Thoughts about Paterno getting the boot

Before I begin, I'd like to thank Al Michaels for earlier tonight dropping the latest edition of the stupidest, least creative, most trite joke in the history of sports commentary. The Jets had just forced Tom Brady into intentional grounding while he was in his own end zone, earning themselves a safety. The score was Patriots 6 Jets 2. Al:

Looks like we've got a game going on between the Red Sox and the Yankees!

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR I hate that bit.

Moving on to the NCAA football scandal of the week (this time with extra horribleness and nightmares!). I didn't feel compelled to write anything else about it until I had long conversations with two different friends in the past week. Contrary to my own views, those friends both thought Paterno's dismissal was unwarranted. And since those friends constitute 20% of the blog's readership, I will respond to their concerns with what I think is the simplest, clearest way to explain that the dismissal was absolutely necessary. It's worth noting that neither friend attended Penn State, and only one has any affinity for the school (since one of his parents was a professor there when he was a little kid). I'm not dealing with blind fanboys here.

First I'll clean up a couple side points. Both friends wondered why more outrage hasn't been directed towards Mike McQueary. For the most part, I agree with them. He should be fired. Fine by me. Putting aside the fact that keeping him around would just be kind of weird, he pretty much failed as badly as Paterno did. Paterno's failure means more because of his position, mind you, but McQueary bombed just as spectacularly when it came to preventing the rape of children. Ideally he would have actually stopped Sandusky when he stumbled across the 2002 incident. Failing that, he would have immediately called the police. Failing that, he would have followed up with Paterno and the high level school administrators (who met with him after his initial report and told him not to worry his pretty little head about it) and told them that he needed to know exactly what was being done about the incident and what changes would be made going forward. If they couldn't clarify things and tried to duck and dodge behind some "Oh, we've handled it" bullshit, he should have gone to the police. Since he did none of those things he can go fuck himself. Whether it was because he wanted to keep his job and feared losing it if he pushed the issue, because he didn't know quite what to do, or simply because he honestly believed that the administration had taken care of it, his inaction almost certainly facilitated more crimes. Fuck him. So there you go, we agree on something.

The other side point is kind of a macro-level analysis of the Paterno situation and is a little bit simplistic. But I think it's worth considering. Both friends conceded that Paterno could have done more. Paterno himself concedes that he should have done more. All three of them don't think Paterno should have been fired. How about this, though- put yourselves in the shoes of the university president (or perhaps in the shoes of a potential donor, ready to write a check if you feel good enough about the school). If you're the guy in charge or a person making an important choice about discretionary income, do you really want to have the most powerful guy on campus to be someone who doesn't do absolutely everything they can to prevent child rape? Do you want that guy to be someone who fulfills his legal obligation, shakes his head sadly for a minute because one of his oldest friends is destroying lives, and then calls it a day? I'm just saying.

Now, the one thing Paterno defenders have been saying about this argument is that maybe Paterno had no idea what was actually going on. Maybe McQueary didn't make the details clear enough. Great, let's discuss that possibility. Because while this is a complex situation with a lot of different events and actors, I think the question as to whether or not Paterno should have been canned can be reduced to what happened in the aftermath of McQueary's initial conversation with Paterno. As I see it there are only three possibilities as to what happened and they all force me to the same conclusion.

Possibility #1: McQueary was crystal clear when he told Paterno about what he saw (by which I mean he didn't use ambiguous language like "they were horsing around" or "Sandusky was doing something inappropriate" but rather "he was having sex with the kid, I am 100% sure of that"), Paterno understood exactly what McQueary was saying, and then Paterno responded by sending a report up the chain of command and nothing more.

Conclusion: Fucking fire his ass. The reason is pretty obvious as far as I'm concerned. You're the boss. Penn State football and its facilities are your domain. You need to keep control of the program and those facilities at all times and do everything you can to prevent horrible crimes from happening on your watch. You've just been told that someone who is still somewhat involved in the program and has access to the facilities is raping kids. Your obligation, unless you have a good reason to distrust McQueary, is to 1) get the police involved and 2) make sure this person never again comes anywhere near your program or your facilities. Your chosen response is to kind of sort of get the administration involved and then leave the situation alone for nine years, hoping it'll just go away. Fuck you.

