Blue and White Roundtable: Fur Coats And Handguns
October 9, 2007 by Run Up The Score!
This week’s questions are from There Is No Name On My Jersey.
The rest of this week’s team:
William Yurasko
1. Criminal allegations swirl around the squad — what impact will this have on the team? My own “fall off of my high horse of PSU’s sterling reputation” has been terrible, have you experienced the same?
Pretty much. I’m just surprised at the repeated selfishness and stupidity of people on and around this team. They severely screwed up in the spring and more or less got away with it because Joe Paterno got out in front of the controversy with his stadium cleaning punishment. Whether you agree with his actions or not, he provided cover for his team. For that, he was rewarded with nothing but more off-field shenanigans. Not all transgressions are equal, but the sheer frequency of incidents is staggering given the blatantly obvious facts that (1) this team had an outside chance to do something special this season, and (2) they were warned, repeatedly, about this sort of nonsense.
Could Paterno have been a little more consistent with his punishments? Absolutely. Light cleaning for a fight and a three week suspension for underage drinking? Doesn’t make sense to me, either.
2. Evan Royster provided Penn State with the Spark it needed to get going on Saturday, did he win himself the starting job? If not, how does your depth chart read at RB and why?
According to one of the Fight On State guys, Austin Scott is #3 on the depth chart this week. So, uhh, yeah.
I’d let Kinlaw and Royster split time equally. Royster’s the future, but honestly, Kinlaw’s earned his playing time. Since it’s unlikely that Austin Scott comes back, I’d let Stephfon Green assume the #3 spot. He’s the #2 running back next season behind Royster, and there’s no practical reason for him to go into 2008 with less than 50 carries.
3. Anthony Morelli gets it done while looking both awful and excellent in the same game. What the hell is PSU supposed to do at QB?
I can legitimately see a scenario where Morelli remains quarterback for the rest of the season by playing like he did against Iowa — just good enough to not get benched. Take away that second interception, and people would’ve totally been satisfied with his performance on Saturday. All of the other mistakes, the overthrows and other assorted junk, would have been forgiven.
Lightning Round
What games are you watching on Saturday?
I’ll be at the Wisconsin game, so that’ll be about it. Everything else will be thanks to Sirius.
What are your predictions for the second half of the season?
Oh, hell. I don’t know at this point. I have no idea what to expect anymore.
Who will be PSU’s MVP come January?
Dan Connor. As always.
Any of you homers who thought M1EK was being too hard on Paterno for the “fight” want to say anything now?
speedomike02 doesn’t like when people refer to themselves in the third person.
oh yea! M1EK - you were right - our team’s full of thugs - waa hoo! you win the “Eeyore Oh Bother” award.
No, PSUgirl, people who “lean thug” are emboldened when thuggish acts of others aren’t appropriately punished. That’s the lesson; not that any of you homers will learn it, which is why we’re headed down the Miami path.
My Responses:
http://pennstateminutiae.blogspot.com/
The Miami path? Seriously?
While everyone would appreciate it if the players kept themselves out of trouble (and thus - out of the news), I think we’re a far way away from the “Miami path.”
Call me when Luther Campbell is roaming around the sidelines, paying players and bringing over “entertainment” for the guys. When we start roaming the town in combat fatigues brandishing pistols downtown. Then? Then I believe we’ll be on the Miami path.
If you think football players getting into fights is new, perhaps you haven’t been around college football players all that long. Always happened, probably always will. It’s just that today bloggers and over-excited fans post items on the internet within five minutes of it happening. 10, 20+ years ago, people just didn’t hear about these things, and they’d be punished within the team, if at all. Players haven’t changed. The speed of information has.
PSU has had it’s share of less than saintly people through the decades, as much as we’d like to believe that Joe’s boys are all church-going Boy Scouts with 4.0’s in nuclear engineering.
TS, thanks for displaying exactly the kind of homerism I was talking about.
