burnspbesq
@Gin & Tonic:
The verdict doesn’t remove all doubt. We’re all aware of cases in which juries have gotten it wrong. But yes, “convicted child molester.”
My more fundamental beef is with people who skipped over “alleged child molester” and went straight to “child molester” when nobody knew jack shit. Eventually being shown to have guessed right doesn’t excuse lynch-mob behavior.
Cassidy
@Punchy: Oh we get it. we’re just saying you’re wrong and full of it.
Cassidy
Smoking weed and hip hop?
martha
@Seebach: Oh good God. Where do you live? Seattle? San Francisco? Oh wait. New York City. Another coastie telling us fly-over denizens how superior you are. Jesus.
Carl Nyberg
Vacating past victories seems a bit like retroactive retirement to me.
It’s a way of creating a penalty that only penalizes if you accept the import of the world of college football. And it’s only significant in a sort of oblique way within that world.
Given that much of the problem was attaching excessive import to college football and its royalty, it seems odd to hit Penn State with a penalty that validates the import of football.
Dork
@Seebach: What’s this even supposed to mean?
I’m kind of shocked that so many commentors dont understand the role that college athletics plays in alumi support, and importantly, donations. Long after I graduated, my only real tether to the school what its sports teams. Pride in such pushes me to donate to their academic programs. I cant possibly be the only one that sees this.
Monkeyfister
A chump-change fine, they lose four Bowl Game opportunities, and some fee-fees get hurt when the man comes and takes away the trophies. big fricken deal. They’ll dump the fine onto the backs of the students. All those big suit people who allowed this to go on will still get their golden parachutes.
NCAA should have totally unplugged the entire Penn State Athletic Program, from Baseball to Wrestling. All the money that schools siphon from other actual ACADEMIC programs to feed athletics is a crime in itself.
Where are the PERP-WALKS for those who covered this up?
Seebach
@martha: I live in Texas. I can see the damage football has caused. Way to go by the Republican stereotype playbook, though.
jon
@robertdsc-PowerBook: No. Let it be for soccer. Real football played by men and women.
Seebach
@Dork: So the only reason you donate to academics is because of sports? You people are fucking deranged.
We see it. We just think you’re sick.
geg6
@WJS:
You are the biggest asshole in this thread. You know NOTHING about our students. NOTHING.
rumpole
The win thing is bullshit.
No one can take “wins” away. If Penn State won the national championship, or pounded the buckeyes into the dirt, that team still beat them. Saying they didn’t “win” after the fact has no effect on the university. Sticks and stones and all that. It’s not like they’re going to come ask players for their big10champ hats back. Please.
60 million? That hurts (maybe, depending on budget). One year with no football? That really hurts. But they didn’t do that. The whole thing is sickening.
rumpole
The win thing is bullshit.
No one can take “wins” away. If Penn State won the national championship, or pounded the buckeyes into the dirt, that team still beat them. Saying they didn’t “win” after the fact has no effect on the university. Sticks and stones and all that. It’s not like they’re going to come ask players for their big10champ hats back. Please.
60 million? That hurts (maybe, depending on budget). One year with no football? That really hurts. But they didn’t do that. The whole thing is sickening.
debit
@Punchy: I’m sorry, but I think the normal reaction to finding out that an institution allowed a child rapist to continue to rape children is, “BURN IT DOWN.” Yes, there are victims, but it’s funny how some people think there are ones beyond the little kids who were raped.
Cassidy
@martha: We have beaches and driving anywhere doesn’t involve an endless corn field. You lose.
Carl Nyberg
I would like to see the NCAA create a list of penalties for offenses perpetrated in the past, as well as stuff that seems like its reasonably likely to come up.
When a coach gets a report an athlete has raped someone, he’ll know that if he picks up the phone to influence the response or investigation, he’s opening himself and his program up to specific sanctions.
This seems necessary since a bunch of Penn State fans seem to consider the people calling for consequences as the problem.
If it’s all in writing in advance, it makes it clear who is responsible: the people who commit the misconduct.
Monkeyfister
@Dork:
Ridiculous premise.
martha
@Punchy: I get it as well. And I’ve lived on the west coast as well as now the Midwest. It’s cultural and social and socio-economic. I have no issues with “The Death Penalty” or what the NCAA just did to Penn State (even though I think the NCAA is totally screwed up).
But to sneer in general at how communities gather around sporting events and celebrate them is to forget 2,000 years of history (Greeks, Romans, etc.) And it’s also elitist snobbery.
Amanda in the South Bay
@geg6:
I think you are forgetting the purpose of university, your eloquent defense of small town values notwithstanding. I mean, I grew up in a small town, I get it, but jesus, in this case it was rotten to the core.
Dork
@Seebach: Yep. Deranged that I support my university financially and also enjoy their sports teams. I’m freakin crazy that way!
burnspbesq
@Cassidy:
One of those is a crime against humanity. Smoking weed is just a violation. Here’s your ticket, pay by mail or on-line.
Amanda in the South Bay
@martha:
Hey, some of us grew up in that environment, and think its rotten. You think that some people might have different opinions on this, who grew up in that fucked up kind of environment?
Villago Delenda Est
@Gin & Tonic:
The thing is, Joe Paterno’s Penn State did win those games. It’s just that, retroactively, they didn’t. The reasoning is, from 1998 on, the program was tainted by the cover up of Jerry Sandusky’s predations to “protect the reputation of the program”. Well, that turned out just great now, didn’t it? The reputation of the program, and Joe Paterno, has been shot straight to hell. Paterno’s legacy now is not “the winningest college football coach, EVAH!”, it’s “Joe Paterno looked the other way while Jerry Sandusky buggered 11 year olds in Penn State’s locker room.”
There won’t be an asterisk (proper spelling, not the comic strip character from now on, I swear!) by Paterno’s name because he accomplishment “wasn’t as good” as Ruth’s, it will be there in acknowledgement that his legacy was shot to hell by his own actions, of actively covering up for Sandusky.
Robinson didn’t cover up for a Jerry Sandusky. That’s the difference.
Punchy
So you’re not Catholic, right?
Seebach
@martha: The Greeks and Romans raped boys, too. So way to carry on tradition, Small Town America. You’ve given us so much.
Cassidy
Wow. I was not aware that sitting in a camp chair drinking swill from red plastic cup and eating undercooked wings while Billy Bob regales you with his latest hand up a cow’s ass story was on the same level as the Olympics.
geg6
@Seebach:
Go fuck yourself, why don’t you?
Jeebus. A fucking assistant coach spends decades molesting children and four top administrators and the Board of Trustees cover it up. And, somehow, it’s the fault of the fans and people in the community.
People like you should spend a day or two living here. You have no idea what community means.
martha
@Cassidy: LOL. Whatever. I’ve lived where you did once. I’m perfectly happy here (no cornfields in sight and the ones close are being turned into sileage right now because of our extreme drought…climate change and all). This is a big, gorgeous country with lots of interesting places to live and people to meet. And lots of them live in the flyover.
debit
@Punchy: Nope. And I would happily see the Catholic church burned to ashes.
Ash Can
@Dork: We understand completely; it’s that we disagree with it. Specifically, we think it shouldn’t be the only thing that elicits loyalty to a school — and especially to the degree that it becomes more important than maintaining perspective on matters of human decency.
martha
@Seebach: Wow, you immediately jumped to rape. I was actually thinking about the arc of history, nothing new, things never change, etc. And the Olympics, since they start on Friday. London, you know. Silly me.
Seebach
@geg6: I think the best part of this all is seeing arrogant Penn Staters have to crawl around in the mud and shit they made themselves. I didn’t even need coffee this morning to pep up.
I’d rather die than visit your piece of shit town.
Punchy
@Seebach: And progressives keep scratching their chin and asking why they cant seem to make a dent in the votering patterns of rural states. The elitism is stunning, damn near insulting.
FlipYrWhig
I can comprehend big-time college sports as a kind of American analogue for club teams in soccer: it’s your local side, crush those jerks from that other place, woooo! But I think it’s _totally_ bizarre that it has anything to do with an educational institution. And that creates a bunch of issues in its own right, like the need to keep money out of players’ hands (officially) and the desire to put perks into players’ hands (secretly).
(Ironically, Paterno IIRC was always regarded as one of the big-time coaches who cared most about the academic side of the mission.)
geg6
@Cassidy:
Please enlighten me. Who covered for either of these people, besides the four administrators and the Board of Trustee? As for Roethlisberger, I am unaware of anyone covering for him other than his posse. Name names or shut the fuck up.
Cassidy
@burnspbesq: You, my wierd worded lawyer, are listening to the wrong hip hop artists. I am currently waiting for the oppurtunity to tell any of my friends who knew about Deltron 3030 and didn’t tell me that I hope they get sick this weekend.
@geg6:
Shared outhouses?
rb
@Carl Nyberg: it seems odd to hit Penn State with a penalty that validates the import of football.
Agree, but you can’t have NCAA issuing penalties and not fall into this trap. The entire motivation for everything going on here is that penn st football damaged “Football” and so must be punished. Every word the NCAA excretes furthers the outsize import of football.
The NCAA is already vastly overpowered. A significant black cloud to go along with the silver lining of this punishment is the renewed validation the NCAA (a corrupt price fixing cartel making billions from unpaid labor) will get from it.
The state of PA and the university itself could reorganize their priorities if they had the will. What will (hopefully) actually happen is that that reorganization will happen secondary to a criminal and civil pile-on the magnitude of which will make this NCAA fine seem like nothing.
satanicpanic
@martha: I think it’s fair to question your premise- football makes better communities. Is Pennsylvania free of the divisiveness that other American states suffer from? I would guess not. My community (not in PA, but a small rural one) never was. Football can also set communities against neighboring communities. I remember plenty of inter-town violence during football season. And we’re beginning to understand that football is an industrial-strength brain destroying industry, and in the very near future, only poor parents are going to allow their kids to play.
burnspbesq
@Ash Can:
The empirical evidence of the link between athletic success and alumni giving is overwhelming. That’s reality, and it’s not changing any time soon. You don’t have to like it, but you gain nothing by pretending it’s not true.
Seebach
@Punchy: So are you going to vote for Romney now over your hurt fee-fee? Big meanies, making fun of your stupid football cult, so it’s time to destroy the entire country?
peach flavored shampoo
Are PSU’s football coaches’ contracts all rewritten now? Gotta believe that they all had bowl game incentives and win/loss incentives written in them. In light of these sanctions, shouldn’t they all be re-done? Or are the coaches just hosed?
Cassidy
@martha: Actually, I agree with you,re: nice areas. I’m just fanning the flames. I really enjoyed living in Omaha.
I still don’t excuse the rabid fandom and accept the sports=community dynamic. It’s not all bad, but clearly, it can lead to a toxic environment if left unchecked. And yes, the fans do bear some responsibility, albeit a small protion. They are part of that environment and, as you well know, it all feeds on itself.
Face
Last time I looked at the schedule, PSU is still playing this year, with 11 peeps on both sides of the ball. Not sure where the crawling in shit comes into play. Must be a Texas thing.
300baud
@aimai:
That NPR piece bothered me, too. Gosh, the community will be devastated! And they’re already devastated by the scandal!
No mention of how the raped boys felt, of course. Surely nothing as strong as devastated, or I’m sure the piece would have mentioned it. Maybe they were mildly discomfited.
No mention, either, of how the community’s fanatical support of the football program enabled the cover-up, and kept people from coming forward. Or how the local police put one raped boy into witness protection. Not to keep him safe from the rapist, but from the football fans.
Oh, the poor devastated community! All victims, they.
Legalize
@debit:
Certainly. The NCAA took away ALL of the program’s prestige.
burnspbesq
@Cassidy:
Hmm, let’s see … Bach, Coltrane, or Deltron 3030? Oddly, that doesn’t seem like a tough call. I will check them out before making a final decision, however.
Cassidy
@geg6: Chill dude. Use the terrible towel to clean up some of the enraged fan spittle. It’s only a game, right? ;)
Cassidy
@burnspbesq: There is a time and place for all.
geg6
@Amanda in the South Bay:
Um, no. Since I have worked and taught at universities and colleges for my entire career, I am well aware of what the purposes of them are.
