Composed upon Watching Penn State and Indiana

"Life is filled with adversity. The way you travel through life is how you handle adversity, and that is how you're defined as a man." –Bill O’Brien

I love basketball enough that I’ll watch it alone.  It’s not my all time favorite—given the choice I’ll watch it with people everyday of the week, but I haven’t managed to convince many roommates they want to watch it with me very often.  It might have something to do with the way I yell at the screen or spontaneously add more items of Carolina blue as some games progress.  (To be clear, I know they can’t really hear or see me, it’s just a habit that makes me feel better.  Also, despite some fears, I would never actually throw anything at the screen.  It had never even occurred to me.)  So the only times I really know I’m going to watch the game with someone is when I go home for the weekend and when the game is a late one since Dad usually works weekends through tax season, which corresponds with the best part of basketball season.   I don’t know how much Dad loves it when I come home to watch the game because I talk during sports.  Not incessantly.  Not about nothing.  And ever since 2009 it’s substantially less because I finally got a taste of my own medicine and hated it when Andrew and I were trying to watch the second round UNC/LSU game in March.  The guests over at my parents’ house to celebrate my dad’s birthday didn’t seem to even realize there was an important game on TV and I suddenly realized what I had been doing to Dad for years. 

But it’s not basketball season yet.  It’s still football season and even though it feels like summer outside today, it’s autumn and that means Penn State games.  Maybe it was because I was at home for the first game of the season this year and heard my mom trying to pronounce Stephen Obeng-Agyapong’s name and listen to her think aloud through who her favorite players are going to be this year for various reasons.   It might even go back to last season when I happened to be home for the last game of the season—the one where Sam Ficken redeemed himself as a kicker by winning the game in overtime with a field goal against Wisconsin after failing to successfully complete field goals against Virginia in a 17-16 loss for PSU.   Maybe it was seeing the raw emotion from Bill O’Brien—whose face on the sideline was the strangest part about last season---after the final game was over when during his interview he may have called his players “fighters” (or something far less PG… http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/24/bill-obrien-curses-f-bomb-penn-state-wisconsin_n_2185860.html).  Whatever the reason, I’ve been trying to watch Penn State games whenever possible this season.  I’m really not a fan of watching football alone—I’m not as used to it and I don’t love Penn State like I love Carolina—I won’t plan my day around making sure I’m home for the game.  It makes me miss my dad when I watch it alone.  Partly because I don’t understand the subtleties of football quite as well since I’ve never played it.  Partly because I think sports are really meant to be watched communally—otherwise you end up doing things like writing blog posts about your philosophical views on watching sports. 

           But maybe the point is I’m willing to not only make an effort to watch Penn State again, but to admit that I’m a Penn State fan at all.  It wasn’t an easy thing to say for awhile.  To admit that I still have some love for the now-deceased Joe Paterno.  To say that I still have anger and frustration about most of the aspects of the Penn State scandal.  But that I’m still a fan of the Nittany Lions.

This year college football has a new rule about players targeting with their helmets and there are severe consequences, with the intention being to keep the players safe.  It’s a rule that seems to make a lot of sense—if you are doing something that could cause possible harm—you, the person who committed the foul—are penalized.  This should have the effect that it will happen less often and the college football game should then be safer as a result. 

This is not what happened in the sanctions delivered by the NCAA to Penn State.  There are so many ways I feel about the whole situation.  Sickened that people didn’t do enough, didn’t make absolutely, 100% sure that children were safe.  Angered that a clearly sick and disgusting man had the continued ability to interact with children who couldn’t protect themselves against him.  Annoyed that said sicko continues to try to appeal what seems to be a very just prison sentence.

There are only a few things I feel good about—that the victims have justice, finally.  That Sandusky can’t hurt any more children.  That the money Penn State is paying in a fine is going towards child victims of sex abuse.    

It also makes me sad that a legendary coach who taught so many young men good things about football, and hopefully about life, has died not a legend, but a tainted figure.  It makes me sad that he died at all.  It’s unscientific but a big part of me thinks this whole situation was really why he died.  It also makes me sad, as a person who also works with young people, that he didn’t understand his real job was to protect those who couldn’t do it themselves.  That he didn’t go further than just the minimum.  That he didn’t do any and everything that was necessary.   

If you look at the Penn State football team today, you see they are led by true freshman quarterback Christian Hackenberg.  He wasn’t even old enough to walk when the events of the scandal began and yet he won’t be able to play in a bowl game until his senior year of college.  If you look at the sidelines of the players, coaches, and people involved in Penn State football you won’t find anyone who was there when Sandusky was doing unspeakable crimes.  Those people have been fired, or jailed, or have died.   But you do see the players who are feeling the greatest impact of the NCAA sanctions—no bowl games which means they won’t be ranked.  Not as many scholarships, which means they aren’t playing with the highest caliber players like they could have been.    Dad and I have talked about—it doesn’t make sense to punish people who have absolutely nothing to do with crime.  It doesn’t make sense that a body like the NCAA which has no authority in criminal cases is punishing a football team for something that criminal that a former football coach did, even though that coach has finally been punished by the criminal system. 

I understand intellectually that this is just the way it works—the current team gets punished for mistakes those who have come before them have made.  It’s not the ideal situation, but it’s the only solution they’ve come up with the to the problem.  It reminds me a lot what I’ve said about standardized testing—it isn’t good, but it’s the only solution they’ve found so far to the answer of accountability.  If you don’t know me well enough to know this already, this is not a compliment. 

I’m glad the day has come where I can admit to watching Penn State again. I hope that soon there will be a day when I can watch a Penn State football game without thinking about all these things in the background.  I hope there will be a game where the announcers don’t mention Sandusky, the sanctions, or any of the whole mess.  I hope that day will come soon.