Players are Ultimately to Blame for NHL’s Labor Woes

I have never supported the players in a professional sports labor dispute. And I’m not about to start doing so with the current NHL lockout.

I have read numerous stories about the greedy owners and how they are asking the players to take a pay cut while the league is supposedly growing its revenues by leaps and bounds. Conveniently omitted from most of those stores are two things; the fact that the players’ salaries have nearly doubled since the last lockout and that according to Forbes Magazine, only five NHL teams made a profit last year (defined as positive earnings before interest, taxes, and depreciation).

Somehow the players keep forgetting to mention this when they act the aggrieved party.

I have tremendous respect for players like Sidney Crosby and Jonathan Toews. They are two of the best players, best leaders, and best ambassadors of and for the National Hockey League. And they are extremely well compensated for this. Crosby just signed a deal that will pay him an annual average salary of $8.7 Million for the next dozen years (on an accelerated pay schedule). Toews currently is working at $6.2 Million per over five years with a huge raise certain to come on his next deal. And every dollar of those contracts is fully guaranteed whether or not they perform to expectations.

In the meantime their employers, arguably the two most successful U.S. based teams in the National Hockey League both failed to make a profit last year; in spite of having three home playoff games each.

Toews is one of several players who has been highly critical of the owners for wanting the players to take a 10 to 12% cut from a wage pool that has nearly doubled since 2005 (based on the mid-point of the minimum and maximum cap). That’s when the NHL rolled out a $39 Million salary cap. A mere eight years later, the MINIMUM cap is now $54 Million (the max is over $70 Million), which means the players have gotten more than their fair of the NHL’s growth.

Sorry if I don’t buy Captain Serious' contention that the owners are killing hockey just to prove they are in charge.

I have no problem with players being paid as long as the league can afford to pay them. I define “afford” as follows; the teams in the league can be reasonably profitable and the league maintains competitive balance. Once that stops, I have issue. To me a league where 25 of 30 teams are not profitable is one that cannot “afford” its current wage structure.

And that’s before we consider that NHL revenues are disproportionately driven by ticket revenue. It bothers me as a die-hard fan that I have to pay $75 for a decent seat at the new energy barn so that the Penguins can generate a manageable net operating loss.

Let’s be clear on something, the NHL is not asking its players to work for minimum wage. The current league average salary is about $2.5 Million annually on FULLY GUARANTEED CONTRACTS. Under a realistic concession plan where the players get 50% of hockey related revenue, the same plan the NFL and NBA players agreed to; the league average would be around $2.2 Million and the highest paid players would still be near $10 Million.

I’m guessing that Shea Webber can still pay his mortgage on that.

I am tired beyond belief of hearing about the concessions the players made in the last lockout. Those concessions were necessary for the NHL to be financially viable. Does anybody really think the owners would have cancelled an entire season if they were not for the most part in dire financial straits? Put it this way, did you ever believe for one second the NFL lockout would last in to the season when that league is minting money? They pushed as hard as they could for a better CBA and then got it done before any football, and any revenue was missed.

Owners cancel seasons when it’s more costly for them to play than not to play. And apparently many of the owners feel they are in the same position now. Why they have to threaten to cancel another seasons before millionaire players get that message across is beyond me.

The players should not be complaining about give backs. They should be on their hands and knees thanking the good lord in heaven that they get paid an average of $2.5 Million per year, in a sport that struggles for acceptance in most U.S. markets. If Chicago and Pittsburgh cannot make a profit selling out a hundred plus games in a row, what do you think is happening in New Jersey, Colorado, Dallas, Tampa, and San Jose? There are at least 10 NHL cities (if not more), where the local team is barely noticed and that’s not going to change any time soon.

The salary cap was necessary to create financial stability and cost certainty for the NHL. Now the cap needs to be adjusted to a figure that allows teams to at least break even during the regular season. There is nothing wrong with that. For my money (which is exponentially less than Crosby’s or Toews’), the players need to get on board with this reality.

I am not saying the owners are blameless here; they are not. I’m on record in this blog as taking them to task for their ridiculous cap circumventing contracts that gained popularity over the last four years. It amazes me that these folks canceled an entire season to get cost certainty and then went out of their way to circumvent the rules in place. I also have issue with them signing guys to big money contracts days before the lockout started. Little or no such activity went on in 2004. I will also concede that their initial proposal to the union was off the deep end and that they cannot expect total victory this time around.

And yes, to some degree the owners need protection from themselves. How is that different than passing rules to protect the players from themselves? Critics say the owners should not overspend even though the minimum cap figure basically forces them to. Well Raffi Torres should not elbow players in the head and potentially ruin their careers. He does so anyway.

Sometimes limits are needed for the greater good.

According to Forbes, three of the five profitable teams, Montreal, Toronto, and NY Rangers generated almost all of the league’s overall profit last year. Those three teams and a few others drive the revenue figures that dictate the cap. The rest of the league cannot keep up with that growth. And it’s not a feasible solution to have Toronto subsidize 20 teams so that Scott Gomez can earn $7 Million annually to score 9 goals.

On top of which, high revenue teams like Philadelphia go on predatory (literally) spending sprees to steal players from small market teams. The goon squad throws some insane contract at Shea Webber in the hope that Nashville cannot financially match it. The Preds then have two choices; match a contract they cannot afford or have their two best players walk away in the same offseason. Good luck selling hockey in Nashville if that happens.

I do not want the NHL turning in to Major League Baseball. And the NHL’s financial model is every bit as untenable at 57% of hockey related revenue as it was before the cap.

There is a popular misconception that the players’ union is stronger now than it was in during the last lockout. The union was every bit as obstinate in 2004 and Bob Goodenow was every bit the Don Fehr clone. The owners ultimately prevailed not because the NHLPA was weak but because after one year of not playing hockey, the players finally got the message; that playing hockey under a $39 Million cap was infinitely better than doing just about anything else. Even after the owners spent a year proving their financial convictions, Goodenow was still screaming at the players not to give in. Does that make any sense to you? Does the union seem like it has the league’s best interest at heart?

It’s not about the strength of the union; it’s about how long it takes the players to face reality. In 2004 it took an entire season. Here’s hoping it takes considerably less time in 2012.

The Steep Price of Excellence for the Steelers’ Defense

I started watching football in 1980.

That qualifies as pretty bad timing if you are a Pittsburgh Steeler fan. I have the vaguest recollections of the Black and Gold’s fourth Super Bowl victory over the then Los Angeles Rams in 1979 but little else. My first true memories of Steeler football are of a 9 and 7 football team in 1980 that kicked off a decade of mediocre football in the Burgh. It was truly the only down period of Pittsburgh Steeler football in my lifetime.

I do not have memories of Joe Green and Jack Lambert eviscerating offenses with ferocity and skill. I do not have memories of Mel Blount blanketing and shutting down the top receivers in the game. I know of that only from books and the grainy highlight videos of that era. My memories are of those proud warriors on the back ends of their career when they were no longer elite players. There were occasions when they could still be great but never again was there the consistency of dominance that existed in the 1970s.

I cannot help but wonder if we are living that again in 2012.

The Steelers of the 70s got old together and the team simply could not replace those great players. That aforementioned decade of mediocrity in the '80s was the price of dominance.  For 4 Super Bowl championships in 6 years that price was a bargain.

