Joe Paterno: 1926-2012

The end will come for all of us one day. The nature of the circle of life is that we all will, sadly, pass away. Sometimes sooner than we ever expect.

It seems weird to say that an 85 year old has passed away too soon, and yet for some reason I can't seem to help but shake that feeling now that Joe Paterno has died at the age of 85 from lung cancer.

Obviously, the events of the last two months, and the scandal that continues to engulf the biggest thing in Centre County, Pennsylvania, is the first thing that comes to mind. The events that lead to the retirement/termination of Joe Paterno seemed to be the capper on a truly scandal-ridden college football year of 2011.

To be blunt, it was an abrupt and ignominious end to a great career. 

But today just doesn't seem like a day for that. Joe Paterno was the last of his kind, I think: a true lifer. He arrived in Happy Valley out of Brown in 1950 and didn't leave his job until November of this year. 

61 years as a coach at one school? That is just never going to happen again. Not in this era of college football.

I had the pleasure of living in State College/University Park for three years. Two of those years were among the worst seasons that Penn State endured under Paterno. They were bad. Comically bad. And then 2005 happened, and the great run to the Orange Bowl. You couldn't help but get swept up in the magic of Penn State football and the love that that community had for the program and the coach in particular.

I saw the man quite often walking near campus. I never met him (although I did almost hit him with my car once). He had his good side and his bad side, and obviously he had his flaws. His flaws might have ultimately led to his undoing.

The word "legacy" is going to be utilized quite often over the next few days in discussions about Joe Paterno; it is unavoidable when you are one of the best of all time in your field. And while the end was ugly and ultimately tarnished his legacy, it did not erase all of the good that he did both on the field and in the community.

Rest in peace, Joe Paterno.

Sandusky Situation Could Lead to Paterno's Downfall

I lived in State College, Pennsylvania for three years in the early to mid 2000s. It's hard to live near and work for Penn State without developing some level of affection for the communty, and for the Nittany Lions football team.

I lived about three miles or so from the stadium and drove past it on the way to work. For about a year, my route home took me near Joe Paterno's house, and I even saw him walking across campus on a couple of my drives home.

Centre County, which is where Penn State is located, is most definitely a small, close knit community. It is a special place.

Which is why the news that has come out of there over the last few days is beyond sickening.

There has been a complete and total failure of leadership at Penn State, if you read the grand jury indictment. Complete and total. If you read the full indictment, I advise you to do so on an empty stomach, because it is truly sickening.

Athletic Director Tim Curley has stepped down and is on administrative leave. He's gone, basically.

Vice President of Finance and Operations Gary Schultz has "retired." He's gone.

Curley and Schultz have also been indicted for perjury in lying about what they knew in regards to Sandusky's predilictions via information received in 2002 from (then) graduate assistant Mike McQueary, who allegedly caught Sandusky in the shower one night at Penn State's Lasch Football Building having sex with a ten year old boy.

McQueary (now an assistant coach) told Joe Paterno what he witnessed. Paterno then told Curley. Sandusky's reprimand? His keys to the facility were taken away and he was told not to bring boys into the lockerroom or on campus anymore.

Nobody called the police. And that ban on bringing boys on campus was, as Curley admits, unenforceable.

That pisses me off, especially because, after the 2002 shower incident, there was another document victim, from 2005-2008 when he finally cut off contact with Sandusky.

Someone else allegedly had part of their innocence stolen because of massive inaction by supposed leaders of men.

Curley and Schultz apparently covered for Sandusky and tried to protect the repuation of Penn State. President Graham Spanier was apparently okay with the lack of action taken by Schultz and Curley. And as far as I can tell, Paterno did the bare minimum that was legally obligated of him, as did McQueary.

That's not good enough as far as I am concerned. It simply isn't good enough. And it might, correctly, cost some other people their jobs. Including Joe Paterno, as the New York Times is reporting.

It would be an ignomious end to a great coaching career, and it is an ending that no one could have ever seen coming.

2011 Kickoff: Preseason Predictions

Oh, it truly is the most wonderful time of the year.

Each Labor Day weekend, we receive college football back.

Even with all of the off the field scandals (covered in summation here), and with the drama coming from the pending implosion (again!) of the Big 12, I can't wait to spend more attention to games on the field—like the 50-48 barnburner supplied by Baylor and TCU on Friday night.

But I wanted to go on the record with my divisional, conference and national title picks before the games begin in earnest on Saturday at 9am PDT.

ACC Atlantic: Maryland
ACC Coastal: Virginia Tech
ACC Overall: Virginia Tech
Big 12: Oklahoma
Big East: West Virginia
Big Ten Leaders: Wisconsin
Big Ten Legends: Nebraska
Big Ten Overall: Wisconsin
Conference USA East: Southern Mississippi
Conference USA West: Houston
Conference USA Overall: Southern Mississippi
Mid-American East: Ohio
Mid-American West: Toledo
Mid-American Overall: Toledo
Mountain West: Boise State
Pacific 12 North: Oregon
Pacific 12 South: Utah
Pacific 12 Overall: Oregon
SEC East: South Carolina
SEC West: LSU
SEC Overall: LSU
Sun Belt: Troy
WAC: Fresno State
Independent: Notre Dame

National Title: Alabama over Wisconsin    

The 2011 College Football Season is Here. Thank Goodness

I don't know about you, but I have been waiting for this day for a long, long time.