Look, I understand that rape accusations are serious business. Duke lacrosse scandal, etc. Every year tons of people are wrongfully accused of rape and it can have disastrous effects on their life (and subject the accusers to all kinds of liability and problems as well). But in this scenario, we're talking about Paterno getting a clear and precise account of the rape of child from a McQueary that he trusts. And if you have that, what other followup option do you have besides contacting the police? I'm not saying you do it the minute McQueary leaves your office. Maybe you talk to the university's general counsel about it. Maybe you call Sandusky and ask for an explanation. But what could he possibly say? One of three things. "Yeah, I did. I'm sorry. I have a problem." Great, call the cops. "You know what Joe, my lawyer has advised me not to answer any questions about that." Great, call the cops. Or maybe "No way! Totally untrue!" Well, now we need some expert fact finders to get involved because we have a factual dispute. I suppose the university might be equipped to handle that fact finding task... but when rape is involved, I think law enforcement is the much better option. Call me old fashioned, I just think you've got to err on the side of caution when it comes to this kind of thing if the report you receive is clear and from a trustworthy source.

Possibility #2: McQueary was crystal clear about what he saw, but Paterno didn't understand what McQueary meant. He either couldn't comprehend it or chose to believe it wasn't true because the Sandusky Paterno knew was a class act who would never do something so unspeakable. Thus Paterno responded by telling the administrators that apparently McQueary saw something weird happening but it was probably just a misunderstanding and then doing nothing more.

Conclusion: Fucking fire his ass. If you're too old and senile to understand when someone uses unambiguous language to describe a rape, you shouldn't be in charge of a college football program. If you someone uses unambiguous language to report a rape but your relationship with the alleged rapist prevents you from believing that the reporter is telling the truth, you shouldn't be in charge of a college football program. You're beyond help in this scenario. There's no better way to put it; you simply do not possess the mental abilities needed to preside over a large and powerful institution. If you're a local hero like Paterno is, you should be placed in some kind of a figurehead honorary position where your stupidity is less likely to cause horrible damage to people and society.

Possibility #3: McQueary actually wasn't clear at all. Fearing backlash from Sandusky, fearing that he wouldn't be believed, or perhaps being so traumatized by the incident that he didn't want to believe he saw an actual rape, he chose to use ambiguous language in his conversation with Paterno. He said Sandusky and the kid "were messing around" or some shit like that. Paterno heard this, understood what McQueary said, took him at his word, reported it up the chain, and then left it alone.

Conclusion: Fucking fire his ass. This is most of the same logic from #1, just taken a step back to account for the possibility that McQueary didn't present all the relevant information up front. And if that happened, obviously it's Paterno's duty to ask some fucking questions and try to get that information. There's no way that an old man and a child were doing anything that fits under the umbrella description of "messing around" in a shower but that there was nothing at all wrong with it. So ask the questions and get the answers. And if McQueary won't give them to you, get a serious investigation rolling. Contact Sandusky. (That should be done in situation #1, too.) Contact the Second Mile. Ask the university to launch an internal investigation. Do something to gather the facts. Don't just stick your head in the sand and hope it all works out.

Yeah, so there you go. I dunno. There are a lot of other ways to look at the Paterno firing but I feel like this is the simplest. When McQueary came to Paterno and the end result was a few conversations about the issue behind closed doors and an unenforceable decree that Sandusky couldn't come to campus any more... it doesn't really matter how the Paterno/McQueary conversation went. Joe sealed his fate right there in my eyes. Feel free to leave thoughts in the comments (unless you're some fuckass moron named Anonymous), or just stare at the wall for a minute and ponder how fucked up humans and life are.

Mariotti is the Pot, Woody Paige is the Kettle

Special thanks to reader Jim A for the tip. On yesterday's Around the Horn, the following situation (allegedly, we don't have any visual evidence, but fuck it, this is a blog, we don't have to substantiate anything as far as I'm concerned) took place.

