They still ... don't get it (at least some people)

"You're a North Carolina grad. Did you take those classes when you were there? The ones that didn't exist?"

I confess, when I saw that Sports Illustrated had an article in this week's edition called "We Are Still ... Penn State" (the link isn't to the article itself, which I couldn't find, you'll have to see the magazine), I was prepared to hate it. I figured it would be a story about how everything at Penn State was fixed because the football team won a few games ... see also the Saints winning the Super Bowl or the Yankees and Mets in 2001.

However, it actually wound up being a more-complete picture of life a year after Jerry Sandusky. Yes, it notes that the team is actually pretty good, and there is some realization that something bad did happen there.

Unfortunately, there are also the "We Are ... Pissed Off" T-shirts (which you can actually buy), booing college president Rodney Erickson because he signed the consent decree that led to the NCAA sanctions against the school, the placing of flowers near the site where the Joe Paterno statue once stood.

There's the talk of "collective punishment," the idea that everyone at Penn State, even those who had nothing to do with football, has to be punished for what a few people did. First of all, people who complain of collective punishment have to realize that the scandal isn't that something happened to them.

Secondly, the football team at Penn State in general and Paterno and particular defined the university, providing a collective relevance to everyone who went there ... even if they had nothing to do with the team or any interest in football. They can't have it both ways.

Which brings us to the quote at the start of this post. The speaker was Russ Ross, the women's volleyball coach at Penn State, a 33-year employee of the school who was apparently upset about author and Tar Heel S.L. Price questioning the Penn State culture, because "That isn't the Penn State I know."

Price spends the next several paragraphs explaining that Ross sort of had a point about Penn State and North Carolina basically both believing that their stuff didn't stink, but sort of didn't for some reason or another.

What I wish Price would have written is that it takes a lot of nerve to equate an academic scandal to school officials, including the most-powerful one (hint: the guy who was the football coach) allegedly allowing a child molester ... let me say that again, A CHILD MOLESTER ... to walk around campus and covering it up.

Perhaps Ross should spend more time in Penn State's Principles and Ethics of Coaching class, which "examines the challenges of today's coaching profession through societal norms and expectations from the past and present."

It shouldn't be too hard for him.

He teaches it.