The Steeler defense of the 2000s also got old together, again with championship results. You do not break up a dominant group that was the driving force behind an 8 year run of excellence including three Super Bowl appearances and two championships.

Eventually, the run has to end; especially given the NFL’s infinite array of methods to promote parity amongst its members. The question is, are the Steelers about to pay the same price they did in the '80s? Will it take a decade to replace the deep and talented group of stars that drove this recent success?

For what it’s worth, I thought the defense was showing its age in 2009 when the Steelers started regularly blowing 4th quarter leads; often to mediocre (or worse) opponents. To their credit, these proud warriors fought back with another brilliant season in 2010. The defense was the driving force behind an 8th Super Bowl run. That the Steelers ultimately lost that game does not change my view that keeping the unit together was the right move.

And statistically the Steelers had another strong defense last year. They ranked number 1 in the NFL in points allowed; a fairly difficult statistic to argue with. And yet I’m guessing most Steelers fans would say there was something different about last year’s unit. Somehow the defense never seemed as good as the numbers it produced, even before the unspeakable day they were Tebowed in Denver.

The 2011 defense was solid but certainly not the elite, game changing unit we’ve grown accustomed to. There was a shocking paucity of impact, game changing plays; a hallmark of the black and gold for the last 20 years. Worse than that, you got the sense that any truly elite QB was going to pick them apart. It was, adjusting for the philosophical differences of the era; very similar to the 1979 defense; a solid group but one that did not perform to the level of its immediate predecessors.

This results in part from the NFL’s incessant drive to become outdoor arena football. It’s hardly a coincidence that we are seeing record passing and scoring numbers in the league the last few years. It started with liberalized illegal contact rules that made it harder to cover. Then came the reflexive penalty flag pretty much any time a defender dropped a hard hit on a quarterback or receiver. A big component of the Steel Curtain for years was intimidation. Any receiver who went over the middle risked a trip to the hospital; and teams were well aware of that danger. Now those same receivers can run through the middle with impunity.

In short, the NFL has legislated intimidation out of the defensive game plan; a change that damaged the Steelers as much or more than any other team.

Even with the reality of these changes it’s impossible not to notice the aging of this defense. We’ve already seen age and injury take out Aaron Smith and James Farrior. Casey Hampton and James Harrison seem to be on the same path. And it’s slowly but surely taking its toll on the unit’s most indispensable player, Troy Polamalu. It seems only a matter of time before Troy loses that half-step of speed that makes him so dominant, and/or he takes one to many cracks to the cranium (if he has not already).

This transition was inevitable and quite frankly I expected it sooner than now. I’ll be the first to admit I was not overly surprised watching Peyton Manning pick the defense apart last Sunday night; most notably as a result of a complete lack of pass rush from the second quarter on. Certainly the absence of Harrison and Ryan Clark played a factor and hopefully their returns this week (or later) will be impactful. That does not change the fact that both players are aging; and Harrison is now doing so on an injured knee.

I am not suggesting things are hopeless. The Steelers used two first round picks in the last four years on defensive linemen in Ziggy Hood and Cameron Heyward. If either or both become impact players it would make a huge difference. The jury is still very much out but to this point neither has been a true difference maker. Heyward is still very young; the clock is ticking on Hood.

That means that in 2012, the Steelers two most dominant defensive players are the same as they were in 2008; Polamalu and Harrison. Given their age plus accumulated wear and tear, that’s not a sustainable formula for success at their age.

I also wonder if the zone blitz, 3-4 defense can still be effective in today’s NFL. That defense has always been predicated on obliterating the running game and then blitzing from all angles against QBs in long yardage situations. I’m not sure that approach can work in a league where teams play Madden, video game football, willingly abandoning the run and throwing 50 plus quick passes a game. New England and Green Bay have shown definitively how to beat the Dick Lebeau defense. Those same two teams were stymied twice in five years by the NY Giants; a defense built around a dominant from four. The Giants can pressure the elite passing QBs of today while still dropping 7 defenders in to coverage.

That said, any scheme can be effective with the right players. It’s possible the Lebeau scheme is outdated. It’s every bit if not more possible that the Steelers no longer have the depth of elite personnel to be a truly dominant defense. I’m pretty sure the 1974 and 2008 Steeler defenses could have dominated with virtually any scheme.  The players were simply that good.

So am I predicting doom and gloom? ABSOLUTELY NOT! I have tremendous faith in the Pittsburgh Steelers’ organization. No team in sports has been consistently better at rebuilding and retooling on the fly. Few teams in sports do a better job of maximizing the talent they have. The last eight years have been without question the second best era of Steeler football ever behind the 70s; but keep in mind this team has been a consistent championship contender for two decades. I always believe in this franchise and I still believe a playoff berth in 2012 is fully possible.

That said, sustained excellence in the NFL almost always comes at a price. Eventually teams are forced to rebuild or at least retool. I can’t help but think that the Steelers might be on that path, at least on one side of the ball.

WE...are Penn State

The very first time I heard of a possible issue involving Jerry Sandusky was October 22nd, 2011.

We were celebrating a special family occasion and many of us gathered at my brother’s house that Saturday evening. Penn State was playing at Northwestern and given the Chicago family connection, plus several other Penn State alums in my family, the game became the featured entertainment for the night.

One of our family members is a Michigan graduate so we’ve given each other a little good natured college football grief over the years. And I thought that’s where we were headed again when he asked me, “what’s up with your defensive coordinator?”

Initially I assumed he meant Tom Bradley but after further discussion I realized he meant Sandusky, who was retired for well over a decade. And this person whose knowledge I’ve come to respect over the years pointedly stated that he had heard Sandusky was under indictment for sexual abuse of children.

That was the first time I heard anything, some 13 years after Sandusky was first investigated for such crimes.

Two weeks to the day later I was at the gym when the news of Sandusky’s arrest, plus those of Tim Curley and Gary Schultz rolled across the ESPN ticker. Within 48 hours I knew with shocking clarity that the Pennsylvania State University would never be the same again.

Let me reiterate for clarity, it took 13 years for me to hear even a rumor of Sandusky’s activities. I spent four years at University Park and I’ve been a proud alumnus since 1995. I have numerous family members and friends who attended that school. I personally know at least 100 people who are connected to the University or Alumni Association. They are connected to thousands more. Given the advent of social media, infinitely more connections are available to people you barely know.

And not one person I know had any idea about Jerry Sandusky's "issues" until at least the spring of 2011.

I will add this, during my four years at Penn State there was never so much as a peep let alone a sordid rumor about Sandusky. Yes I graduated three years before the first chronicled incident but seriously, does anybody think Sandusky woke up one morning in 1998 and realized he was a pedophile? The sad, shocking, vile truth is he’s likely been doing this for far longer than any of us dare imagine.

So with that I wish to clearly state for the record the following; which I believe applies to me and every other Penn State student, alumnus, and employee I know:

• We...did not enable Jerry Sandusky

• We...did not cover up his crimes

• We...did not witness and fail to report the sexual abuse of a child

• We...did not blindly worship Joe Paterno

• We...are not members of a cult

Why do I feel the need to say this? Rest assured it’s not in preparation for my grand jury testimony.

