The Soap Opera That Preempted the 2011 College Football Season

I have a confession.  It's a guilty pleasure.  I enjoy watching The Young and the Restless with my wife.  I didn't start out as a man who enjoyed soap operas.  When I met my wife, she was a fan of The Guiding Light and The Young and the Restless.  Frequently she would watch one, the other, or both and I would politely sit by her biding my time until "real" television came on.  My wife would talk to me as if I was paying attention.  "Oh my God, I can't believe _______ did that!"  My responses to these statements were normally, "Who's ______?"  My wife would then exasperatedly explain to me for the nth time that ______ was the brother of __________ who was once married to __________ and is now sleeping with ___________.  We continued these identical conversations for almost three years before I started paying attention.  I realized that ________ actually had a name and that I remembered _________ and even though I frequently made fun of the bad writing and the story lines that would drop off for no earthly reason, I found myself falling into the shows.  I have reconciled my guilty secret with the knowledge that at their heart, soap operas are simply modern, commercial versions of ancient Greek tragedies.  All the basic elements are there.  There is nice emotional release that can be had from watching a soap opera.  The characters do things they shouldn't do; they put themselves in situations that they shouldn't put themselves; and they allow their emotions to rule their better judgment.  As a viewer, you can relate to the character and also comfortably be morally condescending that you would never stoop to their level.  It's their frequent lack of better moral judgment that drives the ratings.  Lately, I have realized that I'm not the only man who enjoys a good soap opera.

Early in my marriage, I frequently questioned why my wife liked soap operas.  She responded by asking me what I loved about college football.  In many ways, I found that what I liked about college football and what she liked about soap operas were very similar.  I told her that when it comes to college football, or any sport for that matter, there is drama, there is great story, but in football, it is unscripted.  When you watch college football, it is a game played among young men but the outcomes of those games sometimes become legendary.  I gave her examples.  Florida State had lost three games to Miami on wide right, end of game field goals.  Isn't that worthy of a great story?  There were transcendent games, in 1970, USC's defeat of Alabama might have done as much to break down racial barriers in Alabama as did sit-ins and marches.  Just last week, college football featured one of the best regular season games in many years.  It was a #1 versus #2 matchup of two teams that featured two of the best defenses to ever take the same field in the same game.  It was coined "The Game of the Century."  Whether it was worthy of the title is a debate for another article however in terms of drama it is nowhere close to a game being played this week that, for all the wrong reasons, will be "The Game of the Year." 

Of course with any major sport there are stories that don't take place on the grid-iron but it seems of late, the side stories are becoming the featured event while the actual game suffers.  Unless you are living under a rock, you are probably aware of the Penn State, Joe Paterno, Jerry Sandusky scandal.  It has spread from the sports pages, to the front page, and even to TMZ.  In less than a week, it has turned the world of college football upside down, ended the legendary career of the coach with the most wins in Division I football, and spurred a violent riot on one of the largest collegiate campuses in the Nation.  We are five days into this story and it is far from over.  More heads will roll and there are now questions as to whether Joe Paterno will be charged criminally by his inaction to report the incident to police.  Is it all newsworthy?  Absolutely!  Is the sports media right in demanding blood?  For the most part, yes.  Don't get me wrong, my qualified answer to my question is not to be seen as support for the culprits, and they are culprits, but moreover the dangerous road that the sports media is travelling down with this story. 

On Monday night, most people who follow college football were aware that Jerry Sandusky, a former Penn State defensive coordinator, had been indicted for sexual molestation of young boys.  Generally the sports viewing public was also aware that Joe Paterno was a witness for the prosecution at the Grand Jury.  By Tuesday morning, the major online sports media outlets were demanding for Joe Paterno's immediate dismissal, (something that was accomplished by Wednesday night).  Before the general public could even ascertain what the facts were, readers were being spoon-fed what they should be thinking.  Make no mistake, those calls for immediate dismissals were right on target.  Without rehashing the entirety of the facts, very briefly, in 2002, Mike McQueary, a then graduate assistant and current assistant coach walked into a Penn State locker room and allegedly found Jerry Sandusky subjecting a ten year old boy to anal sex.  He then reported that, not to the police, but to head coach, Joe Paterno.  Joe Paterno then reported it to Athletic director Tim Curly and also it was reported to Penn State Vice President Gary Shultz.  None of the men mentioned reported the incident to the police.  Jerry Sandusky is charged with similar incidents after 2002, all of which could have been prevented if any one of those men had bothered to report it.  Losing your job is a bare minimum of punishment.  Sometimes though, in the case of the media, you can be right and still be wrong.

This week's scandal has shown us not only an ugly side to a well respected coach but also to the media that is reporting on the incident.  Any journalist who has simply stated that there should not have been an immediate rush to judgment has been met with a backlash of virulent anger from fans and other media reporters that somehow their unwillingness to immediately grab the pitchfork is seen as support for people who had a massive moral collapse. 