One of those purposes is supposed to be to create community and acceptance among the students and faculty/staff, in addition to all the other stuff like academics, responsibility, etc., etc., etc. An education spent entirely in a classroom or library isn’t much of an education.
FlipYrWhig
@satanicpanic: Hey now, Thunderdome really pulled together the Bartertown community after that apocalypse.
Ash Can
@burnspbesq: You misunderstood what I wrote. I know it’s there, I just wish it didn’t exist to the degree it does. I never went to football schools myself, but I keep in touch with them and donate to them on the basis of their academics. My husband, on the other hand, did go to a football school, and is proud of both the school’s academics and sports program. And I think that’s great — because this particular school (Northwestern) and its alumni maintain a relatively healthy balance between academics and sports.
Eli Rabett
People are missing the real point, this was not a football scandal, this was a governance scandal, and the NCAA is a sideshow, the place the rubber SHOULD meet the road is the accrediting agency, the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, and they are investigating .
The real issue is how did Paterno and the football program escape from the control of the University (Bd of Trustees, President, etc.:( and it is not only Penn State. This is a moment where if people get their heads out of the pigskin, the heads of the hydra can be cut off.
Punchy
And I have to believe that you blame the parents of the children that were molested by priests. After all, they contributed to that environment by driving to the church, parking, and going inside to enjoy the service. Church Fans, natch.
Stupid parents. Clearly enabling all that harm by….um…showing up.
geg6
@Seebach:
You don’t even know what my town is.
And seeing that you said you live in Texas, you really should not be throwing around slurs at people who don’t want to live in the hellhole you do.
Seebach
@Punchy: Yes. All Catholics who still donate bear responsibility for supporting a child-rape conspiracy.
geg6
@Punchy:
Damn near? It is just plain insulting.
300baud
@@Punchy: Punchy:
I am fascinated with your theory that something a group considers normal can’t have something seriously wrong with it.
Perhaps if you think extra hard you can find some examples where that isn’t true?
Midnight Marauder
Penn State fans should stop whining for a day and just be fucking thankful they even still have a football program to rebuild.
You are lucky they didn’t burn your entire rotten institution to the fucking ground.
geg6
@Cassidy:
Another insulting dick who has no clue about life outside his/her own bubble.
rb
@Eli Rabett: This. I’m not terribly optimistic, but your comment is right on point.
The NCAA isn’t the ultimate authority here, and in my opinion they should have much less power than they do.
satanicpanic
@FlipYrWhig: Haha seriously. I, being a young liberal interested in race + class issues, always was irritated that when it came to picking QBs, it was always the white guy from a rich family who got the gig. Poor mexicans and poor whites had to do all the grunt work. Just like in the real community!
Cassidy
@Punchy: YOu really want to do this Punchy? I mean, we’re both kind of assholes and I get that, but you’re really wanting to sink to the level of being mad at children having the gall to be raped and ruining your weekend? Are you really that shitty of a person.
Suck it up, son. Fans like you don’t want to hear about this kind of stuff. You want people like Paterno to keep it hidden just so you can have your weekend “togetherness”. Fans like you are just as happy not knowing and your undying allegiance to people like Paterno anables them to cover up things like this. You are just as much at fault as anyone else for not demaniding accountability, for allowing your school to vacate decency in the name of keeping you fat on wings and bribed on football. You are part of the problem.
Villago Delenda Est
Obviously, emotions are running high in this thread.
That’s to be expected. This is a passionate subject for many, in all its facets.
I’d ask, politely and with respect to all, to dial it back down to 8 or so. We don’t need to go to 11.
If we do, wingnuts will show up, and you all know what will happen THEN.
suzanne
@Cassidy:
Word. Absolutely.
I’m currently visiting my in-laws in Fayetteville, home of the Razorbacks, as I’m visually informed every damn time I leave the house. I really don’t give even half of a mercy fuck that they have nothing else to do out here (to my in-laws’ credit, they don’t, either) than watch sports. If they want to bond as a community, they can start new institutions as they so choose. Judging by the look of the place, they could use a good community cleanup effort. Sorry that that sort of thing interferes with your ass-sitting armchair gladiator amusement. If it’s really that amusing to you, it might be time to check out your local library.
Seebach
@geg6: LOL, someone at Penn State saying that other people live inside a bubble. That is fucking hilarious.
I’m not sure this can be topped.
Tokyokie
@lamh35: I’m happy for the Grambling community that Eddie Robinson is back at the top of the list. I guess you could argue that Robinson was adored to the same extent in north-central Louisiana as Paterno was in central Pennsylvania, but it seems Robinson was appreciated more for his personal qualities, Paterno for the success of his football program. When Paterno finally passed Robinson last year amid the Sandusky allegations, I thought it was a shame.
Amanda in the South Bay
@geg6:
And you wonder why people who don’t give a rat’s ass about sports find the emphasis on community and sports to be a bit…fucked up? The only way to build community is through sports?
rb
@Punchy: Stupid parents. Clearly enabling all that harm by….um…showing up.
I know you’re being snarky, but there’s an inconvenient grain of truth here. Denial at the level of the community is rampant in the RCC*, some victims’ families included, and we are seeing this in “PSU nation” as well.
RCC laity and PSU fans obviously aren’t the primary or secondary villains in their respective scandals. But they and their ennabling denial are on the list.
*I attended as a young person, and still consider myself partially responsible, though I left long ago.
Mnemosyne
@Peter:
College sports have kind of a weird history in the US, because many of our professional sports (particularly football and basketball) started as college sports first, and then went pro later on when people realized they could make money off them. That’s why professional baseball has a farm team system (where young players go to the minor leagues before being promoted to the majors) but football and basketball use college programs as their de facto minor leagues.
geg6
@Cassidy:
First, I’m not a dude.
Second, you made a lot of accusations there. All I’m asking is some evidence. You must have some, right?
jon
Wow. Loving the anger that so nicely distracts from the central issues: child rape and college football/our sport culture.
Child rape (please don’t call it a “sex scandal” unless the unseemly acts were done with consent) is, all but a tiny minority agree, completely unacceptable.
The institution that covered it up deserves to be punished.
And the punishment handed down by the NCAA is either effecting the wrong people or not effecting the right ones.
Duh.
And Duh again.
The NCAA doesn’t exist to punish child rapists. It exists to self-perpetuate. Is it out of control if it doesn’t do all the punishing we want? No. It just did what it did.
The power to change things is political: governor, legislature, board of trustees. Send them your angry letters. Send them your angry thoughts. The NCAA is a contract vendor for sports entertainment, but it’s the universities themselves that hide behind this symbiotic parasitic relationship. If you want Penn State football gone forever, tell that board.
What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us? (formerly MarkJ)
@Seebach: what fucking pointless hobbies do you have, just out of curiousity? Or do you just do nothing but work, sleep, and comment on blogs? Everyone indulges in something that other people consider frivolous. Just because someone likes college football doesn’t make them a bad person, undereducated, or a uncultured hick. Other people follow the Kardashians, The Wire, or watch sitcoms, or knit, or become civil war reenactors, or obsessed fans of spider man, the LOTR, or Star Trek. You can do any or all fo the above and not be a bad person.
Punchy
Dont lump me into your asshole-ness.
Did you just jump to the conclusion that college football fans (in general, of course) are now enablers of child molestation? If so……whhhhhhheeeeeeeewwww buddy. That’s about as fucking stupid as I’ve ever heard. Where do college baseball and basketball fans reside in your hierarchy of blame and resposibility? Are womens volleyball fans exempt?
BruceK
The vacating of past wins seems to me to be less revisionist history and more along the lines of “poisoned fruit” – in law, the concept that you can’t use evidence, no matter how compelling, that was uncovered through an illegal search; here, the concept that you can’t claim credit for a win achieved through violation of the rules. If Penn State beat Ohio State during that time? True, it doesn’t undo the fact that Ohio State got stomped, but it didn’t happen at the hands of a legitimate competitor. That’s what vacating the wins means – that from the moment they decided to cover up Sandusky’s crimes until the moment the secret was revealed, Penn State was not a legitimate athletic program.
It’s like a forfeit in baseball – the Bisons could be clobbering the Mud Hens 19-2 in the sixth when Bison fans rush the field and trigger a forfeit, but no matter what the score was on the field, it goes into the books as a 9-0 Mud Hen victory.
As for the impact beyond the guilty parties? That happens. You can’t allow a culture to stand when it’s the sort of culture that will see protecting the secret of someone like Sandusky as an acceptable action.
Cassidy
@geg6: …says the guy espousing the truthiness of his rural, rape enabling community life. Look dude, I’ve been around a bit. I’ve lived in every part of this country except the Pacific Northwest and Hawaii. That has nothing to do with it. No, I don’t like little tiny communities. I don’t want to drive 45 mins to get something fancier the Hardee’s and Darla’s Diner. I like having the option to entertain myself. I also don’t like the gossip, the acceptable racism, the institutional mysogyny, the piss porr educational systems, the hero worship of sports, and not being able to get a decent imported beer. You like your rural community? That’s cool mine, enjoy it and embrace it. But don’t expect the rest of us to treat you like special little snowflakes because your football gathering got all fucked up. Blame your school, blame yourself as the enablers…not us.
rb
@jon: The NCAA is a contract vendor for sports entertainment, but it’s the universities themselves that hide behind this symbiotic parasitic relationship.
Yup. I’d add “corrupt, bloodsucking” in front of “contract,” but otherwise: this.
geg6
@Seebach:
You do realize that Penn State has more than one campus, right? And that each of them have their own culture, separate from but loosely linked to University Park?
No, I can see that you don’t know and don’t give a shit if you can see a way to beat someone you know nothing about up.
Seebach
@What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us? (formerly MarkJ): My pointless hobbies don’t involve young people running at each other really, really hard.
Movies, books, music, even television like the Wire or Breaking Bad can enrich your life. It’s really quite wonderful what you can do when you’re not feasting on health sacrifices made by children. Nobody’s getting brain damage or ruining their body for my entertainment.
geg6
@Amanda in the South Bay:
Around here, yes. There are very few things that most people agree upon. Not politics. Not religion. Not most things. But almost everyone here can cheer for our sports teams and feel connected to one another over that. If you have a better idea, perhaps you should propose it.
Gin & Tonic
@Villago Delenda Est:
VICTORY!! ?
Seebach
@geg6: Cockfighting and dogfighting, perhaps?
IowaOldLady
If anyone wants to anchor this discussion in numbers, Penn State’s budget is online.
Bas-O-Matic
@burnspbesq: @JBerardi:
I don’t know anything about Deltron 3030, but I’ll put Illmatic up against A Love Supreme any day. That’s not to say that there’s not bad hip hop, but then there’s also Chuck Mangione.
geg6
@Cassidy:
I don’t live in a rural community. Which tells me again that you know nothing about me, my community, or Penn State. I am less than 30 minutes from a major city.
Oh, and I’m a woman. Quit calling me “dude.”
Robin G.
I’m not sure what all the wailing from Penn State is about, to be honest with you. The most powerful argument against the death penalty was that it would severely depress the local economy; while I thought it was worrisome that an entire section of the state seemed to survive solely on the PSU football program, lost jobs are nothing to sneer at. But that didn’t happen.
PSU’s still got their football team — they’re just going to have a *bad* one for awhile. Is the argument that no one will have anything to do with the Lions if they’re losing? I thought the “We Are Penn State” love for the program was so enormous that it would overcome anything. If everyone’s going to stop coming or associating with PSU not because of their association with child rape but because they’re not winning as many games, that’s just a whole new level of fucked up.
Also, as a lifelong Baltimore Orioles fan, I don’t have loads of respect for people who ditch their team because of on-field suckitude.
Cassidy
@geg6:
Very soincere apology. I always thought you were a gay guy. Not ebing snarky, but that’s what I thought stuck out to me and made me remember it.
Admittedly, I’m trolling to a certain extent. I get small town life, I really do. It occassionally appeals to me, but I enjoy cities. But this whole community rallying around sports thing to me is nothing more than excuses and bullshit. I do not care, one little Hggs-Boson if the Saturday afternoon tailgate date has been ruined or is one iota less enjoyable over this. If young boys getting brain damage is what binds a community together then, I’m sorry, nuke it from fucking orbit.
