This really should have been an easy post to write.  There is quite a lot to say about Paterno’s extensive contributions to the Penn State community, his commitment to academic excellence, and his coaching accomplishments.

There aren’t many things that could have slapped an eternal “Yeah, but…” on such a legacy, but Jerry Sandusky’s alleged behavior qualifies.

Most of what I’ve read and heard today cautions against defining Paterno’s career by the mistake that ended it, on the basis of what I’ve said above.  People are saying it because they wish it were possible.  I do too.  It isn’t.  Ask Woody Hayes.

RIP.

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Honestly, initially I signed up to help, but also significantly because I wanted to ensure that Nathan got this particular coach of whom we think an awful lot.  But it’s also become partially because I’m considering volunteering to be a head coach next year and want to learn.

Now mind, I’m getting more exercise now than I ever have in my adult life, but most of it is walking.  Tonight’s exertion was relatively brief but definitely vigorous, and I didn’t prepare enough for it.  Even now, when I got up from my office chair, there was a slight twinge in the backs of my calves.  It was neither comfortable nor all the way to painful.  I think it’s foreshadowing, though.  I distinctly heard my calves say “ooooh, I’m gonna get you in the morning, you stupid son of a…”  Maybe I’ll put some ibuprofen and a glass of water on my nightstand, take them when I wake up, then snooze for 20 more minutes.

It’s good timing for me to get more active, really.  I’ve not full-on regressed, but part of me has apparently decided he’s just delighted with languishing in the upper 260s instead of going hammer-down and starting the major loss again.  I won’t call it a plateau, because I know why it’s happening.  (Isn’t it a plateau only when you really are doing all of the same things but not losing?)

I was so fortunate to be up only a half-pound at this morning’s weigh-in, when it was a fairly undisciplined four days preceding.  Time to build on that unexpected blessing.

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Alabama’s domination of the line of scrimmage was severe and relentless.  Auburn was never a threat to win the game.  I’d have loved any victory, of course.  But I really love being in a position to pick style nits, like arguing about whether and to what degree Auburn’s touchdowns were gifts.

And oh, my, was that final Trent Richardson run a jewel.

Now, unlike far too many Auburn fans who honk like geese whenever their team manages to claw its way out of mediocrity for a year or two, I’m not much of a rubber-inner.  Superficially, this makes me appear polite.  Except then you learn that I’m not making a big deal of it primarily because I regard it as restoration of the natural order, which might make me one of the biggest jackasses of all.  (I don’t lose much sleep over you thinking that, by the way.)

This evening I have very much enjoyed my Twitter feed filling with #WDE coulda-shoulda-woulda.  (I’m particularly savoring the bloviations of one who is on and on about how Alabama plays dirty, when she sounded ready to have Nick Fairley’s children last year.)

As to whether Alabama should get a rematch against LSU:  ladies and gentlemen, the way it works is the way it works.  Is the BCS authoritative, or not?  If so, we all have to be beholden to it and quit picking at it.  And clearly we’re not, and clearly we haven’t.  Wrote about that before.  Fortunately, “they” are deciding pretty much as we speak how it should go in the future.  I do find it incredibly ironic that all this talk is going around about the voters essentially deciding for or against, when one of the big selling points of the BCS to start with was reducing human subjectivity.

I also think it’s quite clear that this year, there is LSU, Alabama, and everyone else.  Do you put the two best teams in, or not?  If not, what’s your rationale?  Spite?

Wherever Alabama goes, I’ll pull for them mightily.  If it’s not the title game, I shall do so without grousing.  (It does, after all, still remain that had they not lost, there would be no such debate.  More importantly, the terms are known, and those terms have a big human factor.)

Roll Tide, my friends.  Auburn, ‘preciatcha.  What say we do it again next year at our house?

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The most reasonable piece I’ve yet read also says as much.  It also discusses the instant, continuous communication with which we find ourselves in the early 21st century, and the competition it generates.  It’s important to be more outraged.  It’s important to call for graver consequences.  There is some validity in that premise, but I also think there is something more.

There is a powerful human need for resolution.  Indeed, there is a part of our souls that prefers a negative outcome to an unsettled state.  And I believe we are desperate to get the Penn State horror into a box.  When so, if it’s not fully understood—even if it’s never fully understood—it has boundaries.  It can only hurt so much, because we can see where it stops.  We can’t see where this stops yet, and that generates profound dissonance.

The victims here dwarf any other consideration.  They need care, and their abuser needs justice.  I believe there is no reasonable differing position.  However, I think it’s that very lack of ambiguity that generates talk about other aspects—like, oh, what we ultimately do in our heads with a guy like Paterno, who has laid down six consistent decades of leadership and generosity.

Realize that considering such is not necessarily disrespectful.  It just might be the only conversational ore there is to mine.

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As the wheels of justice begin to turn, I’m sure I’ll have more thoughts.  However, one thing is already certain.  Socioculturally, this is forever, and consequently I’m heartbroken for the Penn State family in general.  “Reeling,” “shocked,” and other such adjectives pepper the stories describing the mood in State College, and as abused as those words are, if anything they’re insufficient here.

(Please know that I write about this aspect of the story now only because I feel there is clarity here that is not yet present in the victims’ stories.  I do not intend to suggest for a moment that any damage to the culture surrounding a university’s football program is morally comparable to the damage of the alleged sexual abuse itself, and no such suggestion should be assumed.)

Penn State means a little something to everyone in the college football world, and that little something it means has been overwhelmingly positive.  It has been about character, tradition, and just doing things the right way in general.  It’s about ceaselessly classy fans.  It’s about a massive vessel of life and vigor springing up in the middle of a nowhere defined only by its equidistance between two somewheres.

