Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Dull


“Are you still so dull?”  Jesus asked them.

I first started not liking [Penn State] very much when their football team beat my beloved [Missouri Tigers] in the [1970 Orange Bowl], 10-3.  Yes, I have made it quite clear that my first love is the [Arkansas Razorbacks], but with me spending more time in the state of misery than opportunity, I have found it prudent to save some love for good ol’ Mizzou.

Anyway, that Orange Bowl victory came at the end of [Joe Paterno’s] fifth season as the head football coach at Penn State, which would make this season be his 45th.  Of course, since my trusty old solar-powered Casio calculator died, I have had to do my mathematical cypherin’ on my not-so-trusty, even older and non-solar-powered abacus.  So, I might be off a decade or two.

Did you happen to take note of the score of that Orange Bowl game?  This is typical of the 400+ victories under Paterno.  For he has them playing smash-mouth football, which is a very exciting style if you enjoy seeing the teams trying to run over the other.  For the rest of us, it can be excruciatingly dull.

Despite the area where the main campus of Penn State is located being called Happy Valley, I would think that it would require being a rather dull person to attend the school.  For a great deal of Pennsylvania is quite mountainous, which leads to pockets of isolation, and as you can see from the map, State College, which is the middle of the map and where the main campus of Penn State is located, is in a very isolated pocket.

If you can’t see it, please take my word for it.  For I have been just north of State College on I-80 more times than I’d like to remember, and it takes a while to get anywhere from there.

Put it this way, it is a good three (and much more likely over four) hour drive to Pittsburgh, even in a sports car with a lot of power and corners well.  Yes, it is somewhat closer to Harrisburg, but I haven’t heard much about it being the place to party—have you?

Even the Penn State football uniforms reek of dullness.  They claim that it is meant as an homage to the past, but dark-blue jerseys and plain white helmets are just plain dull.  Perhaps in another twenty years or so, they will add the Nittany Lion logo (as shown above) to one side of their helmets like the Pittsburgh Steelers do, which is stupid (and not necessarily better than dull).

As referenced with Matthew 15:16, there is another meaning to dull, and this is appearing to be more and more applicable to Joe Paterno and the administration of the Penn State Athletic Department.  For it is being alleged that [Jerry Sandusky] engaged in a pattern of [sexual assaults] upon very young boys associated with [The Second Mile Charity] while and after he was Paterno’s defensive coordinator, and the stuff is starting to hit the proverbial fan about Paterno knowing about at least one incident that happened in 2002 involving a 10 year-old boy being molested by Sandusky in a shower room at the Penn State Athletic Complex.

Since Paterno reported what he was told to the athletic director, he is not being investigated for any legal wrongdoing, but since he clearly saw that nothing really came of the molestation accusation, shouldn’t he have wanted to get to the bottom of it on his own?  After all, Paterno is supposed to be a man of great integrity, and letting something like that be swept under the proverbial rug would have had to have torn his guts out—right?

Alas, I must admit that I can naturally be just as hypocritical as you about some things.  Well, maybe not quite that bad, but the point I am trying to get to is that I would have a very different perspective about this if Sandusky had of been getting busy with some cheerleaders (really good-looking female cheerleaders, just to be clear) over the years.  In fact, he could have been taking some incoming freshmen co-eds on an intimate tour of the dorm rooms, but I have to draw the line on little boys and girls.

In all fairness, Paterno may be able to honestly say that he really didn’t know anything, which makes him about as dull as one can get in every sense of the word.  What do you think (or know)?

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4 comments:

Rational νεόφυτος said...

I think the orange bowl would be far more entertaining if the football players all gathered in a massive bowl and then suddenly a horn sounds and huge citrus fruits are rolled at the players and they have to dodge them or be mashed by massive GMO fruit...

Unknown said...

Yes, your kind would consider that to be quite entertaining, my dear Lavender.

Chinaren said...

"Well, maybe not quite that bad, but the point I am trying to get to is that I would have a very different perspective about this if Sandusky had of been getting busy with some cheerleaders (really good-looking female cheerleaders, just to be clear) over the years. "

I think it was the fact that they were ten years old, rather than 'not female', was what they have a problem with. Though as an ex-teacher any student-teacher relationship is frowned upon, and teachers know this. (I don't actually agree with this rule myself, but then I'm more on the side of anarchy and so forth).

I'm sure he'll go to your hell for being homosexual though, as that's obviously a worse sin.

Mind you, I always find it suspect that people start claiming these things when it hits the headlines, rather than twenty years previously when 'it happened'. Mmmm.

Unknown said...

Thanks for stopping by again, my dear Chinaren!!! A couple of lines earlier, I tried to indicate that this was my "natural" way at looking at things, which is quite different from the way our Heavenly Father has allowed and enabled me to see things, but since my old nature has been left intact to a much greater extent than I am now comfortable with, I am compelled to speak about it as much as possible. For one of the worst things that a Christian can do is act like they have been made perfect when they haven't. This is not to say that it is impossible for someone to be made perfect in this world, but that isn't the way He wanted it to be for me.

Anyway, I agree with you on the age being more of a factor than with whom he was molesting, but in any event, Paterno was in a position to make a call to even the head of the FBI, if none of the school, local and state officials were doing enough to put a halt to the games that Sandusky was playing. In all fairness, I could be more on his side if what happened in 2002 was the only incident. For I could excuse his behavior on being totally focused on coaching his football team, but with it coming out that the first allegations of inappropriate behavior against Sandusky surfaced in 1994, which was when he was still the Defensive Coordinator for the team, it is hard to imagine Paterno not knowing anything of it.