I do care that students who pursue academics over sports are going to bear the brunt of financial penalties. I do care that some kids won’t get to go away to college and ge tthat experience because dorm rates go up. OTOH, maybe going to CC and not going to PSU is better for them in the long run.
@Punchy:
Shit, I did you a favor. I’m not the one upset because raped children ruined my weekend.
butler
Yup, no musician or writer ever endangered their health or died young as a result of their profession.
And I suppose than The Wire is at least one step removed from the actual events which inspired its plots and characters, so you aren’t technically being entertained by human misery.
geg6
@Seebach:
Those sound more like Texas pastimes to me.
Mnemosyne
@Seebach:
Uh, you might want to look at what the long-term consequences of anorexia, bulimia and drug use are before you decide that no one is suffering for your choice of entertainment. Not to mention the various crew members who die making TV shows. Or the child stars whose lives were permanently fucked up because of the pressures of acting at a young age.
The Moar You Know
So, in other words, they lose the statue of JoePa and pay a perfunctory fine and we’re all done, back to business as usual.
Why is this becoming a very predictable end result of “justice” when large institutions indulge in life-destroying criminal behavior?
Seebach
@geg6: I hate Texas, so if you think making fun of Texas is going to get to me, I have to laugh. Not everyone gets personally offended if you make fun of their podunk little town.
@butler: Musicians and writers have died, but dying is not the point. Violence is the point of football.
Breaking Bad shows violence, but it’s not real. As for football? Junior Seau.
My violence is fake. Your violence is real.
jenn
@ Cassidy re your earlier statement re the power of the NCAA to do this ~ my understanding is thatprior the this Penn State decision so horrified Emmert, the NCAA president, that he demanded the power to do this from his Board of Directors, and they were horrified enough to comply. So folks who initially said he couldn’t do this much (which is what your comment seemed to imply) weren’t entirely wrong.
.
Also, is it possible for us to abhor what Sandusky, Paterno, Spanier et al did, to support the NCAA’s sanctions (or even wish they’d gone further), and refrain from telling everyone who works or attends Penn State, or lives in flyover country, and attends football games, that they suck? It seems like that should be possible.
Cassidy
@geg6:
But I bet you live 5 minutes from a cow. Just sayin’.
Chicks can be dude’s too. We were also posting at the same time. Sorry.
Mnemosyne
@Seebach:
Your violence is not nearly as fake as you want to believe. Which is kind of the point.
Bill
So I’m particularly surprised with how my mom is taking this, going back to the statute being removed. We’re not tied to Penn State at all, and she’s no big football fan. She just convinced herself that it’s awfully convenient that they reach this conclusion after Joe Parterno died. As she told me the other day, “Of course – now that he’s dead and can’t defend himself, the administrators throw him under the bus as the bad guy to save themselves.” Without him alive to respond, she thinks the Freeh report is just a way for those in charge to try to wash their hands of most of their responsibility by saying it was all Paterno’s fault.
She got visibly angry when she saw the news that the statute came down – I don’t know how she’ll feel about all of this.
Seebach
@Mnemosyne: Very true. I only watch but the two shows. So I’ll just stop watching Breaking Bad, as the Wire is long-concluded. I will be television free to prevent any further abuse from my entertainment.
Cassidy
@jenn: I’ve always felt that the NCAA was going to do whatever it wanted regardless of its “powers”.
As for the rest of it, this didn’t start that way.
Kane
A 55 year old assistant coach who twice received Assistant Coach of the Year awards while coaching at one of the most prestigious college football programs in the country retires in the prime of his career and no one asks why?
In the musical chairs of hiring and firing college coaches, are we supposed to believe that no school in the nation inquired about hiring Jerry Sandusky to be Head Coach of their football program? If inquiries were made, what did they learn and when? And when did the suits at the top of the NCAA first learn about what was going on at Penn State?
And what about the local and national media? Why was it that ESPN and the national sports media never floated the name of Sandusky everytime there was a job opening for Head Coach? What did they know and when did they know it?
Punchy
You’re such a disengenous fucking asshole. I never said any of that, but since all you deal in is constant and increasingly vicious ad hominems, I’m going to back out of this and let you just fling shit at everyone else that walks by. Christ what a dick you are.
Mnemosyne
@Seebach:
I guess you didn’t follow the link, because it’s ain’t just TV. It’s movies and music, too.
Pretty much any mass-produced entertainment — including sports — is based on the pain and suffering of others. You can argue in favor of mitigating the problem as Haskell Wexler has been doing, but don’t pretend that your preferred form of entertainment is inherently better because the damage it does to the people who work in it is hidden from you.
Kimberly Smiths
Elders should set an example to the young ones… remember that folks!
Cassidy
@Punchy: Words matter. Perhaps you should rethink your unwavering support of a sports team if it can lead to enabling a sexual predator.
debit
@Kane: Also, too, Mike McQueary. There was an article that said he’d been told, clearly, by Paterno that he wouldn’t get the job when he applied for it. Then he got it. Who made that decision, and why?
Seebach
@Mnemosyne: Fair, but doesn’t the fact that the suffering is hidden make it superior? Even amongst sports, Football and Hockey stand out as reveling in the violence. The violence is the point.
If suffering can’t be avoided, I’d think you should at least not glory in the suffering for suffering’s sake.
JBerardi
http://twitter.com/joe_sheehan/statuses/227402116954722305
JenJen
Well, this thread is pretty insufferable. As a sports nut who lives in Ohio and went to a public university, I’m a bit offended by what so many have to say in this thread about sports in general, football, and college sports specifically.
There’s more than a little elitism here and I’m honestly surprised by it.
Seebach
@JenJen: Why is it “elitism”? Rich people enjoy their “sports” as well.
Bob
The institution – and the reverence for it – enabled and allowed the rape of children.
The $60m is going to come from higher tuition for the kids. When Morehouse & SMU get the “death penalty” for having the temerity to pay the kids who go out in front of the cameras and play football, well, that just won’t do. Institutionalized child rape – fine.
Me: No football, two years. No home games six years after that. No televised games ten years past that. There are plenty of schools that do not go to the church of the gridiron on Sunday, Penn State should try to be one of those schools for a while.
And to those who would say “well then others would have been hurt” by such a ruling – well – that’s the effing point. Because what should happen is next time someone see something and thinks about reporting it, do you want that person’s thought to be “Don’t worry, if it turns out to be something we’ll just pay the fine” or do you want to be “Why would they pay me to be an assistant coach/hot dog vendor/groundskeeper if there is no longer any football team.”
FYI – The response should be the latter.
Roy G.
Well, nothing says ‘community’ in the 21st century US like dressing up in weird clothes, waving foam fingers, getting wasted, pigging out on junk food, and cheering on your -gladiators- football team against their hated opponents. Big time college athletics really loves to wrap itself in the flag, and pretend that it’s all ‘amateur’ – don’t mind the billions of dollars floating around!
I think the other scandal is that the vast majority of these fans don’t give a single shit about whether or not their team is dirty or clean, but only if they get caught or not. It seems that most of the focus is on the latter for most of PSU right now. Break the rules, take the punishment. Penn State cheated to win those National Championships, so sorry, they don’t count.
And, i’d like to add, that the supreme righteousness with which Penn State used to display so proudly was all bullshit. Your program was dirtier than SMU, Miami, USC or any of the other big timers that got slapped. If you want to be mad, look inside your own house and the leaders who betrayed you. Time to eat it and STFU. Your bubble has been popped, so show some humility for once.
Brachiator
@The Moar You Know:
I don’t think that these sanctions have anything to do with any other pending actions, especially civil lawsuits. I’m not sure whether any PSU officials can be prosecuted for any of their actions related to protecting Sandusky.
Does anyone know what has happened to the foundation that Sandusky used as a cover for his activities?
I am not seeing anything like back to business as usual here. Not yet.
apocalipstick
@aimai:
One of the best metaphors in the history of the internetz.
suzanne
I really don’t get why it’s elitist to note that sports aren’t exactly promoting a life of the mind, routinely result in serious injury, contribute to tribalism, and, for some sports, feature violence and physical aggression as the primary draw for the spectator.
I say this as a Wildcat and a Sun Devil.
rb
@The Moar You Know: Why is this becoming a very predictable end result of “justice” when large institutions indulge in life-destroying criminal behavior?
I agree with the thrust of your comment, but the NCAA isn’t empowered to deal out “justice.” Our expecting it to deal out justice is part of the problem here.
Face
You dont know much about hockey, do you?
JenJen
@Seebach: Well, for one, why do you have “sports” in quotation marks?
ETA: Good grief, I just read what you said about hockey. Honestly, if you don’t understand sports, try not talking about them. You’re betraying your ignorance.
Seebach
@JenJen: Because I see it as a plague that wastes much of the world’s time, energy, and money.
Mnemosyne
@Seebach:
In a thread about Penn State, you want to try and argue that hiding the suffering that your program or industry is based on is superior to letting it be visible for all to see (and criticize)?
Frankly, I think one of the biggest problems that football currently has is that, like so many aspects of our culture, it’s been corrupted by entertainment. They can’t just run plays and score points anymore. They have to have harder hits, more extreme injuries, because otherwise it’s boring television. It’s been like this since the 1970s which, not incidentally, is when football started becoming a broadcast TV phenomenon.
It’s not a great movie, but the 1975 version of Rollerball totally called it — once a sport becomes a TV spectacle that garners ratings and massive advertising dollars, there’s no extreme that the owners won’t bring it to.
SatanicPanic
@JenJen: You don’t need to be a big city liberal to find problems with sports, especially football. In my community high school football just reproduced all the nastiness of the larger community in a more intense and dangerous package. I don’t remember any farm worker wages being raised because their kids were star running backs. I lived this and I’m skeptical, so I don’t see what’s wrong with other people voicing the same opinions.
Dork
To all the self-rightous folks, a little clarity is required. PSU’s coaching and AD system was poison, not the actual team and players. To “compare” them to USC or Miami is absurd; in those scandals, the players were largely or exclusively at fault (taking money, drugs, etc). None of the current players have ever been accused in participating or covering up the Sandusky scandal.
Seebach
@Mnemosyne: Nah, not really. You’ve been very thoughtful and measured, and your points are excellent. I just wish a few “sports fans” in this thread were more open about the suffering they’ve signed on with.
aimai
@geg6:
I don’t really understand the notion that my statement was “elitist.” I went to those schools because they were schools. My point was not to say that my education was better than someone else’s, or my lack of attatchment to football makes me a better person. But merely to point out that it is perfectly possible to attend several Universities and have a perfectly cromulent time of it without ever, once, worrying about where I was going to spend a Saturday morning.
No, I do not think that a football program, or any sports program, is necessary to a sense of community. I think its very clear that it is parasitic on the schools where it has grown so large that it has become like a totem or a religion and where what happens to the football coach (!) the fucking football coach (!) is allowed to see first like lese majeste and then like a shakesperian tragedy. Its not. Paterno and all his people were fallible, like anyone else. They did some good, and a whole lot of bad and the University and the students refused to hold them accountable for that until they were forced to, by the Freeh report, long after the harm was done because of an overwhelmingly childish sense of greed and need for a totemic identification with a “winner.”
I think that’s sick. Definitionally sick. This has nothing to do with elitism–I would absolutely say the same if/when it happens at any college or university with which I have been affiliated regardless of the status of the wrongdoer or of the students.
I did not bring up class issues and I don’t see this as at all a class issue. It has to do with a pathetic need of (everyone) to identify with somethign larger and more important and scary than themselves. It happens in every kind of group that people affiliate themselves with if they are not sceptical and self regulating–garden clubs and quilting bees, highschool sports and college sports, dance competitions and tons of other associations.
The lesson of Penn State up until the “death penalty” was that important people get coddled and protected and they can always find a way to make their cause the cause of lots of little people who they happilly stepped on, shat on, and even molested on their way up the ladder.
aimai
geg6
@Seebach:
So you don’t really give a shit about any of this, your moral platitudes notwithstanding. You just hate sports.
Got it.
Face
@Seebach: Curious — just what sports do you enjoy? Or are all sports evil? Is swimming too violent for youngsters? Do kids get no discipline or exercise from soccer? Any problems with the teamwork and hand-eye coordination of baseball?
Would you rather your kids sit their ass on the couch and play video games?