I say this because so many have become so willing to broad brush the entire  University and Penn State community. Apparently to many it’s not sufficient to restrict blame to the perpetrator, those who actively covered or failed to report his heinous actions, or even the Board of Trustees. For the record, that group comprises perhaps 25 to 50 people of the 500,000 plus students, alumni, and employees of Penn State in this world.

Apparently the egregious actions of a select few are sufficient cause for many to blame and defame an entire community of people, the significant majority of whom were completely divorced from this tragedy.

We have, for decades on in, proudly proclaimed “WE ARE PENN STATE” to the world. Such declarations and identifications require that we accept both the good and the bad from our school and our community. It does not require that we bare responsibility for the criminal actions or negligence our supposed leaders, especially when we are in no position to prevent it.

I’m not perfect by any means but rest assured if I witnessed a child being sexually assaulted I would do something about it; no matter who the perpetrator. Rest assured I would not sit ideally by for A DECADE plus while the guy came to my office, worked out in my gym and traveled on flights with me and other co-workers.

I get that the entire Penn State community is going to wear the scarlet letter for the foreseeable future. We are all deemed guilty by association because of the horrific acts of a disgusting serial pedophile and the horrendous choices of others to protect his actions. We cannot escape that, at least not in the short-term. I can live with that as reality for now.

That’s a far different reality from those who paint the entire Penn State community as brain dead cultists who enabled a pedophile due to their blind worship of a demigod head coach. I’ve heard it suggested that we are responsible because of the “culture” we created. I’m curious as to how many who sling such actions have any firsthand knowledge of that “culture” but that’s an argument for another day. For now, simply understand that the “religious fervor” you hear about regarding Penn State football is far more myth than reality.

I’m not trying to play the victim card here. I’m not a victim, none of us are. We all know who the victims are and what they’ve suffered at the hands of this monster. Save your prayers and your tears ONLY for them.

I’m simply reminding the world that there are a good half a million plus people in the Penn State community who truly embody “The Penn State way.” And in spite of what you see in the media or on the Internet, virtually every one of us would have tried to the right thing if we had the misfortune to get directly caught up in this mess. All of us would settle for even one story on the $10 Million our students raise to help cancer victims every year for every ten sanctimonious beat downs from Rick Reilly and Jeremy Schaap.

Yes we loved and respected Joe Paterno, probably too much. Understand this however; no matter how much the NCAA and/or media wants to rewrite history, there was no reason not to love and respect him before last November. And while many of us our still struggling terribly to accept his role in this along with the complete reimaging of his legacy that is still a far cry from suggesting we would not have moved heaven and earth to stop Jerry Sandusky if we could have.

I spent a football weekend in Columbus Ohio a few years back. I can assure you from personal experience that Penn State fans are no more devoted or cult like than Ohio State fans. The same repulsive event could have easily happened in Columbus, Ann Arbor, Tuscaloosa, or Austin if those schools had the horrific misfortune of a pedophile on their coaching staff.

I am a card carrying member of the Steeler Nation. I can assure you from personal experience that Penn State fans are no more devoted or cult like than Steeler fans. I would also remind everyone in Pittsburgh that a large portion of the country thinks we are blindly supporting a rapist every Sunday and that the Steeler Nation took a tremendous leap of faith to believe Ben Roethlisberger’s innocence. I doubt we would have made a similar leap if Big Ben was a plumber or an accountant.

Steeler fans, including me, supported Ben in spite of increasingly disturbing tales of his poor public behavior. Is that not as bad or even worse than supporting a man with thousands of testimonials and a six decade track record of mentoring and coaching you people? And for the record, difficult as it is, most Penn State fans are now dealing with the reality of Paterno’s involvement, given that we now have reasonable evidence to support it.

No one person is Penn State, not even Joe Paterno. That certainly includes Graham Spanier, Gary Schultz, Tim Curely, Mike McQueary and anyone else who failed in their obligations. They are the most visible of us and perhaps today the worst of us…but they do not represent who WE are.

WE are Penn State…the hundreds of thousands who try and live the right way every day. I hope those who condemn with too broad a brush will take a second or two to remember that.

From Bad to "Worse" at PSU

Back in November, when the Jerry Sandusky scandal reached its most feverish boiling point, it strained credibility to believe things could get much worse for Penn State. Not when the university, its football program, and its beloved head coach were dead center of perhaps the greatest firestorm in the history of sports.

I knew then that things actually could get worse and expressed as much in this blog. That said, I would be lying if I claimed to have true foresight in to the details of “worse.” It was merely an abstract concept that I allowed myself, primarily as an emotional defense mechanism, to consider if not fully understand.

Well now it’s officially worse.  Much worse.

Over the last 8 months, 60 years of Penn State history has been figuratively obliterated. This morning, the last 14 years of Penn State history were officially obliterated. The scandal is so horrific that the NCAA deemed it insufficient to merely crush the future of Penn State football. They had to rewrite history and annihilate the past as well.

How ironic is it that so many believe Joe Paterno’s actions, or inactions (and those of his co-conspirators) regarding this scandal were motivated primarily to save his pristine legacy. And now that legacy is irrevocably shattered, along with our faith in the man and what he purported to represent. A man who’s passing in January many of us mourned as if he were a beloved member of our family.

The NCAA sanctions are devastating to Penn State’s football program. It very well may set it back a decade or more. Between the official sanctions and the public backlash against the school and program; it’s hard to imagine any football player worth his salt wanting to suit up at Beaver Stadium in the near future.

And just so we are clear on this, I’m fine with that. This is an unprecedented scandal in North American sports and the punishment needs to fit the severity of the crime. Quite frankly, when you consider what our leaders are accused of Penn State got off easy.

A small group of men charged with defending the integrity of our university, have instead been on some level, the instrument of its destruction. That's not to say Penn State as an institution of higher learning is dead. It will ultimately survive in some way, shape, or form. It will simply never be the same. Those men, through their willful ignorance and callous indifference of horrific crimes against children have destroyed something that meant so much too so many.

It’s easy to argue that Penn State University has no business fielding a football team this year. Quite frankly, I’ve come to believe that would be the best course of action, no matter the collateral damage. If you dread the daily public and media scourging of our beloved Alma matter happening right now, imagine what’s going to happen when Bill O’Brien’s boys take the field for what is unquestionably a meaningless season in September.

So no, I will not dispute or complain about the sanctions, they are what they are.  That does not make this any less painful, any less devastating.  The sanctions at this point are more symbolic to the Penn State community; they represent the apex of a scandal the depths and consequences of which we never dared imagine.

I've rarely felt so painfully numb in my entire life.

Understand that for me this has nothing to do with the future of Penn State football. I will be the first to admit that over the last few years, the Nittany Lions have fallen to a lower rung on my sports agenda. There are numerous reasons for this, the details of which are irrelevant to this blog.

For me, it’s far more about the past. It’s about the systematic destruction of our history; a history that binds so many of us together. It’s about taking something that was a tremendous source of pride in our lives and turning it to a nationwide source of scorn and ridicule. It’s about my hesitating every time somebody asks me where I went to college, a question I once answered with unwavering pride. It’s about learning that even a grown adult of nearly 40 years can still have his faith in others shattered.

More than that, it’s about a betrayal of trust and confidence that on some level I don’t think any of us will ever get over.

Penn State fans have been myopically accused by faceless critics of cult-like worship of Joe Paterno. I categorically reject that assertion, at least for the majority. We simply wanted to believe in an ideal, in a better way and the person we thought embodied it. No matter that it’s a national punch line today, we truly believed in “success with honor.”

