Joe Paterno: A Fractured Legacy

Joe Paterno’s Legacy, is a confused mess of triumph, greatness, and disgust. Paterno was one of the best college football coaches, if not the best football coach, period, of nearly all time. How do you judge Paterno’s legacy? Should his statue be removed? Finally, does the football program of Penn State deserve to be dismantled?

Joe Paterno was a great coach, and is an intriguing story of a life. Joe Paterno, the leader of men, who apparently was able to build fine football players, excelling students, and complete men. But, when push came to shove, and the results of the so-called Freeh Report, reported what to me seemed obvious, Joe Paterno, and other administrators, covered up Jerry Sandusky’s heinous sins. The fact is, Paterno, broke a law. If you know of Child Abuse you are legally obliged to report it to authorities, or you can be charged and tried in the criminal court of law. So, did he (Paterno) did all he possibly could to stop the malicious abuse of children? No. Plain and Simple. It was Paterno and other administrators who thought they could deal with the problem themselves and ultimately prevent a colleague from being arrested. In the end, Paterno might have done a lot of good things for Penn State and college football, but after what he has done, I find it morally hard to accept him as a great man, but I can buy him as a legendary football coach.

The status of the statue is a very sensitive subject. I honestly do not believe that Paterno deserves to have such a grand and embellishing statue outside of the stadium. At the same time, I do not think that he deserves no credit to how much he has contributed to the on the field success of the football program. Instead of a statue, I can see and approve of a mural of Paterno, maybe of him being carried off the field by a championship team, and a plaque on the mural reading “JOE PATERNO 1926-2012”. I think that wouldn’t be so heroizing (New word!) but would still recognize him for coaching such a good team.

The biggest issue of this everlasting scandal, which seems to add a new chapter to the saga every month, is what will happen to the football program itself. I have heard different reports about different opinions and demands. I have heard/read about people calling for the football program itself, to be eternally terminated. I am not sure about that, but that is why you pay the people in the position to lead, the big bucks. You, as a work place superior to someone like Joe Paterno or the head of the Penn State Athletics Department, would hope that the people in charge would do the right thing. Thus, when you are a leader, and you screw up, you make your organization suffer as well. An argument countering argument to the permanent death penalty of Penn State football is, “What about the players?”. The thing is, if a football player is good enough to go to play, as a non-walk-on, for somewhere with as much reputation as Penn State, he could probably play anywhere else. But, as a program itself, I do not believe that the football program being taken away, is the right choice. I think that Penn State should ban themselves from playing in bowl games.

There are also a lot of other interesting opinions across the web. The most intriguing one is a Fox Sports rticle about how things would have turned out differently if there was a female in charge of some part of the athletics department.

Anyways, those are my opinions, and it was announced yesterday that the statue would come down, and it has, and NCAA fined the football program $60 Million, and all their wins since 1998, and suspended the program from any bowl games for the next four years.

Switching Around

The NBA offseason is heating up, and almost every team is running around, trying to pick up some new talent. There's been a lot of talk, but so far, few things have happened. The primary big name transfer was Steve Nash going to the Lakers. However, many other possible traders are in the works. Ray Allen wants to move to Miami, Jeremy Lin is contemplating going to the Rockets, and Dwight Howard, well, he could go just about anywhere now.

I am going to start off my commentary, with Nash and the Lakers. I think, Nash will offer a lot of leadership and teamwork to the Lakers. Steve Nash works very hard, and has a great attitude that will have a positive effect on the team. I think that, while the Miami Heat has a great group of forwards, the LA Lakers have the NBA's most elite, point guard-shooting guard match up with Nash and Kobe Bryant. I don't see why the Lakers can't go a long way in the 2013 playoffs.

Now, we have Dwight Howard in the middle of talks with the Orlando Magic. I find the Saga to be really long, and bland. Basically, the Magic can't make Howard happy enough to be able to resign him. So, there are a million other places he could end up. I have seen articles on the internet stating that there a rumors he could go to Houston or the Lakers, but really, it is impossible to tell. The fatal flaw of sports writing, is predicting what's going to happen, whether it's who wins a game, or which free agent ends up where. Honestly, I couldn't see him playing for anyone else, but the Magic. Eventually, Howard and the Orlando Magic will be able to strike a deal.

Jeremy Lin signed an offer sheet with the Houston Rockets, so the deal is almost half done. But, what does an offer sheet do? An offer sheet basically states, that an offer has been made to a player, and the team who the player belongs to, has 72 hours to make a counter offer to keep their player. I think Lin will fit right in with the Rockets, and even if the Knicks decide to counter, Lin would like the center stage of Houston a lot more.

Finally, we have Ray Allen and him wanting to go to the Heat. Why? Don't ask me that: you already know. Obviously, he wants to win a championship, which obviously isn't possible via the Celtics and hard work. That's probably his view, which I don't really understand. And honestly, how much more stacked can the Miami Heat get. Chris Bosh, Dwayne Wade, LeBron James, and even Shane Battier would be a star if he wasn't over shadowed by these goons. So much for the CBA. However, if the Heat have the room to sign him, there is no question that they will. But, I doubt he will ever get down to South Beach, probably at the end of it all, he will find himself in Boston, which isn't a bad thing. In my opinion, winning a title with the Celtics isn't all that hard.