SatanicPanic
@Mnemosyne:
This is a great point. I was living abroad and went about 5 years without seeing a football game. I’d watched the Olympics, seen a few soccer games, etc. but American Football.. I had forgotten how crazy the TV broadcast is. With all the wild colors flying at the screen, the nutty graphics, the player photos which move (man I find that unnerving), it’s just a step short of watching Transformers.
aimai
@geg6:
What the fuck, geg6? Are you under the impression that US sports are some kind of badge of workingclassness? That people who “don’t like sports” are all effete liberals and that people who do like to cheer student atheletes are somewho “the salt of the earth?” The Penn State Boosters and the Alums who bring the big money are big fucking money people. Sports teams routinely soak the taxapyers and the consumers of sports as entertainment for every penny they have. The dream of making it big in sports is an obvious fraud on most of the kids who should/could/would be competing for academic scholarships if we poured half the public money into academic scholarships that we pour into sports.
aimai
Seebach
@geg6: I hate the sports culture that ravaged Texas and allowed this to happen, and which you have yet to admit complicity in.
@Face: Kids? When has this been about kids? This is about fat adults living their dreams through children.
Swimming isn’t violent. Are you insane?
I’m also pretty sure that exercise is possible without competition, or hero worship.
Face
Shorter: kids should not play sports. Did I swing and miss, or nail this? Cuz it sure sounds like you’re implying that kids should read books 8-10 hours a day, group activity, exercise, teamwork, and motor-skill development be damned.
The most sound, responsible, have-their-shit-together peers I knew in college were all athletes. I cannot understand this allergy towards sports.
Cassidy
@JenJen: As a Gator fan, and SEC fan in general, and a fan of multiple sports…dirty is dirty. I love a good Super Bowl party as much as the next guy, and grand slams, and perfect games, and broken records, and March Madness, all of it. I love football and basketball and use to love baseball until they made my inner child cry, and volleyball (indoor and outdoor), the occassional lacrosse match and hell, I’ll watch cricket. I don’t have friggin’ clue what’s happening, but I’ll watch it. Dirty is dirty.
This notion that community is tied to sports is toxic. I understand fandom; I want my guy to win also. But they’re comes a point wher the fanbase has to stop and realize that the system, and their part in it, enables teams and schools to make wrong and (sometimes) illegal decisions to protect “the team”. How do you guys not see a problem with that?
geg6
@aimai:
No. Four administrators and the Board of Trustees were the ones who did this. The “University” didn’t do it and the students didn’t do it. As you are definitely unaware, since the media don’t see fit to cover or even discuss this, the vast majority of the students, the alumni, and faculty and staff are completely disgusted by this whole situation. You may see a bunch of students rioting on tv, but it was less than 10% of the students at the University Park campus, let alone the whole University. You may see a bunch of people who live in State College crying about that statue, but you’ll notice that almost none of them are identified as actual students, faculty/staff, or alumni. I work at Penn State and can’t name a single person, student or otherwise, who isn’t heartsick about what happened to those kids and how badly our leaders failed us and them.
But it is a class issue and the fact that you don’t see it that way tells me that you can’t imagine yourself in our community or place. I challenge you to answer the question I directed at another commenter who was so scornful of what our traditions are here to please provide me with another powerful community building pastime that would cross all dividing lines in our community other than sports. She had plenty to say about how shitty my community must be, but didn’t answer that question. Perhaps you are braver than she.
Seebach
@Face: Kids can play sports. I just don’t see why it has to be taxpayer-subsidized and run by schools. Schools are for education.
Let the private sector handle sports.
peach flavored shampoo
The self-unawareness of this comment is a beauty to behold.
Todd
Drum circles (with giant puppets), flamboyant pride parades and poetry readings don’t really constitute community gatherings out in these here unsophisticated parts o’ the country. Many of us are hooked in by family connections and friendships to people who would not be enthused about standing in a drum circle, manning a giant puppet or putting on assless leather chaps to wear in a pride parade, so we connect with each other by attending sporting events.
wonkie
@Punchy: I grew up in a Midweswtern college town. The depiction of such communities as lacking in anything to do except football is…rude to Midwestern college towns.
For one thing, we had basketball. :)!
My community banded together one afternoon to move the library books from the old building to a new one–by playing the equivalent of pass the bucket, books were passed from person to person util all the books went to their new location.
Yes, people read books, lots of them.
RD
@JenJen:
Some of us are honestly frustrated by the disproportionate influence that flyover country has on American culture.
Everyone is afraid to piss them off. We have to dumb things down to please them.
Also, driving east to west in Pennsyltucky is like a journey back to 1849.
Seebach
@geg6: Why do you so BADLY want to be part of a community, that you would sacrifice your very ethics to do it?
geg6
@Seebach:
What are you accusing me of? When did I sacrifice my ethics? Please, get specific if you want to accuse me of something. I’m dying to hear about it, since I don’t believe we’ve ever met.
Todd
@Seebach:
Because she lives there and doesn’t believe in unicorns.
Peter
I can’t fucking find it now, but somewhere upthread someone asked how much of the responsibility the fans and ‘community’ have for the rape of children and the covering up thereof. I can’t find it now, so just imagine this comment is addressed to it.
I’ll tell you exactly how much responsibility they bear: they bear responsibility for creating the environment that allowed and encouraged the administration at PSU to prioritize the program’s reputation over the lives and well-being of children. The rape itself is too far removed to apply any blame, but the cover-up would have never happened without the atmosphere of adulation is idolization that surrounded the program. And every fan owns a piece of that. Which also means that they own a piece of every additional rape enabled by the coverup.
(And before anyone tries playing GOTCHA with me, the exact same thing is true of the RCC’s pedophile coverup.)
rb
@Cassidy: But they’re comes a point wher the fanbase has to stop and realize that the system, and their part in it, enables teams and schools to make wrong and (sometimes) illegal decisions to protect “the team”.
Protect. This. House.
Nah, there’s none of that in our sports culture. No idea what you’re talking about. ;)
Seebach
@geg6: You apparently supported the Penn State football culture, for one. But why is it so important for the community to be united over something so trivial? That is what I cannot understand.
SatanicPanic
@geg6: I’ll answer that one- the county fair. Also, parades and, where I grew up, agricultural festivals.
Hypatia's Momma
@Seebach:
I see you’ve never been a competition swimmer. ;)
rb
@Peter:
Indeed. We agree.
Martin
@Cassidy:
Generally speaking, and I believe this is true at PSU as well – state money isn’t used for athletics outside of a bit of Title IX matching. Moneys at public universities are quite well segregated – scholarship money is never substitutable for other money and the bulk of need based scholarship money comes out of tuition which itself isn’t substitutable for other money.
The $60M is going to have to come out of athletics or as an opportunity cost of the university – so it’ll come out of the same non-athletics pot that has always been funding athletics – university branding/memorabilia. Now that money could be used for other things, but given how dependent those revenues are to athletic program success, it’s not entirely unreasonable that they are connected. That is to say, that money could be used to lower the cost of education rather than pay for sports, but doing so would cause the money to mostly dry up, so it’s a short-term gain/long-term loss.
In aggregate, athletics are break even or a bit better for universities. They attract students that wouldn’t otherwise attend – particularly those that bring non-state tuition. The biggest problem with the system is that there isn’t a relegation system in NCAA. PSU should have lost their Div 1A status (with the ability to earn it back later) and this opportunity given to another university. Same with membership in Big 10.
The problem isn’t that the universities (with obvious exceptions) can’t run athletics programs without preserving the quality of their academics – shit, many of the biggest sports universities have notably improved their academics – both in quality and accessibility during their sports expansions, but that the public is only interested in funding the sports and not the academics. That’s the problem. You guys are railing against the wrong side of the problem.
Carl Nyberg
At what point does unethical activity become so widespread that the program is to blame, not just the people who touched the money?
I sorta feel like if the program benefits from the unethical activity then it’s kinda hard to say the program and its supporters have clean hands.
George Ryan tried the defense in Illinois, “Yes, there was corruption; yes, it was illegal; yes, the money went to my campaign; but you can’t prove I did something specifically illegal.” Ryan got convicted.
The problem with NCAA sports is that it has these regulations that everyone knows are being violated. The NCAA only takes action when it becomes impossible to look the other way.
And people who support the NCAA by being money-dropping fans (and program donors) are all playing a role in the corruption.
Penn State played their little game where they claimed to be observing the officials rules and the program had more integrity, right? That was part of Paterno’s shtick.
Surprise, surprise… the guy talking about morality, honor and integrity was overseeing a program committing crimes people found unthinkable.
I saw this in Navy Recruiting too. If the supervisors create an environment where violating the rules is widespread, but tolerated because it serves the mission of the organization, don’t be surprised when recruiters take this as permission to indulge their sexual appetites.
JenJen
@Cassidy: I didn’t make myself clear; as a rabid sports fan I’m disgusted by the actions of Penn State and feel they got exactly what they deserved. And if I were a Penn State student, I’d withdraw and find another school. No way would I want to carry a twenty-year student loan from that hellhole, where it is compeltely obvious the culture is rotten from the top down and requires a complete re-set.
Rather, I take issue with the elitism of those who are not willing to understand what local and college sports means to a community, and within this thread there is more than a little anti-rural, anti-midwest attitude that I find striking and surprising.
@RD: Case in point. “We have to dumb things down to please them”?? Seriously, as an Ohioan who lives in a fairly large city, you don’t have to “dumb down” anything for me. Or, “them.”
Cassidy
@Hypatia’s Momma: What? You can flap some fins at me. :D The only sport that matters is Crew, anyway.
chopper
paterno’s statue says a great deal more now. fucking good riddance and i hope he rots in hell.
butbutbut…tailgating!
Hypatia's Momma
@Cassidy:
Bah. 1000-m relay all the way.
Carl Nyberg
The appropriate response would be for the NCAA to create a better set of rules and a proactive enforcement mechanism.
But the NCAA hasn’t done this. Why not?
The NCAA’s primary duty is to make sure the money flows. When bad PR results from unethical conduct, the NCAA’s job is to pin it on the lowest level people possible and invoke the “few bad apples” defense.
Seebach
@JenJen: Yeah, sports fans are as pretty much as oppressed as Christians in this country.
chopper
@JenJen:
what about those of us from the rural midwest? or are we just self-hating?
Peter
@geg6:
I’ll do you one better than that. I’d argue that if once the sporting event ends, the town goes right back to being the divided, non-communal mess it was before the sporting event, then it isn’t building community at all. It is, at best, emulating it for a few hours a week.
aimai
@geg6:
It is you who are implying that your community has no other cross cutting community areas than this particular sports program, not I. Offhand I can say that churches, charities, public schools, parks, state fairs, gardening clubs, minor league sports, dance schools, boy scouts, girl scouts, exchange programs, movies, music, (yes, my god, poetry slams but not, in todd’s deathless prose, with assless chaps). Holy fuck there are a lot of ways that people relate to other people that do not involve sitting in a big stadium once a week, or hearing about a win or a loss on the tv.
This is not a class issue at all. Upper class people are mad for sports and protect sports teams/franchises all the fucking time. The people who own these sports franchises and benefit off the dreamy sacrifices of kids and their families have fucking pots of money.
You are using the word “elitist” to describe people on this thread who aren’t under the glamor of sports but it doesn’t mean what you want it to mean. In fact, your attitude is oddly like the people who attacked Obama for the infamous “clinging to guns and god” statement. There is obviously something wrong with a culture that so exalted winning that it couldn’t bear to see a liar and an enabler of child rape be held accountable–students rioted in honor of Joe Pa. Yes, students.
I have nothing to say about the financial penalty that is accruing to all the students in all the Penn system. I’m very sorry about that. But needless to say the fact that the penalty is falling on them is merely to say that, as usual, the real elite upper classes have privatized the gains and socialized the losses. Obviously the penalty should be paid by the NCAA and the Paterno family directly, as well as all the trustees (including the governor) who were involved in the coverup. That this won’t happen just means that the students are paying the price for being pawns in a system which does not value their lives and struggles. But that was true before the penalty–viz the treatment of the children–and will be true long after business goes back to the norm at the insistence of the students and the college community.
rb
@geg6: The “University” didn’t do it and the students didn’t do it.