The HUB fight might be the normal kind of college fight you’re talking about. Not enough details yet. Underage drinking, sure. I’m not complaining. But the Scirotto incident most definitely was NOT.
And at the old Penn State, Paterno would have made sure that his response to the Scirotto incident would have ensured that no other crap happened the rest of the year - not even the little stuff. See how well that worked this year?
This is the Miami path, and you’re delusional if you think otherwise. Miami didn’t become Miami overnight.
So who would be an example of a more severe punishment that the Old Penn State would have handed out? Sayles and Engram were arrested on burglary charges… and stayed around back in the early 90s. I personally saw Brad “Bear” Scioli try to fight an entire fraternity with one of his friends…. as a HS senior. Unlike Scirotto, he just didn’t need to call for backup. Hit the papers the next day as the frat guys needed to mace him to stop him, and Paterno still offered him a scholarship, as I recall.
I guess my point is that I believe Joe has always handled problems his way - right or wrong, too harsh or too lenient. He’s given people second chances before. It’s just that now we hear about more of them, and demand immediate and appropriate justice, whatever we feel that may be.
Or, maybe the leaders on the team aren’t strong enough or don’t set a good enough example for the younger players.
Edit: Forgot, Sayles did not return, as that was his second offense in the span of a few months. But Engram certainly did.
“Sayles and Engram were arrested on burglary charges… and stayed around back in the early 90s.”
They didn’t stay around - one was kicked off completely, and the other was off the team for a year (after evidence that he was largely a dupe). That’s exactly the kind of punishment I want to see - and it worked fine (no other major incidents that year; and Engram got the message and turned it around big-time).
As for Scioli - again, you’re missing the point. Fights, yes. But not posse-gathering, breaking-and-entering, beat-down applying thuggery. Those are two different things, despite how much you and the other apologists want to make them the same.
What Scirotto apparently did was WORSE than what Engram did. And the punishment, if there’s ever going to be any, is obviously far less.
I hadn’t heard the Scioli story. How’d he do?
Well, we’ll agree to disagree on this one.
Scioli basically got drunk and tried to enter a fraternity party, so 20 brave guys jumped him and his friend, spraying them with mace in the process. Eventually beat him up a bit, although it appears that it didn’t really faze Scioli. He was an interesting cat.
“”The kid took a beating, but he was acting like nothing happened,” the second source said. “It seemed it didn’t faze him, like he wanted to go finish it.”
Links for fun reading on the story:
http://www.collegian.psu.edu/archive/1994/01/01-26-94tdc/01-26-94dnews-7.asp
M1EK,
explain why an OSU kid being caught buying a $20 prostitute…and there national championship running back being pulled over with automatics…and their heisman QB getting caught being paid by a booster…means that tressel is a great coach who is in control of his team.
Or the ND kid who was caught with a hooker, also…or their emu QB being caught buying beer underage…means that ND still has high standards and is respectable.
Or the florida kid (a captain!) getting arested, with links to the starting heisman finalist QB…both of which were playing a couple days later.
You sound like an 80 year old man. You must have gone to college, did you ever get in trouble? If so, should I write a story on my blog about how your parents are out of control and need the court needs to demand they turn custody of you over to the state?
They are 18-21 year old kids, at college, they drink, and we all know how many hard asses there are in state college…i know i saw my share in 4 years there. When our players start getting arested with guns, or getting shot, or starting on the field brawls (remember the ND douch bag that gave whoever a cheap shot? did he hit back?)……when those thing start happening you can start calling psu thug U, until then you need to look at every college and realize this is broadcast over the internet at literally every school.
upthemiddleeverytime,
Get your head out of your ass. What apparently happened with Scirotto et al wasn’t “just a fight” - it was a posse-gathering breaking-and-entering beatdown. The kind of thing that would get you shot in Texas. And the guy doing the shooting wouldn’t be spending any time in jail either.
