Joe Pa

I apologize if you think I blog too much about football.

It’s a fair critique by the way, but I’m a big boy, I can take it. My thicker-than-usual skin on this subject matter was incubated through countless years of advice from my parents. You see, this football obsession was started at an early age and I was appropriately counseled by my folks to not put all of my eggs in a single metaphorical basket. They were right… to an extent.

But critique or not, it is nearly impossible to avoid blogging about the passing of the winningest major (U.S.) college football coach of all time, especially given the pigskin-related headlines that dominate the news. The Super Bowl contenders have been chosen. Planning for the 100th Grey Cup is well underway. Coaches are being hired, fired and re-hired, on both sides of the border. Plus, the whole horrific Sandusky allegations are rolling towards trial. (I have taken into consideration the request of the university’s interim president and stopped calling it the Penn State Affair. It really was the alleged evil of one sick individual, as opposed to an institutional crime. Unless we find out the institution’s level of complicity is higher than any of us grossly unimagined.)

The topic at hand, of course, is the sad farewell we must give Joe Paterno, who died last weekend at age 85. Continue reading “Joe Pa”

Game Over?

It was a cruel irony for me to be in Pittsburgh on the weekend when the Penn State scandal erupted.

Sunday, some pals and I were indulging in being immersed in American football culture and lapping it up. It was a scene right out of a bad Tom Cruise movie. Me and the boys sitting in a greasy spoon/bar/hangout – aptly called Locals – on the South Side of the Steel City, quaffing beers and devouring all day breakfast.

The TVs were showing every afternoon game imaginable, with our attention focused on the Bills getting t-rexed by the Jets. Most of the bar was clad in black and yellow, in anticipation of the Steelers’ evening clash with the hated Browns… err, Ravens!

But between Cruise sightings (he was actually in town filming a movie, which I am pretty certain isn’t the sequel to All The Right Moves), and Ray Lewis -bashing, our talk turned solemn to the scandal erupting in not so ‘Happy Valley.’ I could not believe what I read online. No one could.

It has gotten even worse as the week has unfolded. I don’t need to rehash what has been said in a thousand places. But I do need to share my thoughts with you. Because they are sad ones. Continue reading “Game Over?”