Punt/Counterpunt: Penn State 2016

PUNT

By Bryan MacKenzie

Fandom is an exercise in optimism untethered from reality. Every year, Vegas sports books put out a line on the Cleveland Browns winning the Super Bowl, and every year, people literally hand their own money to another human being with the understanding that they get nothing in return unless the Cleveland Browns win the Super Bowl. When a team is announced as a #11 seed in the NCAA tournament, its fans look at the bracket and see how hard their draw to the Final Four will be. I went back to watch the end of the Utah game a couple of years ago JUST IN CASE.

Fans are stupid about being fans. We know this. And we accept this, both in ourselves and in others. It actually makes the whole endeavor more entertaining; what would be the fun of College Gameday showing up at your school to signs like and "Covering the Spread For Harambe" and "Moral Victories are Victories Too?"

Ordinarily, we do not begrudge fans their optimism. We point and laugh at outlandish predictions, and we remind those optimistic fools of the error of their ways when their hopes are found wanting. but that's because we have all been blinded by fandom, and we know that some day we will be those blind fools predicting glorious victory over the windmills.

Penn State fans are not unlike Michigan fans (or fans of dozens of other schools) in their proclivity to predict great things for their program, whether or not such predictions are even remotely rational. And if it were any other team, I wouldn't be as annoyed when they predicted their team to cover the spread by 58 points, or declared their coach to be superior to Jim Harbaugh, who is destined to fail. Hell, Rutgers has been engaged in a similar battle of words with Michigan, and Michigan fans collectively see this as somewhere between amusing and downright cute.

But Penn State fans aren't just apologists for a bad football team. They are, from the Board of Trustees to the Athletic Department to a shocking and disappointing number of the fans, apologists for a man who hid child sexual abuse for decades. They talk, without a shred of self-awareness, about how much JoePa cared about the kids he coached. They make mealy-mouthed arguments about honoring Paterno's first team, not Paterno himself. They demand a return of the statue. They threaten to sue anyone and everyone. They quote Martin Luther King.

So when Penn State fans scream "CONSPIRACYYYYYY" every time the referees call a hold or add two seconds to the clock, it just serves to remind everyone how far from reality they have drifted, and that the disconnect extends way beyond the football field. That the toxic, deluded culture that permitted so much damage continues to exist, and that five years later they still don't get it. And yes, I know that a throttling on the football field probably won't change anything. But it couldn't make it worse. And it would feel damn good.  Michigan 34, Penn State 8

COUNTERPUNT

by Nick RoUMel

I promised myself I would try to get through an entire article about Penn State without once mentioning the permanent stain of corruption on the program and the entire school. But there are things that become forever identified with one thing that defines them. These include people, places, institutions and even dates (just ask anyone whose birthday is September 11). What’s the first thing that comes to your mind when someone says they attended Penn State University? Oh, yeah, that Thing. Nice meeting you; I think my Uber is here.

The Nittany Lions wear this thing as a badge of defiance, what former safety Malcom Willis once described as the “us against the world” mentality. Coach James Franklin, with his relentlessly positive attitude and the official end of scholarship sanctions, is trying to return the football program to normalcy and prominence. But Penn State still see themselves as underdogs.

The problem is that unlike other underdogs, Penn State is not loveable. Even before the Thing, they were jerks. When they joined the Big Ten, they boasted that they would dominate the league. Pennsylvania’s Lt. Governor said of the merger, “What it means is that Penn State fans can make plans to attend a Rose Bowl in the very near future.”

It didn’t work out as they had hoped. While 1994 was a very good year for them, it was their only outright title. Northwestern has won or shared as many since Penn State joined the league. And as for Michigan, the Wolverines rang up ten straight victories from 1997-2015* under coaches Lloyd Carr and Jim Harbaugh, while Penn State fans groused about ridiculous conspiracy theories, such as Coach Carr’s ability to personally add two seconds to the clock.

But see, that’s the difference between our programs. Our embarrassing thing is a bad hire or two. We get an awful AD, we pretty much scrub him from history. That’s done more easily when the man was a loser both on and off the field. The problem Penn State has is that Joe Paterno and his minions were winners, and people too often look the other way when the wrongdoers are otherwise successful. That’s why Penn State still has its fits of moral ambiguity, such as when it “honored” Paterno at its last home game.

Well, I broke my promise to myself that I wouldn’t write about the Thing. So let’s talk football:

MICHIGAN WOLVERINES 42, PENN STATE PEDERASTS, 20-TO-LIFE

[*Michigan temporarily suspended its football program from 2008-2014.].