Well, it looks like the NBA will have itself a hectic offseason. Perhaps, this post-lockout after shock will be just makes this offseason more busy to make up for all the inactivity last summer due to the lockout. The one thing I always remember is, every offseason is a soap opera.

2012 Wimbledon Review

In a way, this year's Wimbledon brought all of us back to old times. Serena Williams and Roger Federerhad a pretty long drought until recently when both won their respective singles titles in the 2012 Wimbledon Championships.

I'll start with the Men's Singles Tournament. It was one of the more interesting tournaments I've seen in awhile. Nobody expected Rafael Nadal to make such an early exit. It is hard to explain what might have happened to Nadal to cause that lose. Honestly, every once in a while a professional tennis player is going to be upset, no matter how dominant you are. Now, let's fast forward to the Semifinals. Probably, the most interesting match of the entire event was the semifinal between Roger Federer and Novack Djokovic. Surprisingly, Djokovic was finished off in four sets, and never won more than four games in any one set. Now, on to the other semifinal, Andy Murray defeated Jo-Wilfred Tsonga to become the first Englishman to reach the finals in a long time. (I believe it was 74 years) This match also took four sets and ended with the final set being won by Andy Murray 7-5. I honestly thought that Andy Murray was going win. Main;y because Federer, (no offense to him) is getting 'up there' in age, and he had issues with his back in earlier rounds of the Wimbledon; I wasn't sure how much he had left. Nonetheless, Federer was able to pretty much dominate the match in win three sets to one. The second set was won by Federer with seven games, but other than that Federer won with a decent majority.

Now, on to the Women's side of things. Maria Sharapova was the definite favorite, and I was expecting her to win. However, her loss in the fourth round changed that. I thought that Victoria Azarenka had a chance, but then there was Serena Williams. Serena, before the Wimbledon, was in somewhat of a drought, there was awhile before the Wimbledon which Serena wasn't very present. However, she battled the entire way throughout the tournament, and was able to defeat Agnieszka Radwandska in three sets, which is the maximum number of sets in Ladies' play.

I found a couple other things interesting in this year's Wimbledon. The Williams sisters (Serena and Venus) won yet another Women's Doubles title. That was their thirteenth title, and a very amazing feat. Also, when I was watching the Men's Doubles final, I was very amazed by Jonathan Marray's sportsmanship. He admitted missed  calls by the line judge multiple times. Once, in a tiebreak, Marray accidentally hit the net with his racket and won the point. He admitted it to the umpire, and the point was reversed. That was some pretty stellar stuff. Finally, my last point of interest is that both the Boy's and Girl's Singles were both won by Canadians. Maybe in the next few years we will see Canada enter the international tennis stage.

Source(s):

• "2012 Wimbledon Championships", Wikipedia, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Wimbledon_Championships>
• Wimbledon Official Website <http://www.wimbledon.com/en_GB/index.html>

Well, no one expected that.

Nick United

Commentary for Soccer, Futbol, or whatever you call it!

Spain and Italy, eh, well I saw Spain, but Italy? Well, the Euro 2012 ended somewhat unexpectedly. Well, let's dive right in, shall we?

To start from the top of the Euro 2012 Elimination Stage Bracket, an all-Iberian Semifinal was expected, hands down. Obviously, Portugal was going to beat the Czech Republic and Spain was going to beat an in-a-slump France. That was pretty straight forward. Now the battle of the Iberians was somewhat of a different story. Of course Spain, was going to win, but no one thought it would be so close. But in the end, Spain advanced on PK's 4-2, and the Portugese manager came under fire after the match when Paulo Bento put Cristiano Ronaldo last in the PK order, but the PK's ended before Portugal got a chance to take a fifth shot. Some people even blamed Ronaldo for not cutting line and helping his team, which is somewhat preposterous in my opinion.

Things get slightly more interesting as you look at the bottom of the elimination tree. Germany completely wiped out Greece 4-2, more-or-less expected. However, I personally did not see Italy coming out over England. England, I think, has one of  their better sides since Beckham's era. However, Italy dominated the entire game despite the score being even at zero goals a piece. England pulled ahead on PK's 2-1, and I thought the Brits were going to have it, (for once a English PK win!) but Italy rallied back and won the match 4-2 on PK's. 

It was an Italy-Germany semifinal, I think there was a boatload of upset gamblers at the end of this match. Ballotelli had a brace (two goals in one match) and Germany didn't score their single goal until the last couple minutes of the match. 

I could have sworn that the finals would be a lot more entertaining, for sure, but not so much I guess. Italy came along way to get to Spain, and then Spain completely walked over "the Blues". Four-no was the final score; Silva, Alba, Torres, and Mata all scored in that order.  It was exciting for some but boring for other to watch such a one-sided.

Well, besides MLS, soccer/association football will have a break until Premier League action starts up this fall. Untill then I will blog about other thing, particularly the Olympics in London.

Corrections:

• My last Football Friday (now known as Nick United) post, said, "...Ronaldo and Spain...", it was supposed to say Torres and Spain, I do not know how I managed that error.