Decanonized Mythologized Disgraced Ped State Monster Coach Joe Paterno (Zombie Icon)

[Zurp]

Found this interesting:

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Paterno Weary From Off-Field Issues

While a possible punishment in the courts is still to be decided, Paterno already handed one down to the entire team: the Nittany Lions will clean Beaver Stadium on the Sunday's after every home game. Paterno also said all of his players would do several hours of community service.

 

[CleveBucks]

football players already do community service. at least at OSU.

 

[Zurp]

football players already do community service. at least at OSU.

How about clean up the stadium after home games? That's the part I found to be weird.

 

[BB73]

How about clean up the stadium after home games? That's the part I found to be weird.

There's a 'PSU garbage' thread in the Reference Locker.

 

[sandgk]

One thing for sure JoePa gets my vote for coaching move of the week with his post-game clean-up squad-wide punishment to the football team.

JoePa, putting the old back in old school.

 

[Bleed S & G]

JoePa, putting the old back in old school.

 

[sandgk]

Centre Daily columnist gives JoePa Partial Credit on Stadium Clean up Punishment

This is an interesting viewpoint from Centre Daily columnist Ron Bracken. In a nutshell he views the public declaration of the team punishment to clean up the Happy Valley stadium as at least part political maneuvering to undercut the Office of Judicial Affairs. Which OJA has responsibility for meting out punishments of a more stern nature to students at Penn State. For backdrop consider that when there was the incident involving LB Dan Connor and what Lion fans call "phonegate" JoePa felt he and Dan got the short end of the stick.
For the record, I still view this as good old school discipline, but that aside
here is the centredaily article from Bracken.

Why this?

Why now?There have been numerous times throughout his career when Joe Paterno has dabbled in politics.
He seconded George Bush's presidential nomination. He's been tight with several governors of this state.
At one point, he was considered a possible gubernatorial candidate himself.
He would have been great at it. The man is a master politician.
And you need look no further than his plan of punishment for those members of his football team who were involved, either directly, peripherally, or not at all, in the fight in a downtown apartment recently.
It's a stroke of political genius.
...

But if you peel back the warm and fuzzy blanket, it's as much a preemptive strike at the University's Office of Judicial Affairs as it is corporal punishment for the players.
Consider the timing of the announcement. It comes before the Judicial Affairs folks begin their hearings into the incident. And it comes at a gathering near Philadelphia where it was guaranteed to get the largest media exposure, which it did. Tuesday's Philadelphia Inquirer, the largest paper in this state and one of the largest in the country, played it prominently on the front page of the sports section.
No candidate running for political office could have done it better.
But as with any politician, you have to take what they say and when they say it, at face value and believe it at your own peril.
....
His move to punish is a classic where, if one member of a group misbehaves the whole group is punished. Most of us have been there either as a member of a team or a class or a scout troop.
....

But this appears to be designed to subvert Judicial Affairs and prevent them from performing the function they're charged with in an effort to save his football team and the season. If that's the case, then it's not nearly as noble as it appears on the surface.



Continued ...

 

[Best Buckeye]

Nice article Sand;
No one can ever accuse JoPa of being stupid.

 

[sandgk]

Another PA Sports Columnist Comes Down Against a Cleaner Happy Valley

You can please some of the people all of the time, all of the people some of the time yet not all of the people all of the time ...

Philly Inquirer columnist Bill Conlin apparently is in the permanently displeased demographic.

For him the JoePa Habitat for Happy Valley punishment smacks of Captain Queeg - he even warns of Mutiny on the Nittany as the consequence. You can call it spot-on, or you can call it simple trash talk - either way, Conlin isn't in the clean it up column.

DID ANYBODY check Joe Paterno's right hand while he met with local media before addressing the Nittany Lion Club in King of Prussia? Was he nervously rolling a pair of steel ball bearings in the fashion of Herman Wouk's fictional Captain Philip Francis Queeg, the delusional World War II skipper of the minesweeper USS Caine? Queeg became the model for stress-induced paranoia. Wouk won a Pulitzer Prize, and Queeg's name is often invoked when some famous person circles his psychological wagons and starts doing weird stuff.
The iconic football coach is justifiably upset by the mounting evidence the football Camelot that was once Happy Valley - or so we were conditioned to believe - is nothing more than a pre-NFL proving ground populated by hired thugs.
One unsavory incident involving high-profile football players after another has rocked the pastoral university a writer once described as being "100 miles equidistant from Nowhere . . . "
The shock waves travel more quickly than they did in 1963 when I made my first swing through the trees between Harrisburg and State College.
The Pigskin Curtain came tumbling down in the winter of 2002-03 after Paterno permitted a player named Anwar Phillips to play in the Jan.1 Capital One Bowl. Phillips had been indicted in the rape of a Penn State coed with whom he had a year and a half friendship before an alleged Nov. 12 sexual assault of the young woman. Paterno kept Phillips on the squad even though he had been formally expelled, effective in the semester that began after the bowl game. Paterno was hammered by the national media. Nobody bought the "innocent until proved guilty" card. Not on this one. Not when it was only a football game, as opposed to the suspension of his civil rights.
An embarrassed university president Graham Spanier quietly diminished Paterno's sweeping authority to make the call in matters involving his football empire.
Four of the six players allegedly involved in an ugly April 1 party rumble were legally cleared of any criminal wrongdoing. However, two others, alleged instigator Anthony Scirotto, an All-Big Ten safety from West Deptford, N.J., and defensive tackle Chris Baker, face a number of felony charges.
In King of Prussia, Paterno described the latest incident as a "team embarrassment." Then he outlined how he intends to "prove to people we're not a bunch of hoodlums."
And that's about the time his audience needed to listen for the clackety-clack of small steel balls being rolled in his right hand.



