The Nittany Turkey

Primarily about Penn State football, this is a tale told by idiots, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

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The Surma File

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For those of you who love a great conspiracy theory, Penn State’s outgoing trustee John Surma is a great lightning rod. While I don’t normally go to great lengths to spread trash, I felt a bit capricious this President’s Day afternoon. So go ahead and read THE SURMA VENDETTA. This has been around since last September, but it is a great way to stoke your ongoing anger with the Board of Trustees. Even though Surma is leaving and I’ve posted this link before, it will behoove you to give it a read, if you haven’t already done so.

If one is to extrapolate from anecdotal tidbits such as this one, we may never know the extent of intrigue and subterfuge surrounding the Sandusky affair. As they come to light, more and more pieces of the proverbial puzzle are assembled with the ultimate effect being that the puzzle becomes more puzzling, which leads to great conspiracy theory fodder.

Whatever it takes to get the damn BoT cleaned out and freed from the agenda bearers is great with me,  even if we sometimes have to dig deep.

Line up, boys and girls!

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In December Karen Peetz stepped down from her chairmanship of the Penn State Board of Trustees and expressed her intention to leave the board, then, last week, John Surma decided that he would bail out in June. Both stated increased business commitments as the reason for their voluntary departures. Peetz is President of BNY Mellon Bank and Surma is chairman and chief executive officer of United States Steel, so both have unassailable excuses to fall back on.

Now, Trustee Alvin Clemens comes along and declares that the BoT should have another look at the Freeh report. Another? Did they ever look at it in the first place? Clemens uses the word “reexamine.” Same thing. To reexamine something, one would have had to examine it at some point.

I imagine that some trustees took the matter seriously enough to read the Freeh report on their own, but I doubt that anyone read all 267 pages of it. The board never considered it as an agenda item for the record, so the proper conclusion is that the report was never read and digested by the inner circle on the board, the vaunted Executive Committee. Peetz and Surma are both members of that inner circle, as is Rod Erickson. Clemens, although a governor-appointed trustee, is not. This is a digression, but I’m want to continue to assert the point that the board blindly accepted the Freeh report, and the Executive Committee is the power center of the board.

Can we expect to see more polarization of the BoT? I believe that we will. Two rats hopping off the ship while one trustee expresses misgivings about the Freeh report in the wake of the Sollers report is just the beginning. Suddenly, the board of trustees takes on a different complexion. The purge could be on. At least we hope it has started.

Read a brief story about Clemens’ statement in Onward State. Thanks, Joe.

John Surma to Leave Board of Trustees in June

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Citing “new and continuing business commitments”, U.S. Steel chairman and chief executive officer John Surma declared that he would cease to be a Penn State trustee in June. Yeah, this one was greeted with great shrieks of delight from BoT haters around the country. Why? Primarily because Surma was vice-chairman of the Board of Trustees when the Sandusky scandal broke, and he was the man who effected Joe Paterno’s denouement. To be fair, he was the point man; the actual decision was above his pay grade. Sure, as CEO of U.S. Steel, he could make the decision to fire his head coach, assuming that Big Steel had a football team, but in this case, it was a collaborative decision to fire Paterno. However, even though many agree that it had to be done, the manner in which it was handled was a major factor in fomenting hatred for the BoT in the hearts of alumni.

To refresh your memory, here’s how the firing was done. The BoT enlisted Fran Ganter, then an employee of the Penn State athletic department and formerly assistant head coach and offensive coordinator of the football team, to hand-deliver a message to the Paterno house during the after-dinner hours. The written message was a phone number that Joe was directed to call. When he did, it was Surma who answered and delivered a succinct message to the effect that Paterno was no longer an employee of Penn State University. Classy, eh?

Is it any wonder why alums hate Surma?  Well, now, in words last famously uttered by Richard M. Nixon after his defeat by Pat Brown, they won’t have John Surma to kick around anymore. He joins the similarly hated Chairman Karen Peetz in expressing the intention to leave a much maligned (deservedly) Board of Trustees in the past couple of months. Peetz stepped down as Chairman.

About Surma, current Chairman Keith Masser graciously, albeit incorrectly, stated, “Our community owes a significant debt of gratitude to John Surma and his family.” I don’t know which community Masser is talking about, but I owe Surma nothing. He could have handled the whole thing with the class Joe Paterno’s service to the university merited, but he let himself be sucked into the emotional vacuum stoked by the rapidity of events following the Sandusky revelations.