The start of the 2011 college football season has taken forver to get here, and now that it is here, hopefully attention can be paid to the game on the field.

And this year more than ever, that has to be the case, because this was an offseason that we all should want to forget.

At first, it just seemed to be carryover from the end of last season, with the Ohio State "Tat Five" being allowed to play in the Sugar Bowl, and a little bit of hangover from Cam Newton as Auburn won the BCS Title.

But the drama never seemed to stop, as more and more information came out about Ohio State, ultimately costing Jim Tressel his job and forcing Terrelle Pryor to enter the NFL supplemental draft.

Meanwhile, Bill Stewart, who had a coach-in-waiting situation forced upon him by West Virginia athletic director Oliver Luck, tried to take down said coach, Dana Holgorsen, and failed. He was given the boot after trying to leak information about Holgorsen's wild partying ways to the media.

Over in Eugene, Oregon head coach Chip Kelly tried to parse the name "Will" versus "Willie," in discussing the fact that the Ducks must have been fleeced out of $25,000 by Willie Lyles, a Texas man who serves as some sort of recruiting svengali for LSU, Oregon and some other programs as well as top rated recruits. The recruit in question was running back Lache Seastrunk, who, thanks to a vision from God, has transferred from Oregon to Baylor.

Butch Davis was ousted from North Carolina literally a couple of days after returning from ACC media days because the leadership of North Carolina thought that the best time to get rid of a coach was two weeks before the start of fall training camp. Last summer, a lot of folks thought that North Carolina was poised for greatness. Now, they appear to have lost another season thanks to their NCAA issues.

Yet all of that drama was surpassed by the atomic bomb that Yahoo! Sports investigative reporter Charles Robinson dropped on the University of Miami two weeks ago. If you haven't read it by now, you have to spend a couple of hours going through all of the player pages. It is fascinating reading.

Oh, and the expansion carousel may be spinning again thanks to the Big 12, the University of Texas, Texas A&M and ESPN. Good times, good times.

So now do you see why I am excited about kickoff?

Let the games begin.

A Letter to ESPN

Dear ESPN,

I'm probably long overdue in writing this missive, and for that I should apologize. Although I am sure that by now, you must have realized that this letter was coming. I know from my perspective, the writing has been on the wall for some time now, but events over the past few months have forced my hands to the keyboards.

I probably shouldn't beat around the bush anymore, so here it goes:

I think we should start seeing other people.

It's not you. It's me.

No, no. That isn't quite right; I would say that both of us are probably to blame for the change in this relationship. And sometimes that happens; people change. They drift apart. Interests that used to be shared just aren't there anymore. Quite frankly, I don't think that carrying on this long-term relationship is mutually beneficial anymore.

I know I've changed. I've discovered new outlets for accessing information, as SI.com and Yahoo! Sports have become much, much stronger voices in the sports media, with killer investigative reporting and feature writing. From a different perspective those lines, blog networks like Bloguin and SB Nation allow more fan voices to speak through, and the analysis that takes places on some of the fan sites on these networks outstrips a lot of the work that is done by ESPN.

(Disclosure: I am an author for a site on SB Nation's network of college blogs, Rock M Nation.)

My local sports radio station here in Las Vegas is one of the best sports radio stations in the country, and the mid-day shows Gridlock and DC and the Sunshine Man cover national sports with more edge than I could ever expect from Mike and Mike and with an intellectual honesty that is sorely lacking from the likes of Colin Cowherd.

My tastes have changed. The way I want to receive information has changed. The type of people I want to receive that information from has changed. But you have changed as well.

One of the things that made me realize exactly how far apart we had grown was when the book about ESPN by James Miller and Tom Shales came out in May and I had less than zero interst in the book. I mean, less than zero. Years ago I would have rushed right out to a bookstore and snatched up the first copy I could get my grubby little hands on. Now? I don't even want to look for it a the local libraries.

The second thing that made me realize how small a role ESPN plays in my life now is the fact that there are only three shows I watch on ESPN regularly that are not live sports: Pardon the Interruption, College Gameday (for football) and College Football Final. That's it, that's the list. I don't remember the last time I watched a whole SportsCenter from start to finish; it seriously might have been 2003. That was not the case years ago.

The third thing was when I logged onto ESPN.com and didn't realize that you had shifted some of the bloggers around to different beats and had actually added some new staffers. That blew me away.