We believed this in combination with our deep seeded love for the school and for the experience that so many of us rightfully claim as the best four years of our lives.

We took the greatest emotional risk there is in life; we vested ourselves in another human being. And we did so purely on faith given that most of us never truly knew this man we committed so much of ourselves to.

That is why the removal of the Paterno statue is so painful. It represents final tangible act crystalizing the magnitude of this betrayal; just as the vacating of his past victories reflects the symbolic death of his legacy. I would hope those outside the community could forgive us if after 45 collective years we’ve struggled to come fully to grips with the categorical reimaging of his legacy and persona in 10 days?

But we are not the victims here, not even close. It seems hollow to keep repeating this but it must be said; the children are the only true victims. They and only they deserve your thoughts, prayers and support. We are merely collateral damage; of which there is plenty more to come. Our pain is real; but it pales in comparison to the children that were physically and emotionally assaulted.

If anything, this horrific betrayal has allowed me some modicum of perspective on how Sandusky’s victims must feel. If it’s this painful for us; when the ultimate costs are purely intangible; imagine their horror. Imagine what it must be like as a young child to have a trusted adult authority figure betray your confidence and quite literally steal your innocence. Imagine the emotional agony of learning years later that others could have prevented it and choose not to.

On second thought, don’t.

Make no mistake, our lives will go on. Regardless of how we feel today this will ultimately be just be a sad part of our past; something to mourn and move beyond. Will Jerry Sandusky’s victims ever truly get beyond what happened to them? Could even the best of us forgive a betrayal of that magnitude?

No matter how devastated we are today, we must never forget that.

We can’t change the past but we can affect the future. We can make sure that something like this never happens again. We can demand unwavering vigilance from our new leaders; we can require that they protect that which is most sacred in this world. Most assuredly that is not the Penn State football team.

We can accept that as much as we would prefer otherwise, Penn State University has taught us another invaluable lesson in life. It has reminded us with stunning clarity what is truly important in this world.

In the long run we can rise beyond this and show the world what the Penn State way really is. It’s about hundreds of thousands of people living and doing right every day; not about five people who failed miserably in their obligations to protect.

In the short-term, the entire Penn State community wears the scarlet letter from the unspeakable crimes of a pedophile and the failures of his enablers. That means enduring the non-stop barrage of criticism; some wholly justified; some nothing more than sanctimonious blood lust. It means getting up every day fearing the next unimaginable element. It means, impossible as it is to fathom, that things may very well get even worse.

We Cannot Defend the Indefensible

On January 17, 2012, I wrote the following in this blog regarding Joe Paterno:

For now, I’ve made peace with the following short-term compromise. I accept that a decent human being made a terrible mistake. I do not believe he did so with direct intention or malice but that is irrelevant in consideration of the consequences.

I will accept that this is undeniably part of his legacy and that he must answer for his action or worse yet inaction. At the same time, I refuse to directly offset six decades of good; 60 years of giving more of himself than most of us could ever imagine by one awful decision. Not when he neither witnessed nor perpetrated the crime. I still maintain that Jerry Sandusky is the ultimate criminal and demon in this situation; a fact that far too many have willfully forgotten.

That’s my compromise, at least as of today. It’s flawed, biased, perhaps even irrational. I’m in no position to deny that. I’m far too close to this situation emotionally to remain objective.

My position however remains very much fluid. And what frightens me most after Paterno’s statements is that I can now conceive only of my perspective getting worse, not better. Paterno has officially set the “best case scenario” boundary for him and quite frankly it’s not all that great. Given his failing health and the magnitude of the scandal, it’s possible he will offer no greater defense.

 The worst case scenario remains very much in play; he participated in a carefully orchestrated cover up to protect Penn State or his football program. When or if that is proven to be correct, the compromise I described above will be irrevocably destroyed, as will the entirety of Paterno’s legacy. At that point all those involved will be indefensible on any level. I cling to the hope, however thin that no such conspiracy exists; for the good of both Paterno and Penn State as a whole.

---
Today, I posted the following on Bob Smizik's internet blog:

From the beginning...and as recently as last week, I have pleaded with everyone to be patient and let all the facts come out. I hoped those facts might make things better than they appear, but frequently conceded they would likely make things look far worse.

Prior to today I did not believe we were in possession of nearly enough facts to make any conclusions as it relates to a cover-up. We had a grand jury transcript, and little else to PROVE a cover up. People could make educated inferences but nothing more.

I took some criticism for that stance in this forum but I do not regret it. I staunchly believe that before you publically condemn people for involvement in a vile cover-up of sexual abuse; before you annihilate their reputations and legacies there must be reasonable proof of their actions. Prior to today, I do not believe we had sufficient and complete information to make such conclusions.

This is especially the case for a man with a 60 year track record of teaching and mentoring young men. I argued that man deserved and in fact demanded the presumption of innocence as he had earned benefit of the doubt.

As of today, that benefit of the doubt is gone. A neutral investigation has provided substantial evidence of a heinous cover-up. I cannot defend the indefensible nor will I try. Today is a terrible day for all of those who believed or wanted to believe Paterno, Penn State, or those involved.

 It will take a long time to come to grips with the full ramifications of this. And PSU is in no position to argue any sanctions brought against this football program.

---
I’m not sure what else there is to say.

As stated above, I do not regret my position. I was never willfully ignorant of the issue or the potential consequences. I made the decision to support something and somebody I believed in until there were definitive facts to the contrary. Of course this was a biased an emotional decision. It was also based on my own experience and thousands of testimonials from those who knew Joe Paterno that he was a good and decent person. I choose to believe that over media speculation and public blood lust.

I also wanted desperately to believe Joe Paterno. I wanted to believe, no matter how horrific the scandal that somehow, someway, he was above it all. Even with the release of the horrifying Freeh report today, I probably on some level still do. And I’m sure I’m not alone in these conflicted feelings.

Because we love Penn State; because Joe Paterno meant so much to us we will probably on some subconscious level continue to give him benefit of the doubt. We will compartmentalize our anger for his actions and inactions a decade ago, separating that from our belief that he was at heart, a decent person. We will never truly look at him with the same scorn or contempt that most outside the Penn State community now do. When you are as emotionally invested in a person or an ideal as we are, completely and honestly facing the harsh truth can be a daunting task. Perhaps some of us never truly will.

Notwithstanding the horrors of this scandal and his apparent involvement in it, I grieve for Joe Paterno’s soul today.

That said, there are times in life when it’s okay for your heart to overrule your brain...and this is not one of them. No matter our preconceived biases, we must now confront reality. Excepting some shocking revelation to the contrary, that reality is that Joe Paterno was part of an orchestrated cover-up of sexual abuse of children. That act is indefensible, on any level.

If you find yourself doubting that at any time, go back and read the testimony of the children who were abused by Jerry Sandusky. And then understand that several powerful and intelligent people made the decision not to intervene in any way to stop it. I maintain that Sandusky is the ultimate criminal here; a depraved and cowardly human being who tortured his victims right to his final moment of freedom. Regardless, as of today I’m no longer able to fully separate his actions from those who failed in their obligation to stop him.