Come on. It’s not so black and white. A university is a community and has a culture. Deification of anyone – e.g. a football coach – is a lamentable aspect of that culture, when it occurs, and enables the exploitation of the weak by those made powerful by that culture.
It’s like rampant misogyny in our entertainment. We’re not all haters of women or “as bad” as misogyny’s worst exponents, but we bear some of the responsibility.
chopper
@Peter:
i would think if your community is made of people getting together to tailgate at a ball game, you need a new community.
JenJen
@Seebach: Where the hell did that come from? Look, you made a really ignorant comment about hockey. Don’t talk about shit you don’t understand, and don’t put words in my mouth. When did I say sports fans were oppressed?
The elitism in this thread just gets thicker and thicker.
@chopper: I never implied any such thing, but perhaps you’re not as insulted as i am by some of the insinuations in this thread about those of us who actually live and thrive in “flyover country,” whether urban, suburban or rural.
SatanicPanic
@Todd: You don’t have fairs? Music festivals? Movies at the park? Fourth of July? Halloween? Church? That’s just what I can think of off the top of my head.
Cassidy
@JenJen:
Fair enough. In my defense, I’m mostly
jokingTrolling (edit, joke is the wrong implication. I was being more dickish than that). I do understand the appeal of small town life and rural communities. I also think that’s an appeal that only exists if you don’t ask too many questions.That being said, I think most of the people here do understand what local and college sports mean to a community and we’re saying that’s not entirely a good thing. In some cases it is, I get that. And in a few cases (Penn State) it’s toxic. The in-between seems, to me, to be a mixture of nostalgia, projection, beer, dreams and hopelessness. I mean, how great is a lifestyle that all but tells you from the start of life that if you’re fat and can’t play lineman, your stuck and get really good at milking the cows and feeding chickens. If you’re a minority, you better be able to run fast cuz that’s the only way the white folks in town will treat you with respect? I’m sorry, but this love of community isn’t adding up.
debit
@geg6: I get that you’re upset for your students, but what I’m also getting from you is a lot of how terrible this is for everyone. I doubt the victims are going to agree with you.
Your school failed. Your community failed. Everyone associated with this failed those kids. You name a few administrators and a coach, but this sort of shit doesn’t happen in a vacuum; people knew. People knew enough to warn off other institutions from hiring Sandusky.
If I were unlucky enough to be associated with such an institution, I would be more inclined to try to figure out how to make sure kids would be safe in the future, to focus on cleaning house, to take my fucking lumps and thank your deity of choice that it wasn’t worse, because most of America is right there with me when I say, again, that I’d be happy if the place burned to the fucking ground.
Amanda in the South Bay
@JenJen:
Is it elitist when you grow up in a small town, and aren’t into sports? As in, don’t play them, and certainly don’t give a shit about them? The only true small town working class people are into sports? Fuck, you wonder why so many people who grow up in small towns hate them. You’re being elitist when you make small town community all about fucking sports-who cares what the nerds and outcasts in small towns are into, amirite?
rb
@Peter: Heh, so it IS like a religion (ducks head).
peach flavored shampoo
Wow. Just wow.
Amanda in the South Bay
@geg6:
You see, the problem is is that you’re just like the GOP, complaining about “Real” America. “Real” small town, salt of the earth types worship sports, right? You don’t seem to realize that there are people who live in those environments who don’t think the same way. You’re being rather elitist yourself in defining who fits in the “in crowd” in small towns.
Peter
@rb: Ha! Pretty much. This has more in common with the RCC situation than is obvious. You can worship at the altar of the Lord or you can worship at the end zone line, but it’s the same energy you’re putting into it and socially has about the same effect.
Seebach
@JenJen: With all your talk about “elitism” are you sure you’re not a republican troll? Because I don’t know any normal person who talks about “elitism” as though Ivy League universities don’t have sports teams.
JenJen
@Amanda in the South Bay: I never said nor implied any such thing.
@Seebach: Yeah, that’s it, I must be a Republican troll.
rb
@Amanda in the South Bay: Not recognizing the betterness of real america is the new elitism.
Same as the old one, in other words.
gwangung
@chopper: That kinda ignores the reality of how humans band together. Humans select all sorts of rules and rituals to band together, and terming one set as being better than another seems…elitist.
They’re all equally silly, and they’re all equally meaningful.
gwangung
Isn’t this a rather silly point given the behavior of European soccer fans?
Cassidy
@Seebach: JenJen has been around here for quite some time and is clearly (unless she’s a helluva an actor) not a Republican or a troll.
Roy G.
@Dork: I can see your point, but then the question is, who was giving the players the money, arranging to have their tests taken, etc? How many NCAA-sanctioned college football scandals were due solely to the players? Almost by definition, they are due to the coaching staff, boosters and administrators.
This is about real accountability and real ethics. In theory, and according to the many proclamations of Joe Paterno, college athletics are about teaching character and accountability. Yes, the current crop of players isn’t culpable, but they have to make atonements for the sins of their team’s fathers. Let them truly live out the love of the game, even if they aren’t eligible to go to the WalMart AT&T Bowl on January 17th or whatever.
RD
@JenJen:
Will it play in Peoria?
SatanicPanic
@Peter: They’re divided at the game. Rich white boys always got the best positions on the team. Rich white girls always were head cheerleaders. I wasn’t the only person who noticed this either. It seemed to me like a way for their important people in town to lord their importance over everyone. YMMV.
peach flavored shampoo
@SatanicPanic: LOLWUT? Flyover people cant do all those things and attend football games? Who knew?
Dracula
Strawman alert.
SatanicPanic
@gwangung: I have no idea. I wasn’t living in Europe, I haven’t been there in over 20 years, I never watched any European sports telecasts and I don’t have any particular knowledge in how their fans behave beyond what I hear in our media.
Amanda in the South Bay
@SatanicPanic:
Yeah, based on having gone to every single fucking high school football game (thank you band), there’s always a hierarchy-its always the parents of the students who were the best athletes who were royalty (this was in a small town). Most people didn’t care, especially if their children had nothing to do with athletics.
Peter
@SatanicPanic: That was always my impression too, but I’ve admittedly been sports-averse my whole life, so I don’t see myself as an authority ont he behavior of sports fans.
Amanda in the South Bay
@Dracula:
I’m not the one who made high school football the end all and be all of small town living.
Cassidy
@Dracula: Actually, it’s not. This nostalgia for small town life and the exalted community that bands together over sports is a white-wash of the mysogyny, bigotry, and nihilism underneath it all.
gwangung
@SatanicPanic: I’m just pointing out that rabidness in sports fans (and the loyalty engendered to athletes and sports teams) is not limited to Americans; it’s quite common in European and Asian fans.
JenJen
@RD: I would appreciate it if you would not ascribe blatant Halperinism to me. And if we were talking about politics in general, does it really matter how it would play in Peoria, anyway, as Illinois is pretty solidly Democratic when it comes to national elections?
We were talking about Pennsylvania, though, which you call Pennsyltucky. I suppose you intend that as an insult, although it is yet another solidly blue state in national elections, and I don’t think people in Pennsylvania need you to “dumb it down” for them.
SatanicPanic
@peach flavored shampoo: I didn’t know that because, uh, I attended all of those. Even the football games. I was making the point that there are things besides sports going on in small towns.
chopper
@gwangung:
What makes a good man go neutral? Lust for gold? Power? Or were you just born with a heart full of neutrality?
SatanicPanic
@gwangung: I don’t disagree. And it’s certainly possible for that to be the case without the Michael Bay style telecasts we have here in the USA. I just find NFL broadcasts off-putting.
Peter
Also I’ve lived in a rural town so small that it literally doesn’t appear on most maps, and I have to say that outside of occasional pick-up baseball game, most of the times the community came together to have a good time were not sports-related. Indeed, I’d say the majority of them were musical. This ‘sports events are the only community building small towns can have!’ line is a bunch of malarky.
RD
@peach flavored shampoo:
Corn subsidies. Gentleman farmers.
Jokes about “jew doughnuts”.
Good luck with that.
chopper
@gwangung:
in all seriousness, yes humans select all sorts of rules and rituals to band together, but i’m going to go ahead and say, from a moral perspective, a tailgate party is ‘better’ than a backyard klan meeting. and i’m going to point to other stuff that’s ‘better’ in terms of making community than a tailgate party.
sorry i’m such an ‘elitist’. it must be the rural midwesterner in me.
WJS
@burnspbesq: That’s brilliant reasoning. Absolutely brilliant. You must have a sleeve full of degrees.
WJS
@geg6:
I know the smart ones are already looking for a better school, preferably one where child rapists aren’t running things.
Sometimes, an asshole has to say things people don’t want to hear. I’m glad I could be that asshole today. It’s like winning the Stanley Cup on your birthday.
WJS
@debit:
Sorry, but she can’t see anything through that veil of rage.
Without a properly oriented moral compass, the rape of children vs College Football Money just doesn’t make sense to people like that anymore.
Money, money, money. What about ethics? How can you learn anything from an institution where money means more than children? I don’t get that at all. It cannot be all about money.
JoeShabadoo
I just hate the fact that people are looking at the NCAA as as if they are anything but bottom feeding scum. The NCAA is worthless and whatever “punishment” they give will be weighed heavily off the amount of money they can milk out the program and how this can be used to bolster their waning power.
chopper
@WJS:
pure awesome.
SatanicPanic
@Amanda in the South Bay: Yeah, these kids were groomed all their life. But you’re right about the fact that most people didn’t give a crap. Like Peter is saying, there was more going on than just football.
Dracula
Extreme Hyperbole alert.
gwangung
@chopper: Well, OK…I just think folks are letting their focus slip to the forms rather than the power and money that allows human sins to be magnified and to dominate.
peach flavored shampoo
@RD: I have no clue what any of this comment means. Probably because you haven’t dumbed it down enough for a simpleton like me.
Judging by the tone of the thread, I’m pretty sure I dont want to know.
geg6
@Seebach:
Actually, I don’t support the PSU football team. At all. I have never respected Joe Paterno in any way. I never cheered for them. I went to Pitt. I just work at one of the PSU campuses.
@SatanicPanic:
Well, there is no county fair here. And we don’t have parades either, unless it’s a parade for the local high school football team for homecoming. You do not seem to understand how woven into the fabric of this part of the world sports are.
There are large parades in Pittsburgh for Labor Day, Veterans Day, and St. Patrick’s Day, along with the huge ones set aside for when the Steelers or Penguins win championships. But that’s in Pittsburgh, not in most of Western or Central PA.
aimai
@Dracula:
But that is exactly the argument that geg6 ismaking, that it is elitist to argue that there are many other ways that small town or big town people can relate. She is arguing that without sports there is nothing left of community. Its not our hypebole or our strawman, its hers. I resolutely deny it and like others gave many examples of ways in which people love their communities and interact with other people in their communities that are not sports focused.
aimai
Roy G.
@JenJen: So it’s really egalitarian salt of the earth midwesternism to go around loudly proclaiming to be ‘THE’ Ohio State University? Uh huh. Nothing elitist about that.
Punchy
Sandusky was President(Chancellor?) of Penn State? Or was he on the Board of Directors? These statements are such revelations. I had no idea.
debit
@Punchy: Would child rapist enablers make that statement any better? My guess: No.
RD
@JenJen:
It’s called that for a reason.
Which you would know if you weren’t so busy watching Ohio high school football on basic cable.
TheColourfield
As a mostly lurker I don’t comment much, but having read through most of the thread there are some real assholes here, Seebach in particular.
I get that many people don’t like sports but to attribute support for child rape as equivalent to supporting the local team is beyond trolling.
I also feel sad that people can’t see the beauty and art in athletic achievements. Is the dancing and creativity of Baryshnikov any more stunning than the feats of Michael Jordan, Bobby Orr or Barry Sanders ?
How many ankles are broken in ballet? How many injuries in figure skating or gymnastics ?
SatanicPanic
@geg6: That’s unfortunate, because where I grew up the fair was a huge deal. I’m from an ag community though, so maybe that’s the difference.
stormhit
@Cassidy:
Except for the fact that there is no asterisk for Maris in the record books and never has been.
stormhit
@Cassidy:
Except for the fact that there is no asterisk for Maris in the record books and never has been.