The last thing that made me realize that we might have reached the end of the road was the situation with Bruce Feldman. I've never met Bruce Feldman, but I have been reading his writing since the nascent days of ESPN.com (back when it was still ESPN Sportszone). I've always found his reporting and writing to be solid; the essence of professional, quality sports journalism. Feldman is one of the few people that work for ESPN that, off the top of my head, I would love to meet and talk with.*

With that being said, the way that your organization treated him last week was unconscionable, and the bullshit spin that you put out after Twitter exploded with the #freebruce hashtag was abominable.

If Feldman was "never suspended" as your p.r. flacks and the terse, three sentence release stated, then a) why didn't you say so when contacted by other journalists Thursday night and, b) why did your statement mention Feldman was "resuming duties?" There is nothing to resume if there is nothing that was interrupted, which is what a suspension would have done.

Additionally, why was Bruce not allowed on his Twitter account and why was his chat skipped without explanation on Wednesday? Why did it take you a day to say he wasn't suspended if, he, in fact, wasn't suspended?

To an outsider, it looked petty. It looked small-minded. It looked wrong. It looked like it was badly mishandled by management.

Sadly, you've become a network that has little relevance in my life at this point, with few broadcast personalities that I care about or even pay attention to, and a management that (allegedly) treated one of their veteran writers harshly only to be rebuked publicly through blogs and social networks into (allegedly) reinstating him from a suspension that never happened. It's a tough pill to swallow, and quite frankly, I don't need that much drama in my life.

I'm moving on, although I hope that we can still be friends in the fall (for college football) and in the late spring/early summer (for the NBA Finals). Maybe you can put your money into reaching someone younger who is willing to overlook the flaws you have, and I'll find comfort in the arms of a wider variety of information sources.

Good luck, ESPN. I wish you the best.

Sincerely,
The Pigskin Pundit

(* The other ESPN folks I want to meet [in no particular order]: Kornheiser, Wilbon, Forde, John Anderson, Scott Van Pelt, Bob Valvano.)

Michigan needs victories, not mascots

Even though my background is in higher education administration, I have had the pleasure of spending time around business majors and business professors. In addition, I have plenty of friends who work in business, marketing, advertising.

As a communications major, and as a cynical person, I believe that nothing good can ever come from the words, "youth demographic." Especially as it relates to sports.

So imagine my surprise when I read a story in Michigan Today, which contained those ill fated words in connection to...a costumed mascot at the University of Michigan. From athletic director Dave Brandon:

"I'm struck by the fact that when opposing teams come to our stadium, and they bring a mascot, all of our young fans are lined up to see if they can get a picture taken with it, whether it's the Penn State Nittany Lion or Sparty," Brandon told Michigan Today. "That's a little annoying to me.




"You can't get your picture taken with a Block M. Mascots are really embraced by the youth demographic and we want to take advantage of that, for all the reasons that are obvious...Our history and our tradition is great for those of who were there to experience it, or remember it...but there's a generation coming up and you've got to connect with them and keep them excited."

I'm not like ESPN's Michael Wilbon, who detests most mascots and would rather see them banished from the sports landscape. My alma mater has a costumed mascot, Truman the Tiger. Named after President Harry Truman, who was from the state of Missouri. I've been down with Truman for about a decade and a half at this point.

Mascots can be fun, mascots can be entertaining for the kids. I know that when I take my son to events out here at UNLV, he likes seeing Hey Reb around and giving him a high five.

So I totally get what Brandon is talking about.

But I agree with Michigan alum and NFL Network broadcaster Rich Eisen. Michigan should be a mascot free zone.

Part of what makes Michigan, well, Michigan are the maize and blue colors, "The Victors" fight song, the winged helmet (which was not originated at Michigan but is a part of the iconography of the school) and the distinct lack of a mascot.

Nine of the twelve Big Ten schools have on field mascots. Hell, newcomer Nebraska has two with Lil Red and Herbie Husker. Illinois used to have one until the NCAA forced Chief Illiniwek into retirement (and that's a whole other story). So the clear lack of a mascot is a relatively unique position in the conference and on a national level as well.

You know what I think will make Michigan football exciting for the "youth demographic" that Dave Brandon is desperate to reach? It's not a mascot, or "retro-inspired uniforms" or finally playing a night game (although that may help a little bit more than anything else).

It's winning. (Duh!)

Win.

Win often and win big. Beat Ohio State. Beat Nebraska. Beat Michigan State and Penn State. Win your division, win the conference and compete not for Rose Bowl appearances, but for actual BCS Title game appearances.

Because not having a fuzzy mascot like Willy the Wolverine (an attempt that some enterprising Michigan students tried in the 1980s) isn't what will lose you traction with the almighty "youth demographic."

Not having won a national title since 1997 is a much, much bigger ailment.

Housekeeping: Guest spot this week

I'll be doing a guest spot tomorrow over at Blatant Homerism, an Oklahoma blog with the Bloguin network. It's "Best of Week" and I highly recommend you check out the other stuff over there. The guys do good work on Oklahoma football and college football in general and is in my must read rotation of blogs.