Joe Paterno: 1926-2012

The vast majority of Joseph Vincent Paterno's life story was written in blue and white ink.  

Joe Paterno never went anywhere other than Penn State University, and he never needed to. Paterno was steadfast at Penn State because everything he did was timeless, yet outdated at the same time. Joe Pa drove a Ford Tempro to work every day; whether it was in 1950 when he just started out as an assistant coach, or in 2011 when he had won more games as a head coach that anybody else. He maintained his iconic look of Poindexter glasses and flood pants throughout his career; even when they went out of style decades before the fashion trends of his final recruiting class. Even when Paterno's famous Grand Experiment appeared to falter in 1979, Joe Pa's faith in his players and himself never budged. Generations of Penn State football players came in and out of the locker rooms at Beaver Stadium, but Joe Pa remained year after year, decade after decade.


On Sunday, at the age of 85, Joe Paterno passed away. Paterno left behind his wife Sue, his son Jay, and every one of his family members that all gathered by his hospital bed to watch him take his final breath. Still, Paterno left more than his own family behind. He left behind all of the kids who's lives that he influenced for the better; the University that was the first stepping stone, foundation, and Tash Ma Hall of Paterno's coaching career, and millions of people who blamed him in part for a scandal that rocked the sports world to it's core.

With the final chapter of Joe Paterno's life story written we turn to the maddening process of drafting the man's epilogue: his legacy.

What will the world most remember Joe Paterno? Will we all remember the 409 career wins, 24 bowl wins, two national championships, three conference titles, and his induction into the College Football Hall of Fame? Or will Joe Pa be remembered for what he failed to do? The alleged sexual assaults he reportedly knew about  and failed to stop. Is Joe Paterno the man defined by his 1986 Sportsman of the Year award or by his final interview with the Washington Post in which he unconvincingly plead the fifth?


There is no middle ground to comprehending Joe Paterno's legacy. No sensible answer that can be determined by placing sins and forgiveness on the Libra scale. The only two seemingly possible stances on Joe Paterno are light-years apart from one another. The scale will be forever weighing the mountainous highs of one the five greatest coaches in the history of college football against the cavernous lows of one of the three most destructive scandals in the history of sports.

How Joe Paterno's legacy will be written depends entirely on the person who chooses to remember him.

Some will choose to remember Jo Pa for the best of times rather than the worst of times. For the individuals who have played for, spent time with, and wrote about Joe Paterno, the memories will shift towards their positive interactions. Stories about how Paterno would take in players who were not doing well in school into his home in order for them to receive tutoring or a silly thing that went on in the locker room will be most players' default coach Paterno memory. A  more specific tale recalls Paterno's constant visits to Adam Taliaferro, a defensive back who played for Penn State and made a miraculous recovery from  paralysis.

Others who may not have known Joe Pa will only associate his name with the broken remains of Penn State's credibility. Paterno's lack of action put him past the point of forgiveness in the eyes of many. In this country, committing sexual misconducts of any kind will bring shame upon a person for the rest of their life. Although Paterno did not assault any of the boys himself, his alleged prior knowledge of the assault that allegedly did go on makes him guilty by association in the court of public opinion. And in a what-have-you-done-for-me-lately public mindset, Paterno's good deeds would surely go unnoticed in hindsight to the last ten weeks of Joe Pa's life.

Joe Paterno's life was one to remember one way or the other. His success as a coach has secured his place in the highest summits of football lore. By the same token, his biggest failure will be remembered by everyone and unforgiven by many. His legacy may be open ended, but the name Joe Paterno will live on long after a lot of us are gone.

Don't Alter the Past to Change the Future.

A recent in depth conversation between this young man and his father about college basketball covered some of the usual topics. Discussion started with which teams were going to make an impact come March; continued with which players were going to make an impact at the next level, and ended with my father's go to phrase whenever an Ivy League school does well: "Go smart kids."

In the middle of the spirited father-son conversation we both somehow entered the delorean and traveled all the way back to 2007-2008 to find out when and where Derrick Rose went to school. And as it turns out, Rose lead the Memphis Tigers to 38 wins and took his team all the way to the NCAA Championship game.

But don't tell the NCAA that because according to them, that isn't what happened in 2007-2008. According to them, Kansas won the national title by playing nobody.

How is that possible you ask? The answer can be found within the most ludicrous rule in sports.

The NCAA Committee of Infractions stripped the Memphis Tigers of their 38 wins and Final Four appearance because they found several major rule violations, including a fraudulent SAT score from Derrick Rose, and 2,000 dollars in travel expenses provided for Rose's brother. The NCAA couldn't touch Rose, who bolted for the NBA later that summer or Memphis' coach John Calipari who was the coach at Kentucky when the sanctions came down. So the NCAA decided instead to act as if Memphis' season never happened instead of conducting their usual punishment of voiding the school's scholarships and putting the program on probation.

Except it did happen, and the NCAA can never say otherwise.

