{"id":849,"date":"2007-05-23T10:53:26","date_gmt":"2007-05-23T16:53:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php\/index.php\/2007\/05\/23\/849\/"},"modified":"2009-05-30T09:27:41","modified_gmt":"2009-05-30T14:27:41","slug":"849","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=849","title":{"rendered":"Joe Knows Character"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the reasons I’m so dilatory and mercenary about following most professional sports<\/a> (unless the Cubs, Twins or Bears are in the running) is that most pro and, indeed, college sports are just another commodity-based business these days.<\/p>\n

Not that I ever really took after athletes as “role models”, although Dick Butkus taught a lot of key life lessons – but as I grew up, I realized that cynicism about sports was both amply justified and a two-way street.<\/p>\n

So I was both surprised and gratified to read this: Joe Paterno is spanking his Penn State football team<\/a> for having acted like a bunch of spoiled thugs, forcing the whole team to clean the 100,000+ seat stadium after each home game to punish about a dozen of their teammates for participating in a brawl:<\/p>\n

We’re all going to do it, everybody,” Paterno told the Harrisburg Patriot-News<\/em> after a banquet in suburban Philadelphia. “Not just the kids that were involved. ‘Cause we’re all in it together. This is a team embarrassment. I wouldn’t call it anything much other than that.”<\/p>\n

This is easily the greatest punishment in recent collegiate history, an absolutely diabolical, telling, high-impact bit of discipline that should remind one and all that what Paterno has been doing out in State College, Pa., all these years is more than just win 363 football games, including 20 the past two seasons.<\/p>\n

In a coaching business so full of phonies who talk character only to bend the rules, who consider the definition of discipline a player’s weight-room attendance, who wouldn’t dare pull something like this because it might hurt recruiting, here’s Joe Pa, four decades on the job and not giving a damn.<\/p>\n

Except about what’s right.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And I loved this part:<\/p>\n

It’s a job that usually goes to members of club sports on campus \u2013 say, rugby or crew \u2013 which do it to raise money so they can compete. Paterno said the clubs still will get the $5,000 for the job, but his guys, fresh off playing 60 minutes of major college football the day before, will do all the work starting Sunday morning.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s gratifiying to know that there’s one participant in the college sports industry that still has a sense of responsibility…:<\/p>\n

“I don’t condone (the fight),” Paterno said. “Our kids were wrong.”<\/p>\n

And across the nation college football coaches faint.<\/p>\n

Most coaches have spent their offseason complaining about not being able to text butt-kissing messages to recruits. They no sooner would wear out their players on an off day with garbage picking than give up their country club memberships.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

…and a little scary to realize you have to go to an 80-year-old throwback to an era a couple of generations back to find it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the reasons I’m so dilatory and mercenary about following most professional sports (unless the Cubs, Twins or Bears are in the running) is that most pro and, indeed, college sports are just another commodity-based business these days. Not that I ever really took after athletes as “role models”, although Dick Butkus taught a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,77],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-war","category-the-rare-sports-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=849"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/849\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}