On Wednesday night and Thursday morning, the new target of the Penn State scandal was the Penn State student body who protested the firing of Joe Paterno.  More than likely, their violent protest had a lot to do with their inability to digest all the information before the Board made their decision to pull the plug on the Joe Paterno era.  Did the Board of Trustees make the right decision?  Sure, it was a no-brainer but would the Board have made the same decision, the same way, without the media's calls for that decision.  That is debatable.  My guess is that if the Board of Trustees had not been under so much intense pressure, it would have suspended Joe Paterno while investigating the matter.  As the investigation moved on, Paterno's support with the students probably would have eroded and either Paterno would have seen the light and resigned or the Board of Trustees could have made the same decision a few days later without all of the circus that has surrounded it.  Even though the same result would have been achieved, it was being demanded not by the public and not by Penn State but clearly by the sports media.

I am a huge supporter of media.  Media can be and has been the watchdog for the public but sometimes members of the media can cross a boundary in which they stop being journalists, even stop being editorialists, and take on the role of moral compass.  It was unnecessary with the Penn State scandal.  The facts are what they are.  Was it believed that the sports public was simply too obtuse or morally deficient to make the right decision given the facts?  Is this story the proverbial golden egg laying goose?  This Saturday, Penn State will face Nebraska and for the first time since 1966, will have a new head coach.  I expect that it will be a ratings bonanza for all the wrong reasons.  Less than half who tune in to watch the game will be doing so for football but will be doing so in spite of the game.  It's very possible that the Penn State / Nebraska game could top last week's LSU / Alabama matchup in terms of ratings.  Meanwhile, Saturday night, Stanford will face Oregon in a game dripping with national championship implications but the game is threatened to be overshadowed by any news coming out of Pennsylvania.  I hope that the soap operas of college football go back to being those that are played out on the football field on Saturdays and that the soap operas involving moral indecency and sex scandals go back to being played by actors on shows that air Monday through Friday.

Another Big Ten Scandal – Another Legendary Coach Gone (The Fall of Joe Paterno)

As I write this, Penn State and Joe Paterno are immersed in one of the most controversial scandals in the history of college football.  As a college football enthusiast, I had come to believe that I was starting to get immune to college football scandals.  This time last year, the world of college football was engrossed in the question of whether then Auburn quarterback had been paid to transfer to Auburn.  Just last week, the NCAA closed the books on that question with a "no proof of wrongdoing" answer.  Before we could even exit the 2010 season, Ohio State was dealing with an issue of free tattoos for their players.  At the time, it seemed a minor infraction, and truthfully, had it been handled properly, it would have stayed that way.  However, during the offseason, evidence emerged that the head coach of Ohio State, Jim Tressel, knew about the infractions early on and then knowingly failed to report those infractions.  I wrote about those scandals in my article The Offseason of our Discontent http://theevilcommish.blogspot.com/2011/07/offseason-of-our-discontent.html.

 

The major difference in the two scandals in The Offseason of our Discontent and the one that is threatening to destroy or at least severely taint the legacy of the coach with the most wins in FBS is that this is not a scandal about college football.  Joe Paterno has been a coach at Penn State for sixty-seven years.  He has been the head coach at Penn State since 1966.  During that time, Penn State has never been involved in any kind of scandal.  Joe Paterno has been a coach that has been the poster child for how to do things the right way.  Early this week, that all came to a crashing end.

Records from a grand jury indictment became public.  In those documents, Jerry Sandusky was indicted on forty counts of sexual molestation and is accused of sexually molesting eight boys from 1994 to 2009.  Sandusky's relationship to Penn State and Joe Paterno is that he was Joe Paterno's defensive coordinator and one time heir-apparent to Paterno.  This in itself would not be enough to taint Joe Paterno.  Events that took place in 2002 have directly linked Joe Paterno to this scandal and yesterday's reaction to those events clearly turned the tide of public opinion from support of Joe Paterno to angry calls for his immediate dismissal. 

In 2002, then Penn State graduate assistant, Mike McQueary witnessed Jerry Sandusky molesting a ten year old boy in one of the showers in the Penn State locker room.  McQueary did what he should have done.  He brought the incident to Paterno.  According to Paterno, McQueary did not lay out the details of what he saw to Paterno only that Sandusky and the boy were in a shower together.  Paterno did what he was required to do.  He brought the incident to Penn State Athletic director, Tim Curly.  Tim Curly and Penn State Vice President Gary Shultz did . . .  nothing.  They are now currently facing criminal charges of their own for their inactions.  By letter of the law, Joe Paterno is criminally guilty of nothing but sometimes doing the right thing is not something that can be mandated in a state statute.

After the 2002 incident, Jerry Sandusky continued his affiliation with the Penn State program and had been on the Penn State campus as recently as last week.  The questions quickly arose on Monday evening as to what if anything Joe Paterno should have done.  The answers were in no way kind to Paterno.  Andy Staples, a writer for CNN.SI wrote an article calling for Paterno's immediate dismissal.  Todd Blackledge, a current ESPN college football announcer and former Penn State quarterback told ESPN News this morning that even though he considers Joe Paterno a mentor and a friend, that if the allegations do hold water that there should be an ultimate accountability.  Kirk Herbstreit of ESPN's College Game Day was on ESPN's Mike and Mike in the Morning and stated that Paterno would need to go if these accusations proved true and that ultimately, this wasn't about college football, Joe Paterno's legendary status, or anything else other than the victims of these crimes.