Woody, obviously, is based in the Denver/Boulder area. And anyone who has lived there for the past 10 years or so will never forget the backstabbing the University of Colorado received at the hands of a certain current UCLA football coach. He basically packed his bags in the middle of the night and left for Washington after promising over and over again that he wanted to stay with CU for life. People there are just a little bit sore about the whole deal, even to this day. And subsequently, that coach has earned himself a couple degrading nicknames. I think that's about all the background you need. The rest I'll just leave in Jim's words:

That Woody Paige guy called Rick Neuheisel "Neuweasel," and the next sound was the voice of Jay Mariotti saying, "stop holding a grudge". I actually watched the replay of the show on ESPN2 just to make sure I heard right. It's a good thing Mariotti is such a fair and reasonable person who would never use his position and access to public media to hold a grudge against a guy like, say, Ozzie Guillen. What a fucking hypocrite.

Don't hold grudges, Woody. That's unprofessional.

According To The Mini Biography That Appears At The End Of Everything He Writes, Gene Wojciechowski Is The Senior National Columnist For ESPN.com

But why? Someone down at the World Wide Leader needs to start asking some questions as to how this guy has a job at all, let alone a job as "the senior national columnist" for their website. Next to Gregg Easterbrook and Bill Simmons, there isn't a more annoying idiot writing there. It's columns like this one that really separate Gene from the pack when it comes to not knowing anything about sports despite being paid to analyze them.

Even in victory, Broncos can't hide flaws

DENVER -- About the nicest thing you can say about the Denver Broncos is that their uniforms make them look like very large traffic cones. Otherwise, there's no reason to pay attention to this team.

Not yet, at least.

Traffic cones? Either Gene hasn't watched a Broncos game since they changed uniform designs in the mid 90s or the department of transportation where he lives uses blue cones. I'd imagine those would be hard to see at night, but I guess it's possible.

Yes, I know, they upset the sluggish Pittsburgh Steelers, 31-28, on a meat-freezer-cold Sunday night at Invesco Field. Thing is, you couldn't tell who was more surprised by the outcome, the Steelers or the Broncos.

OK, that's not exactly true. The Broncos insist that the last-second victory was no accident, that they were never as crummy as their 2-3 record and three-game losing streak made them look.

"I kept telling you guys we were confident in the locker room," said quarterback Jay Cutler, who remains a work in progress. "We had a bye week. We knew we were a good team. We just weren't playing up to our potential."

So: we have a strong statement of opinion from Gene about game. Followed immediately by quote from a player that directly contradicts said statement. Now that's journalism. "I had a hamburger for lunch today. Well, that's not exactly true. I actually had some pizza."

Cutler wasn't the only one to chide reporters about their lack of faith in the Broncos. Cornerback Dre Bly, whose injured right shoulder featured a puncture mark from a pain-killing shot, happily provided the obligatory cliché.

"Nobody was giving us any shot to win this game," Bly said.

Maybe that's because the Broncos hadn't earned the benefit of the doubt. With the exception of Jason Elam (Is it a good thing when the best player on your team is the place-kicker?), nobody on this team had played exceptionally or consistently well.

Obviously the term "best player" is being applied loosely here. A kicker is like a closer; they don't get into games very often relative to the rest of the players on their team, but when they do it's often in high-leverage situations. So simple minded fans might be tempted to think when they play well, as Elam has, they are their squad's best player. In reality, it's incredibly difficult to measure their abilities against those of other players, but it's probably a huge reach to say that anyone on Denver's roster not named "Champ Bailey" is the best player on the team.

Sheesh, where are my manners, listen to me ramble on and on like a cocaine addict... what I'm trying to say is that Gene is a travesty of a writer.

Also, let's look his main point so far, which is: the Broncos won, but they shouldn't be happy about it. That's right. They should not claim that their previous losses were caused by them failing to playing up to their potential, or be excited about the fact that they beat a favored Pittsburgh team. No. Instead, they should tell the media "We wanted to lose. We expected to lose. We are ashamed to have won. More than anything we'd like to thank the Steelers for graciously handing us this victory, which was 100% due to their lack of execution and 0% due to our own good play." Sounds about right.

Elam's 49-yard walk-off field goal as time expired was his third game-winner of the season. Without him, the Broncos don't beat Buffalo on the road, don't beat Oakland in overtime and don't beat Pittsburgh. '

Well yeah. I guess. Assuming Elam wasn't there, and the Broncos didn't have anyone else try to kick the ball during the last play of those games and instead just snapped the ball to the holder so he could sit there like an idiot until he got tackled... you're right, they would have lost all three. But if they had a different kicker attempt the same plays, who knows what the outcome would have been? This is like saying "without David Eckstein, the Cardinals would never have won the World Series last year." Um, what if they replaced him with someone else who also played pretty well? The "without him" argument should only apply to ridiculous all-time greats like Michael Jordan.

