Tonight, Penn State trustees decided to fire embattled football coach Joe Paterno, effective immediately – and the school’s students responded with violent riots. It’s emotionally hard not to interpret the students’ behavior as rioting in favor of raping children.
Before, it was easy to say most of the people at PSU were caught up in a bad situation not of their making, where the actions of one powerful person and inaction of a handful of others reflected badly on a whole community. But after that sickening display, I’d be perfectly fine with the entire school being shut down.
Failing that, I hope Nebraska beats them by about 180 on Saturday. And I doubt I’m alone.
Is this what students march and protest for these days? I’m a part of a generation, X, that was considered apathetic. I don’t mind that designation anymore. Football is not life guys!
My country right or wrong.
Be true to your school.
Family first.
This is a morality people understand, everywhere.
They always have.
This isn’t being true to your school. It’s quite the opposite. This is being true to a guy who has clearly gotten to be bigger than the school in many students’ minds.
L’état? C’est moi!
Apres moi, le deluge.
Sadly, it doesn’t surprise me. You know how they are in central Pennsylvania about JoePa, Boo. The level of admiration is kind of creepy. It’s inconceivable to many Penn State fans that Paterno could do anything wrong.
We dealt with a milder form of it here in Tallahassee during the last few years of the Bowden regime. It always bothered me, because I never thought Bowden was much more than a huckster who stumbled upon some incredible coaches in Mickey Andrews and Mark Richt, and later Jimbo Fisher. And I’d always thought of JoePa, “Well, at least he’s not a huckster like Bowden.” But, shit, Bowden’s almost saintly next to him now.
Except I blame our kids less, because (1) they never rioted and (2) Bowden never to my knowledge fucked up like this. He just aged, and the game blew by him.
What’s shocking everybody about the kids at Penn State is that they seem completely oblivious to what’s happened there. They genuinely thought this should be something that blew over so they could get back to getting psyched for Nebraska. Seriously messed up priorities.
Let me tell you, it is almost inconceivable that Paterno could do something this wrong. It is very hard to compute. And, let me tell you another thing. For most Penn State fans, before this was revealed, they’d rather lose with Paterno than win without him.
What he represented was that valued.
And that’s where the problems arise: When the man becomes bigger than the school, priorities get screwed up, and bad things happen. People come to believe they can’t be touched. They come to believe anything goes if it means winning another game or protecting a legacy.
When even people who don’t care much about the subject buy into the hype, the bubble’s usually about to burst.
People hold football coaches who have success up as great moral leaders. They’re not. Yes, many — JoePa among them — serve(d) as mentors and father figures to kids who need it, but like all things that involve lots of money and ego, football inevitably has its ugly side.
I’ll add: Penn State fans have spent loooooong time claiming to be above the kind of corruption and ugliness that goes on at other schools in the Big 12, SEC, ACC, and the rest of their own conference.
But I’ll tell you something: USC, OSU, Miami, UNC, and Auburn look pretty good right now.
You just listed five schools with very recent scandals, all but the last of which resulted in coaching changes.
That’s exactly what Penn State never had to deal with.
I’ll agree with you that the schools look better now that the have new regimes, but how could they not.
No, I mean their scandals are nothing compared with this.
I don’t know when it happened, but football (and many sports) at the college and NFL level have become not much more than home town boosterism in recent years. It is bad for sports because people care much more about winning at all costs and less about athletic excellence than before. At least that’s the way it seems to me.
That’s about the size of it – most of the country rooting for a triple-digit beat-down.
You know what’d be awesome? If Nebraska suited up a bunch of 10-year-olds to take the field.
Which they may well do. Between the distractions and the fact that Penn State is terrible unless they’re playing the little sisters of the poor (and even the little sisters have played them pretty tight this year), Nebraska may turn them into oatmeal.
It seems very all-American to me. We have to be number one, no matter who gets hurt.
When your coach is a god, keep him. Don’t worry about growing up, you’re in the Varsity now.
In America, sports are a religious cult. Penn State Board of Trustees did the equivalent of firing the pope.
Now, is the president of the university gone?