football Archives - Page 9 of 10 - Ramblin' with Roger

Unhappy Valley

It’s POWER, and the peculiar notion that “we can look the other way because of the rightness of our cause.”

As you may know, Joe Paterno, coach of the Penn State University football team for 46 years, was fired this week, along with the university president, Graham Spanier. Former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky…has been indicted on charges of sexually abusing eight boys over 15 years… Paterno, who, reportedly, was specifically told of one terrible incident, and mentioned it to university authorities without any follow-up, had been revered on the campus. The football program had been a model of a “clean” program. If you have the stomach for it, check out the grand jury indictment against Sandusky [PDF], which, as the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s office noted, “details a disturbing pattern of sexual assaults on young boys, all of whom Sandusky met through his involvement in the charitable organization known as The Second Mile – an organization that Sandusky himself founded.”

It was clear to me early on that Paterno had to go, preferably before this weekend’s home game; he is the face of PSU. It’s peculiar to me, though, how people who don’t follow sports are blaming the influence of sports in society for this debacle. It’s not just sports per se, or religion (see: the sex coverups THERE) or politics. It’s POWER, and the peculiar notion that “we can look the other way because of the rightness of our cause.” As this ESPN article notes: “Joe Paterno and Penn State officials were faced with a critical choice about damning information and chose to protect the program. This is what power has become. This is what power has always been.”

So the following morning, my wife tells me that the students are rioting because Paterno got fired. Surely she’s mistaken; maybe they were rioting as a result of the outrage over the stain to their community. Nope, she was right, although, in the light of day, some students have been wearing pins in support of the victims of the alleged crime.

For a greater understanding of the complexities of this case, I recommend the two articles cited here.

Favorite sports (and version) QUESTION

It seems that half of the NBA gets into the playoffs anyway, making the regular season almost meaningless.

Simple query this time: what are your favorite sports? Are there versions or levels of the sport you enjoy more (or less)?

For instance, I like baseball. I like Major League Baseball, like watching it on TV, though I hate the fact that the National League has 16 teams and the American League has 14, for reasons Scott discussed here. But I really enjoy attending Minor League Baseball. College baseball’s interesting, but they still use those aluminum bats, which I find to be sacrilege at that age level. If the Little League World Series happens to be on, I’ll watch it.

I like football. I like the NFL, and particularly how the divisions are even. The league has found a way to distribute money more equitably so that there is more parity than in the college game. While I like the college game, I hate how it’s become a quasi-professional league, which in turn has caused several teams’ victories to be voided. Alabama and Ohio State (disgraced coach Jim Tressel, pictured), and several other teams have had their wins vacated in the past couple of seasons, with the expectations of it continuing in the future.

College basketball can also be subject to fraud. But the March Madness scheme, allowing teams from “weak” conferences to compete with the “major” conferences, unlike in football, makes the season more exciting. Meanwhile, it seems that half of the NBA gets into the playoffs anyway, making the regular season almost meaningless.

What are your sports favorites and dislikes?

Super Bowl rituals QUESTION

Back in the 1980s, I had these friends who hated football. In particular, they had a particular antipathy towards the secular holiday known as Super Bowl Sunday. So in retaliation, they would all go out together to eat, not in front of the TV, but at a nice restaurant. Then they would go to a 7 p.m. movie, as the game was going on.

Me? I’ll watch the game AND the commercials. But I have no designated snacks or particular apparel I wear.

Do you usually watch the game, and will you be viewing this year? What will you actually want to see – the game, the ads, the halftime performance of the Black Eyed Peas? I actually have that thing you can pause live TV, which is good, because, sometime during that evening, I’ll need to put the daughter to bed. Do you have a rooting interest? Mine is with the Pittsburgh Steelers, who have been installed as the underdog, even though they’ve been to the Game twice in the past decade, and the Green Bay Packers, not in 15 years.

And a question for you folks outside of the US: CAN you watch the game? By what method? Is it carried on a local network, or can you access FOX in Finland?

Honey, I’d like to watch 2 MORE football games today, OK?

Franco Harris and Lynn Swann BOTH have March 7 birthdays, same as mine. And the team had L.C. GREENwood and Mean Joe GREENe.

It happens almost all the time in the last several years: I end up watching more football games in the playoffs than I did during the entire regular season. That’s not all bad; I managed to miss my New York Giants giving up 28 points to the Philadelphia Eagles in eight minutes, a loss which essentially cost them the playoffs. Yet I’ve managed to have seen at least part of all eight playoff games leading to Super Bowl XLV thus far, though by no means all of them. All I saw of the Bears’ shellacking of the Seahawks was the 10 minutes I watched at the Radio Shack, and the Bears were already up 21-0.

Whereas I watched most of both of the Jets’ wins over the Colts and especially over the Patriots. Rooting interests are peculiar things. The sports guy at the local paper has a personal rule that once you pick a team to root for while in your teens, you have to stick with that team for life.

Though not a fan, I must admit that I was happy the first time the Patriots won the Super Bowl, and for that matter when the Red Sox won the World Series in 2004. But when it got habitual, it started getting annoying.

It occurred to me that not only have all four of the remaining teams won Super Bowls, but, not being up on the regular season games, that I tend to associate the present team with those glory days. In fact, other than the quarterback, I would be hard pressed to name more than one or two players on each team.

