Around the Big Ten

[iam416]

Somewhat related: http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/ncaaf-...54--ncaaf.html

[Optimus Prime]

...and Michigan exceeded practice by 20 minutes.

[Rob F]

Rob, you wound me. Deeply.

Can we be friends?

XOXOXXXXOX

Flattery...or Flatulence?

[lineygoblue]

My money is on the latter ....

[THE_WIZARD_]

Latulence?

[Tony G]

Report: Freeh source criticizes NCAA


Updated: July 28, 2012, 8:27 AM ET
ESPN.com news services

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A source familiar with the investigation into Penn State's response to former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky's child sex abuse scandal is speaking out against the NCAA.
According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, a person connected to the Freeh report, which condemned Penn State's handling of Sandusky's abuse, said the NCAA should not have based its harsh sanctions against the university on the investigation.
"That document was not meant to be used as the sole piece, or the large piece, of the NCAA's decision making," the source told The Chronicle on Thursday. "It was meant to be a mechanism to help Penn State move forward. To be used otherwise creates an obstacle to the institution changing."

“ That document was not meant to be used as the sole piece, or the large piece, of the NCAA's decision making. It was meant to be a mechanism to help Penn State move forward. To be used otherwise creates an obstacle to the institution changing.
” -- Anonymous source
connected to the Freeh report, to
The Chronicle of Higher Education

According to The Chronicle, members of former FBI director Louis Freeh's investigative team can't speak publicly about the report. On Friday night, a spokesperson for the group denied that any member of the team spoke to The Chronicle.
"The Freeh Group emphatically stated that no member of its investigative team spoke to The Chronicle of Higher Education for its story," the spokesperson said. "The Freeh Group has no comment on the NCAA's use of the report."
Issued earlier this month, Freeh's firm produced a 267-page report that concluded that former Penn State coach Joe Paterno, president Graham Spanier, athletic director Tim Curley and vice president Gary Schultz "failed to protect against a child sexual predator harming children for over a decade."
Freeh called the officials' disregard for Sandusky's child victims "callous and shocking." Sandusky is awaiting sentencing after being convicted of 45 criminal counts for abusing 10 boys.
On Monday, the NCAA severely sanctioned Penn State for its handling of the scandal, hitting the university with a $60 million fine, a four-year football postseason ban and the vacating of all wins dating to 1998.
NCAA president Mark Emmert said the organization relied on the Freeh report when coming up with those penalties because it was "vastly more involved and thorough than any investigation we've ever conducted."
The Chronicle's source, however, said that should not have been the case.
"The Freeh team reviewed how Penn State operated, not how they worked within the NCAA's system," the source told The Chronicle. "The NCAA's job is to investigate whether Penn State broke its rules and whether it gained a competitive advantage in doing so."
The source also told The Chronicle that since the Freeh report didn't interview Paterno, Schultz or Curley, the NCAA should have furthered the investigation to see "how far this went."
"The NCAA took this report and ran with it without further exploration," the source said. "If you really wanted to show there was a nexus to cover up, interview the coaches. See their knowledge and culpability ..."
The failure to do so, according to the source, has damaged Penn State.
"The sanctions against Penn State were really overwhelming, and no one imagined the report being used to do that," the person told The Chronicle. "People thought it would help others draw conclusions about what happened and provide a guide for leaders to be able to identify minefields and navigate through them.
"Instead, Emmert took the report and used Penn State's own resources to do them in. The institution is made of people, too. And they don't deserve this."
Meanwhile, former Penn State players Franco Harris, Rudy Glocker and Christian Marrone have sent an email to other Penn State alumni saying the Freeh report "is highly flawed, and factually insufficient."
The group plans to publish the letter, obtained Friday by The Associated Press, in The Wall Street Journal and other large publications.
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Oh my ...... what a surprise.

Hopefully this is just the beginning of nailing Emmert and the ass-clowns inside the B1G that got in bed with him.

Of course, another guy, PSU's President, Erickson, deserves to be exposed as the coward he is in letting Emmert get away with the shit he and the rest of village idiots of the NCAA dreamed up.

[hack]

Reading Talent play language games in here in order to achieve some sort of equivalence, and, failing that, justification, is fun. Funner still when Michigan beats their sorry asses. Then he'll be a cheater AND a loser. To the team that inspires that school to cheat in the first place.

Big happy smiles to come.

[iam416]

Pitiful. Though, you are right about language. I really, really need to remember the audience.

Though, I will defer to you and M on the subject of being losers AND cheaters.

[WM Wolverine]

a quote from NCAA President Mark Emmert when he was chancellor of LSU:

“The critical role of our football program is clear. It is of vital importance to the entire community — our students, our fans and alumni worldwide and the state of Louisiana. Simply put, success in LSU football is essential for the success of Louisiana State University.

