Penn State Cult (Joe Knew)

[Joe Pa Thetic]

Again, it's just another data point to consider. Every survey ever done has issues. There's never been a perfect one created.

I appreciate you posting a link. I was wondering how many people took part in the survey. PSU says they have "well over 600,000 living alumni." If 486 unique voters took part in the survey, that means less than one-tenth of one percent of the alumni answered the survey -- although the chance of 9Fold or pnnylion voting 409 times does seem like a very real possibility.

http://admissions.psu.edu/info/alumni/

 

[Delaware Buck]

I appreciate you posting a link. I was wondering how many people took part in the survey. PSU says they have "well over 600,000 living alumni." If 486 unique voters took part in the survey, that means less than one-tenth of one percent of the alumni answered the survey -- although the chance of 9Fold or pnnylion voting 409 times does seem like a very real possibility.

http://admissions.psu.edu/info/alumni/

So not to pile on but review the .pdf I linked. They have been asking this exact same Paterno question in the last 5 alumni surveys and here are the results and numbers of participants:

 

[409fold]

It's unfortunate your tone had to turn nasty. The "you're" was really a general word for these supposed 'sane' PSU people. Let's be clear though, you (actually you this time) are here to change 'hearts and minds' about the perceived state of the Penn State community and it's overall reverence for dear old JoePed. Newsflash - it's really not working. I live around and amongst PSU's largest concentration of alumni and fans in the world - and you are 500 miles away pretty much disconnected from that cesspool. You know, the ones you keep telling us is full of really great people that are ready to move on and don't care about Paterno. I've seen and heard enough in the last 5 years and these additional data points such as the survey, election results and press releases only confirm what I already suspected - the vast majority of people associated with Penn State, either alumni, fans, supporters, etc... feel Paterno was either framed, didn't know anything or did everything 'legally required' by law. The last one technically being correct but morally bankrupt when taken into context given his 61 years service and billion dollar fundraising status. The rest of the world formed an opinion and has moved on and you can't change hearts and minds 5 years after the fact.

Put the bet in and make payable to BP. If I was you I'd really think about lowering that value. I think you are letting your pride get the best of you here

I'm not here to "change hearts and minds." I'm just here to make fun of 9fold. :-)

It's fair to admit it --- last week was another situation for the "HA HA Penn State, fuck those cultists, hopefully Mark Emmert does his thing and screws them" crowd to feel good about themselves.

I get it. Penn State folk were obnoxious with "success with honor" and "we're better than everyone else" in the pre-2011 days. Now the tables are turned.

I also get this: I grew up in Michigan, schooled in Pennsylvania, now work and essentially live in Ohio. I'm definitely connected to all three places and have interacted with all 3 fanbases. Michigan, Penn State and Ohio State fans, in the aggregate, are all basically the same. None of us, as a group, are any better than anyone else. Just be thankful it didn't happen at your school. It could have, and there would be no shortage of Buckeye fan idiots either.

 

[409fold]

If you are going to explore those details why don't you give all the facts. The Alum Assoc. was, until very recently, at odds with the cult over many things including BOT representation, honoring JoePed, Freeh. And then all of sudden they get off the fence and start supporting the most radical ideas such as pushing for an honor day. So what caused that? Maybe a realization that their grassroots members support this and other ideas such as dismissing Freeh.

Also you have no credible data to prove the survey was compromised by fraud or overly motivated voters, so in the absence of that the results stand on their own merit. That's how things work. As I said before it's like the elections. Oldsey, Brown and Doran all won by wide margins. People don't get to say that the only reason they won is apathy. That's a lazy bull[Mark May] excuse. We accept results and move on because it's a bottom line process. And if people want to change the results they do in the next cycle - which has not happened and will not happen.

Sure, I have no "credible data." Neither do you. There is not a single statistically rigorous survey you can point to to support your point.

Fine: Oldsey, Brown and Doran won. I don't care, those trustees don't have that much power. Besides, I have the best weapon of all on my side. TIME. Paterno Loyalists are more liable to be old farts. They'll die. The millennials and those even younger, they're not as married to the concept of "Paterno State University."

I can't find the exact quote, but it basically goes like this: "social progress isn't made because one changes the hearts and minds of folk. Progress occurs because the older folk simply die and fade away."

 

[Delaware Buck]

Sure, I have no "credible data." Neither do you. There is not a single statistically rigorous survey you can point to to support your point.

