Three P's: PSU, Paterno, and the Press

The media storm about the scandal surrounding Penn State, it's football program, and head coach Joe Paterno has raged all week.  In brief, an assistant coach was a serial sexual abuser of children and was caught raping a 10 year old boy in the shower.  That was years ago.  The incident was reported and Paterno and the college administration covered it up.  Last night the Penn State Board of Trustees fired Paterno.

It was so clearly the right thing to do it is hard to fathom any other outcome. Yet many people predicted Paterno would hang on.  Especially when he announced yesterday afternoon he would retire after this season.  This is the free press in a democracy doing it's job.

A college in small town is an insular community.  Any such community will inevitably have a culture to protect it's own beyond the norm.  Maybe the Board of Trustees would have done this without the on going media storm. Maybe not.  The media made the decision all but inevitable. Everyone knows what happened.  Everyone knew those complicit were still employed by the PSU.  The university had to protect itself and start to make amends for what happened.  That couldn't happen with the conspirators still employed.

UPDATE:  I agree with John Cole that this is just the beginning. More bodies and more firings are coming down the pipeline.

Old Age And Treachery Will Overcome Youth And Skill

My brother's and I's volleyball team is certainly not without skill. In fact, my brother is one of the better players in our league. But last night we lent our support to the old adage. We played a team of early 20 somethings. Before the game, as we were stretching we saw our opponents doing the same. We joked that when we were their age we warmed up for games with shots of Tequila. Not these guys. They had talent, speed, and youthful energy. Both their guys could jump serve and their girls were good setters and could hit when in that position. They had beat us in the regular season when we were short handed.

And we knocked them out of the playoffs in straight games.

They telegraphed their hits. They didn't switch their guys into hitting positions giving us rotations that produced a lot of free balls. And more than anything when they got down they couldn't recover. The last game was a rout, 21 - 8.

Mental toughness when playing sports is an interesting thing. The greatest players certainly have it. In the pro sports one thinks of Jordan and Tiger. These are guys that would do anything possible to win. Now I'm not even beginning to say our team has that kind of intensity. We don't. At our level of play though you can see the break down on other teams and the younger teams suffer from it more often. One team in our league has a group of very good players, a team that "on paper" should compete for first place, almost always loses in the first round of the playoffs. They fall apart when they start losing and start making mistakes. The same thing happened to the team we beat last night.

I don't know how one teaches or learns to keep the focus. Maybe it can't be taught. Perhaps it is something gained when one is down and overcomes adversity. And not just in sports but in other life situations. The confidence that comes from learning you can win at the game of life. The confidence is not necessarily a direct function of age as much as it is experience. All pro athletes have some level of this confidence because they have been playing their respective sport for so long. Again, we're not pros but we've played together for a lot of years now. We know what each other is capable of doing. And we've lost games and we've come back when it looked sure we were going to lose.

Those poor kids didn't stand a chance last night.

Bring My Crystal Ball?

My brother texted me this morning. The conversation:

Brother: Bring your crystal ball to work?
Me: huh?
Bro: watch superbowl?
Me: Yeah. Don't get crystal ball reference.
Bro: Doritos commercial
Me: 20 minutes after the game i couldn't remember a single commercial
Bro: OK

I had a few beers but I wasn't really drunk. There just wasn't a single one that was at all memorable. I had the same feeling last year and the year before. I'm sure if people give me more details than "crystal ball" I might remember some but over all a waste of $3M / 30 seconds if they were trying to get me to do something.

No R-E-S-P-E-C-T

It was like school in July, no class.



A girls' high school basketball team in Texas beat their opponent 100 - 0. Now the team is feeling remorseful and seeking a forfeiture.

To establish a little bona fides, I think the "everyone gets a trophy for participating" method of sports is utterly wrong. And I don't accept that the Trophies-For-All crowd is teaching sportsmanship or sports. Sports, like many things in life, is a competition. Some win and some lose. Sportsmanship is showing grace when winning.

That said, IMO, this is a complete failing of the winning team's coach. And the player's parents. Both failed to teach sportsmanship and respect. Both were reportedly cheering the girls on. There is a clear line between winning and embarrassing your opponent. This was an intentional embarrassment.

