Outside the Lines PSU Segment

I made this following post on a cbs.sportsline message board and then realized that it probably works as a blog post too. Here it is:

Personally, I thought it was pretty stupid on the whole but they were admittedly solid on a couple things. Barely.

I still believe that the whole Meridian Apartment fight was terrible for the program. The fact that Scirrotto called up a plethora of players was probably the single most stupid act of that whole ordeal. There is no doubt in my mind that guys like Baker went in and trashed the place (especially Baker because of his history). I believe everyone involved in that incident got off easy (except people like King who shouldn't have been charged at all) but that probably has a lot to do with DA Madiera being incompetent and a lack of evidence. The HUB fight was ridiculous too. We're definitely worthy of criticism for that as well. JoePa was pretty stupid for stopping the stadium cleanup with a couple games left too. I totally understand that he thought they learned their lesson but that just opened up another unneeded opportunity for outsiders to criticize the program.

However, as others have noted, ESPN badly slanted a lot of the story. They put out all those numbers but some of them are retarded offenses. Underage drinking is something that I would guess that probably ~25% of PSU students have gotten. I'm not condoning it but I'm just saying it happens. So many charges have been dropped too. If a player isn't convicted of something, what the hell is the point of noting it? Innocent until proven guilty, perhaps? Not only that, but after the HUB fight which was almost a year ago, the only notable bit of trouble from the program was Chris Bell and he was swiftly booted from the team. JoePa also admitted fault for that saying he should have gotten help for him sooner.

Lastly, bringing in Stephen A. Smith at the end of the segment probably ruined any bit of credibility the segment had. Because he wrote for the Philadelphia Inquirer, that apparently made him a credible source for Penn State football, or sorry, "University of Penn State" football according to him. What a klutz. He knows his basketball (some of the time) but I have no clue why they would bring him in on this. If anything, maybe they should have brought in a dual panel at the end with Todd Blackledge and Smith or somebody else critical of the program.


Another thing to note is that I feel like the emerging story coming out of Iowa makes anything PSU has done over the past year look like nothing. It's one thing for a football player to be falsely accused of rape (Austin Scott) but it's another for a school to COVER UP a rape. Iowa is gonna catch hell for this....they already are in some ways.