[Tony G]

Penn State's reconcilable differences

Still missing amid trials, punishment, sanctions, fines: an effort at restoration


Updated: July 28, 2012, 6:55 PM ET
By Jeff MacGregor | ESPN.com

• Top Recruits Pledge To Stay At Penn State

Nothing is resolved. Sandusky, Paterno, Penn State, the jackhammered statue, the Freeh report, the NCAA sanctions -- all of it rushed, unfinished, provisional. The Grand Experiment fails and the race to forget begins. The contract extension kicks in, the civil suits line up, the opportunists circle the parking lots, and we're talking about money and Hawaii and which players stay and which players go as if it were all over. Tim Curley and Gary Schultz don't have trial dates yet. Jerry Sandusky hasn't even been sentenced.
"It's time to punch back." All due respect coach, but are you out of your mind? The penalties fall and the punishments drop -- none of them even a week old -- and already the language rings defiant, as if there's been a persecution, an injustice done against Penn State football. Who are the real victims here? And who are the martyrs?
"We took a lot of punches. Penn State has taken a lot of punches over the last six months," Bill O'Brien said at Big Ten media day, "and it's time to punch back."
[+] EnlargeMark Wilson/Getty ImagesThis tragic story has been told by lawyers and the judicial system. To truly move forward, Penn State should open other safe avenues of communication and reconciliation.


Against what? Against whom? Against the monster this program harbored for so long? Or do you mean to punch back against the critics and those who said maybe football was less important than atonement?
Where's the effort at reconciliation? The restoration of trust in your own community? Where's the contrition? Financial compensation, no matter how lavish, is not by itself restitution. Money alone heals no one.
Penn State missed the chance to voluntarily suspend football operations until it knew where it stood. Until it knew what happened and for how long and to whom. Instead it rushes into another season without knowing where the next accusation is coming from, or where the next investigation might lead. In the weeks and months and years ahead, how many more names will be read out in how many more courtrooms?
But no one need miss a single down of football.
It's been suggested that Penn State convene a Truth and Reconciliation Commission like the one made famous in South Africa. Trade amnesties for bitter truths. I second this, but note without surprise that the idea has no traction anywhere. Instead, elaborate arrangements are being made for financial settlements. Payoffs.
Has a single plan been suggested for moral restoration? For spiritual restitution? Across hundreds of pages and scores of recommendations for lost scholarships and better bureaucratic checks and balances, neither Freeh nor the NCAA address the heart or the soul or the mission of the institution itself and what it might do to restore our faith in it.
Nearly every system of philosophy or religion has a mechanism for reconciliation. Atonement. Forgiveness. I keep waiting for any sign that anyone at Penn State understands this. If no one learns anything, it's as if all this misery has come and gone for nothing.
The sports press is complicit in this too, of course, all of us in the zombie media who keep using words like "incomprehensible" to describe what happened. To do so is to let ourselves off the hook. A big college football program covered up the serial rape of children in order to produce more big college football. There is a completely comprehensible truth here for anyone willing to look at it.
Beyond entertainment, the only real value in sports is in how they reveal essential human truths. In what we can learn about ourselves from all that metaphor and overblown poetry. Like so much of human art and science, sports are part of the search for decency.
If your local factory produced something that poisoned people and made them blind, you'd shut it down. We should hold our football factories to the same standard. All the arguments over Penn State and football and money are just that: arguments over money. The loss of Penn State football to the Pennsylvania economy has been detailed and inflated and retold again and again and again. Not yet answered is the one question worth asking:
What's the real price of a clear conscience?

[Rob F]

BINGO!

Thanks, Tony, for posting that---I've been saying for a while that PSU needed to self-impose some sort of death penalty, but Jeff MacGregor says it much, much better in this column than anything i've expressed.

[Wild Hoss]

1) There has been plenty of contrition....the arguement to the reverse is specious at best.

2) Shutting down football has more impact than just symbolic punishinment of Penn State; it puts innocent people out of work. A lot of them.

As I have said before, people aren't interested in justice. They want vengeance.

[entropy]

Iowa RB Johnson suspended after 2 run-ins

IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — Iowa running back De’Andre Johnson has been suspended after two run-ins with police in the past week.

Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz issued a statement Sunday saying he had suspended Johnson from all team activities after learning about the sophomore’s latest encounter with police.

The Cedar Rapids Gazette reports that Johnson was ticketed for speeding and eluding arrest on Saturday. It says Johnson drove his motorcycle 60 mph in a 25 mph zone and didn’t immediately pull over.

University Heights police didn’t immediately respond to a message from The Associated Press.

Two days earlier, Johnson was ticketed by Iowa City police for maintaining a disorderly house after neighbors complained of a loud party at his home.

Ferentz did not say how long Johnson’s suspension might last.

[entropy]

Iowa RB Johnson suspended after 2 run-ins

IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) ? Iowa running back De?Andre Johnson has been suspended after two run-ins with police in the past week.

Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz issued a statement Sunday saying he had suspended Johnson from all team activities after learning about the sophomore?s latest encounter with police.

The Cedar Rapids Gazette reports that Johnson was ticketed for speeding and eluding arrest on Saturday. It says Johnson drove his motorcycle 60 mph in a 25 mph zone and didn?t immediately pull over.

University Heights police didn?t immediately respond to a message from The Associated Press.

Two days earlier, Johnson was ticketed by Iowa City police for maintaining a disorderly house after neighbors complained of a loud party at his home.

Ferentz did not say how long Johnson?s suspension might last.