The other match-up in the Semi-final Round of the 2011 Football Moment Bracket is a bittersweet one, matching up Braxton’s life imitates video games 81 yard run against the defensive Goal Line Stand against Penn State. This game has gone down the proverbial memory hole.

It’s no secret to you that Ryan Shazier had his coming-out party against Penn State, but I just love watching him play in this sequence of downs.

#2 Braxton’s 81 YD Run (Indiana)

VS.

#3 Ohio State’s Defensive Goal Line Stand against Penn State

[poll id=”25″]

Hi there. You may remember me formerly as el Kaiser’s grand idea of having a little bracket competition of all the great Football Moments of 2011. Man, that was a great idea, wasn’t it? Things got kind of busy for us, but he’s bringing it back just in time for the weekend! We’ve moved on to the third round when things should be getting real interesting.

Round Three: #1 Braxton’s TD Throw (Wisc) vs. #4 Evan Spencer’s One Handed Grab (Akron)

This is sort of a win-win situation for Braxton. He’s going to come away with at least some part of this victory. But you go ahead and vote for your favorite moment between these two.

And I’m not trying to bias anyone’s opinion, but I am STILL getting chills from that Wisconsin play.

#1 Braxton Miller’s Touchdown Throw against Wisconsin:

VS.

#4 Evan Spencer’s One Handed Grab (Akron)

[poll id=”24″]

Last November 900 year old Joe Paterno, head coach of the Penn State Nittany Lions was fired. He was fired for his lack of leadership which allowed former PSU defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky to roam freely and abuse children, over and over and over. Shortly after this news was made public there was a massive outpouring of emotion from fans. No…not for the outrage over what Sandusky had done and what top leadership failed to do at PSU…but because Joe Paterno was fired. Students did this:

And they went to Paterno’s home to show their undying support for the wrinkled, diaper wearing false idol:

Oddly enough I don’t remember them showing the same support for the victims in the Sandusky situation. Football, football and more football. It reins supreme at Penn State. It trumps all. From top to bottom it created a culture where even child rape was swept under the rug and forgotten about. Why you ask? To protect the football team. Football in State College spiraled out of control. The current powers that be knew they had to do something. So they hired the former director of the FBI (Louis Freeh) to investigate what happened at Penn State and this is what he found:

Excerpts

● “Four of the most powerful people at The Pennsylvania State University — President Graham B. Spanier, Senior Vice President-Finance and Business Gary C. Schultz, Athletic Director Timothy M. Curley and Head Football Coach Joseph V. Paterno — failed to protect against a child sexual predator harming children for over a decade. These men concealed Sandusky’s activities from the Board of Trustees, the University community and authorities.”

● “The Board (of Trustees) did not create a `Tone at the Top’ environment wherein Sandusky and other senior University officials believed they were accountable to it.”

● “Before May 1998, several staff members and football coaches regularly observed Sandusky showering with young boys in the Lasch Building (now the East Area Locker Building or `Old Lasch’). None of the individuals interviewed notified their superiors of this behavior.”

● “Janitor B explained to the Special Investigative Counsel that reporting the incident (a 2000 encounter during which a colleague saw Sandusky molesting a boy in a school shower) `would have been like going against the President of the United States in my eyes.’ `I know Paterno has so much power, if he wanted to get rid of someone, I would have been gone.’ He explained `football runs this University,’ and said the University would have closed ranks to protect the football program at all costs.”

● “The special investigative counsel found no evidence to indicate that Sandusky’s retirement was related to the police investigation of him in 1998.”

● Handwritten note, apparently from Paterno to Sandusky: “If there were no (Second) Mile, then I believe you … probably could be the next Penn State FB coach. But you wanted the best of two worlds and I probably should have sat down with you six or seven years and said look Jerry, if you want to be head coach at Penn State, give up your association with the (Second) Mile and concentrate on nothing but your family and Penn State. … You are too deeply involved in both.”

● “A reasonable conclusion from Spanier’s email statement (in 2001after a graduate assistant reported seeing Sandusky with a boy in a shower) that `(t)he only downside for us is if the message isn’t `heard’ and acted upon, and we then become vulnerable for not having reported it,’ is that Spanier, Schultz and Curley were agreeing not to report Sandusky’s activity.”