By mid-morning today, Joe Paterno tendered his resignation effective for the end of the season.  I doubt that we have seen the end of this story, and I would wager that Joe Paterno's chances of coaching in the Nebraska game this Saturday are less than fifty percent.  Paterno's resignation seemed to come as a conciliatory gesture to allow the University to move forward but something like this doesn't get taken care of so easily.  As I write this, I am sure that attorneys are contacting the victims.  They have the classic perfect legal case—victims of heinous crimes and culprits with bottomless pockets.  Regardless of what Paterno was required to do regarding the 2002 incident, Joe Paterno's continued employment at Penn State has quickly become a liability.  Penn State students have poured out in support of Joe Paterno but so far, their support of Paterno has not spread beyond Happy Valley.  Joe Paterno has stated that he only wants to do what is right by the University that he has been a part of for the majority of his life.  Sometimes what is best is to walk away.

The Game of the Century – #1 LSU versus #2 Alabama

By its very title, Game of the Century implies simply one game per century.  In the world of college football, it meant about five games during the last century and truthfully, since no one had coined the phrase prior to 1971, (you may have to check me on this), We really should rename the title, Game of the Decade Which May or May Not Be Shared  With Another Deserving Team Within The Decade So Really Game of the Decade Unless Another Game Comes Along That Is Better Within The Same Decade Then We Will Conveniently Forget That This Was The Game of the Decade.  As the more accurate title fails fabulously on a marketing level we stick with the misnomer, Game of the Century.

One would think from my opening paragraph, that I am not a big fan of these so called Games of the Century.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.  I do think it is a bit presumptuous to give a game the title a whole week before kick off but those games that did wind up getting the designation, Game of the Century, (usually after the game had been played), have certainly lived up to the hype, (see 1971 Oklahoma/Nebraska; 1988 USC/Notre Dame; 1991 Florida State/Miami; Michigan/Ohio State 2005).  

This week's Game of the Century features my own alma mater, #2 Alabama versus #1 Louisiana State University.  On this Saturday, the nation, (the world?, aliens from the planet Grghgskzaxxx?), will tune in to watch two superpowers clash.  It's Ali and Frazier, The Celts versus the Lakers, Kim Kardashian versus that guy she just filed for divorce from.  In reality, this really could be one of those matchups that lives up to the absolutely, ridiculous amount of hype that it has and is being given.  On paper, this is probably the first game that really looks like it could rival the original Game of the Century 1971 matchup between Oklahoma and Nebraska.  Both teams mirror each other in many ways.  Stewart Mandel of CNN.SI called Alabama's defense "unworldly."  If, and this is a big if, if LSU's defense is not as good as Alabama's, it is not as good by a hair's breadth.  Per the NCAA, Alabama ranks #1 in total defense with LSU ranking #4.  Both Alabama and LSU have simply dismantled every opponent they have faced and there have been a slew of great opponents.  LSU took on currently ranked #24 West Virginia and currently ranked #7 Oregon at the start of the season and neither team were able to stay on the field with LSU.  Alabama's opponents haven't been quite as impressive but the results have been the same.  Alabama's most notable out of conference win was against Penn State which is currently ranked at #16.  It was their closest game of the season as Alabama beat Penn State 27-11.  Both teams have faced Florida and Tennessee.  Alabama played Florida and won 38-10.  LSU got the Gators the next week and won 41-11.  LSU played Tennessee on the third Saturday in October, a week more traditional of the Alabama/Tennessee game, and LSU won handily 38-7.  On the following Saturday, Alabama, after being tied at half time with the Volunteers, poured it on in the second half and beat Tennessee 37-6.  Both teams rely on a strong running game complimented with a good but conservative passing attack.  If Alabama looks in the mirror, they see LSU and the Tigers see crimson when they look in their looking glass. 

Many times, in a game like this, the hype starts a week or two before the teams take to the field.  That wasn't the case with this week's matchup between the Tide and the Tigers.  The hype started preseason.  With every week, the anticipation was notched a little higher.  As both Alabama and LSU have looked unstoppable, it only makes sense that a matchup between them would be the only thing possible of derailing these two freight trains.  So much hype has been bestowed on this game that there is already talk of a possible rematch of LSU and Alabama in the national title game.  Right now, I think that talk is very premature.  The world of college football can change drastically on any given Saturday.  There is no reason to get ahead of ourselves.  This Saturday we have a chance to see what might one day be considered one of the great matchups on the college football gridiron.  As to whether it winds up being one of those famous Games of the Century will be left to the results and time itself.  For now though, it is nothing more than an upcoming matchup between two great and evenly matched teams and I plan on savoring the game minus the needless hype.