Fine: Oldsey, Brown and Doran won. I don't care, those trustees don't have that much power. Besides, I have the best weapon of all on my side. TIME. Paterno Loyalists are more liable to be old farts. They'll die. The millennials and those even younger, they're not as married to the concept of "Paterno State University."

I can't find the exact quote, but it basically goes like this: "social progress isn't made because one changes the hearts and minds of folk. Progress occurs because the older folk simply die and fade away."

The survey has been done 6 times in 5 years and they asked the same question each time. The number are above - at no point in 6 surveys was the honor Joe support less than 86%. Again another data point but spin away on that.

You've completely missed the point about the alumni trustees and the election numbers and it has nothing to do with 'power' so stop moving the goal posts. They are the only ones that the average penn stater can actually vote into office. We know their goals, see their cultish work and yet the results each spring are the same with no intermediate corrections by the core alumni. That's what makes it disturbing. You would think at some point the rank and file alumni would simply say 'enough is enough' let's elect some mainstream people to these position - but it never happens and it's doesn't really matter if that's from apathy. Silence=agreement

 

[409fold]

The survey has been done 6 times in 5 years and they asked the same question each time. The number are above - at no point in 6 surveys was the honor Joe support less than 86%. Again another data point but spin away on that.

You've completely missed the point about the alumni trustees and the election numbers and it has nothing to do with 'power' so stop moving the goal posts. They are the only ones that the average penn stater can actually vote into office. We know their goals, see their cultish work and yet the results each spring are the same with no intermediate corrections by the core alumni. That's what makes it disturbing. You would think at some point the rank and file alumni would simply say 'enough is enough' let's elect some mainstream people to these position - but it never happens and it's doesn't really matter if that's from apathy. Silence=agreement

If you can't see the problems with using that survey (or any of its previous iterations, which likely had the same sampling deficiencies) as "fact", I honestly don't know what to say.

Doran/Oldsey/Brown (none of whom are younger than 62 years old, which supports my point that Paterno Loyalists skew toward being older folk) got ~65% of the vote among the ~4% of eligible voters who voted in the recent election. Those are the numbers.

Silence does not equal agreement. Really?!?

 

[Delaware Buck]

I'm not here to "change hearts and minds." I'm just here to make fun of 9fold. :-)

It's fair to admit it --- last week was another situation for the "HA HA Penn State, fuck those cultists, hopefully Mark Emmert does his thing and screws them" crowd to feel good about themselves.

I get it. Penn State folk were obnoxious with "success with honor" and "we're better than everyone else" in the pre-2011 days. Now the tables are turned.

I also get this: I grew up in Michigan, schooled in Pennsylvania, now work and essentially live in Ohio. I'm definitely connected to all three places and have interacted with all 3 fanbases. Michigan, Penn State and Ohio State fans, in the aggregate, are all basically the same. None of us, as a group, are any better than anyone else. Just be thankful it didn't happen at your school. It could have, and there would be no shortage of Buckeye fan idiots either.

This is the fundamental error in everything you've said and couldn't be less true and if this is your core belief I feel sorry for you. OSU fans would not have reacted like this and I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in that opinion. Can't speak for scUM. For starters, we would want everyone associated with the knowledge of the rapes to be canned. Period. Never to return or be defended. There would be no riots at any point in time - ever over something like this. A commissioned report from the former FBI director would be accepted warts and all - period. There would be no 'movement' to elect cultish BOT members - that kind of thing would never even gain traction at OSU. OSU would have settled with victims and been done with this years ago - no need to drag this on for PR reasons. There would be no statue restoration or honor day. We wouldn't still be obsessing about it 5 years post trial. We wouldn't spend countless hours on other fan base web forums trying to convince them that 'we're all the same'. We're all the same when it comes to the obsession we have for college football and our respective teams - and that's where it ends. But we are very different in how we accept something like this and move on. It's been stated here many times in this very thread... you meet a penn state fan, they seem perfectly normal, well adjusted and then the topic of the scandal comes up and they get downright cultish. Rationalizations abound - "Joe was framed, it's a shame what they did to Joe, Joe knew nothing, Joe reported everything and they threw him under the bus anyway, a lot of the kids that got money were liars and my favorite one... Joe was being blamed because the eggheads were jealous of him.