The sheer stupidity that lies within whatever clause that enables the NCAA to take away wins makes the BCS  look like the poster child for how to properly determine results in college sports. The association cannot erase the countless memories that exist regarding the 2008 Memphis Tigers; and at least 38 of those memories include the team winning. The statistics that Rose and his fellow Tigers put up in their time at Memphis are still archived by the Tigers team website and ESPN.com. Memphis University already raked in the revenue from ticket sales, concessions sold, and media access that the very successful 2007-2008 season provided them. CBS and the other networks that covered the tournament already got their advertising money from the ratings of Memphis' six tournament games.

Besides, even if the NCAA could take all of that away, there still would exist a long list of permanent results that would not make any sense in the history books.

The NCAA may have taken away wins from Memphis, but the letter of the law did not say anything about voiding losses. So according to the NCAA's version of the 2008 NCAA tournament, the Memphis Tigers were a number 1 seed in the NCAA's hallowed playoffs with a record of 0-1. Which has never happened in the history of the tournament. Also, if Memphis' win against Texas-Arlington didn't happen, then a 16 seed advanced in the NCAA tournament for the first time in tournament history. But Texas-Arlington did not play Mississippi State in the second round, so clearly the Mavericks did not advance. By that same logic, Mississippi State, Michigan State, Texas, and UCLA all just magically vanished from the tournament bracket without losing to anybody.

Those scenarios make sense? Didn't think so.

The fact of the matter is that yes Memphis was in violation of the rules, but it was the NCAA's own fault for punishing the wrong people. The culprits the NCAA failed to catch were Derrick Rose and John Calipari, and the NCAA couldn't punish one and didn't punish the other. Rose fulfilled his NCAA obligation to play for one year in college before becoming draft eligible. The NCAA could not touch Rose once he became an NBA player in part because of their own rule.

As for John Calipari, the NCAA may have taken wins away from the coach, but this was the second time Calipari committed major violations against at a program he coached for. Calipari did the exact same thing at the University of Massachusetts and was not punished when the NCAA brought down the hammer on UMass because he had left for Memphis. In fact, Calipari coached another full season at Memphis before the punishments came down on the program. With no restrictions against coaches who are under investigation of violating NCAA rules, Calipari bolted and got off without punishment. The NCAA was left only to shake it's fist angrily as coach Cal built up another program at Kentucky.

The NCAA's ability to police their sport is about as effective as a squirt gun in a wildfire. So instead  of improving their own enforcement.the NCAA attempted to sweep their mistakes under the rug rather than fixing their own policing of the game. Sorry to break it to the higher ups in Indianapolis, but because you took away Memphis' wins on paper does not mean that they did not happen. Not only because there are other pieces of paper that say otherwise, but because millions of people saw otherwise with their own eyes.
And the NCAA can never take those memories and moments away.

Online Censorship? Was Ist Das?

Welp.

I can't say I'm not a bit anxious to see how Congress' SOPA bill, short for the Stop Online Piracy Act, turns out.  I'm not exactly sure what it entails.  I keep seeing the protests, I've read the summaries of what the bill means, and yet I have no idea how it will affect what I do on the internet on a day-to-day basis.

From what I could gather from ABC News, SOPA combats illegal digital sharing.  It's supposed to protect the movie and music industry as well as other providers for online content.  Companies are protesting however, because the "censorship" of the web they fear may mean that their search engines or even links on their own webpages could be blocked if attached to a site guilty of illegal file shares.

For the average college student or highschooler, this certainly may not bode well for their iPods.  Surely given all of the hype the music industry has stirred up in the past couple of years regarding digital piracy--this bill, if passed, would surely move to repress such websites.

I don't pirate my music however...every single song I have has come from iTunes.  So what am I worried about?

Well for starters this blog.  I've made it a point to try and source as many of the photos I use in my stories, but I only started doing such fairly recently.  But even if I did source a photo, what happens if the link to which it is attached is on a restricted website??  Does that mean this blog shuts down?  Or I get a notice?  I've seen plenty of other blogs that don't source their photos (mine included for my earlier posts).  Do people even take note of such a thing?

I have occasionally in the past (and by occasionally I mean literally once...that's why its stuck in my head all these years) tried to use a photo for a power point or a project, only to be told I couldn't use such an image because I'd be stealing it by copy/pasting it.  As long as you aren't literally saying..."I took this photo, all rights should belong to me" in replacement of whatever website or individual you took it from...I can't say I see the point in penalizing someone for copy/pasting images.  Now as a disclaimer, I will say that only a couple of the photos on this blog are mine--but I've made no claims that any of the other ones share a common origin.

Like the Star Trek photo in my latest post......do you think that I actually took that?  No of course not.  Not just because I sourced it...but rather more of a common sense sort of thing don't you think?  Nobody looks at a photo of Picasso and thinks that the guy who posted it is the actual artist, or owns the painting itself.  That doesn't mean that people don't have a right to their work.  They do, and I'm not advocating downloading pirated music or buying pirated dvds.  My mere question however, is as to what will constitute as necessary censorship.