Six months ago, I stated that I could understand, if not forgive a crime of omission. I could understand how a man put in an impossibly difficult situation, related to acts he neither perpetrated nor witnessed, might erroneously choose to divorce himself from the issue. If that were the extent of his failings it would indicate only that like all of us, Joe Paterno was a flawed human being.

I cannot, under any circumstances understand or forgive anyone who puts the welfare of a university or its football program over the lives of young children. The act is heinous beyond my ability to reconcile. All those involved must be held accountable to the fullest extent possible. Such an outrage must never occur again.

If there is any positive in today’s horrific news, it is this; Penn State can now officially begin the healing process. Whether that process includes football or not is now fully irrelevant. We are in no position to argue any sanctions against the program, even the dreaded death penalty. To be perfectly honest, I’m not sure I will ever fully embrace Penn State football again, though I’m far too conflicted emotionally to state that as a certainty.

All I know for certain at this moment is this; I feel like we were living a lie our entire lives. I feel like six decades of our history has been summarily obliterated.

I reiterate one final point from my January blog; a point that seems even more poignant today. There is nothing worth compromising your ethics or integrity. There are often daunting short-term consequences for standing firmly behind your principles. Such consequences pail compared to the long-term price of ignoring them.

Indeed they do.

The Quintessential Cub

There is perhaps no single participant in their long and tortured history that more epitomizes the Chicago Cubs than Kerry Wood.

Wood’s career, which came to a stunning halt last Friday afternoon is a microcosm of baseball’s most cursed franchise. It arcs and falls just like a typical Cub season. Which is to say it started with unbridled optimism, peaked early, crashed and burned late and ultimately fell spectacularly short of expectations. The often repeated mantra of the Cub fan, the promise of next season being “the year” became inextricably linked to the promise and failure of Wood being healthy.

Chicago’s long suffering, north-side baseball fans suffered the demise of two brilliantly talented pitching phenoms within one presidential administration. Understand however that you will find little sympathy in Chicago for Mark Prior’s parallel meltdown. Not with Prior’s surly personality and resounding rumors that he was chemically enhanced. The Wood story by comparison is a Greek Tragedy, in a strictly athletic context.

Kerry Wood was everything you want an athlete to be. He was a superior talent with a warrior mentality. He seemed to get how lucky he was to play baseball for a living and was a genuinely committed professional. He wanted to win and possessed the perfect mix of talent, work ethic and determination to make it happen.

Alas that perfect mix was all too frequently spoiled by his imperfect right arm.

I am by no means a baseball historian. There are many whose knowledge of the game dwarfs my own. With that caveat I will say this; the greatest game I ever saw pitched was by Kerry Wood in May of 1998. Kid K earned his nickname that day by striking out 20 Houston Astros, allowing just one hit in the process. If you believe that only a no-hitter or perfect game is subject to the accolades I’m giving this performance, I beg you to find a copy of the game. You will see that for nine innings, Wood made a baseball defy every conceivable law of physics.

I cannot remember who but one Houston player said simply, “we could not touch him today.” And he was right. For nine remarkable innings, Wood turned major league hitters in to over-matched little leaguers. If I did not know better, I would have thought Jim Rigglemen one of those unscrupulous little league managers that doctors birth certificates to use over aged players in Williamsport.

Wood’s performance created meteoric expectations for a hundred years of drought stricken Cub fans. His brilliance fueled Cubs fans to dream the impossible dream; a World Series championship.

As is so often the case on Chicago’s north side, the reality never matched up.

Before the season ended Wood was clutching his overworked elbow in pain. Even as it was brutally obvious that their prized prospect’s arm was breaking down the Cubs irrationally let him start a playoff game after six weeks on the shelf. Before the 1999 season started the great Kid K was undergoing Tommy John surgery on his damaged limb.

The whole surreal story seemed so “Cub-like.”

He returned in 2000 and struggled for three seasons to regain his form. And for one magical season in 2003 he did just that. Right up to doing was here-to-fore consider impossible, leading the Cubs to a playoff series victory over Atlanta in the first round. At that moment it seemed Kerry Wood was back to being the savior he was expected to be.

A week later the impossible dream (or sign of the apocalypse depending on your perspective) was one win away. The Cubs lead the NLCS 3 games to 1 and Chicago, at least north of Madison Street, was dancing with an electricity not seen since the Michael Jordan era. The century long prayers of tormented fans were on the verge of resolution, with Kerry Wood front and center.

Four days later they completed an epic collapse; with Kerry Wood front and center in game 7.

It’s debatable whether the Cubs as a franchise ever recovered from that nightmarish breakdown. What is not debatable is that Wood was never the same. The Cubs spent the next five years recklessly trying to purchase their lost glory through free agency. Wood spent much of that time on the disabled list as his arm continued its systematic breakdown.

By the time Jim Hendry’s $120 Million nightmare of a team rekindled the naive hopes of Cub fans in 2008, Wood was volunteering his way to the bullpen to salvage his failing career. I consider his willingness to endure the indignity of pitching in middle relief a sign of his character; a man willing to do whatever was necessary to help his team and stay in the game he loved. I also believe it one of the saddest things I’ve ever seen on a major league field.

Only the Chicago Cubs could turn arguably the greatest pitching prospect of this generation in to an 8th inning set-up guy. Only for that franchise could such a talent win just 86 career games; excruciatingly extended over 15 seasons. And only the Cubs could break the spirit of the ultimate competitor so much that he would walk off the field and retire at mid-season.

Even Wood’s swan song epitomized Cubs baseball. It was 41,000 fans basking triumphantly in an essentially hollow moment of glory. Don’t get me wrong, Wood deserved the ovation and the adulation for his heart and dedication alone. That said, nothing says Chicago Cubs baseball like an over the top celebration for a meaningless play by a last place team. That it was achieved against their hated rival and equally floundering measuring stick on the South Side only furthers the comparison.

The moment was remarkably fitting a franchise whose fans dance and sing in the isles, celebrating victories triumphantly to the ridiculously hokey “Go Cubs Go” song while they are mired in last place.

For my money, Kerry Wood deserved better than that. The man had the talent and the drive to be an all-time great. Sadly he spent his formative years testing the limits and endurance of the human arm, elbow, and shoulder. There is a reason he was able to make a baseball perform miraculous acts that May day in 1998. It’s the same reason he was under a knife six months later. The human elbow is just not built to continuously snap off 92 mile per hour sliders

It seems pointless and anti-climactic to state the obvious; that Wood never got the Cubs to a World Series let alone broke the longest championship drought in the history of professional sports.

To his ultimate credit, Wood battled to the very end. Unlike Prior, he never acted like a pampered superstar; never thought he was too good for the game. He never complained about being blatantly overworked by the bullpen challenged Dusty Baker even though that likely contributed sharply to his demise. And he gave the Cubs at least moments of brilliance; far more than they got from failed prospects Corey Patterson and Felix Pie.

Wood deserves credit for that. Glorifying it sets the bar far too low in the context of his potential. In the end, Wood will be remembered far more for what he was not, than what he was.

Kerry Wood the person is a hall of famer. Kerry Wood the player is the quintessential Chicago Cub

Penguins Crash and Burn Will Sting for Awhile

The Pittsburgh Penguins and the Philadelphia Professional Hockey Club played 11 meaningful games this season. Philadelphia won 8 of those games.

