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.

It's all personal at Penn State

I'm going to guess that LaVar Arrington and Brandon Short are not stupid human beings, at least not so stupid that they don't understand something bad happened at their beloved Penn State University.

So how do you explain this reaction to hiring Bill O'Brien as the school's new football coach?

“I will put my Butkus [Award] in storage. I will put my Alamo Bowl MVP trophy in storage,” Arrington told the Penn State Rivals.com website, BlueWhite Illustrated. “Jerseys, anything Penn State, in storage. Wherever Tom Bradley goes, that’s the school I will start to put memorabilia up in my home. I’m done. I’m done with Penn State. If they’re done with us, I’m done with them."

 "Penn State is a family and it is real and if they choose to get rid of Bradley and not hire a Penn State coach, then they’ve turned their backs on our entire family,” Short said.

And how do you explain some Penn State students, who I'm also going to assume aren't stupid, rioting after Joe Paterno was fired?



The answer is that it's all about them.

Let's go back to Arrington and Short for a minute.

“By these people making the decisions the way that they are making them, basically coinciding with everything that’s being written about our university, if they get rid of Tom Bradley, that means they, in essence, have accepted the fact that we are all guilty,” Arrington said.

"Penn State is a family and it is real and if they choose to get rid of Bradley and not hire a Penn State coach, then they’ve turned their backs on our entire family,” Short said.

By hiring an "outsider," Arrington and Short feel betrayed. Any "insider" they could have hired would be connected to Paterno -- the man they likely credit with making them who they are -- so by not hiring someone already connected with the program, Paterno's program, it diminishes Paterno ... and therefore diminishes them.

As for the students, it's actually another former player, D.J. Dozier, who sums it up with his complaints about the O'Brien hiring.

'Dozier said, 'It’s politics, it’s fall out, it’s everything that has nothing to do with a program and continuing to build a solid program.'"

Even though there's a Penn State alum who has been in the news a lot lately for reasons other than football, the college is defined almost entirely by its football team. If you see a kid wearing a Penn State sweatshirt, you think about the football team. If you ask a kid where he or she goes to school and Penn State is the answer, it registers with you because you know about the football team.

The football team in general, and Joe Paterno in particular, made Penn State relevant. And therefore, it made Penn State students relevant ... even if they had no aptitude for or interest in football.

So if anything makes Penn State football less relevant, it makes the college less relevant ... which makes them less relevant.

Now, that's probably what was not going through their minds when they rioted, but that's why they did it.

What a great, moral, upstanding man Joe Paterno is

According to this story from Matt Hinton, Joe Paterno said he "knew inappropriate action was taken by Jerry Sandusky with a youngster."

But he did nothing about it.

What a guy.