Tuesday, July 17, 2012

The Freeh Report and Temple Football Forever

On the day the Freeh Report was released, the lede (or lead) story on the front page of the most popular Penn State football website was an interview with me.
I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing that Black Shoe Diaries picked that day to run an interview it conducted with me a few days earlier.
I guess the only good that came out of it was  because it led to a large number of hits on Temple Football Forever.
Bad timing, though, because a July preview of the September Temple vs. Penn State football game looked trivial in comparison on a day like that.
Truth is, the show must go on and the staff of Black Shoe Diaries needed a few more hours to digest the 266-page report and write on it.
The whole dirty Sandusky matter is a Penn State problem that soon the NCAA will determine.
I agree with Louis Freeh, the former FBI chief, that the top four officials "covered up" the Sandusky crime in order to protect what to that point had been a pristine national Penn State image.
I don't think Penn State is going to get the death penalty, though.
USC got two years of bowl bans and 30 scholarships taken away for "institutional control" problems related to the Reggie Bush incident.
That pales in comparison to this.
I think Penn State will probably get three years of no bowls and more scholarship losses, which will relegate the Lions to near the bottom of the Big 10 for most of the upcoming decade.
That's just an educated guess.
In the meantime, Penn State might have its best football team in a awhile this year.
I hope Penn State wins the Big 10 and loses to Temple.
A death penalty would rob the Owls of the chance for possibly their most prestigious win ever and, for selfish reasons, I don't want that to happen.
If there's a death penalty to be meted out this fall, I want the Owls to be the executioners. Beating a decent to good Big 10 team like Penn State would do wonders for Temple attendance the rest of the season. Plus, it's Penn State, a program revered in Philadelphia for so many years.
I really believe the Owls are closer now to winning than they were in 14-10 and 22-15 losses the last two years. They have a great quarterback, great defense and a great kicker and those are major ingredients in the plan to win.
Temple can take back its town by winning.
After that, the NCAA can do whatever it wants.