Honestly, I’m not sure much more needs to be said.

There will be a predictable amount of emotional overreaction to the Pens first round playoff demolition and understandably so. The Pens got their rear ends kicked by their most hated rival and their execution and focus in the series was questionable at best (horrendous at worst).

I still believe the Penguins were the deepest and most talented team in the National Hockey League when the playoffs started. This was a team whose radar should have been locked on one goal, the Stanley Cup. A first round exit was completely unacceptable, no matter how unfair the seeds that forced the Pens to play Philly while New Jersey got Florida.

Which is to say that championship teams do not make excuses, they just get it done. I said this in my ill-fated predictions blog; if the Pens were truly a championship team they would overcome an unfortunate first round match-up. To say the least, they did not.

Which brings us right back to losing 8 of 11 meaningful games to Philly and the inevitable conclusion one must come to given that fact. Simply put, Philadelphia was better than the Penguins all year long. We can break down and micro-analyze the series 1,000 different ways. The overriding theme simply does not change.

That should not have been the case. Not with Pronger and Maszaros out of the line-up. Not with so many rookies having to play key minutes for the Orange and Black. Not with a goaltender who struggles to find peace in his sole and harmony with universe as much as he struggles with 30 foot wrist shots. The Penguins with this roster should have been better than Philly.

They were not; not even close.

Some of it may have been psychological a point I made in my last blog. It just seems that between the overriding animosity and Philly’s remarkable penitent for comebacks this season that they got inside the Penguins collective head. Anybody watching game 3 would conclude that the Penguins had completely lost their emotional focus.

Most of it however was physical and/or technical.

The Penguins had no answers for Claude Giroux who was far and away the best player in this series. Much of the credit for that goes to Giroux; the man just had an incredible series. They had no answers for the Philly power play which flat out annihilated a penalty killing unit that was amongst the league’s best for two years straight. Sean Coulturier got so close to Geno Malkin in this series, they could have shared the same pants.

I do not subscribe to the reactionary, fire the coach approach that many fans resort to after a bad loss. At the same time Dan Bylsma will have to answer some serious questions. At the top of the list, why have players like Giroux, Ovechkin, and Mike Cammalleri utilized the Penguins as a launching pad to historic post season performances in the last four years?

That of course is only part of the story.

I’ve never been more inspired by a Penguin team than I was late last season. Undermanned without their two superstars, the Pens battled and fought harder than they ever have, refusing to give up when every reasonable consideration said they should. It was ultimately futile, they simply could not overcome the talent disparity caused by their injuries, but they never quit. And they carried that same work ethic throughout this season, even with the added benefit of Malkin and James Neal at their best.

They continued to battle with passion, fury, and focus, right up to the moment that Crosby returned. And then something clearly and obviously changed. Almost to the day that 87 reentered the line-up, the Pens became a run and gun team trying to overwhelm everyone with superior offensive talent. From there until the final moments of yesterday’s game they never reined it in, never got back to playing the kind of hockey that wins in the post season.

I’m not blaming Crosby for this or even Crosby’s return. I still believe this team was not good enough without him to win the cup. I do believe the entire club let out a collective exhale when Crosby returned. It was almost like they felt they no longer needed that superior work ethic and structure to win hockey games. With a fully loaded roster they were finally just be better than everyone else.

That’s an approach that NEVER succeeds in the NHL post season. Crosby need only ask his landlord for confirmation. The last time a superior talented Penguin team tried to win on skill alone was 1993. The end result was the terrible, awful loss to the Islanders that should never be spoken of. I saw parallels to that team heading in to the post season and wrote about it in the aforementioned predictions blog. There was just something unnerving about how this club played down the stretch, especially against their rivals to the east.

I’m not sure how else you explain what may be the worst defensive and penalty killing performance I have ever seen in the post season. Marc-Andre Fleury will take a lot of blame for this series, and deservedly so but I’m not sure any goaltender could have survived behind this abomination of defensive hockey. Yes Philly is a talented offensive team but I’ll give you pretty good odds they don’t come close to this level of offensive production in their next series.

How else do you explain the complete breakdown of discipline in this series, most notably in game 3? The Penguins faced some ridiculous and irrational criticism as arrogant, cheap shot, whiners down the stretch, criticism that was pure fiction before this series. And then in stunning and embarrassing fashion they lived up to it in game 3.

The entire Penguin club needs to take a hard look at their effort, their focus, and their execution in light of that reality.

And yet with all that we should not forget this: the Penguins lost several games to Philly before Crosby’s return. They lost several games when their work ethic, focus, and defensive play was exactly where it should be. They lost several games when Fleury was on top of his game, Malkin was dominating the league and the club was playing tight defensive hockey.

Simply put, when it’s all said and done, the Philadelphia Professional Hockey club was just better than every incarnation of the Pittsburgh Penguins this year. I will understand if that causes severe intestinal disturbance to Penguin fans. Rest assured it does for me.   It should cause similar or worse distress for the players.  A legitimate Stanley Cup favorite was crushed in the first round by its most bitter rival. More than anything else, that should sting for a long time.

A Brutal, Perspective Challenging Penguin Loss

A significant part of my maturation as a sports fan has been the development of what the more enlightened among us might call, “perspective.” Which is to say I’ve learned, with all due respect to Ilya Bryzgolav to view sports in the proper context of its overall importance to the universe.

To be clear, I’m not one who says you can’t be upset about sports simply because there are terrorists or starving people in the world. Those are horrible things; far worse than what happens on an any athletic field. At the same time if you love your teams and they are important to you, it’s okay to hurt after a difficult loss. Nowhere is it written that you cannot feel sadness simply because there is greater sadness in the world.

The difference between Adam 2012 versus say, Adam 1992 is how much I let those losses affect me. It took me days to shake off the horrible, awful, loss that should never be spoken of to the Islanders in 1993. Some would say I’m still not totally over it. In contrast, I was for the most part able to put the Steelers’ most recent Super Bowl loss behind me 24 hours later after a therapeutic lunch with Doug (Doug?).

I take great pride and comfort in my maturation and new found perspective on sports. No matter how bad a loss is, I like to get up the next day and move on with life. There are just too many other things that are FAR more important.

So I’ll be the first to admit, I’m more than a bit shaken by how much last night's Penguin loss is disturbing me. Honestly, I cannot remember a Pittsburgh sporting event that upset me this much since the Steelers lost the 2001 AFC Championship game at home to New England. The loss was the last thing I thought of before going to bed and the first thing I thought of when I woke up this morning. The former is okay for Adam 2012, the latter is much more Adam 1992.

Simply put, I cannot fathom a more brutal start to a playoff series than blowing a 3-0 lead at home, to your most bitter rival. Losing game 1 of a series is not that big a deal. Losing it in this fashion absolutely is. A game like this can feel like two losses in a best of seven series, given the magnitude of the emotional swing.  And the most disconcerting thing, beyond the obvious, is that is the third time in a month the Pens have blown a 2 goal plus lead against the Eastern Pennsylvania Orange and Black Goon Squad.

There are a combination of factors driving the anger and frustration of me and most of the Penguin fan base this morning. One is the pattern, the fact that the Pens keep losing these games to Philly and keep losing them in the same way. They dominate early, and then Philly just takes the game away from them. This pattern includes an alarming disparity in special teams play. The Pens power play continues to blow opportunities to put games away and the Goon Squad is carving up their vaunted penalty killing unit with shocking ease.

