89 thoughts on “July 24, 2012: Inevitable”

  1. it really bugs me that Ichiro is a Yankee

    ME TOO! I did not expect him to go to the Yankees. It feels like Jet Li in The Expendables... yes he's there with other All-Stars, but it feels like he's in a different league than them. I dunno... just feels weird.

  2. So I hear that all the good Penn State players are now being recruited by other colleges. I'm totally confident that all of such recruiting will be completely honest, above-board, and in total compliance with all the rules.

  3. I'm listening to Brent Musberger, who seems to be saying the NCAA should not have done anything to Penn State, and one of his reasons seems to be "what's the NCAA going to do the next time something like this happens?" If things like what happened at Penn State are happening in so many football programs that this question arises, it seems to me that college football is in a whole lot more trouble than anyone realizes right now.

    1. That seems like a terrible perspective from Brent Musberger. I actually wouldn't be surprised to find out that there are a number of college football programs who have acted to cover up illegal activities that their players have engaged in. It's probably unusual for an assistant coach to be the one running afoul of the law, but I also doubt that Joe Paterno and Penn State are the only guys who would try to cover up something like this. Take the Neuheisel Huskies, for instance. The Seattle Times ran a series of articles about them 3-4 years ago, and they are really quite disturbing.

      The UW football team was used to run-ins with the law. It even had a system, of sorts, for dealing with them. Randy Hart, the defensive-line coach, had police contacts who would tell him when players were in trouble. Other coaches had names of attorneys players could contact.

      One lawyer stood out: Mike Hunsinger, a UW alumnus and longtime fan. In time, Hunsinger would represent at least 14 members of the 2000 football team — players accused of hit-and-run, animal cruelty, punching a security guard, DUI, taking part in an attack on a fraternity, sexual assault, punching windows out of cars, domestic violence, assaulting a parking attendant. He'd charge the players a few hundred bucks and let them pay over time.

      I find it hard to believe that Neuheisel was the only coach with this kind of system in tact to keep his players on the field.

  4. Some (not all) of these sports guys have just completely lost perspective. They are so concerned about the sport that they have to make logic pretzels to show their concern. Tom Powers yesterday argues that PSU killed JoePa by firing him. So are you say that he should have remained coach? Musberger says don't punish PSU so that you have a bullet in your chamber for the next violator. Huh?

    What these guys (and again I emphasis, not all sportswriters/commenters) need to comprehend is that little boys were sacrificed for the sake of a football program. Football, a game (albeit a very lucrative game). Those at the top who made these decisions to sacrifice those boys need to be harshly punished. And punished severely enough so that this never happens again. If your beloved football program is destroyed because of that too bad. Place your blame on those who made those original decisions not the people who were forced to mete out that punishment.

      1. He's going to weigh in and be handsomely compensated for it.

        ... adding, JoePos pitched the book to the Paterno family. From what I understand, in exchange for access, he promised a book that the family could be proud of. That's a dangerous guarantee, but Pos had a financial benefit to be gained and he made his bargain. Now, we will see what he's about. If the book is a fair one, he can be proud. If the book is a hagiography with one part oops, well...

        I would think that postponement of the book would be a good idea. That might be out of his hands, but if it is, he can at least go on record and say so.

        1. Well, yes, his book is technically weighing in, I guess. I just think it's sad that he's being vilified already by people who haven't read a word of the book and don't know a thing about him.

          Not only did the publisher not postpone, I think they'd moved it up. It was supposed to be a 2013 release. I suppose the publisher wanted to get it released before things went seriously south, but with the Freeh report when it was the timing couldn't have been worse.

          1. Technically? He wrote a 419 page book. He's already been paid a reported $750,000. He knows that Paterno covered up child abuse for at least 13 years. This scandal is not a footnote. For the life of me, I can't see how it is possible that a glowing account can be written of a man who enabled a pedophile for a longer time than FDR was president of the United States.

            1. To me, it all depends on how soon the publisher took the manuscript out of Pos's hands. If I were him, I'd certainly want to have the 2013 release date and fully discuss the current events.

        2. Yeah, given that a story this big about Paterno broke while he was writing the book, and it's not over yet, it would be completely reasonable to postpone the book.

    1. A lot of media saying that you shouldn't punish the program because you'll punish people that weren't involved... and I don't really care. For the reasons you stated. The HAVE TO BE consequences.