As persistent and seemingly authentic as the Happy Valley mythos has been, Penn State shall now forever be remembered for this horror at least as much, if not more.  It’s not fair to millions of fine folks, but it’s reality.  When I mention Kent State, what do you think of?

See?

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Tebow’s in the news right now because he’s gotten the nod as the starting quarterback for the Broncos.  His first game out in that role he dug a deep hole, but then climbed out of it.  He’s 1-0, but it’s ugly.  So this has inflamed all of the usual can-he-make-it-in-the-NFL talk concerning his release, his drop-back ability, and so forth.

Fine.  Fair.  But he’s getting a different sort of attention, too.

If you know anything about Tebow besides that he’s a gifted athlete, you probably know that he’s an unapologetic Christian.  However, he is outspoken only to the degree that he talks about it freely when asked.  Mostly, he simply appears to live his faith to an admirable degree, of which most of us fall short.  (Ever been to the Philippines to help poor children (three years)?  I haven’t.  Save yourself for marriage?  I didn’t.)  He is a young man who appears to be genuinely, sustainedly motivated to try to be the hands and feet of Christ.

And he’s hated for that.

I’ve been chewing on two pieces this week, both posted on Facebook where I could see them.  First I read this one, and wasn’t sure what it was talking about.  Though I pay more attention to the NFL than I have in some time, I’m still not a big fan/voracious reader on it, and hadn’t encountered any non-football anti-Tebow sentiment as this piece discussed.  (I mean, there was the Super Bowl commercial, but I’m talking about sustained, standing around hating on the guy.)  Then I saw this one.

Wow.  How have we gotten here?  Is it really as simple as Tebow makes us see our shortcomings in unusually clear focus, and that’s not pleasant, so screw him?  Part of me fears that it is.  Another part of me thinks there are folks who would delightedly associate sick freaks like Westboro Baptist with Christianity in an effort to discredit it, and Tebow is an overwhelmingly positive witness for Christ, so he must be denigrated.  (I kind of wonder whether those sentiments aren’t two sides of the same thing.  Might be another post coming on that sometime.)

Have we really come to a place where we have so obvious a hero for our young people—indeed, for any of us—and he must be trashed and dismissed so we can get back to discussing the finer points of Lindsay Lohan’s probation?

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It’s being reported as happening on lap 12, but lap 11 was clearly displayed on the broadcast graphic.  Perhaps it was not updated promptly.  Whatever the case, it was easily the most sustainedly horrific racing crash I’ve ever seen.  It was hard to believe you were looking at something real.  I’m not going to share the clip here, and if you haven’t seen it and go looking for it, just be warned that you won’t be able to unsee it.

Despite appearances, drivers kept coming from the care center OK, so I was hopeful.  It got a lot harder to be hopeful after the drivers came out of a closed-door meeting with their heads in their hands and sharing hugs.  So sorry for his friends, family, and especially his wife and two young sons.  God be with them.

Wheldon was a bit of a cocky so-and-so—the sort of fellow you rib because he was into it with one of your drivers, or because you saw him mouth off in an interview.  I wasn’t happy with him backing into his second Indianapolis 500 victory earlier this year, when J.R. Hildebrand, leading by several seconds, drove himself into the Turn 4 wall on the last lap.

He had done some excellent broadcast work this season, and did a lot of shakedown testing on the new IndyCar tub coming next year.  He was widely speculated to be Danica Patrick’s successor in the GoDaddy-Andretti car when she went to NASCAR full-time.

There was a lot of reason to be excited about today’s final race of the season.  It was a fast oval—my favorite.  My man Tony Kanaan was on the pole.  It was Danica’s last scheduled IndyCar race.  There was a lot of drama between Dario Franchitti and Will Power, with 18 points separating them for this year’s title.

Instead, it wound up being a poignant reminder of just how wickedly dangerous the whole affair is.

Thanks for the good times, Dan.  RIP.

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Or so the overwhelmingly leading narrative goes.

To be fair, it is difficult to quibble with current positive assessments of these squads.  LSU has terrific speed and size, and (at least for the moment) appears to be devoid of that trademark Milesesque erraticism.  Alabama may have its most complete team of the Saban era yet, and wow, are they hitting hard on defense.  We may in fact be headed for a game of uncommon consequence; the match of the year.

But it’s a way out there, folks.  There are things like fatigue and possible injury to consider.  And—oh yeah—those pesky other opponents between now and then.  Don’t misunderstand me.  I’m excited about it too, and I’m delighted with my Tide so far.  Let’s just enjoy it all, okay?  This is by far my favorite sports season, but it’s also by far the shortest one.  Let’s not wish it away.  Looking around:

• Can you ever remember a deader man walkin’ in September than Houston Nutt in 2011?
• I kind of hope Richt hangs on at Georgia, just because I like him.  It’s tough to quibble much with Bulldog fans’ complaints, though.  I think he has to win the division to keep his job.
• Looking forward to Alabama at Florida.  I really don’t know what to make of the Gators.  That’s why they play the games!
• It looks very much as if Auburn cannot reasonably expect to win any of its next four games.  Their defense is so bad, it’s difficult to write even a plausible upset scenario.  Consider they have not faced a high-power offense yet.
• Is Vandy headed back to a bowl in James Franklin’s first year?  It certainly looks doable from here.

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And it’s not conducive to a particularly stimulating post tonight.  Sorry about that.  Have a good weekend.  Be back soon.

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