yes plz
scandal
Joe Pa's letter on the scandal before he died
He still doesn't sound apologetic at all and avoids discussing the real issue at hand. He let a monster stick around and harm defenseless children. Instead, he criticizes school officials for attacking the football program. I realize he was elderly and PSU football was his life but he had no remorse for his mistakes.
Link: http://espn.go.com/college-football/story/_/id/8157705/penn-state-nittan...
Fox Sports: NCAA should consider OSU's "arrogant attempts" to "snake its way out"
Thayer Evans of Fox Sports says:
The University of Miami is doing it right by self-imposing a bowl ban. That’s something Ohio State never did . Granted there are differences, however, OSU still allowed players to play in the Sugar Bowl after 5 players became ineligible by accepting illegal benefits (now known to include money as well as tattoos). The NCAA should never have allowed this. Now, OSU is still trying to “snake its way out of NCAA woes” by minimizing penalties.
“The NCAA should factor in Ohio state’s arrogance” when deciding what penalties to impose.
http://msn.foxsports.com/video/college-football?vid=6c5d5e27-0a1c-4560-b...
Practicegate & even Tresselgate no longer look so bad
Reading through the coverage on Penn State, I realize how much we have to be thankful for at MIchigan. The practice hours debacle, the coaching debate, all of it, pales in comparison to Sandusky and PSU.
For that matter, what Tressel and TP and everyone else at Ohio did doesn't even begin to compare to Sandusky and Penn State. (I suppose they're relieved in Columbus: "Finally!! something big enough to take the focus off of us! ESPN will leave us alone now!!")
It struck me, how would I feel if this tragedy had happened at Michigan? What about Ohio? Or even Michigan State?
The Fab Five scandal, practice gate, coaching change from RR to Hoke, Moeller's resignation, they all fade in comparison.
I really feel bad for Penn State fans. How do you recover from something like this? Your honor, your reputation, are in ruins and tatters, all gone.
It has been hard reading Three and Out. You feel as if our dirty laundry is out in public, and that the infighting and pettiness is revealed for the world to see. However, the scrutiny from Bacon and the book are like a walk in the park compared to the proctological exam PSU is going to go through.
We have an awful lot to be thankful for!
OT: Randy Shannon's Attempts To Stop Nevin Shapiro
I found this article on Randy Shannon and Nevin Shapiro interesting.
http://miami.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=1253198
It basically summarizes how Randy Shannon warned his players about Shapiro by name on multiple occasions, refused to talk to the guy, and threatened any assistant coach who dealt with Shapiro with an instant firing. There are rumors he had people around town who would let him know if they saw his players with Shapiro.
Shapiro responded with racially-charged rants to the AD about Shannon. It appears the AD and Shannon didn't exactly see eye-to-eye over Shannon's refusal to even talk to Shapiro.
And yet he still had 12 players receive illegal benefits.
Question: Is it always the coach's responsibility when this kind of thing happens? I know we all say the head coach is ultimately responsible, and maybe he is. But with a system this bad and not exactly getting full support from the AD, what is he supposed to do? Leave the job in protest?
I ask because some of the first things to come out on this board after the story broke were "thank god we didn't hire Randy Shannon as DC." Reading this article though, is Randy Shannon such a bad guy? Should he be held responsible?
Rumor: SI set to release latest Buckeye findings on 5/31
Columbus radio reports that SI will launch their newest round of missiles at OSU a week from today. In true Buckeye fashion, the radio personality said that SI was 'saluvating' over the article. I guess the guy covering the story is a Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist.
It will probably be some of the stuff that we covered on here last week. But apparently there is new dirt on Tressel going back to his YSU days. It's about both Tressel and players, and there is a pretty thorough history of this 'thing', whatever it is. Popcorn sales in Michigan are peaking right about now...
Birth of The Fools
You might not know him yet but this is a guest post from a guy who isn't afraid to let it all hang out. Here it is.

I came from the internet, just like the rest of them. I came mostly because of the W’s, the kind of ephemeral letter that flickers like a scoreboard lightbulb in Crisler, the one that always seems to surge with a crackle of electricity as the clock reads zeroes and drives out the bleak emptiness of the losses. I came when I saw Mike Hart, but let’s not dwell on that. The haze of a malleable past where “what ifs” become certain realities lends itself to, if anything, an epically long-winded run-on of creative diarrhea, so that less than cohesive memories strung together like the diamond weave of a basketball net with collegiate adulations will seem to imply there’s deeper meaning.
There’s technically no more time but let’s call for more time.
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It was years after the facts if facts even exist but nothing matters anyway. I never knew the Fab Five- nobody really knew them before Jalen Rose appeared on the ESPN scene. Jalen appeared amongst the legions of button-down, over-the-top talking heads and he belonged. The ease of appearing so at ease left me wondering when the background wall of noise, the crescendo of the unanswered allegations and shades of spectres would rise again.
But his self-serving documentary fought back, slashing and hacking as a Crusader against the perceptions of an infamous team that set into motion an avalanche on its alma mater, and stopping to pillage and have its way with the mindful rebuttals of nothing to show. It happened, and it always had.

The tattered remains of dishonorable seasons enchanted, enhanced, and crammed with the semblance of stylish fashionable vogue. Base race arguments whirl as a miasmic harbinger to change, blotting the past til the mutable message emerges at last- we did something great.
It’s like someone saying “So tell me who the Fab Five was” last year. The sun vanishes and I no longer feel the shame and dissatisfaction of achievements left unattained or see the tarnish to the program, and my eyes close and my mind calms, the laudations emerge. Jalen is still half-buzzed by the side of the road and laughing at how easy it was.
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This isn’t what you expected. You expected a dextrous homage to a diminutive tailback, legs churning like pistons in a cyclone of mixed metaphor. It’s like being in a movie theater with your popcorn when you were a kid, eyes wide open with that tingling sensation as you sat too close to the screen in an impossibly dark world of possibilities, but leaving with the buttery aftertaste of reality.
They were, and always have been, regardless of origin they might be, if only for a nanosecond, aimlessly disjointed words and commas.
This guy used to write stuff like this before Uncle Tom shut him down. He met Steve Fisher once but Fisher denies it to this day.
