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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Home Archives for Sandusky Scandal

Sandusky Sent Down River

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After a Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Corrections Department review, convicted child molester and former Penn State assistant coach Jerry Sandusky has been sent to the Greene State Prison, where he will serve out his sentence (and probably, his life) in protective custody. He’s still pursuing appeals, which no one expects to go anywhere.

Jerry Sandusky, hands shackled, is whisked off to county jail.Greene is a maximum security prison, classified as a “Supermax“, which contains a Death Row. Lifers there include Philadelphia serial killer Juan Covington, and three convicts await execution. This is one tough place.

“We make individual decisions based on facts,” Corrections Secretary John Wetzel said in a written statement. “Given the high-profile nature of this individual, coupled with the nature of his crimes, this makes him very vulnerable in a prison setting.”

Noooo kidding, John!

(We all know from watching TV crime dramas what happens to guys like Jer in da Big House.)

Just how effective will the security measures be? Better be Biohazard Level 5 containment for Ol’ Jer.

He will not have a cellmate and will be subjected to heightened supervision and an escort when not in his cell. He will get an hour of individual exercise five days a week and three showers a week — alone, save for the escort. He will eat meals in his cell. All other services, including religion, medications, and treatment programming will be conducted in his cell.

All visits will be non-contact. No touching of or by the Tickle Monster.

Sandusky’s legal representations did not return phone calls.

This is close to home for “Jer”. His home town of “Little Washington” is a half-hour north on I-79. A further half-hour north lies the thriving, post-ferrous metropolis of Pittsburgh.

The State Correctional Institution at Greene, as it is formally known, is a maximum-security prison that houses a total of 1,800 inmates and employs 700 people.

Sudden Impact: Bike Week and NASCAR

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Yeah, mah peeps, it’s Biketoberfest in Daytona, so for a week I will be placidly serenaded to non-sleep by the sounds of choppers running wide open in second gear on the I-4 fun run between the Orlando attractions and the biker bars back on da beach. I live about a mile from I-4, and when the wind is right, it sounds as if they’re running right through my bathroom and out the back door.

That’s yet another thing to make a curmudgeon more curmudgeonly, to render a fowl fouler, as it were. I’ve been largely absent from blogging and have been feeling guilt, but not too much, as my excuse is that I’m building a humongous computer system that will enable me to write this drivel just as copiously as now, but with a helluva lot of computing headroom, just in case I need it for a Turkey rant.

“When you’re in ‘NASCAR,’ you can rip off quite a few plays very quickly.” —Penn State running backs coach Charles London

Where’s the NASCAR connection? Daytona, you ask? Noooooo, nooooooo, I was thinking of Penn State’s hurry-up offense, which like its namesake’s cars is anything but stock, and is sure as hell a refreshing change from the Paterno Buick driven by an old lady to church on Sundays. So give a read here, already.

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Jerry Sandusky is starting the appeal process. He maintains his innocence of the half-a-hundred charges of which he was convicted. Today, his attorneys asked for a new trial because they hadn’t been given sufficient time to prepare. This was pretty much expected, and it is also pretty much expected that it is not going anywhere. Jer will be joining the legions of other innocent men at Camp Hill. Good try.

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Dear Old State will not be renewing the contract of former athletic director Tim Curley when it expires in June 2013, it was revealed today. Curious timing, to be sure. I guess Curley never relinquished the title of athletic director, but he was put on “administrative leave”, a sort of disemployed yet still getting paid purgatory. The administration is surely pandering to someone with this move. OR — another thought — Dave Joyner is a short-timer, and the powers-that-be are anxious to form a search committee to find the next Penn State AD. Curley’s trial is in January. He still faces perjury charges.

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It is possible that we won’t get a close-up look at Mark Weisman, Iowa’s prolific running back, at Saturday night’s game.  This is a shame, as this Jewish Turkey wanted to catch a glimpse of the most outstanding “Landsman” tailback since Herschel Walker. OK, just kidding about Herschel, so I cannot even think of any other Jewish running backs. How about Elroy “Crazy Legs” Hirsch? I dunno. He was from Wisconsin, so he’s probably a German Hirsch. The fact is, how many Jewish mothers would allow their sons to play in a position in which they could get hoit, already? “If you’re going to play football, you’re going to be a quarterback! And don’t miss any violin lessons, either!” I could go on an on. Poor Markele hurt his ankle last week in a winning effort against Moo U, in which he carried the ball 26 times for 116 yards, his fourth consecutive 100-yard game. An MRI later, he’s been cleared to play by the crack Hawkeye medical staff, but his status is listed as questionable.