      1. And I'll go ahead and say that the players, other coaches, students, etc. were involved. Someone had to help push the program, and Paterno, into deity status. I don't see punishing the entire program as anything other than necessary.

      2. Not to mention that practically all NCAA punishments have consequences for people who weren't involved.

        1. Practically all punishments ever have consequences for people who weren't involved. Lots of sports journalists get exposed when covering actual news.

          1. This. Every time a defendant is sentenced, there are consequences to his or her family, friends, employer, etc. The standard judge's response was "The defendant should have thought about that before (s)he did this."

    2. I still think that "destroyed" is hyperbole in this case as well. They lose bowl revenue sharing and 10 scholarships per year for four years and a chunk of change? Oh, boo hoo. there's no shortage of little boys who want to grow up to play Big 1Ten2 football, and dozens will come out of the woodwork specifically because of the Paterno punishments.

      I also hope that a lot of their current players take the offer to receive their scholarships without playing football any more.

      1. I'm pretty sure the academics will suffer as a result of this fine, and that pisses me off.

        1. How will Penn State's academics suffer as a consequence? Because former football players will start showing up for class? Because the athletic department will have less money to give athletic scholarships to kids in non-revenue sports with high GPAs?

          I can see a potential impact on overall giving to the university tied to the scandal, but not so much to the (potential) decline in competitiveness of the sports programs. I think the research on the spillover effects of athletic success is somewhat mixed. There are effects on applications and enrollments, but I think the evidence on donations is weak (at least I'm not very aware of it).

          1. Unfortunately Meat is correct, the academics will suffer. Studies have shown that success in high profile sports like football and basketball cause an increase in applications to a college and an increase in the quality of those students. Research grants follow as well. Then it becomes a self-perpetuating machine. Notre Dame would be a little private catholic school on the Indiana prairie without the tradition of Irish football. Duke was a sleepy southern gothic school until basketball started winning in the in the 70s and 80s. Now both of those institutions are top 10 or so in academics nationwide.

            Penn State was never a huge academic powerhouse, mainly because it had to compete with all the big eastern colleges but I am sure it captured a bigger share of high performing kids because of its football team, those kids will be the first to abandon PSU.

            1. Not sure I'm buying that. PSU isn't some outpost. It is the largest public university in one of the largest states in the country. Comparing it to ND or Duke, two relatively small private colleges, is the proverbial apples and oranges comparison. It has 45,000 students and 550,000 alumni. It is the third largest school in the B1G, behind only Ohio State and Minnesota (propped up, do doubt, by their terrific football program).

              1. from one of my academic friends, on the faculty at PSU:

                The point being, PSU is indeed a major player in academic research.

                More from him:

                Name that university ...

                Undergraduate students (main campus): 40000
                Undergraduate students (all campuses): 77000
                Graduate students: 14000
                Academic staff: 9000

                US News overall undergraduate rank: 45th
                US News public university rank: 13th
                "Top ten" NRC PhD programs: 39 (7th)

                Operating budget: $4.3 billion
                Research expenditure: $780 million (9th)

                (Self-funded) athletics budget: $116 million
                Football expenditure: $20 million

            2. free, if you are going to use Notre Dame as a comp, then you also have to use the University of Chicago, which dropped its then-Big 10 football program in 1939 and left the Big 10 in 1946.

              I think it is a gross overstatement to claim that basketball converted Dook from a "sleepy southern gothic school" to a high-profile academic powerhouse. Much more credit is due to the presidency of Terry Sanford, who came into that office in 1969. Dook's growth in reputation in basketball coincided with its growth in reputation in academics, its desegregation (in 1963), and its move to full coed status in 1972.

              I would also point out that Dook made the Final Four three times in the 1960s (as well as in 1978), substantially pre-dating the cable era of basketball success under Coach K. Perhaps those three trips (1963, 1964, when they lost the final, and 1966) were the true causes of their subsequent transition away from sleepy southern gothicness??

            3. High-performing academic high schoolers are using football success as a major component of their college choice? I mean, to play completely into the stereotypes, how many of those high-performing academic students got swirlies from their high school football team? I'm sure it's a factor for some students, but I'd bet it's a really small factor in the overall picture of location, price, academic reputation, etc. I'll grant that I came from a pretty small high school, but no one I grew up with went to a school with a good football team.

              And frankly, who cares if it hurts Penn State's academics? If this is all about football success, then Penn State's loss is going to be someone else's gain. And if academics is being largely driven by the number of football dynasties in the nation, the system is broken and needs repair badly.