A friend of mine I sent the article to said, "f you get to 30-0 and the other team obviously doesn't have the skills necessary to do anything against you, you let them drill against you." That's exactly right! I've done the same with my softball teams in the past. Some of the leagues we're in are of mixed skill level. If we come up against a lesser team and are beating them decisively I implement what I call "Gentleman's Rules." That doesn't mean we stop playing or throw the game. It does mean we don't take full advantage of our better skills to out and out slaughter them. It's not condescending, it's respect. The other teams and the umpires recognize and appreciate it.

I'm not sure what other recourse is available for the basketball team but asking for a forfeiture is the minimum.

My Dad Can Beat Up Your Great Granddad!

So after months – many, many months – of being almost completely idle at work I’ve had a shit storm land in my lap. People with lots of letters in front of their names are all atwitter. I’ve made the code changes to stop the bleeding but the clients want more and more tests every day. That’s their prerogative but it prevents me from spending time to write a program to go back and identify the specific errors on each account so that corrections can be issued. I don’t mind pressure. Hell, I actually feel good right now with all this on me. But today because of system problems I’m forced to be idle.

So, let me talk about something I know almost nothing about. The Super Bowl. (Can I say that without being sued?) Honestly, with the exception of the 4th quarter, it was a pretty boring game last night. I mean 7 – 3 at half time? With the “greatest offense ever” playing? Boring!

I don’t even remember any commercials very well although there was something with dancing geckos that was funny. Couldn’t tell you what they were advertising for the life of me though.

I’m not much of an American football fan. I’ve said on more than one occasion that if American football fell off the end of the Earth my life would get better. But it can be hard to avoid and when I saw some Patriot games this year I thought: “That’s how the game is supposed to be played.” I actually enjoyed it somewhat. At least as much as I’ve ever enjoyed American football.

But it’s the “greatest offense ever” that had me at all interested. One thing that seems ubiquitous to all sports that I don’t like is the comparing of teams from different eras.

Are the 27 Yankees the best team ever?

How would the Bulls teams compare to the Boston Celtics dynasty teams?

Could the 2008 Patriots hold their own against the 70s Steelers?

Could Tiger beat Jack in his hey day? (Or is that hay day? Or heyday? Whatever.)

Who’s the greatest Super Bowl team of all time? (Apparently the 85 Bears have this distinction and a bunch of Chicagoans were rooting for the Giants so they could keep it).

These questions are just stupid to me. First and foremost, there’s just no way in hell we’ll ever be able to know the answer. Time travel as cool as it might be (or not) is just not anywhere on the horizon. The 2008 Patriots are never, ever, ever going to play the 1985 Bears. The comparison doesn’t matter. The Bears were the best team in 1984/1985. The Patriots Giants were the best team in 2007/2008. Period.

Second, sports are a head-to-head competition in the here and now. It is entertainment in the here and now. It doesn’t matter how this decade’s team would fare against last decade’s teams. It’s watching the game now that matters. Then again, I don’t get the ESPM Classic station either. Why would anyone want to watch a game that took place 10, 20, or 30 years ago? You know what happened.

Third, equipment and training change. Generally the equipment and training get better. Chi Chi Rodriquez didn’t have a Big Bertha to smack the ball down the fairway. Roger Staubach didn’t have the advanced pads to protect him from hits. Or the 300+ pounders but more on that below. Stan Musial didn’t have the body armor that sluggers use to protect themselves from inside pitches nor as many restrictions on the size bat he could use. Does that make Chi Chi, Roger, and Stan better than today’s players? No (and it doesn’t matter), but it means they played the game differently. Well into the 1980s it was anathema for a baseball player to spend time in the weight room. Flexibility was considered more important. Today’s players are much stronger.

Fourth, the rules change. In basketball, goal tending (defensive and offensive) used to be legal. Zone defenses used to be illegal in the NBA. This year MLB is adding limited instant replay review. Current day athletes play the same sport in name but the games have changed. Today’s athletes and teams are incomparable to those of the past.

This brings me back to the 2008 Patriots, or more importantly, 1972 Dolphins. Last night there was a chance that the 1972 Dolphins would finally have to STFU, but NOOOOOO…. The NY Giants and their overbearing defense had to go and end that dream. So now we are stuck with many more years of hearing these pompous asses tell us how great they were as soon as some team has started the season 6 – 0.