The second factor is Philly’s shocking dominance at the New Energy Barn. It’s getting to the point where the Pens almost have home ice disadvantage. It’s bad enough for a team to have an unfettered belief in their ability to beat you. To have it in your barn is even worse. This is compounded by the fact that there was a Stanley Cup caliber atmosphere in the building last night. Word is the Goons were chanting “this is our house” after the game. Can any Penguin fan hear that and not be physically nauseous?

Finally there are expectations. Simply put, when a team has as much depth and talent as the Pens do the only reasonable expectation is the Stanley Cup. It’s just inconceivable that such a team could crash and burn like the Penguins did last night. To say it was not a championship caliber performance understates this issue. The real issue is that championship caliber teams rarely allow such thing to happen.

Throw all these factors together and you’ve got one seriously unhappy Habe this morning.

What bothers me the most is that the Penguins clearly took their foot off the gas with a three goal lead. The all-powerful, all knowing hockey savant Pierre McGuire pointed this out while the Pens were still leading by two goals. He made it clear that the Pens had gone in to a defensive shell; pulled back on their forecheck and stopped attacking. He also made it clear that this was happening, in his opinion, far too early.

Reasonable people can debate Mr. McGuire’s abilities as an announcer (or whether Brooks OrPECK should run him through the glass) but the man does know his hockey. And when he points something out that clear and obvious, moments before the house comes crashing down you have to take notice. This is not simply a factor of the Goons grabbing some momentum and turning the game around. This is about the Pens making what appears to be a disastrous strategic decision that could impact their entire season.

There are plenty of more micro issues to fret from last night’s game which I will not rehash here. The reality of hockey, or any sport, is that you can find good and bad in virtually every game, win or lose. Great teams balance this and find a way to win. When its all said and done, the Penguins had a tailor made opportunity to put the game away with an early third period power play and failed (a point I made to Emily just after it ended). As noted above that’s been a disturbing, season long trend against Philly.  And the Pens cannot win this series unless they AT LEAST even this out.

My wife has reminded me repeatedly this morning that it is only one game. And she’s 1,000% right. We learned in 2009 that even after the worst of moments (game 5 in Detroit); a team can turn things around in spectacular fashion. That said, there is a disturbing quality to this loss. This is far more reminiscent to me of the Pens comeback in game 1 of the 1992 Stanley Cup finals against Chicago. The Hawks had won 11 straight playoff games coming in to that series. After that comeback win, the Pens just seemed to be inside their heads. The series was competitive after that but you never got the sense that the outcome was in doubt.

That’s what bothers me most. The Pens most hated and bitter rival seems to be very much in their heads. Championship teams begin with talent, but there is so much more to the equation. A big part of that is the mental edge; a a certainty of belief that you can overcome any obstacle and win any game. The Goon squad seems to have that belief right now, especially in regards to the Pens. And unless they turn things around quickly, meaning in game 2, I have concerns about whether the Pens can change that. 

The Pens had Philly and their skittish goaltender on the ropes last night.  In the span of 30 minutes they not only let them off but got knocked to the canvas themselves.  That is a monumentAL emotional swing.  If they are truly a championship team, they will dig deep and overcome.  If they are not, it could be a stunningly short post season in the Burgh.

A TRAVESTY OF SEEDS…FIRST ROUND NHL PLAYOFF PREDICTIONS

It’s been 13 seasons since the NHL converted to a conference style playoff format, with guaranteed top 3 seeds for division winners. I’m a huge fan of the conference format; but the latter stipulation has caused a fair bit of controversy over the years. This year it has made a flat-out mockery of post season match-ups.

At the crux of this injustice are the Pittsburgh Penguins; owners of the NHL’s 4th best record overall. Their reward for such excellence, an opening round match-up with the team finishing 5th. In a system that made any sense at all this match-up would not occur until AT LEAST the second round. Honestly this is the most ridiculous miscarriage of post season justice since…three months ago when a 12-4 Steeler team was forced to play on the road against 8-8 Denver.

And such is life.

Champions do not make excuses; champions just find a way to win. If the Penguins are truly championship caliber, they will overcome what is an unfortunate break of seeding. If they are not, they will not. Consider that the Pens got a huge break two years ago, facing two inferior opponents in Ottawa and Montreal. They lost in the second round anyway because the 2009-10 Penguins were not playing at a championship level.

Here is the straight dirt for hockey fans; there is no team in the NHL that is deeper or more talented than your Pittsburgh Penguins. The top three center group of Malkin, Crosby, and Staal is far and away the best in the NHL. For the first time since 2008 (the first cup year), the Pens have enough quality scoring wingers to compliment both Crosby and Malkin. The team has an elite goaltender in Marc-Andre Fleury, a Norris Trophy caliber defensemen in Kris Letang and a solid if unspectacular group of D-men around him.

If this team plays to its full capabilities, nobody should be able to beat them. Not even a deep and talented Goon Squad that has given them problems all season long. Keep in mind that I have not even mentioned the intangible qualities which are Stanley Cup experience (including Coach Dan Byslma), and a hunger built on two consecutive post season flame outs.

A first round match-up against a bitter rival can be a mixed blessing. This is obviously the most difficult first round match-up in this year’s playoffs. That will force the Pens to be at their best from game 1 on with little margin for error. A series against Ottawa would obviously be easier than dealing with Claude Giroux, Bozo the Hartnell, Mr. Universe (Ilya Bryzgolav) and the man Penguin fans love to hate, Jaromir Jagr. And it could get brutally physical at times which is a concern for subsequent series.

At the same time, the Penguins parlayed a first round victory over Philly in 2009 to a Stanley Cup championship. And rest assured there was no less bitterness and hatred between the teams then, no matter how ugly things got two weeks ago.

Playoff analysts (including me) like to critique match-ups, rate strengths and weaknesses, and come up with clever insights as to who will win a series. Well I’m not doing that here because there is no point. The Pens are the best team in the league if they want to be. That means if they play with the requisite heart, grit, determination, physicality and intelligence necessary in the post season. It means showing that immeasurable determination that championship hockey teams possess.

If the Pens do all that they will win this series. If they try and win on talent alone, as they did at times down the stretch, they will replicate the horrible, awful loss that is never spoken of to the Islanders in 1993.

I’m betting on the former; as is my beautiful wife Emily…Pens in 6.

As for my remaining picks I find myself in a painful situation. Namely I’m picking no fewer than five teams that I hate to win their first round series. My wife in contrast sticks to her guns and backs only teams she likes. Here’s hoping her predictions blow mine away. Historically speaking, they likely will.  Both are noted below.


HENRICK LUNDQVIST (1) VS OTTAWA SENATORS (8)

Why New York will win in 6 games (Adam and Emily)

Both teams are trending in the wrong direction at season’s end and John Torterella is popping off about arrogant organizations and conspiracies. The Rangers are ripe to be upset, but Ottawa just is not the team to do it. In case you have any doubt say this to yourself ten times…Lundqvist versus Craig Anderson. Besides, Jason Spezza is Joe Thornton soft come playoff time and the Rangers actually have a few guys who can score this year.