In rooting interest order:

New York Jets – they get some coverage around here, a little less than the New York Giants, because the Giants summer at the UAlbany, but more than the Patriots or the Buffalo Bills.
QB – Mark Sanchez, who doesn’t feel quite ready for prime time
Only other player I could name before the playoffs – Santonio Holmes, only because he won a Super Bowl with the Pittsburgh Steelers; I also know the coach, Rex Ryan, he of the loud mouth
I’m thinking about: the 1969 Jets. After the NFL-AFL merger, the Green Bay Packers won the first two Super Bowls (which weren’t called that yet), so when the team led by QB Broadway Joe Namath, he of the pantyhose commercials, guaranteed a victory over the mighty Baltimore Colts, it sounded crazy. I still remember the score: Jets 16, Colts 7.
Rooting interest: geography. I mean, they DID play in New York when I saw them play the Houston Oilers in the early 1970s. And their uniforms are GREEN and white.

Pittsburgh Steelers
QB – Ben Roethlisberger, who got into enough trouble off season to warrant a four-game suspension at the beginning of the season. Roethlisberger has already won two Super Bowls, XL, for which he played poorly, but still at 23 years old, became the youngest quarterback to win a SB, and XLIII, where he shone.
Only other players I could name: receiver Heinz Ward (appropriately playing at Heinz Field), who is Korean and black, and went to South Korea after the last Super Bowl victory to help mixed race kids; Troy Polamalu, the linebacker whose hair obscures his uniform number, who is all over the field.
I’m thinking about: the Steelers of the 1970s, with QB Terry Bradshaw. It had a running back named Franco Harris and a wide receiver named Lynn Swann, BOTH of whom have March 7 birthdays, same as mine. And the team had defensive linemen L.C. GREENwood and Mean Joe GREENe. The team has won six Super Bowls in seven appearances.
Rooting interest: geography, history.

Green Bay Packers
QB – Aaron Rogers, who, Buffalo Bills fans are reminded, could have been theirs
Only other player: wide receiver Donald Driver. Just like the name.
I’m thinking of: those first two SB wins with Bart Starr as QB, though they did win one about 35 years later.
Rooting interest: small market team (100,000 population, 300,000 in the metro area), not dissimilar in size to Albany, NY. Also, it IS the GREEN Bay Packers.

Chicago Bears
QB – Jay Cutler, who I know relatively little about except that he used to play for the Denver Broncos
Only other player: linebacker Brian Urlacher
I’m thinking about: those 1986 Bears, with Refrigerator Perry, et al.
Rooting interest: I liked Chicago when I went there in 2008

Ultimately, I’m just happy that that the game that will be played in Dallas on February 6 won’t have the Dallas Cowboys playing. Them I do not like.

If it was 30 years ago, why do I remember it so well?

“The Beatles, lead by John Lennon, created music that touched the whole of civilization.”

Unfairly or not, I always associate John Lennon’s death with the breakup of my girlfriend the week before. It was Monday, December 1, 1980, and, unlike all of those “grownup” breakups in the movies of that time, this was painful and acrimonious. About the only cinematic aspect of it was the line from near the end of the Woody Allen movie Annie Hall, delivered by Alvy Singer (Allen): “A relationship, I think, is like a shark. You know? It has to constantly move forward or it dies. And I think what we got on our hands is a dead shark.”

So when the FOLLOWING Monday night came around, it was incumbent upon me to do whatever I could that would be contrary to what I would likely be doing with her. The choice was clear: I needed to watch Monday Night Football. It’s not as though I never watched the game, but it was usually a bit here and there. This time I was going to watch the whole damn thing.

And, if I recall correctly, it was a pretty close game between the Miami Dolphins and the New England Patriots, when announcer Howard Cosell said at about 11:15 p.m., “One of the great figures of the entire world, one of the great artists, was shot to death horribly at the Dakota Apartments, 72nd Street and Central Park West in New York City. John Lennon is dead. He was the most important member of the Beatles, and the Beatles, lead by John Lennon, created music that touched the whole of civilization. Not just people in Liverpool, where the group was born, but the people of the world.”

Here’s a snippet of the broadcast after that point.

So the first thing I do is call my good friend Karen, who had written, for our sixth-grade newsletter, a fantasy story about winning tickets to a Beatles concert, and who, that very fall, was working for his record company and promoting his and Yoko’s album, Double Fantasy. But her line was busy. I called my ex-girlfriend and told her; she was appreciative of the fact that I told her. I called Karen several times after that, but the line remained busy. I began to listen to my favorite radio station, WQBK-FM, Q104, and listen to the requests pouring in. It was either that night or the next morning that I asked for, oddly, The End by the Doors, and they played the whole 11-minute version.

Eventually reached Karen at about 1:40 a.m. When she heard my voice, she just cried for 10 minutes. We talked the next day, when I went out and bought, at lunchtime, Rock ‘n’ Roll; there wasn’t a copy of Double Fantasy to be had.

And thinking about time period STILL fills me with a surprising amount of sadness.

JEOPARDY! factoid: Calling him a Revolutionary, in 2000 Fidel Castro dedicated a statue of John on the 20th anniversary of his murder.

I was watching LENNONYC this past weekend – it’ll be repeated on my local PBS station tonight – and it was a good portrait of John’s life from 1971 until the end. Much of the info I knew, but a few bits I did not, such as Yoko going back to the studio after John died to listen to his outtakes.
***
Denise Nesbitt remembers.