Sign of the Times

From Fight on State Audibles Board:

Penn Staters Showed Their Colors

Penn State won the ESPN Wear Your College Colors Contest and the $10,000 prize for the general scholarship fund!

Pledge Your Allegiance

If you are so inclined, vote for PSU in the TASS ESPN contest.  Penn State was currently leading the Aggies 25,142 votes to 21,766 when I cast my ballot.

GO PENN STATE!

NCAA Declares US Constitution Unconstitutional

Well, they may as well have.

According to Satan ESPN,

The NCAA has hit Penn State with a $60 million sanction, a four-year football postseason ban and a vacation of all wins dating to 1998, the organization said Monday morning.

Did the NCAA even investigate this?  Do they realize that the charges actually facing PSU administrators have not even been proven in a court of law yet?  Does our US Constitution not guarantee us a right to due process?  I guess that doesn't matter if the brainiacs at ESPN believe that the football culture needs to change.

Fried Nittany Lion is Today's Special!

Here's a blog entry by a LAWYER about the situation:

According to ESPN and other media organizations, NCAA president Mark Emmert has elected to issue sanctions on Monday (July 23, 2012) against Pennsylvania State University, including a loss of scholarships and a multiple-year bowl ban. If the media reports are true, then the NCAA has charted an unprecedented, and perhaps unconstitutional, course of action. Federal and state courts have consistently held that membership organizations, including athletics associations like the NCAA, are required to provide procedures that protect their members against arbitrary and irrational action. Thus, an NCAA rule or decision cannot be applied unreasonably so that it creates different classes of schools. Accordingly, any NCAA sanction against Penn State at this stage may potentially violate federal and state notions of due and fair process for several reasons, including, but not limited to:

1.The conduct of Penn State and its employees, no matter how egregious, is not a violation of an existing NCAA rule. In fact, according to available information, the NCAA has never interpreted, or issued sanctions under, existing rules to address only criminal violations (or the cover-up of criminal violations). Further, the NCAA has chosen to make criminal activity an NCAA rules-violation in limited circumstances (i.e., Bylaw 10.2 (Knowledge of Use of Banned Drugs) and Bylaw 31.2.3.4 (Banned Drugs))—and the activities described in the report by former FBI director Louis J. Freeh are not addressed in the NCAA Division I Manual.

2.The NCAA did not establish and publish a process and procedure to address the issues relevant in Penn State’s case. Instead, the NCAA is utilizing an ad-hoc process that has not been explained fully to the membership or the public.

3.The NCAA is not adhering to its existing enforcement processes and procedures.

4.The NCAA is treating Penn State differently than other schools that were involved in sexual assault scandals or other serious criminal misconduct.

5.The NCAA failed to provide Penn State: (a) a written notice of allegations; (b) an opportunity to respond to the notice of allegations; (c) a hearing before an NCAA infractions committee to address the allegations; and (d) a process for an appeal of NCAA findings and sanctions.

As legal counsel for colleges and universities before NCAA committees, we are extremely concerned about the possible NCAA actions and urge the organization to comply with its existing processes and procedures to address the Penn State sexual abuse scandal. In addition, based on our review of the Freeh report, the issues facing Penn State are best left in the expert hands of the criminal and civil courts, the federal Departments of Justice and Education, the Pennsylvania General Assembly and the relevant accrediting agencies.

The BOT and President Erickson will not fight this.  I don't know why.  Perhaps they are covering up an even bigger story, but I speculate there.

I can only hope that a class action suit driven by alumni or State College business interests can put an end to this madness.

ESPN thinks that Penn State needs to change their football culture.  well, Penn State fans, welcome to Mao's, Emmerts, the Cultural Revolution.

Will You Vote?

I'm not talking about the elections in November.  I'm talking about something important.

To Gameday or Not to Gameday.  That is the question.

ESPN started a contest where fans of various schools could vote for their team.  The winning school would then be host to a Gameday commercial on their campus.  WooHoo!  Didn't I tell you this was important!

According to CornNation, though, some schools tried to cheat.

Voting in ESPN's College GameDay Campus Commercial Contest was halted Tuesday after a inauspicious first day of voting. Voting was fast and furious in the early stages, and the numbers were staggering. By 11:00 pm Monday night, North Carolina State and Texas A&M were well out in the lead with over 400,000 votes each. For comparison, Nebraska only had 56,771 votes at that point. Was that a sign of the fervor of Wolfpack or Aggie fans? Hardly.