Continues .....



Joe, you'd better join this century before you are out of time. You don't need this final chapter to be titled, "Mutiny on the Nittany."

I have to wonder has Conlin always been this swift to put a pin in his JoePa voodoo doll?

 

[BB73]

I haven't thought about Conlin for a while. He was a frequent guest on the ESPN Sunday morning show The Sports Reporters a few years ago. He probably lost that gig due to a poor 'Q' rating, since he was older and heavy-set.

 

[tibor75]

I haven't thought about Conlin for a while. He was a frequent guest on the ESPN Sunday morning show The Sports Reporters a few years ago. He probably lost that gig due to a poor 'Q' rating, since he was older and heavy-set.

He did seem more intelligent compared to Lupica and Mitch "Did I actually go to that game?" Albom. Not that that's saying much....

 

[BB73]

JoePa might not be able to run onto the field in their opener.

post-gazette

Paterno still recovering from injury
"Right now, I wouldn't bet on it"

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

By Ray Fittipaldo
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette


Last year around this time, Joe Paterno, the oldest coach in college football, scaled Mount Nittany in State College after being challenged by members of his family. Now the goal for the 80-year old coaching legend is simply to run out of the tunnel with his team in the Sept. 1 season opener at Beaver Stadium.

And he is not betting that he will be able to accomplish the feat.

Cont'd ...

 

[Zurp]

He did seem more intelligent compared to Lupica and Mitch "Did I actually go to that game?" Albom. Not that that's saying much....

Not at all. I'd put more faith in why my yellow highlighter is about to tell me than either of those guys.

 

[sandgk]

Mmm - wonder if his optimism is on account of already having made a decision to keep those kids on the field of play ...

JoePa compares 2007 squad to 1994's near NC bunch.

Cites 13 returning starters.

Penn State football: Paterno optimistic about 2007 season
By Eric Thomas, June 10, 2007
Last updated: Sunday, June 10, 2007 12:27 AM EDT


In the long history of Penn State football, few, if any, teams compare to Joe Paterno's 1994 squad, which won the Big Ten championship, remained undefeated and scored an 18-point victory over Oregon in the Rose Bowl.

That team vocally laid claim to half of the National Championship, but were ultimately left out of the equation when Nebraska defeated Miami on Jan. 2 of 1995.

So when Paterno tells an audience of media members that his 2007 squad has as much potential as that 1994 squad, you listen, agree or not.

....
The veteran coach was in town along with Athletic Director Tim Curley, men's assistant basketball coach and Cumberland Valley alum Kurt Kanaskie and new women's assistant basketball coach Maren Walseth, to speak at an alumni function at the Radisson in Camp Hill.

Entering his 42nd season as head coach, Paterno believes he has every right to be excited about the upcoming season. The Nittany Lions will return a combined 13 starters (not counting safety Anthony Scirritto), including quarterback Anthony Morelli and linebacker Dan Connor.
....


This offseason Paterno has dealt with the looming trial of Scirritto and defensive tackle Chris Baker, who both were charged in an off-campus apartment fight.

Several other Nittany Lions players were arraigned for the April 1 incident, but later had charges dropped. Scirritto and Baker could face trial sometime in late summer, just before the opening of the 2007 season.

“It's slowly resolving itself,” Paterno said. “I think we'll be OK, but I'm still angry with some kids on the squad, not necessarily with (the ones in the fight) but just angry we didn't have a couple of guys that said ‘Cut it out.' It was just a fight and it's not as big of a deal as some people want to make it, but it's still a fight. You prefer not to have it happen and it should not have happened the way it came out.”

 

[buckeyemania11]

MyFox WGHP | Paterno Says He's Feeling Great At 80

Paterno Says He's Feeling Great At 80
By RICK GANO
AP Sports Writer

CHICAGO -- Joe Paterno called it a setback, that's all. After more than four decades as head coach at Penn State, his experiences are wide-ranging and varied, so being run over on the sideline and injured didn't deter him. Still doesn't.
At age 80, with a 16th grandchild on the way this fall, Paterno said Tuesday he's feeling swell and has no immediate plans to abdicate as he enters his 42nd season.

"I've been healthy and I'm healthy now," he said during the Big Ten's two-day media convention. "I got a little setback when I got run over in the ball game last year. ... It's kind of flattering that so many people are interested in what I'm going to do."

continued...