Mnemosyne
@Seebach:
You can’t have a six-year-old sit in a classroom for six hours every day and have a healthy child at the end of the school year, and yet schools are eliminating gym class right and left. For many kids, organized sports are the only way they’re getting any exercise at all thanks to budget cuts.
Sorry, but human beings are not meant to sit all day long. It causes all kinds of health problems both in the present day and later in life. I really hate to see professed liberals insist that physical health is somehow less important than being inside a classroom all day.
stormhit
@Cassidy:
Except for the fact that there is no asterisk for Maris in the record books and never has been. Given the rest of your insufferable idiocy in this thread it’s not shocking you don’t actually know what you’re talking about.
Robin G.
@geg6:
Honestly, this seems to me to be a pretty big argument in favor of nuking the program. Maybe while PSU football is sucking (and it’s not *gone*, it’ll just be bad) the people will develop alternatives to the local culture. Something where everyone can come together in the ways you want that isn’t *entirely* based on football.
That’s not an indictment of sports, by the way. It’s an indictment of having all the intercultural eggs in one basket.
RD
@peach flavored shampoo:
I do believe you’ve wrapped your head around the concept, Mr. Shampoo.
JenJen
@RD: Yes, I realize that there are elitists out there who call it “Pennsyltucky” and I understand why, but it’s not OK to call it that, because it insults both Pennsylvania and Kentucky, and it’s nothing more than a broadside, over-generalizing slur made by people who really don’t like America or Americans all that much. It’s much easier to slur broad swaths of the country than attempt to understand each other, or figure out how to communicate better.
You’re a douchecanoe. You know that, right?
@TheColourfield: I agree with all of this. Especially Bobby Orr. :-)
@Roy G.: Well, I’m not an OSU alum, but it’s weird that you assumed I was. Weirder still that it actually bothers you that they call themselves “The Ohio State University” and do so primarily to distinguish themselves from my alma mater. At any rate, the vast majority of Ohioans call it OSU or Ohio State. True story.
WJS
@Punchy:
The fact that Jerry Sandusky was the defensive coordinator for Penn State until his retirement means nothing to you, I gather; this made him either the second or third most important coach on the team and he was rumored to have been Paterno’s replacement.
Since Paterno ran Penn State by force majeure, and Sandusky was his capo, you really need to familiarize yourself with how organized crime families operate.
Cassidy
@stormhit: So you’re in the pro child rape camp?
Mnemosyne
@gwangung:
This. Somehow, the fact that sports exist and that some people like them has become the proximate cause for the crimes at Penn State and not, you know, the corrupting influence of money or the desire of an institution to protect itself.
The game of football is not the problem. Sandusky didn’t molest boys because he was somehow hypnotized into it by the scrimmage line and the three-point goal kick. He did it because he’s a pedophile, and the school conspired to cover up his crimes to protect their income stream and the school’s image, not to protect the game of football.
It’s just so weird to me how many presumably liberal people here seem to think that school should only teach the three Rs and not things like physical fitness. I know we all hated gym class but, jaysus, get over it, people.
JenJen
@Cassidy: Stormhit’s right about the Maris Asterisk. It’s just a persistent urban legend that really needs to go away.
geg6
@Amanda in the South Bay:
You have put words in my mouth that I never said. You are not worth arguing with.
And with that I am done. I can’t believe how this all has come down to blaming me, the students, the small towns and communities that make up this state, and anyone who ever had anything to do with sports or Penn State. Too many people in this thread have no empathy or sympathy for anyone who doesn’t agree with every word they spout about a subject they know very little about.
I am an atheist, but I keep those victims in my thoughts every day. I work hard to make sure that the students who I come into contact with are educated with the least debt possible and that they learn about financial responsibility and that they act ethically. That is all I can do. I still love sports and very little of this mess has anything to do with sports. This was a failure of leadership, who I hold completely responsible for the whole thing. If they had had any sort of leadership qualities or abilities, they would have stopped the canonization of Joe Paterno which led to this entire coverup. Unlike too many in this thread, I am not into blaming everyone for the actions of a few very powerful people at one campus of a large multi-campus university. I never thought everyone at USC, or Ohio State, or Florida State or any other university that did shady things was responsible for and should suffer for what their administrators did. Hell, I have a special hate for the Catholic Church, but I don’t blame the altar boys, nuns, or choirs for what their administrators have done to all the children, myself included, that they abused in one way or another. Carry on with your smug condescension and superiority.
Seebach
@Mnemosyne: Gym class does not equal sports. You can have a daily exercise class in school that is not a competitive sports league. I don’t know why this is so hard to understand.
Cassidy
@JenJen: I know. I looked it up. It was proposed, they just didn’t have a “record book” to put it in. But, I disagree with getting rid of that little urban legend because of the disservice it did to Maris. I think that’s a lesson that should be told every season: the death threats, the rabid fandom, the institutional maltreatment…I think it fits.
Mnemosyne
@Robin G.:
I think it’s more a function of the fact that the main campus of PSU is a college town that basically wouldn’t exist except for the university, with all of the good and bad things that that implies. When you have 40,000 people come and go seasonally with constant turnover every four years (at least), it’s a lot harder to have a consistent community.
I only ever went to college in large cities, so there were always other things to do besides sports (though I did go to my share of sports games while I was in college, mostly because my best friend is a sports fan). But I can see how a small town that exists to cater to the college in the center of it would end up building their social lives around the sports teams at that college.
Cassidy
@JenJen: I know. I looked it up. It was proposed, they just didn’t have a “record book” to put it in. But, I disagree with getting rid of that little urban legend because of the disservice it did to Maris. I think that’s a lesson that should be told every season: the death threats, the rabid fandom, the institutional maltreatment…I think it fits.
freemark
@debit: This is Fred Phelps kind of crazy
We should get rid of voting altogether then because “the culture of democracy” casuse things like Nixon, GW Bush, and Mark Foley to happen. Probably should burn the constitution too because its ‘constitutional culture’ that causes voting and we know what that can lead to.
And lets not forget the judiciary. ‘Judiciary culture’ causes
things like ‘Cash for Kids’ Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan.
Anyone who advocates for the destruction of PSU is an immoral moron. Anyone who tries to blame 45,000 students for the failings of a few at the top is an immoral moronic asshole. Anyone who says students should transfer or quit because of this scandal is just an idiot.
Should anyone directly involved in this coverup be punished. Absolutely. Should rules and regulations be changed to help prevent something like this happening again. Absolutely.
Most the people commenting that PSU needs to be destroyed are showing no regard for the victims or future victims. Its more about their hatred of sports and ‘sports culture’. Much the same way a racist bigot uses a murder committed by an illegal immigrant to justify their racism.
And for those who think PSU should be destroyed bacause its no better than a community college.
Best National Universities
PENN STATE TIED FOR 45th NATIONALLY
Top 50 Public National Universities
PENN STATE TIED FOR 13th NATIONALLY
Best Undergraduate Engineering Programs
PENN STATE TIED FOR 17th NATIONALLY
Undergraduate Engineering Specialities:
Aerospace/Aeronautical/Astronautical: PENN STATE RANKS 10th
Industrial/Manufacturing Engineering: PENN STATE RANKS 4th
Graduate Schools
Top Schools of Engineering
COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING TIED FOR 25th NATIONALLY
Top Programs in Engineering
Industrial/Manufacturing Engineering
PENN STATE TIED FOR 8th
Nuclear Engineering
PENN STATE TIED FOR 8th
Materials
PENN STATE TIED FOR 10th
I don’t know any community colleges that match this.
Punchy
@debit: It would make the statement accurate. As is, it’s demonstrably false. On a thread that has been somewhat accuracy-impaired, I’m just pointing out an important one.
chopper
@JenJen:
LOLWUT? i’d say half the time i’ve heard the term it’s come out of the mouths of people who grew up in the T. they aint ‘people who really don’t like america’. you sound like a bush administration spokesperson when you say shit like that.
WJS
@geg6:
OMFG. It is entirely about big time college athletics. It is entirely about the power that sports gave Joe Paterno. Without that power, Jerry Sandusky wouldn’t have been able to groom his victims, destroy their lives, have his superiors cover it all up, and live more than a decade in peace and quiet.
There is an institutional problem here–Penn State is addicted to football revenue. This gave the head coach too much power, this allowed him to become an enabler of criminal activity of the worst possible kind, and it blinded people to the university’s mission, which is to educate people.
Today’s ruling effectively destroys Penn State football for a decade. Those fair weather alumni aren’t coming next year when the school is fielding an inferior product. Those same people were screaming for Joe Pa’s head when he was losing, and they will scream for the head of anyone who gets between them and their product. If that’s not sick, what is?
JenJen
@Cassidy: Fair enough, and I totally agree about the grave disservice done to Maris. If I had my druthers, asterix the Steroid Generation and give the crown to Maris, where it rightly belongs.
Also too, Pete Rose, as you mentioned above. :-)
@chopper: Awesome! So now I’m a Bush Administration lackey AND a Republican troll, just for disagreeing with two people in this thread about sports, the midwest, and slurs like “Pennsyltucky.” OK, fine, so in your personal experience, a few people you know call it Pennsyltucky. What are you saying about Kentucky, then? I live right across the river, if you want to exchange some more anecdotes.
Mnemosyne
@Seebach:
So all competitive sports should be eliminated from all schools and kids should just do non-competitive jumping jacks to get their exercise?
Yeah, that’s an improvement. That certainly won’t make kids hate exercise and resolve never to do it.
I realize that this is difficult for you to understand, but people like playing games. Go onto any playground anywhere and you will see kids organize themselves into games, whether that game is hopscotch or four-square or — gasp! — touch football. Games are fun. People like them. You are never going to be able to convince anyone that all competitive games have to be eliminated from schools, so therefore you’re taking away the hopscotch chalk and jumpropes just in case those little devils decide that they’re going to play something that has winners and losers.
There are lots of good arguments to make about the corrupting influence of professional sports and how it even drifts down to elementary school sports, but that doesn’t mean that all competitive sports are evil in and of themselves. There are good life lessons that can be learned through sports that are hard to get in the classroom, like how to play a competitive game without rampaging over everyone else’s feelings. It’s a shame that adults have corrupted competitive sports for kids with their insistence that they be as much like professional sports as possible, but that’s not the fault of the sport, that’s the fault of the adults running the sport.
geg6
@Peter:
Okay, gotta address this and then I really am out.
Another person putting words in my mouth. I never, ever said this. I said that it is the most significant in my little part of the world. I don’t presume to know about any other part of the world.
@Robin G.:
And how many more times do I have to say that I don’t live in State College? It’s not about PSU football. It’s about all the ways my community and other local communities in blue collar Pennsylvania, which I’ve lived in for 53 years, use sports to bring everyone together in ways that nothing else, not church or plays or music or whatever else you want to name, does. Apparently, it’s a bad thing to have community spirit and one place where all, no matter what their station in life or religious affiliation or economic status, can find common ground.
I hope I never live where any of you people live. I prefer being able to talk to my Teabagger neighbor and the Jewish doctor down the street and the Hispanic cook at the local diner and the extremely wealthy developer about something we all can agree upon. I wouldn’t want to live anywhere that couldn’t happen.
Cassidy
@WJS: Hey, hey, hey….Punchy has a weekend of junk food, fried things on sticks and beer planned. Don’t screw with that.
SatanicPanic
@Mnemosyne: This is true, but colleges also have a ton of other stuff going on besides sports. A college with lots of events seems like it would be a good platform to build around. I’ve been to Davis (CA) and that seemed like a great town, so far as I know UC Davis isn’t big on sports (hope I’m not wrong about that). But you know, whatever, I haven’t been to PA so I’m just making a general point. I liked small town life and never really cared for football, so it’s doesn’t seem like a stretch to me to do without it.
rb
@JoeShabadoo: just hate the fact that people are looking at the NCAA as as if they are anything but bottom feeding scum.
I hear you, brother. No kidding.
RD
@JenJen:
Spoken like a true flyover.
I suggest you go drown your sorrows at the nearest PF Chang.
WJS
@Mnemosyne:
That’s as dumb as the day is long.
College football is not “physical fitness.” College football actually shortens by several decades the ability of the men who play it to be physically fit.
Clearly, you have not seen the guts hanging over the belts of the fellows who play defensive line. They can certainly run fast, but they’re not out there for the physical fitness.