It was a sign of just how badly ESPN implemented this contest. It was just begging to be hacked, and that's just what a few N.C. State and Texas A&M fans did. Within a few hours, ESPN began restricting voting, but the damage was done. Tuesday morning, ESPN completely stopped the voting, posting the following message:

We've Been Overwhelmed With The Fan Response! We're Taking a Time Out to Ensure the Integrity of the Vote. Check Back for Updates.

CornNation notes in a more recent entry that the contest will be back on come May 1st.

But now that begs the question:  will you vote for PSU?

At first, I thought this was a no-brainer.  Don't we always want Penn State to win, whether it is a mascot contest, helmet contest or cutest cheerleader contest?

But then I saw some comments on one of the message boards.  ESPN has shown Penn State no love, and their coverage of the Penn State Jerry Sandusky scandal was, well, to put it bluntly, scandalous.  The New York Times may have leaked the Grand Jury presentment, but ESPN led the charge against Dear Old State and Joe Paterno with torches and pitchforks.

So it appears many fans would just as soon NOT have ESPN on our campus.

Where do you stand?

Seriously, I hate to sound like I'm complaining or ungrateful, but there's an article on Black Shoe Diaries that has 171 comments!  Granted, I probably don't even get that many hits most days weeks months, but how come when people come here, it's like the cat's got their tongue computer?

DO YOU WANT ESPN GAMEDAY AT PENN STATE OR NOT?

What Might Have Been

From ESPN:

If only we had found a way to beat Nebraska!    Every one loss team is in the Top 10!  Oh, well.  With the benefit of hindsight, maybe we wish we'd have done more!

Big Ten Primer

Rick Reilly (ESPN) has composed a primer for Nebraska.

Your new rival -- Forget Oklahoma. Now it's Iowa, like it or not. You close out your regular season with the Hawkeyes on the day after Thanksgiving at home. Iowa's a natural for you. Both your states are so flat you can watch a train pull out for three days. . . . Got a name for it, too. The Cornfrontation.

Dress code -- Now that Jim Tressel and The Vest are gone from Ohio State, there is no dress code. Your lunatic screamer of a head coach, Bo Pelini -- the man who could be an entire season of "What Not to Wear" -- is going to fit in nicely. Your fans aren't exactly ripped from the Armani catalog, either. Oy, that Sea of Red some of you wear: red socks, red overalls, red cowboy hats. Goes nice with your necks, though.

There is a thing you'll discover called The Michigan Man. The Michigan Man believes he is above Normal Man. The Michigan Man is certain he invented the Big Ten, along with intellect, cocktails and sex. The Michigan Man is full of pride in himself and his Michigan degree -- so much so that you're going to want to bring a throw-up bowl along with you.

Sadly, the Michigan Man has had to reduce the volume a little lately, having not beaten The Ohio State Man since the debut of the Edsel.

Michigan has arguably the grandest stadium in college football. The Big House is the largest in the United States -- holding 109,901 -- and yet they still sell out 102 percent of the seats. Can you imagine? They have very cool helmets that have nothing to do with their nickname, the Wolverines, which is about as indigenous to Michigan as the fairy penguin. They're talking about having a mascot, though, which is going to ruin everything.

Anyway, Michigan runs things. It's the Dean Wormer of the Big Ten. It's fun to mess with Michigan.

I'm afraid Wisconsin is you, Nebraska, only with much better parties and more wins.

Q: How is the health of the 84-year-old Paterno?
A: His ears still hurt a little from The Big Bang.

If you want to get under their skin, just go up to Michigan State fans wearing Spartans jerseys and say, "Oh, couldn't get into Michigan, huh?"

 Them's the highlights there.  A few other gems I might have missed, but that's the essence.  He nailed the THEM Man spot on.  Not so sure about the Wisconsin is you with MORE wins, but hey, pretty funny article all things considered.

Now, they need a primer on the referines.

Coach P and K

Get Well Corso

According to this blurb from ESPN, Lee Corso of College Gameday has had a stroke:

ESPN spokesman Josh Krulewitz said Thursday that the stroke was caused by blockage to a small artery, but the 73-year-old former coach suffered no permanent damage and is expected to make a full recovery. Corso issued a statement in which he called the stroke a "small bump in the road" and a "not so fast, my friend, in my game of life" -- a play on one of his more well-known quips.

Get Well Soon, Lee. Soon Lee? Sounds Chinese? Now I'm hungry.