This is not to say to say OSU or any other fanbase wouldn't have some wackos. They would be very small in number though and they would NEVER have the numbers to nominate and elect hand chosen cult candidates at our university. THAT WOULD NEVER FVCKING HAPPEN - EVER. That's the difference.

 

[BuckeyeNation27]

I'm not here to "change hearts and minds." I'm just here to make fun of 9fold. :-)

It's fair to admit it --- last week was another situation for the "HA HA Penn State, fuck those cultists, hopefully Mark Emmert does his thing and screws them" crowd to feel good about themselves.

I get it. Penn State folk were obnoxious with "success with honor" and "we're better than everyone else" in the pre-2011 days. Now the tables are turned.

I also get this: I grew up in Michigan, schooled in Pennsylvania, now work and essentially live in Ohio. I'm definitely connected to all three places and have interacted with all 3 fanbases. Michigan, Penn State and Ohio State fans, in the aggregate, are all basically the same. None of us, as a group, are any better than anyone else. Just be thankful it didn't happen at your school. It could have, and there would be no shortage of Buckeye fan idiots either.

I disagree. I've spent my entire life living in Pennsylvania. I hate all different kinds of fanbases. Penn State fans, by far, are just different......not at all in a good way. My dad grew up in Troy, OH and graduated from Ohio State during the Archie years. His first job out of college was in a tiny little town in PA on the NY border (not State College by any means, but still Penn State country). All of his friends and coworkers and just people in our lives were Penn State fans. I enjoyed them. They were "uncles" and godparents and generally people who loved us and we loved them. And then Penn State would come up....and these people who would stop what they were doing to come pick me up from school if my dad was busy turn into just the biggest assholes. Smarmy, condescending, rude pieces of shit. Not normal trash talking.......just all around dickheads.

It made no sense to me for the longest time. In any other venue, the team you root for doesn't define you. Fans like to think it does with stupid jokes like 'how do you get a Michigan grad off your porch? pay for the pizza har har har har har'. But outside of the dumb stereotypes, I've never seen the team define the person....other than Penn State. It used to bother me to the point where I started thinking about why that was. I realized it was a unique blend of being independent for so long, having a little success but nothing major like Alabama or Notre Dame, being in the middle of fucking nowhere....isolated from what other people thought of you and your program, and having only one head coach for that whole time. Probably more than just having the one coach, was the way they turned him into a God......but you don't stick around that long without that happening for the most part. All that bullshit "success with honor" and the "penn state way" that was fed to them, and those people being in their special little bubble, turned them into this unique breed of super asshole. I've seen normal fan outlier behavior......this isn't that. This is something that apparently was part of being a Penn State fan.

Sure, the whole scandal could have happened at any other big time school. Being honest.....I wouldn't be surprised at all to find out that Penn State wasn't the only place. But the whackjob reaction to it from the majority of super asshole fans that make up that fan base is something that I doubt very seriously would happen at other schools. My dad tells the story of rushing home from work to catch the end of the Ohio State/Clemson game. He got home just in time to see Woody clock Charlie Bauman. He turned to his buddy who he went to Ohio State with and said "well....that was Woody's last game." He didn't bend over backwards a billion different ways trying to rationalize why the most loved coach in the history of the school should stay despite the fact that he just punched an opponent. When Tressel got busted for the tattoo shit....this board overwhelmingly knew he needed to be fired. Probably as a sacrifice to the NCAA gods to save the school from harsher penalties. But Ohio State fans know that the program is bigger than any one player or coach. Penn State fans still don't understand that. They're unique.....in a horrifying way. And the sane ones are the minority.

I don't know what number is the accepted % of shitty fans vs normal ones in any given fanbase. I think I've seen 90% good to 10% shitty. Penn State is 10% good.....if that.

 

[Delaware Buck]

If you can't see the problems with using that survey (or any of its previous iterations, which likely had the same sampling deficiencies) as "fact", I honestly don't know what to say.

Doran/Oldsey/Brown (none of whom are younger than 62 years old, which supports my point that Paterno Loyalists skew toward being older folk) got ~65% of the vote among the ~4% of eligible voters who voted in the recent election. Those are the numbers.

Silence does not equal agreement. Really?!?

Just about what I expected. More rationalization & contrarian nonsense. Again, you don't get to question the motivation of the voters or the participation percentage. Accept the results and move on and if it's embarrassing, change it.

 

[409fold]

I don't know what number is the accepted % of [Mark May]ty fans vs normal ones in any given fanbase. I think I've seen 90% good to 10% [Mark May]ty. Penn State is 10% good.....if that.