And your kind of apologism is, again, exactly how Miami became Miami.
Nobody at those schools is defending the kid who got caught picking up the prostitute. Big difference. Even our host, who in most other respects is easily distinguished from the rest of you homer nimrods, occasionally fell back into the “it was just a fight” fallacy.
You’re a really bad person. I hope you go through the rest of your life without managing to have an influence on anybody else.
Your pal,
M1EK
You have a team with 100 college age males. You’re going to get a few bad apples that do stupid things. Doesn’t mean the entire program is headed down the path to darkness.
The prevalence of the bad apples, and how often they are able to influence the apples that could go either way, tells you which way the program is going. And our program is not going the right direction.
Sounds like M1ek has some sand in the vagina.
Is PSU out of control, I don’t think so but it is a change from PSU we have known publicly for 40+ years. With the internet, camera phones, and media everywhere these kids (all D 1 players) need to know they stand out and are under the microscope.
Comparing PSU to Miami is just idiotic…now is the time all the PSU haters are coming out of the closet. Even at it’s worst this program is better than 80% of the other programs in the US.
All of that said, I think it’s time for a new era and new approach at PSU. This generation is different that most Joe coached, more kids come from broken families, have been told all their lives they can do no wrong, and have general disrespect for authority. Joe has little clue of how to punish in a fair way, it’s either way to little or way to harsh, he lost touch w/ reality.
StL, you’re a real winner.
Folks, do you want to be proud of Penn State for good reason, or do you want to be irrationally proud of some school everybody else knows is pretty much just the same shit in a different container? Because the rest of the world _IS_ noticing the changes, and _IS_ bringing up the Miami analogy, and _NO_, I’m not feeding it to them.
Delusional homerism is no way to go through life, son.
What are your predictions for the second half of the season?
Oh, hell. I don’t know at this point. I have no idea what to expect anymore.
(Best response I’ve seen to that question.)
—TNT
Here’s just one of the hundred or so news articles you’ll find if you search google news on “penn state” and miami:
http://www.thetimes-tribune.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=18901110&BRD=2185&PAG=461&dept_id=416049&rfi=6
“Seems as if they don’t even care why. If they did, maybe Penn State wouldn’t steadily be morphing into Miami without the palm trees and relentless beach traffic.”
Because the rest of the world _IS_ noticing the changes, and _IS_ bringing up the Miami analogy, and _NO_, I’m not feeding it to them.
M1ek - This is the first time I ever heard PSU compared to Miami of old…thanks for the compliment I am a winner (it’s always nice to have that fact validated)
…and you still have a sandy vagina and probably high blod pressure, you seem to take PSU way to serious…just busting you chops bro.
Because the rest of the world _IS_ noticing the changes, and _IS_ bringing up the Miami analogy, and _NO_, I’m not feeding it to them.
M1ek - This is the first time I ever heard PSU compared to Miami of old…thanks for the compliment I am a winner (it’s always nice to have that fact validated)
…and you still have a sandy vagina and probably high blod pressure, you seem to take PSU way to serious…just busting you chops bro…
So just to be clear, M1EK believes that Scirotto et al should be doing hard time, at least off the team for a year, maybe for good. And because they aren’t, it’s proof that PSU is now paying players in coke and hookers that the 2 Live Crew set up, sort of like Miami used to.
Anyone who disagrees is thusly a homer who wants JoePa as dictator for life, even though we know we’ll only ever be a 9-4 team with road losses to all top 25 teams and we won’t bench seniors.
I don’t know. Maybe M1EK = the kid beat up by the door-breaking posse-having fightin football players. Or something. I just don’t know. Look around, PLENTY of other schools, including high profile ones who try to do things the right way have players in trouble. If we’re Miami of the 80’s, what are some of the other schools? What about the school with the backup punter who stabbed someone? Are they the Oklahoma of the 80s - who, in my opinion - were worse than Miami?