● “Neither Spanier nor the University’s General Counsel, Cynthia Baldwin, briefed the Board of Trustees about the Grand Jury investigation of Sandusky or the potential risk to the University until the Board’s meeting on May 11, 2011 and, then, only at the request of a Trustee who read the March 31, 2011 article” published by The Patriot-News of Harrisburg.

● “Spanier and (university lawyer Cynthia) Baldwin opposed an independent investigation of the Sandusky issue, with Baldwin stating that `(i)f we do this, we will never get rid of this (outside investigative) group in some shape or form. The Board will think that they should have such a group.’ Spanier agreed.”

● “The Board was unprepared to handle the crisis that occurred when Sandusky, Curley and Schultz were charged. This contributed significantly to its poor handling of the firing of Paterno, and the subsequent severe reaction by the Penn State community and the public to the Board’s oversight of the University and Paterno’s firing.”

Findings
● Penn State officials including coach Joe Paterno and university President Graham Spanier concealed information of Sandusky’s activities from authorities and the public to avoid bad publicity.

● Paterno, Spanier, Vice President Gary Schultz and athletic director Tim Curley “empowered Sandusky to attract potential victims” by failing to restrict his access to the university despite receiving two reports of illicit sexual contact involving him and children.

● Spanier failed in his duties as president by not informing the board of trustees about the allegations against Sandusky and the subsequent grand jury investigation.

● Once aware of the grand jury investigation, the trustees failed in their duty to the university by not pressing Spanier for details about Sandusky’s situation.

Less that two weeks after the Freeh report rocked Penn State and the rest of the country the NCAA stepped in and we all know how that turned out. 4 year bowl ban, huge scholarship reductions and a 60 million dollar fine among other things. Upon hearing this news the Penn State faithful once again showed their disgust:

Again, their disgust is solely football related. Here is another gem…and this time 9/11 is compared to NCAA sanctions on Penn State:

Lest anyone forget, here is a rundown of what Jerry Sandusky will be spending the rest of his life in prison for:

Cruising the blogosphere since the NCAA handed down arguably the harshest punishment in NCAA history to Penn State I’ve read some insane posts by Penn State fans. Here is a taste of what I’ve read from around the web:

From PSU’s Scout.com forum:

OP: “I propose that this year, in remembrance of the victims, Penn State wear all
black helmets with black face masks.

Thoughts?”

Reaction to OP:

“Dumb”

“When Saturday afternoons roll around I want to enjoy 3 hours of
football not remember victims.”

“Why black? They’re not dead. This isn’t Baylor.”

“NOOOOO!!! No more apologizing!”

“I propose putting “409” on the side of every helmet and
across the chest where some jerseys have the school name, in large letters
VACATE THIS.”

“The victims are not the players problem they have nothing to apologize for……
Erickson signed the papers it’s his problem!”

This is just a small, small sample of what I’ve read. The level of hatred these people have for Louis Freeh, Mark Emmert, Rodney Erickson and the NCAA are at a frenzied level. I will say that this isn’t every single PSU fan out there. Some of them are actually sane and accept people have done wrong and there are consequences to those actions. But most Penn Staters I’ve read up on, are living in a fantasy land and seem to be sheltered from reality in some way.

What they fail to understand, even with everything that has happened and come out against their false idol is that they failed to lead when it mattered most. Sure, it’s nice that Joe Paterno was able to fart his way up to the booth to “coach” games and all, but when his leadership was needed most…when innocent little boys needed protection from a monster…football was chosen, time and time again.

At the end of the day who cares what these Penn Staters thinks…they got blasted worse than any school in the history of college football. And did so because the highest ranking leaders protected a game over protecting children from a known serial rapist that once begged for death, because he could stop himself. They protected this:

I keep asking myself why they have so much hatred for the NCAA, Freeh, Emmert and Erickson, and not the same level of hatred for Sandusky, Paterno, Spanier and Curley? It’s because of what happened at the top for so long. It’s why the NCAA stepped in and did what they did. The fans in State College have been poisoned by these people. The culture from the top all the way down to the bottom is rotten at Penn State. Football trumped child rape for 2 decades at the highest levels of leadership…and today, after Paterno is disgraced and dead, Sandusky locked up for the rest of his life, Spanier and Curly waiting their fates in court Penn State fans still put football first.