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So, you say you like your football rivalries to be played out against a modern day, sardonic background of unbridled hatred and ridicule? Yeah, you say? OK. Here are a couple of good places to satisfy your negativistic impulses, perhaps in order to drive home the fact that we Penn Staters “are not like that.” Well, a few of us are. Catch a dose at “Penn State Football: Seven Reasons to Hate Iowa” and “Why Iowa Sucks.” I am, of course, a hypocrite, as I’ll take every opportunity to disparage an opponent. Is that what passes for journalism these days?

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Along the same lines, Bill O’Brien hates Twitter, or so he said in the aftermath of a controversial comment tweeted by Stephon Morris to the effect that the two teams hate each other. “Do you know what I hate? I hate Twitter,” the first-year coach said at his weekly news conference. “We have a tremendous amount of respect for their football program and how they play the game, how they’re coached. I think that’s just young guys tweeting this, tweeting that.”

Good for Bill! This whole notion of hatred instead of respect is enough to piss off an old, hypocritical Turkey.

Recall that Joe Paterno, when asked something about Twitter, professed ignorance, while referring to it as “Tweedle Dum, Tweedle Dee.”

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Hey, who came up with that BoB crap, anyway? It sucks big time and it is getting way old. Paterno never liked the “JoePa” moniker, and O’Brien doesn’t like the BoB crap. His name is Bill, not BoB. Yeah, they’re public figures, so we can call them anything we want, but it is no longer cute or novel, as everyone is doing it, and it devalues the individual whose name you’re too lazy to type.

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Tweet of the Day

Why is Catherine Tate still on The Office? While we’re at it, could we get Anthony Morelli a few more years at PSU???

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Major congratulations to the Detroit Tigers, who swept the hated New York Yankees to earn their second World Series appearance in seven years. This Turkey always loves to see the Bronx Bombers get the shaft. Hell, I was there for the Series in 1976 when they got their ass kicked in four by the Big Red Machine. Sweet time in Yankee Stadium. But I digress. With all the crap southeastern Michigan has endured, this is a well deserved happy time! Meanwhile, in the NL, the Cards are one game away from dispatching the Giants, holding a 3-1 lead in the best of seven NLCS series.

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It’s late, so lemme get some sleep. I’ll be back on the morrow with my thoughts on the Big Ten Prime Time game. (The notion of the BTN in prime time kind of titillates me. It’s like they got the 8 pm time slot because the programming geniuses at ABC/ESPN thought this would be a consequential and interesting game when they initially scheduled it. Now, they’re ceding it to the BTN. This is kind of like finding out that your blind date is your sister.)

Terry, those calls are coming from inside the apartment!

Why He Resigned the Paterno Chair

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Michael Bérubé held an endowed chair in literature at Penn State, one that was funded by and named for the Paterno family and which Professor Bérubé recently resigned. He leads into his essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education with the following:

I don’t need to explain why I resigned the Paterno Family Professorship in Literature at Pennsylvania State University, do I? I mean, really. It was the Paterno Family Professorship in Literature. That’s all you need to know.

Except that’s not all you need to know. And much of what you think you know is wrong.

“The Sandusky scandal is a criminal matter. It is not an opportunity for those of you who hate college football to opine about the evils of college football.”  —Prof. Michael Bérubé

Read it. I guarantee you that it will get your blood pumping like an oil rig. You won’t regret it.

I won’t write a bunch of my drivel here, for Bérubé needs no help from me. Read it!

I can promise you that he hits on just about everything you would hope that he hits on, including that vindictive witch, Vicky Triponey:

And I have watched in amazement as Vicky Triponey, a former vice president for student affairs who became infamous in some circles at Penn State for eliminating the right of students to have a say in what groups are recognized on campus, remade herself as “the Woman Who Stood Up to Paterno” (to cite a CNN.com headline from July 2012). If you never heard of Triponey until she began to take her sweet revenge on Paterno, you don’t know how surreal it is for many of us to see the woman who tried to cut funds from the student radio station—for its criticisms of the university administration, some students charged—being touted as the brave whistle-blower who lost her job for crossing the football coach.

Ya gotta love it!

Thanks to reader zbeard for pointing us toward Bérubé’s article.