"We'll take it if we can get it," Elam said. "If we can get 20 of 21, we will take it."

Elam was talking about the World Series-bound Colorado Rockies, who actually have won 21 of their past 22 games. If Elam thinks this team is going on some sort of Rockies-like miracle run, he's mildly nuts or oxygen-deprived. These Broncos have too many flaws to overcome. You can't keep winning on inside straights forever.

Apparently playing your opponent evenly all game, and then winning on a field goal as time expires, is the same as winning on an unlikely inside straight in poker.

Cutler completed 22 of 29 passes for 248 yards and three touchdowns. But he also threw two interceptions, including one on which the Steelers had a team photo shoot going around intended receiver Brandon Marshall.

Two? TWO? Fucking two fucking interceptions? What a piece of shit quarterback that guy is! I can't believe the game was even close at halftime! I mean, how many times has a team thrown two interceptions and gone on to win? What a miracle. They must've converted 100% of their third downs and averaged 8 yards per carry on the ground to overcome that Ryan Leaf-like performace.

"They kind of fooled me," Cutler said.

Obviously. Otherwise you wouldn't have thrown those two picks, like the total waste of a person you are.

Cutler is getting better. He did lead the Broncos from their own 20 to the Steelers' 31 in the last 70 seconds of the game, just close enough for Elam to do the hero thing again. Of course, it helped that Steelers linebacker James Harrison was nice enough to line up offsides on a third-and-1 play earlier in the drive. The mistake handed Denver a first down.

On that play, Cutler snuck for the first down anyways. But nice try. (And no, the three extra yards they gained due to the penalty didn't affect the field goal; it would have been good from at least 5 yards further back.)

"It's still early in the season, and we've got a lot of talent on this team," wide receiver Brandon Stokley said. "I think everybody around the league knows what we're capable of … The sky's the limit for us."

If the sky is the AFC West lead, then, yes, the Broncos have an outside chance at that. Otherwise, they're not going to reach playoff altitude. And even if they do sneak in somehow, does anyone really think they could beat the New England Patriots, the Indianapolis Colts or even these same Steelers again?

$%*# the heck? No one is touting the Broncos as some kind of championship caliber team... no one. Preseason, a handful of analysts picked them to win the AFC West. None that I heard claimed they were going to high-step to the Super Bowl. No one even implied they were on the level of the Colts or Patriots. And they certainly aren't doing now just because of this one close win. This is what we call a straw man argument. It's like saying "Sure, the Washington Nationals weren't as bad as people thought they would be last season. But I'm tired of everyone saying they're going to win the World Series next year."

Since losing to the Steelers in the 2005 playoffs, the Broncos have bordered on postseason irrelevancy.

Since that loss, there has been one postseason. The Broncos did not participate. That's not bordering on irrelevancy, that's being irrelevant. It's also a sample size of one. I can't tell which of those angles better proves that Gene is a moron.

Something happened to this franchise. It lost its mojo, and the rest of the NFL noticed.

Oh my God... I can't believe he set me up like this... maybe they should enlist Austin Powers to help them get it back! LOLOLOL! (I'm embarrassed. It's because of jokes like these that I'm writing this on a dusty old PC from my parents' basement while professional journalists like Gene write their articles on golden typewriters from their mansions on the moon.)

"You show any weakness in this league, and people stop fearing you," said veteran safety John Lynch. "The nature of this league is scoreboard, and we've struggled at home of late, in particular. The only way to change that is do something about it. And I think we took a step toward that tonight in beating a very good football team. Ever since they beat us in the championship game, we kind of lost that dominance at home."

There's a big difference between a step and a leap. The Broncos are 3-3, but four of their next six games are on the road. The two home games are against the Packers and Tennessee. So good luck with that.

Ha! Gene scoffs at your ambitions, Broncos. Why even show up for those games? Might as well save yourself the bumps, bruises, and airfare and just stay home.

"We know we're a championship-caliber team," Broncos linebacker D.J. Williams said. "Definitely a playoff team."