Seebach
@Mnemosyne: I’m not against “winners and losers”. Once you create a competitive sports culture, you have student athletes who are treated differently and given special favors.
Kids can play whatever competitive games they want. But once sports becomes an institution, it becomes a parasite.
honus
@burnspbesq: As a lawyer, you know there is no such thing as a right to due process in a voluntary association.
Cassidy
@JenJen: Definitely. Man I used to love baseball. Like I said, they made my inner child cry with the steroids and the tearing down of classic stadiums and so on and so forth. It’ll never be the same for me.
SatanicPanic
@geg6:
Who is saying that? Clearly, no one has been to your town, so we can’t know all the details. We can only speak from our own experience. It’s not an attack on your town to offer alternatives when you asked people to supply them. And it’s not an attack on your town to say that athletics may bring people together in your town, in some towns it doesn’t.
Peter
@Dracula: Geg6 is literally defying people to name a single other thing they could do to build community. It’s not hyperbole.
Seebach
@geg6: I also find it hard to talk to Jews and Hispanics without sports. What else is there to talk about with such people?
chopper
@JenJen:
no, you’re not a bush lackey. you’re just talking like one when you make this horseshit about ‘hating america’. that’s garbage. and i didn’t call you a ‘gop troll’, so you can shove that shit.
everybody i know who grew up in the area calls it ‘pennsyltucky’. it’s a joke, people. saying it doesn’t make you an america-hater.
FFS, talk about fucking elitism.
sorry, i don’t want to risk being accused of being insufficiently pro-america.
honus
@geg6: You’re not punishing every student, just the ones who want to watch football. And on to the degree they will miss it.
Having attended UVA in the 1970s, I can tell you that it’s quite possible to greatly enjoy going to college at a school with no football team.
TheColourfield
@Cassidy:
Should have included you with the Seebach asshole contingent.
Punchy thinks college sports in small towns is good = ignorant, fat, redneck, child raping supporter.
Absolute Clown Shoes.
chopper
@geg6:
don’t forget the taxi driver, tom.
Mnemosyne
@Seebach:
What, you think the girls who are really good at hopscotch don’t get treated differently by their peers? That’s the whole point of playing.
Again, the problem is not competitive sports. The problem is when adults decide to build their own lives around sports that their kids play and become invested in how the teams do.
We had pretty good athletic teams at my high school with some state championships, but the school certainly didn’t build them up as an institution where the sports stars were allowed to lord it over the rest of the school. This is probably because I went to a very good public school in a town with very high property taxes, so the school was not dependent on athletics to stay afloat.
That’s where the corruption comes in — not in having sports at school, but when the school becomes dependent on the cash influx that they get from those sports. That’s when corners start being cut and offenses start being overlooked to protect that revenue stream.
As JBerardi said waaay up at the top, it’s the money that corrupts, not the sports themselves.
Roy G.
@JenJen: Thanks for clearing that up. It’s not weird at all, considering that during TV introductions, Professional athletes from OSU always make it a point to say ‘THEEEE’ Ohio State University. Seems kind of elitist that they would be so careful on the national stage not to be accidentally associated with your University, but if elitism only happens when the coastal elite are involved, then so be it.
TheColourfield
@JenJen:
Hey Jen,
Check out this if you haven’t seen it
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSDw3tMa7ec
Orr at his best
Peter
Also to Mnenosyme up thread: come now, that’s just being silly. Of course there’s a human cost associated with the production of entertainment. That’s the inevitable violence inherent to systems of people. That has nothing to do with the fact that many sports (like football) are inherently violent activities. And that is on top of said inevitable violence inherent to systems of people. Sports has all the sorts of things you list there, and is gladiator combat on top of that.
I don’t agree with the sports-bashers you’re arguing with, but your line of attack is just rediculous.
Seebach
@Mnemosyne: Well, you can either change human nature, or remove the sports leagues from the school.
Let private corporations handle the sports, if adults need their fix so goddamn much.
chopper
@Mnemosyne:
no, but they shouldn’t get treated differently by their teachers or the school.
part and parcel of our worship of sports in this country is how it’s created a system where people in college sports programs get away with fucking everything. it’s insane.
Cassidy
@TheColourfield: I don’t think I called him fat. I don’t do that. I have in the past, but that is something I stopped. And I don’t think I called him a redneck. I did insinuate that Billy Bob would be telling him stories of artificially inseminating a cow, but that’s merely context and flavor. I will go with ignorant. Not my exact words, but oh well.
Child raping supporter?…no, I think i said enabler, as in rabid fandom helps to promote an environment where things like PSU can happen.
Clown shoes indeed.
Mnemosyne
@WJS:
Several people here have taken their criticisms far beyond college football and say that all school-based athletic programs — from elementary school up to high school — should be eliminated. That is what I am arguing against. Do you agree with them, or do you only want to talk about college athletics?
JG
I agree the culture of worship around Paterno played a role and allowed the corruption of this whole circumstance.
But I have zero doubt that part of the reason the President squashed this horrfying crime had to do with the connection between a recognizable PSU person (of whatever ilk) and a children’s charity. Whether a swim coach, spanish professor, or the director of the physical plant, a recognizable connection between such person being a child rapist and a children’s charity was going to be a PR nightmare.
The whole thing was made “easier” due to the Paterno worship and the AD’s (Curley’s) invovlement, but by no stretch of the imagination was that the only thing going on here. I think the flap over the “support” of the 2 indicted administrators as opposed to condemning their behavior speaks exactly to that embarassment factor.
I also think the over-dramatic “sports culture is evil” arguments are pretty absurd. Did nobody else read the expose I think in the NYT re: the private schools in NYC having sexual abuse issues? That was about money and a culture of protecting one’s own and embarassment. Not football or sports. Yes, there are issues with over-emphasis on any one thing and commercialization of it, etc. But the fact is that while there are other things, sports is a community event. So is church and bad shit happens all the time bc of that…shall we outlaw ALL religion now because some people screw it up? I think we should also outlaw the Supreme Court because Clarence Thomas?
Seebach
@JG: Can we please outlaw all religion? Is that a promise?
JenJen
@chopper: Just for your information, I was responding initially to a poster above who wrote, and I quote:
None of what I said about “Pennsyltucky” was aimed at you, nor was the GOP troll comment. Not everything is about you, and you might do well to get the fuck over yourself, lest you completely misunderstand something again.
Brachiator
@aimai:
No, her argument is based on the simple fact that sports, and college football, has historically been one of the most popular, easiest to understand, and easiest to join ways of expressing community support. And the decline of sports, like the decline of other community focused events, from fairs to bake sales to musicals, all have an impact on a community.
And this is often especially true of college athletics. You may not have attended any college football games, but the plain fact is that college football and all the attendant hoopla from tailgate parties to bowl games is seen for many as an essential part of college life. Hell, the football tradition at Harvard and Yale influenced the way that America looked at college athletics and its importance to the community. And as far as I recall the Yale Harvard football rivalry is still so intensely important to students and alumni that it is referred to, with simplicity and reverence, as The Game.
suzanne
@Mnemosyne:
I don’t think that’s the point. I am all for gym and phys. ed. in elementary through high school. All for Little League and touch football and marathon running and hiking and all the other ways people enjoy physical activity. I am definitely opposed to the corporatization and monetization of those activities, especially in institutions like universities whose primary mission is to produce scholars and thinkers.
aimai
@geg6:
Holy shit are you having some kind of nervous breakdown in the comments? What the fuck makes you think that other people here don’t live in mixed communities with teabagger neighbors and jewish doctors and hispanic people? WTF????
No one is attacking people for liking sports, kids having gym class in grade school, or anything else that people are pretending is being attacked. We are simply pointing out that when a sports program, or any department at a university, becomes such a huge money/ego draw that its coach or its department chair wields unaccountable power over the entire community some bad shit is going to happen and the power base may need to be broken to reset the tone. Its a natural consequence. Its not something bad people are doing to good people. Not something evil elitists are doing to good country people (insert sobbing emoticon for people like jenjen who inserted insults like pennsyltucky into her post and then attacked others for having, as she asserted, thought them).
aimai
aimai
@Brachiator:
No, geg6 specifically told me it was elitist to argue that there were other forms of community building than sports, and she specifically challenged me to come up with some. (Which I did: church, parks, poetry, garden club, etc…way upthread). That was her argument TO ME in comments. She also made other kinds of arguments, but that was the gist of the accusation that it was “elitist” of me to post that SAturday mornings at the college game was not sufficiently necessary to everyone to ignore a massive child rape scandal on behalf of some college student’s need for saturday entertainment.
TheColourfield
@Cassidy:
“Words matter. Perhaps you should rethink your unwavering support of a sports team if it can lead to enabling a sexual predator.”
“Punchy has a weekend of junk food, fried things on sticks and beer planned. Don’t screw with that.”
Wow, how could I have mistaken that? Punchy obviously came out in favor of enabling and is a not a fat redneck but just acts like one.
Are you a Romney press agent with all that “nuance”
JenJen
@RD:
Go fuck yourself, you walking stereotype of an elitist coastal hack.
freemark
@honus: Its a lot more. Get rid of the football program and you unemploy hundreds if not more, innocent people. And its not like those jobs are easily replaceable.
I don’t go to PSU, have very rarely watched the football games, and from a personal stand point don’t really care if they ever play again. But targeting PSU football makes no logical or moral sense at all. A few people took the power they gained from the money of PSU football and used that power to maintain their hold on power. This always happens and will always happen its human nature. But destroying the institution is not the answer. Changing it and regulating it is.
I don’t know any company that would be shut down because its CEO used his influence as CEO to commit the crime. A crime not directly committed by the company. I don’t know government agencies that have been or should be shut down becasue a top officer used their influence as top officer to hide a crime. When that happens the perpetrator is arrested and tried. And hopefully changes happen that help to prevent future occurences. But because this is football it somehow needs to be treated differently?
aimai
@suzanne:
I agree with Suzanne. I think this is a total straw man. Maybe I missed something here but I have seen no one argue that sports and recess in school should be eliminated, or even that competitive community sports for kids and teenagers was a bad thing. I certainly don’t think that and like every other good god damned elitist I know have fought the cost cutting in our local public schools to keep recess and sports. Our town also sponsers a ton of little league and other kid sports and we are (gasp) a blue town in a blue state. Incredibly support for kids sports and safe public spaces is not a “flyover country” issue. Its a lunchbucket issue everywhere because its expensive to run these kiddie leagues unless the parents can fundraise on their own.
But that says nothing about the importance of PSU’s football culture or its damages. They are different discussions.
Face
Members of almost any swim, gynamstics, tennis, volleyball, lacrosse, wrestling teams from almost every univesity would like to say….WTF?
For the love of Pete, stop generalizing football with pretty much every other collegiate sport. It’s immature, inaccurate, and ridiculous.
Cassidy
@TheColourfield: It means exactly what it says. Unwavering support of a team can lead to enabling a sexual predator. That doesn’t require nuance. It might require you to not be such a dildo, but no nuance.
And Punchy may work out. I do and I eat junk food on the weekends. I don’t make a date of it for every football game and tie my community social interactions into sports.
Don’t trip over your clown shoes.
chopper
@Face:
Right, basketball players don’t get away with shit.
Cassidy
@aimai: I think Seebach said something along thos elines of eliminating competitive sports, but I wasn’t following that conversation closely.
RD
@geg6:
Did you make him tea to thank him for trying to destroy democracy?
I prefer being able to punch teabaggers in the neck with a timeless rage.
Face
@chopper: Funny, I didn’t mention basketball. Read much?
chopper
@JenJen:
Yeah, the person doling out who does and doesn’t ‘like America’ is telling others to ‘get over themselves’. that’s fucking rich. Drop the persecution complex.
chopper
@Face:
Convenient for you.
JenJen
@chopper: Tell you what, sporto, I’ll drop the persecution complex when people like RD stop trying to tell me that because of where I live and grew up, I’m somehow not as good as he is, or as smart as he is, or as important as he is. Why don’t you try paying better attention to the context of my responses to people WHO ARE NOT YOU before jumping all over my shit and defending people who clearly do not deserve your defense? You’re free to believe whatever you wish, but in my opinion, people who call where I live “flyover country” and mean it clearly have a problem with the Americans who inhabit it.