I love writing The Grog, its an opportunity to reach out to all of my college friendos, my hometown acquaintances and my family members---and yes, even you! The random stranger from Europe or Canada, or wherever you were when you selected "Next Blog" and stumbled across me.  I don't know what I'd do with all of my creativity allotted time if I had to stop writing The Grog.  Google is protesting SOPA...and this blogger is an extension of Google...so who knows what the future will hold.

I hope you didn't think I'd end on such a pessimistic outlook.  That would be rather debbie-downer of you.

So here, watch this cute Welsh Corgi puppy dog.

Uploaded by Shane2y (Try that for sourcing witches)

--FIN--

Welcome Back to School, Now Hand Over Your Wallet

I have been away from this in quite a while.  Not because I've given up on The Grog, no worries there, but rather because I had literally no new ideas for a post.

School however, is a fantastic source for random blogging post ideas.  Now that I'm back, you'll probably begin to see a closer interval of posts being put up.  So get ready to kick back and read your favorite source of random unapologetically American outlooks.

So where do we start?

Well I suppose we could start with ridiculous pricing.


What do I mean by that?

Friendos, for those of you in college, do you ever feel like your money shoots right down through a bottomless pit into the fiery sulfuric lakes of Hell?  With the ridiculous pricing for one semester alone, one has to wonder why the school of your choosing decides to stiff you on money everywhere.


Now let's relax...I'm not going to protest college payments like the toolbags at NYU that barricaded themselves in the school.  "This is what Democracy looks like!!!"

(Uploaded by the Associated Press)

I'm going to side track here for a second---Democratic process? Take a look at their own vid--http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Q6KAg6qEGY  

I'd say the second you start barricading an establishment and calling NYU staff members "fucking dirty snakes" peaceful democratic protest has been thrown out of the window.  "We need to collectively decide on how to proceed!"  "We need to look at the power hierarchy here guys." 

Yeah that is hilarious. I wouldn't be caught dead protesting like these morons. 

But I digress.  While the tuition certainly is expensive, my parents and I were fortunate enough to only have to pay for one year before the Army started doing the heavy lifting.  Still however, college likes to screw you out of your money on everything.  

I'm extremely thankful that the Army gives me $600 per semester for books, as I had to spend $440 this semester, not including my Physics text book which I haven't gotten yet.  Do I think the books are a litttttlllee steep on the prices? Sure, but that's not nearly as annoying as trying to sell them back to the bookstore you bought them from.  Lets say I bought a book for $130.  Alright, try to sell it back to the book store...they'll at best probably give me back $70.  Alright what about a much cheaper $15 book?  Ah...probably about $7-8.  Even if I hand it back in pristine condition and had never opened it I'll get ripped off.

What about food?  Unfortunately I don't have a 'one swipe-and you can get whatever you want' style cafeteria.  Well that probably increases the quality of the food then right?  That's debatable, I often find that I don't want to eat anything they have to offer...especially when all of the meals look exactly the same on certain nights.  Not to mention, they charge you for every single thing at my school.  For instance, lets say its beer-battered cod and penne night.  The cod comes out to be around $5, the penne will be another $4, if I get a drink thats another couple of bucks.  If I get a monster energy drink that's $4.25.  If I get a to-go container or to-go cup that's an extra 30 cents.  What ends up happening is that if I try to eat like a normal person, I'm destined to fail--I'll run out of money on my meal plan a month before I want to.  

So what do you do?  You can try and cheat the system and avoid the extra costs.  In order to avoid the extra 30 cent cost of getting to-go I'd often buy 'for here' and then just leave with the container if it came in a throw-away paper bin.  But the school caught on to that one I guess--they replaced the paper bins with reusable black baskets.  Of course, most students said to hell with that..the school bought 250 of these things and within one week they were down to about 10.

Facepalm worthy (Source)

In terms of schools trying to preemptively combat students creating costly damages, my brother told me of a particularly pathetic money scam on behalf of his college: Villanova University.

He told me that students were up in arms after they found out that as part of their fees, Villanova had charged all of their students $200 preemptively to cover costs from predicted stealing.  Of course, when students found out about this, they decided 'well what the hell...since I've already been fined preemptively, I might as well start taking stuff from the school.'

Villanova: Teaching Sound Business Ethics since 1842 (Source)

Can anyone be surprised by that outcome?  I guess, in a roundabout way, the school made a sound decision in covering the cost of stolen property....but that only occurred on a wider basis than usual because of the school's directive in the first place.

I have no idea how to end this post.  I'm not going to advocate NYU-like action against "the man", or try to rally you to protest.  No, I'm afraid this is just one of those pet peeves that is annoying..but isn't going to change..not even with a petition campaign (because those really make a difference in the world don't they???). 

So since this is The Grog...and I can't do something else too uplifting, you can just watch the nyan cat. That'll make you feel better about your student loans I'm sure.

It's so addicting. (Uploaded by LagoverLP)

If that doesn't work. Please Refer to Epic Sax Guy.

--Fin--