If that's a promise and a prediction, the Broncos need someone other than Elam to win games.

Lord knows no one else has helped them to those three victories. That's why they call football "the sport determined by kickers and kickers alone, unless you're the Patriots, in which case you're 53 guys working as one towards a common goal."

Otherwise, this city could become the unthinkable.

A Rockies town.

As if Gene cares which of their teams Denver residents like most at any given time.

Gene Wojciechowski is the senior national columnist for ESPN.com.

Again, why?

You can contact him at gene.wojciechowski@espn3.com. He co-authored Jerome Bettis' autobiography, "The Bus: My Life In and Out of a Helmet," which is available now.

Could this be the source of the sour grapes tone in this article? Because he wrote a biography of a former Steeler? I'd like to think so. The only other guess I can come up with is Gene was told by his editor on Sunday evening that he's not allowed to write anything about Lou Pinella for the next 5 months. This upset him, so as a result he decided to make himself feel better by journalistically shitting all over whichever team won the Sunday Night Football game that was happening when he received the news.

chris w reveals his true feelings about the home run derby

this is kind of an awkward way to "blog", but i'll give it a shot anyways. first of all, i think we can all agree that while the home run derby is sort of kind of cool concept, its execution is poor at best. it takes entirely too long, is entirely overhyped, and really just leaves me wondering what all the fuss is about. if i were to change it, jeez, i don't know what i would do. just not make such a huge damn deal out of it i guess. regardless, the point remains- the home run derby and the hype surrounding it are annoying. but i'm not quite sure i am as capable of expressing that sentiment as my fellow fjm contributor chris w. so let's have him take the wheel on this one. what you are about to read is a direct, word-for-word transcription of a voice message left for me by chris w at 2:14 AM tuesday morning. warning: contains slightly more profanity than the stuff that usually comes out of chris w's mouth, which, if you know him, is a lot of profanity. here goes:

what's up, larry's cell phone. it's... it's, uh, chris w here. jesus christ, man, i mean, every time i watch the home run derby i feel more and more retarded. you know, because, it's like, what the fuck? here's this fucking competition that's centered around these fucking big fatass steroid using motherfuckers taking batting practice. and i don't even mean that in the terms of like, the kansas city royals pitching staff but i mean like, literally, BATTING PRACTICE. then in finals we're like all excited that fucking vlad guererro hit fucking 3 home runs, you know? what the FUCK is that? i would hope that he could hit 3 home runs. i could go out there and hold a wooden bat upside down, and i would hope that i could hit 3 fucking home runs with a fucking upside down wooden bat. nobody pitchers could fucking serve up motherfucking fastballs, and by fastballs, i mean fucking 74 mile per hour lob-balls... (trails off) anyways i'm at this sweetass restaurant about to get some sweetass hamburgers hopefully, and.... that's gonna end this call. take it easy.

couldn't have said it better myself. what the fuck. i hope he ended up getting those hamburgers.

also, hey vlad guererro, you're a big bitch for how you handled your second round appearance. did anyone else see this? it got to a point where he needed something like 3 home runs before he got 2 more outs or he would have been eliminated. obviously, he's pretty winded at this point (at least for a baseball player); he's taken about 15 huge swings in the last few minutes. so what does he do? unlike the guys that hit before him, matt holliday and alex rios, he starts stalling for time to regain his strength. he steps out... inspects his bat... lets 6 or 7 pitches in a row go by at one point.... then when it gets down to him needing one more home run with no outs remaining, he steps out AND SPENDS 2 MINUTES TAPING HIS FINGERS. then he hits 2 more bombs before his last out, eventually moving into the finals. are you kidding me? that's bush league. holliday and rios didn't do that shit. they didn't have the same "pressure", sure, because they were the first two competitors to bat so they didn't have a target number they were aiming for. but they certainly would have benefited from taking the same liberal breathers that vlad did. i'm sure they were winded by the end of the round as well. but they just kept on hacking and didn't stall for time to recover. that's gritty. that's relentless. that's the way the home run derby was MEANT to be played.

yeah, i wrote that whole thing because i'm a rockies fan and wanted to see holliday in the finals. but still... honestly. get in the box and swing the bat, asshole. your fingers don't need tape.