Would you rather have James Franklin or Jim Harbaugh as Penn State's head coach?
This is a parody, right? FauxFranklin?Carole Kirkpatrick: I am sticking with King James.
King James, oh that's a good one. Like LeBron James, right? Oh, that's a good one Carole. This is a good parody account.
I say long live King James.
That's a good one, Carole.
Lauren Shipper:...It's true that Harbaugh likely would be regarded as the better coach at this point in time...
True, at this particular juncture in the rent fabric of space/time.
...I think he's setting us up to be more of a contender as time goes on....I wouldn't trade coaches if I had the chance.
Bill Engel: I would take James Franklin over just about any coach out there. Why?
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Tim Johnson: I agree with everything that's been said already, so I'm going to make it 4-for-4 and go with Franklin as well...I think he should be our coach for a long time.
Harbaugh's track record on the field speaks for itself. But even if I could be promised multiple national championships with him at the helm, I'm not sure I'd sell my soul to do it.
Very funny, guys.
Very funny, guys.
This is real. As real as State College, Pennsylvania gets.
On July 23 of this year I wrote a post on Penn State that I never published. I saved it and as reminder to myself gave it the title:
"Penn State post-almost complete"
Sally Jenkins of the Washington Post was the last pencil to interview Joe Paterno. She has written extensively on the Penn State scandal. I quote from this Jenkins article of May 10 https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/penn-state-should-own-its-role-in-the-sandusky-scandal/2016/05/10/41eea4ce-16b3-11e6-924d-838753295f9a_story.html because it treats of a subject that I, not uniquely,, but which few others, treated of very early in the scandal. It is the Penn State Scandal and it is unique. Here is how Jenkins begins her article:
When the Jerry Sandusky child rape scandal was first exposed, it seemed wise to resist the idea that the place had something to do with it. It seemed important to ask whether what happened at Penn State could have happened anywhere, to anyone, given that child predators are so adept at winning trust. But now it seems that maybe the place was important, because some people up there in that spooky little town still don’t get it.
Years ago I wrote that there were reasons why the greatest catastrophe ever to befall an American university happened at Penn State. Not the least of those reasons was in fact that "spooky little town" of State College, Pennsylvania.
I remember reading another writer's description of making his way to State College, a way that I have made many times, and of being struck by how remote the place was, how difficult it was to get to; how, at approach, you first see it from the hills above, down in a valley; the suspicious, Orwellian name "Happy Valley;" how the town and the university that literally gives the town its name, is protected and sheltered by those mountains; how it was easy to envision, seeing just the geography, a black hole for unhappy events, into which they disappeared, from which secrets of their existence did not emerge. And of how the writer now better understood why Penn State was so secretive.
There are other universities equally or more remote, geography is not destiny; some are sheltered by mountains too, topography is not destiny; powerful institutions are almost always secretive, Penn State was not uniquely so, not all paranoids are criminals. But then, "Why did this happen at Penn State?" becomes a sort of silly question.
You want to know how a serial predator can molest boys in the school showers for 40 years without being caught?
...
Most interesting about [Judge Gary] Glazer’s written decision is the very first sentence... “This case arises out of a series of heinous crimes perpetrated against a multitude of children over a 40-year period.” Forty years.
We did not know when the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal broke out of State College that it would become the Penn State Scandal, that it would trail back 40 years, "Forty years," and trail up to the president of the university, and trail laterally across the mountain to other witness-assistant coaches. Geography is not destiny "but... it seems that maybe the place was important,"
My synapses fired until they just about short-circuited the whole contraption when I began reading about what was to become the Penn State Scandal.
This son of Pennsylvania situated in his mind this "place" that there "was, and is" something "wrong with" not only in that specific mountain-shrouded valley but in the larger commonwealth, he sited it in his mind within Pennsylvania and believed, and believes, that Pennsylvania, "the place was important."
If one gives shape to population density, topography, and economic and cultural importance then a map of Pennsylvania resembles a saddle, drooping with weight at the ends, rising with airiness in the middle. The saddle is corrugated with hills and mountains and valleys and rivers and streams-70% of which do suffer "environmental contamination"-and within the creases of the saddle are living things, beings who live lives that are comparatively solitary, comparatively poor, comparatively hard, unusual.
Take the Amish.
The chain of the Appalachian range known as the Allegheny Mountains cuts diagonally through Pennsylvania from southwest to north central, it looks like a keloid scar on a topographic map, it bifurcates the state. Mountains are a bitch for people. They're so danged hard. Mountains are particularly a bitch for government-people, they're so danged hard to get over or through or around. It's difficult for government-people to control the people who live in mountains and control their way of living.
Take the Whiskey Rebellion.
Shit happens in mountains that you wouldn't believe.
Take Stella Elizabeth Williamson.
The shit creek...Hughes Bore Hole...The synapses fire at unheard of speed.
And that Penn State was secretive, if not uniquely so, "seems" to be important.
Glazer cited former school president Graham Spanier and vice president Gary Schultz for apparently choosing “to sweep the problem under the rug.”
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...one victim’s attorney, Marci Hamilton, believes that Penn State is simply unwilling to go through aggressive discovery. Given Glazer’s ruling on notice, “I now look at their quick settlements as evidence that they believed they could keep a lid on the worst of their knowledge,” Hamilton said via email.
Jenkins concludes her article with this:
Maybe there was, and is, something wrong with the place.