RD
@JenJen:
Don’t forget anti-American, you salt-of-the-earth knucklehead you.
freemark
@JG: That’s the point I was trying to make. You did it better
chopper
@JenJen:
How about you just drop the ‘anti-America language police’ horseshit and we’ll call it a wash?
TheColourfield
@Cassidy:
Way to stand up for your assholish rhetoric towards punchy.
Fucking Coward.
chopper
@Face:
I’m talking about sports worship. You show me a school where tennis is worshipped like football is at most schools and I’ll show you a school where tennis stars get away with all sorts of shit.
Punchy
@TheColourfield: No one’s ever defended me before… /tears forming …thanks.
Cassidy’s just a sad piece of trolling shit who’ll do and say anything to get people riled up. He admitted as much in a later thread. Yeah, that’s conviction. A phony name with a phony take to maximize phony interaction about a fleeting topic.
JenJen
@chopper: So you don’t think calling a huge swath of America “Flyover Country” isn’t anti-American in sentiment? Or that insisting people who don’t live in “Flyover Country” have to “dumb it down” for those of us who do live in the midwest isn’t elitist and insulting? Or that adding “-tucky” to the end of a state’s name isn’t bigoted and demeaning?
Sorry, no wash. I call it like I see it.
@RD: Oh, gawd, you again? That’s right, I think people who call where I live “Flyover Country” clearly have a problem with the Americans who live here.
Asshole.
Face
@chopper: We’re arguing 2 different but related points. I’m trying to say that yes, college football may be corrupted, but not nearly all university sports. Whatever is the biggest sport on campus is going to have a ton of BMOCs and therefore hero worship and corruption and the like. But that’s almost always football (sometimes basketball) but not the other, probably, 80% of the other sports, and very unlikely to be any women’s sports. I wish others would stop demonizing all college sports based on the corruption of one.
TheColourfield
@chopper:
Not the same level but it does happen
http://www.tennisforum.com/showthread.php?t=436212
Cassidy
@TheColourfield: Oh I meant everything I said. I’m just not gonna pretend it meant something different so you can have your poutrage enema. If I want to call someone a name I will, for instance, you’re a dildo. Now, I’m not saying your fat, because some dildo’s are made with extra girth. No, I’m saying you’re a dildo. Is that any easier for you?
@Punchy: Oh Punchy, I wasn’t trolling you. I felt bad for the small town and outhouse jokes I made at geg6’s expense and shouldn’t have. You, OTOH, have made it very clear that your weekend wing date has been horribly disrupted by those children who should have taken more precautions against being raped by an authority figure they trusted. I am sorry you can’t tailgate without the spectre of sexual assualt and pedophilia souring the taste of your corndogs.
My last name is Cassidy…I’m sure your parents didn’t name you Punchy. Hell you can find my email address in older threads.
chopper
@JenJen:
It’s elitist but no, it isn’t ‘anti American’. FFS, your part of the country does represent all of America. Referring to the ‘least coast’ or whatever isn’t anti American either.
chopper
I’m from rural northern Illinois. You wouldn’t believe what Wisconsinites call my part of the country. But is sure as shit isn’t ‘anti American’ when they do. Fuck that shit.
RD
@JenJen:
FUCK flyover country.
All it ever gave us was a cultural and societal wet blanket.
But, hey…all you can eat at Shady Maple.
JenJen
@RD:
I think you meant the salad bar at Applebee’s, asshole.
@chopper:
Your part of the country, or your part of the state? Because what RD is doing is insulting an enormous section of America, and showing everyone how little he thinks of millions upon millions of Americans. You can call it whatever you want, chopper. LIGAF.
TheColourfield
@Cassidy:
Another internets tough troll. What a shocker.
Looks like somebody was stuffed into a locker by a football player.
Have fun with your large “girthed” dildo. Add another plus a wetsuit since you seem as level headed as the average republican.
RD
@JenJen:
You’re a bitter clinger.
Enjoy voting for Mitt.
Spatula
@aimai:
Did you ever consider the possibility that there is a place in between the two fanatical views that one, college football is EVERYTHING and two, college football is NOTHING?
You’re as extreme on this as the football freaks.
And your potato blight/monocrop analogy is lameus extremis.
Spatula
@RossInDetroit, Rational Subjectivist:
Oh my.
This is much too reasonable and non-hysterical a position to find a footing among the BJ commentariat.
Cassidy
@TheColourfield: Aww someone is mad. I guess having it pointed out that you’re a lying sack of shit doesn’t make your day all rosy.
one of the jasons
Commenter 1: WHEN WILL THE CREAMERY RENAME PATERNO PEACH? I DEMAND THIS ABOMINATION BE RE-BRANDED FOR THE SAKE OF OUR CORRUPT NATIONAL ICE CREAM CULTURE
Commenter 2: Yeah well let’s check your salsa cred. Waaait this salsa is from…[gasp] NEW YORK CITY!!! [grabs cook and snarls] IF YOU AIN’T NEVER BEEN TO THE GHETTO/DON’T EVER COME TO THE GHETTO/COS YOU AIN’T UNDERSTAND THE GHETTO/AND STAY THE FUCK OUT THE GHETTO.
Commenter 1: But Heinz Field was in the new Batman movie!
Commenter 2: The movie makes a mockery of our community-building traditions! TEAR DOWN THE STATUE OF BATMAN
Commenter 1: Movies are also a place where community exists!
Commenter 2: FIND THE GUY DRESSED LIKE BATMAN AT KENNYWOOD AND JUMP HIM
Mike E
Somehow the Douche Cannon that is Seebach will put out this bonfire of a thread, while simultaneously sucking out all of the oxygen. The trolling, it’s masterful (DougJ, is that you?)
As a recovering PSU football fan, the journey has been particularly painful. I know this deal ain’t even halfway over, so many more shoes have yet to drop. Whether the fanbase comes around now or later is besides the point. A hard rain’s gonna fall. Oh, and Gov Corbett? His role in all of this will come out, and that shitstorm won’t happen to a more deserving person. Patience, people.
RD
@Spatula:
Who cares, you’re a troll.
And not a very good one.
JenJen
@RD:
You know, if you weren’t such a bigoted, pinheaded stereotyping assbag who hates a very large group of his own countrymen, you might take a moment to actually ask me about my politics before calling me a GOPer twice now in this thread. For those who know me, I hope you’re laughing as heartily as I am at this clown right now.
Spatula
@aimai:
Maybe it’s all true, maybe not.
Why don’t you repost when you have one shred of, you know, evidence to relate?
Shameless rumor mongering.
chopper
@JenJen:
so fucking what? when people rag on new york they’re making fun of 8 million people. or when people shit all over he east coast thats what, 50 million people? Jesus fucking Christ give it a fucking break with the patriotic correctness shit.
RD
Where have I seen that before?
Spatula
@Gin & Tonic:
Unless you work for a tabloid paper, or the NY Times, you missed your calling. Your mindset, so desperate to toss around condemnatory phrases and labels when perfectly accurate legal language will suffice, is perfect for such a profession.
Why is it so important to you to call Sandusky a specific name?
JenJen
@RD: Go eat a bag of dicks.
@chopper: You, too. Jaysus, why are you all up in my shit when I’m not the one running around this thread crapping all over “flyover country” and insinuating that we are culture-less morons? None of what I said was intended for you; you just decided to stick your nose into a conversation that had nothing to do with you. I didn’t rag on the coasts; rather, I took offense at the writings of one stereotyping bigot in particular and replied to him, and him alone. Please explore the concept of reading comprehension, or STFU.
Brachiator
@aimai:
No. The challenge was to list community events as big and as vital as high school and college football. Nobody much cares about garden clubs, not even at Harvard and Yale. And nobody was even remotely suggesting that a child rape scandal be ignored for the sake of a college student’s need for Saturday entertainment. This kind of thing is ridiculous hyperbole. What seems to be getting entangled here is the understandable desire to want to see PSU punished for its role in covering up Sandusky’s crimes, with some larger desire to demolish college sports and sports culture because of its supposed evils.
chopper
@JenJen:
Because RD is clearly an idiot, fuck him. Never even seen him before around here anyways You OTOH are a normal person who has been here for a while whose opinion I otherwise respect. why you can’t realize what fucking horseshit this patriotic correctness garbage is, I have no idea. Seriously, WTF?
chopper
So whenever someone makes fun of the ‘least coast’, I assume you’ll swoop out and tell us all what makes a person pro-America? Somehow I doubt it.
JenJen
@chopper: Sorry, but I feel as though you’ve mischaracterized what I said to RD throughout this thread, and that you continue to do it.
This is what I initially wrote, in response to him saying that he has to “dumb things down” for “flyover country”:
“…it’s nothing more than a broadside, over-generalizing slur made by people who really don’t like America or Americans all that much”
That’s the way I feel about what he said. It’s not patriotic correctness garbage to punch back when insulted, at least not the way I see it. But YMMV.
Honestly, I think Brachiator sums up a lot of what I’m feeling in #388. This doesn’t seem to be about Penn or Sandusky or Paterno anymore. It seems like an excuse to lash out at college sports in general, college football in particular, and, due to the location of Penn State, the midwest itself. I realize you didn’t do this, but the sentiment expressed by many throughout this thread has shocked me a little, and has me uncharacteristically edgy.
chopper
@JenJen:
No, you referred to the use of the term ‘pennsyltucky’ as being insufficiently pro-America. That’s what I called horseshit on.
That being said, calling parts of the country ‘flyover country’ isn’t any more anti-America than the former anyways. This is America. We make fun of each other all the time. Quit the right wing patriotic correctness shit.
JenJen
@chopper: No, you’re mischaracterizing what I said, and you’re ignoring context. Have you taken one moment to read exactly what I was responding to, in sequence? Because you sure sound like you didn’t, and you sure jumped right into the middle of it. I’ll remind you that “anti-America” are your words, not mine, and I only used them when responding to you. You’ve said some nasty things to people in this thread, you’re clearly not a sports fan, and frankly I would like it very much if you would just get off everybody’s ass about the language they choose to use.
Anyhow, I’m done with this conversation. And I’ll speak as I please, even if it pisses you off.
chopper
@JenJen:
Post 300 is pretty fucking clear. Even after I brought up the fact that lots of people from the area even use the term you kept digging.
chopper
I love sports. I just don’t like sports worship or people apologizing for the shit that follows from it.
Spatula
@RD:
Idiot.
chopper
hey, punchy referred to the ‘least coast’ upthread! it’s not OK to call it that, because it insults the whole east coast, and it’s nothing more than a broadside, over-generalizing slur made by people who really don’t like America or Americans all that much.
fuck you, punchy!
Keith G
Irrational trollish commenters hurling insults this reads like Red State.
Todd
This might be the awesomest BJ thread ever for a Monday afternoon sans liquor.
chopper
@Todd:
“sans”?
Hypatia's Momma
@chopper:
I’ve been clean & sober for nearly 24 years and am starting think maybe I slipped and had a fifth of schnapps while out shopping for cat food.
chopper
@Hypatia’s Momma:
that happens to me all the time and i don’t have a cat.
Hypatia's Momma
@chopper:
You can have one of mine.
JenJen
@aimai: Hold up… I inserted “Pennsyltucky” into this conversation? That’s simply false, completely untrue, and I’d appreciate you not making things up about what I wrote. I was bristling in response to the poster (RD) who did bring that slur up. I find it every bit as offensive as “flyover country.”
I hope you’ll read through what I wrote and correct the record. “Sobbing emoticon.” Really, aimai? Here’s an “eyeroll” for you.
Omnes Omnibus
Wow, this is one of the worst threads ever.
El Cid
All of you are just incorrect.
eemom
@Omnes Omnibus:
On the positive side, I had nothing to do with it.
Omnes Omnibus
@eemom: There’s that, but I don’t think you could have made it worse.
eemom
@Omnes Omnibus:
hmmm.
Perhaps you didn’t INTEND that as a challenge, but….
JenJen
@Omnes Omnibus: Well, I just always wanted to see what it was like. YOLO!
Omnes Omnibus
@eemom: Oh, dear.
Jewish Steel
@Omnes Omnibus:
Yes, but the important thing is that we all learned a little something today…