So even if this is true --- what is your opinion as to what drives such a stark difference?

I've visited every state in the country --- I've even been to 65% of the individual counties (one of the more bizarre things on my "bucket list" is to try to visit all 3,142 counties in the United States). In my opinion, the state in the country that is most like Pennsylvania is Ohio --- and vice versa.

(1) Pennsylvania and Ohio share a 100+ mile border. There is no wall at the border. You do not need a passport at the border. Point being, cultures will bleed over borders.

(2) South-central, east-central and southeast Ohio, which are all dense with Buckeye fans, is strongly Appalachian culturally. Central and Southwest Pennsylvania, which is dense with Nittany Lion fans, is also strongly Appalachian culturally.

(3) Central Pennsylvania is isolated, yes. Plenty of hick little towns like that one from your anecdote: places where the native population rarely leaves. The whole state of Pennsylvania is not like that, however. There are tons of Penn State fans who live/grew up in non-isolated portions of the state: Pittsburgh, Philly, Harrisburg, Lehigh Valley, et cetera. Likewise, there are isolated portions of Ohio, plenty of hick little towns (south-central and southeast in particular). But the whole state is not that way.

(4) Both are generally blue-collar, rust-belt sort of states. Mining, coal, iron-working, et cetera: all highly important in the history of both states.

(5) High school football and football in general is HUGE in both states.

Given such, why would Buckeye and Nittany Lion fans be so fundamentally different?

 

[BuckeyeNation27]

I kind of went over that in my diatribe.

It used to bother me to the point where I started thinking about why that was. I realized it was a unique blend of being independent for so long, having a little success but nothing major like Alabama or Notre Dame, being in the middle of fucking nowhere....isolated from what other people thought of you and your program, and having only one head coach for that whole time. Probably more than just having the one coach, was the way they turned him into a God......but you don't stick around that long without that happening for the most part. All that bull[Mark May] "success with honor" and the "penn state way" that was fed to them, and those people being in their special little bubble, turned them into this unique breed of super asshole. I've seen normal fan outlier behavior......this isn't that. This is something that apparently was part of being a Penn State fan.

It's why the cult name tag is so appropriate. Things were really fostered a lot like a cult. Isolation, being told you're better just for being in the group, leader treated as a god.....

 

[409fold]

Just about what I expected. More rationalization & contrarian nonsense. Again, you don't get to question the motivation of the voters or the participation percentage. Accept the results and move on and if it's embarrassing, change it.

I did not "question their motivation." That's putting words in my mouth.

Neither did I "question the participation percentage." There is nothing to question there: the participation percentage is a result of simple mathematics. Numerator = people who voted. Denominator = people eligible. The result is what it is.

I think my participation in this particular conversation with you has run its course. I've found you perfectly reasonable to talk to in previous discussions, but not on this one. Maybe next time.

 

[Delaware Buck]

I did not "question their motivation." That's putting words in my mouth.

Neither did I "question the participation percentage." There is nothing to question there: the participation percentage is a result of simple mathematics. Numerator = people who voted. Denominator = people eligible. The result is what it is.

I think my participation in this particular conversation with you has run its course. I've found you perfectly reasonable to talk to in previous discussions, but not on this one. Maybe next time.

It's not possible to reason with someone that is entrenched in a belief system that holds that the fan reaction to what happened at PSU would have been the same had it happened everywhere else. If you don't see the difference I cannot help you. To use a sports analogy, your position on this is in the C deck at the stadium. The rest of us are on the sideline enjoying the game. We're not coming up to C deck to watch the game with you. If you want to be seen as more moderate you need to find a way to make it to the sidelines.

 

[409fold]

It's not possible to reason with someone that is entrenched in a belief system that holds that the fan reaction to what happened at PSU would have been the same had it happened everywhere else. If you don't see the difference I cannot help you. To use a sports analogy, your position on this is in the C deck at the stadium. The rest of us are on the sideline enjoying the game. We're not coming up to C deck to watch the game with you. If you want to be seen as more moderate you need to find a way to make it to the sidelines.

In other words, you want me to say this:

Penn State fans, in the aggregate, are FUNDAMENTALLY worse human beings than the rest of Americans.

That's what this conversation boils down to. You believe that statement. I do not.

 

[Delaware Buck]

You can only say what you really believe and that's entirely up to you.