              1. I can provide a sample size of one and report that I: 1) was a decently-high-performing academic high schooler; 2) chose to attend the U of MN-TC, so clearly I wasn't too concerned about football success as a major component; and 3) got zero swirlies from our high school football team.

              2. I will say, that one of the reasons I considered attending GW (before I got really serious and realized how much it met what I wanted in a school) was because of the Yinka Dare-led run to the Sweet Sixteen when I was growing up.

                1. I don't think that sports-related applications/enrollment effects are in question. Sports-related effects on donors and on overall measures of academic quality are.

                  1. GW became a much, MUCH better school (rather than a commuter school like it had been in the 1970s) beginning in the 80's when Stephen Joel Trachtenberg took over. One of his first moves was to hire Mike Jarvis as head bball coach and invest in upgrading the program (of course, it was 1-27 in his first year as president). Not saying they are completely correlated, but it definitely was a big factor in the school improving its status drastically in about 15 years.

                  2. But isn't academic quality helped by higher quality students? And can't a school be more selective if they have more applicants? And isn't it humorous that I am putting together such crappy sentences in a discussion about education?

                    1. We're talking (mostly) about ginormous public universities. Selectivity is a pretty minor consideration when you have 20K-40K undergraduates. And, trust me on this, the quality of undergrads in these institutions has almost zero impact (at the margin) on the quality of the faculty or the quality or quantity of the research being conducted.

  5. if you love brian wilson, you'll probably love this. if you hate brian wilson, you'll probably hate this.

    httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oKDr_nzt0I

    zack g. does it better.

  6. interesting:

    The Yankees had looked into Shane Victorino and Denard Span but weren't sure if Victorino was going to be available (the Phillies are said to have suggested a high asking price, though they aren't committed to selling yet) and believed the price was "too high'' for them for Span.

    1. I don't usually weigh in on trade rumors, but I wonder where this falls on the the spectrum of "the Twins having a pair and not letting themselves get worked over for peanuts" to "being unreasonable with their demands for Span".

      1. My guess is that if the Yankees were willing to settle for Ichiro, with the kind of year he's been having, they likely weren't going that hard after Span and were just asking around hoping they could get a bargain.

              1. Leave it to a bureaucrat to complain about and dismiss an engineer's results.
                [Sorry, I'm sure there's a better joke in there. Also, I'm not sure if that's still yr job.]

                  1. Oooo! Calling the actuary an accountant. I'm pretty sure the gloves are coming off now!

  7. It's days like these where I'm in the basement working on cover letters all day that I wish "Supermarket Sweep" was still on TV.

    1. funny, the other day I was talking about this show and wondered why it went off the air. You gotta imagine it was a cheap show to make, and with product tie ins, probably could make a Brinks trucks worth of money every episode.

      1. yeah, i don't understand why the embed works sometimes and not others. weird.

        1. Oh, you had it right. I have NoScript installed and it blocked twitter which would have added the context. The key point to get the embeds correct is to include their <script> line after the <blockquote>.

    1. I remember not too long ago I thought for sure he was going to be DFA'd or just not offered a contract and I was fine with that. Now he's one of my favorite players.

          1. I meant opposite in order. He became our favorite player and then DFA'd* and being okay with that.

            * Was he DFA'd? I don't remember the details now.

          1. I don't even care if they get nothing in return. Getting rid of Wes makes this the best off-season ever.

      1. Sheesh, I was thinking he was going to the Lakers with that color scheme description. I feel bad for Phoenix if this is true.

    1. No longer will the Target Center be Makin' It Wayne; perhaps that newly dry air will start Dante's Inferno?

    2. I like to think that this move is a prelude to signing AK47, just because I like to think that Kahn's thought process is something like this:

      Rubio is good
      Pek is good
      Rubio and Pek both came from Europe
      Let's add players from Europe!
      Pursues French player on Blazers
      Signs Shved
      Signs Kirilenko

      Europeans are the new market inefficiency!

  8. Ok these are pretty funny. I'm especially curious about that Eden Prairie story. What part of Eden Prairie could that possibly be?

          1. Before the season started, Sunday was the absolutely perfect day for my logs, given my work schedule. But retail is cruel, and things change. Sunday has become the least likely day for me to see games. I always think about it as it's coming up, and should more often take the time to schedule it two days in advance since I won't be around when it's time anyway.

            Before this season, I'd never missed one. I think I've missed four this season, and that annoys me. Damned retail schedule, dadgummit

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