If you look close enough…

…you can almost see the ghost of a liar and a coward.

We Are!

After what I assume most of you know by now was devastating sanctions leveled against the PSU football program you must be asking why I think the NCAA did them a favor. Here is my thought process in a nut shell up until 2 days ago most PSU fans and a lot of CFB fans didn’t believe the NCAA would do anything to PSU and that the courts would handle punishing them for their transgressions. But in a 48 hour span Mark Emmert President of te NCAA became judge, jury, and executioner. He relied solely on an outside investigation the Freeh Report.

The NCAA didnt have a long drawn out investigation and dig into all the things PSU may have covered up or to find out what rules may have been broken in the career of Joe Paterno. The NCAA didn’t make PSU and its fans wait months or even years to find out how they will be punished. The NCAA didn’t let a group of corrupt officials make their own findings and punishments. The NCAA allowed Emmert to come up with all of this based on a report payed for by the BOT of PSU. Sure the sanctions are horrendous and difficult to deal with for PSU and its fans. Some will say they are fair and others will say they are unfair but it is done and over with. PSU fans wont have to deal with 10 months of ESPN talking heads saying what they think could happen if the NCAA sanctions them. Below you can see a list of the sanctions levied by the NCAA and judge for yourself the harshness of them. But PSU fans be thankful the NCAA did you a favor and ended this today and didnt drag it out and your school for months or years to come.

Penn State has been hit with a 4-year bowl and-postseason play ban.

Penn State has been fined $60 million, which will go into an endowment for children’s causes.

The Big Ten also gave its punishments to PSU today because when there is a pile you better make sure you are on it. PSU is banned from B1G CCG for 4 years and will not be awarded any bowl monies for those 4 years. Roughly 13 million more. All of which will go to charities for children just like the NCAA fines. Penn St. was also hit with censure which means it has NO say on any B1G conference policy discussions.

If you want to see completely irrational and biased opinions on todays sanctions and the whole scandal stop by our friends at Black Shoe Diaries and just read the comments on their articles. Here is hoping they can all find closure soon and at least remember this is all about pedophilia and the cover up there of. If you do anything today remember the poor children who were devastated by the actions of Sandusky and the Big Wigs at PSU including one Joe Paterno.

Here is a video of PSU students reactions to todays sanctions live…. I assume they are so upset about what the kids went through right?

Video via Tony Gerdeman at The Ozone @GerdOzone

For nine months all I have heard is how much Urban Meyer loves and needs speed at the skill positions heck at all positions. For nine months I have followed closely all the OSU recruiting “experts” tell me over and over about what WRs OSU will get or at least wants to get. Today we got a commitment from a guy not one of them has mentioned before yesterday as a WR we could get or OSU wants to get. So here is recruit no. 15 for the 2013 OSU recruiting class.

Taivon Jacobs according to ESPN is a 5’10” 165 lbs 4 star WR/Ath from Forrestville, MD. He is a speedster who was recently clocked at 4.35 in the 40 and runs track at a high level in HS. Scouts has him as a 2 star and 247sports and rivals have him as a 3 star. Although an unknown to many of us he clearly was on OSUs radar the whole time even if he doesnt have the recruiting buzz that other WRs in the class have he has the one thing that the others dont as of yet a spot in the 2013 class. You can see his highlight reel below and hopefully all of Buckeye Nation will become more familiar to the newest member of the class.

The SEC has dominated the world of college football for a better part of a decade. We’ve heard rumors about under the table dealings in the SEC forever. It’s probably the worlds worst kept secret. Here is a funny story Charles Barkley tells about Dirk Nowitzki.

Yet here Ohio State is…serving a brutally harsh penalty for a coach “covering up” free tattoos and trophy selling.