BOSTON BRUINS (2) VS WASHINGTON CRAPITALS (7)

Why Washington will win in 7 games (picked with GREAT RELUCTANCE by Adam)

The Craps played up to their moniker all season long and were in serious danger of missing the post season ten days ago. Alas, playing in a dreadful division doth have its perks and thus Washington stayed alive. Now suddenly Nicklas Backstrom is back, Ovie is on fire, and the Craps are peaking at the perfect time.

The Bruins in contrast are trending very much the wrong direction. They started the season in brilliant fashion, seemingly determined to defeat the dreaded Stanley Cup hangover. Somewhere along the way however the hangover caught up (a la Chicago and Pittsburgh the last two years). The B’s just have not been that good in the second half of the season. They rely too much on Tim Thomas who seems to be wearing down. Injuries may prevent Thomas from having to pump either Michael Neuvirth or Tomas Vokun’s tires; but I foresee some bizarre 2009 Varlomov reprisal if Braden Holtby is in nets for Washington.

Why Boston will in 7 games (Emily)

Because Thomas has enough money to pay his cab fare even if Peggy won’t get him a new credit card. And the closest Ovechkin will ever get to the Stanly Cup is X Box.


FLORIDA PANTHERS (3) VS NEW JERSEY DEVILS (6)

Why New Jersey will win (Adam, 6 games, Emily 5)

Because somebody has to.

Prop bet for the series; higher number, total goals scored or total television viewers? The only excitement for me is how long it takes Kevin Dineen to yank Jose Theordore after publically declaring him “the man” in goal. This series is a hockey travesty and a singular case study for blowing up the current seed structure.


BOBBY LU AND THE FREAK TWINS (1) VS LOS ANGELES KINGS (8) 

Why Vancouver will win in 6 games (Adam)

Because your typical World Cup soccer match features more goals than the LA Kings score for Vezina candidate Jonathan Quick. If the Kings had any offense, ANY, I would say an upset is possible. Alas, given their struggles and Jeff Carter’s annual foot injury I cannot see it happening.  Besides, Vancouver's abudant nightlife will likely consume a fair amount of Carter and Mike Richards' free time.  The Slash and Run Pansies are going down…just not here.

Why Los Angeles will win in 7 games (Emily)

No self-respecting Blackhawks fan (or any true NHL hockey fan) thinks that Vancouver will win. Ever! And even a terrible team can score goals when Roberto Luongo is flailing at pucks from his stomach.


ST. LOUIS BLUES (2) VS SAN JOSE SHARKS (7)

Why St. Louis will win in 5 games (Adam)

Because Ken Hitchcock is back behind the bench, fighting with all his might to drag the NHL back to the dead puck era. The Blues have done so much damage to offensive hockey that noted goaltending sieve Brian Elliott allowed barely 1.50 goals per game this year. Brian Elliott. Seriously. And the Sharks, who usually wait until the post season to choke, appeared to pack it in for the season about two months ago.

Why San Jose will win in 6 games (Emily)

Antti Niemi is her favorite goalie of all-time. The Blues play a ridiculously cheesy opening video at their home games, their fans do a dorky power play dance, and they openly condone hand-to-hand violence against opposing-team’s mascots. Antti Niemi is tried, true, and tested. I can’t stand the grinding style of play that St. Louis utilizes – no team should ever be able to win a playoff series playing like that. Also, St. Louis has minimal playoff experience. By the way, did I mention how much she likes Antti Niemi?


THE HOCKY TEAM FORMERLY KNOWN AS THE WINNIPEG JETS (3) VS CHICAGO BLACKHAWKS (6)

Why the Hawks will win in 7 (Adam)

The Hawks are deeper and more talented and that is without Jonathan Toews who appears likely to return. Keep in mind that in spite of the seeds, the Hawks finished 4 points ahead of Phoenix during the season. I’m a little uneasy with Corey Crawford between the pipes but he’s been stronger of late. And Mike Smith reminds me way to much of his current goalie coach Sean Burke, invincible in March, invisible in April.

Why the Hawks will win in 5 (Emily)…DUH (cue Chelsea Dagger)!


NASHVILLE PREDATORS (4) VS DETROIT DEAD WINGS (5)

Why Detroit will win in 7

(Adam)

This will unnerve the Pekka Rinne admiration society going on around the NHL but I see this series much as I see the Hawks and Yotes. I expect Nashville to battle like crazy…and lose. Great talent beats hard work when great talent is willing to work hard. I think Detroit will do just that. Bad break for Nashville, another team that deserved a better first round match-up than the league’s ridiculous seeding policy gave them.

(Emily)

Hatred of hockey teams south of the Mason Dixon line > Hatred of Detroit…though just barely.

The Risk/Reward Battle with Sidney Crosby

There was fantastic news emerging from the new energy barn on Tuesday. Sidney Crosby is, in his own words, symptom free for the last few days and feeling significantly better. There is no timetable for his return although Sid greased the skids a bit by suggesting Sunday as a possibility.

Needless to say, this is creating quite the buzz in Penguin nation. I freely admit to being shocked by this news. I had all but committed to the reality that Sid was done for the season. In case there was any doubt of my convictions, I’ve created a permanent written record of them on the World Wide Web.

http://habersp0rtsblog.blogspot.com/2012/02/time-to-embrace-life-after-crosbyfor.html

For the record, I am more than happy to be wrong on this issue. As a Penguin fan nothing would make me happier than a healthy Sidney Crosby returning for the 2012 playoffs. I may have been wrong about Sid’s health prospects but I stand behind my other comment in the article. The Pens with Sidney Crosby are a legitimate Stanley Cup favorite. Without him they are at best a long shot. That point was amplified by Ray Shero’s inability to improve the team at the trade deadline.

To be clear, I don’t blame Shero for that result. It’s pretty obvious that there was a limited supply of players available and the asking prices were exorbitant. Paul Gaustad would look great in a Penguin uniform for two months but absolutely not at the cost of a first round draft pick. I stand by my belief that additional pieces were needed but at some point you have to deal in reality.

In the end, Shero made the right decision. If he did so with full knowledge of Crosby’s expected return it was a brilliant display of prudence in a non-existent trade market. If he did so only on blind faith, so be it. The simple fact is this. If Crosby is healthy, the Penguins have the best top three centers in the NHL bar none. That’s easy to forget given they’ve played only 10 of the last 154 games together.

The key phrase being of course, “If Crosby gets healthy.” And that is where this gets tricky.

You see nobody really knows if Crosby is healthy. Nobody knows if he’s 100% healed or if he’s simply survived a few days without symptoms. Nobody knows if he’s set for a decade of dominance or if another innocuous hit will sideline him for six months. Nobody by the way includes the Penguins, their doctors, the fans, the media, and most of all, Sid.

What’s even more clear is that there is limited if any ability to put a time line on this uncertainty. Crosby sat out 10 ½ months last year before returning. Eight games later he was back on the shelf suffering three months of symptoms. That means that the risk of him getting injured might be every bit the same if he returns tomorrow as if he returns next October.

That’s a fairly significant uncertainty when you are talking about a face of the franchise superstar. One who just happens to be one year away from unrestricted free agency.

I’ve made this point repeatedly; the Penguins are 15 months away from having to offer Crosby what figures to be a 7 year (or longer) contract for $10 Million per year (or more). If Crosby is healthy, that’s a bargain price. If he’s constantly out of the line-up with debilitating concussion issues, it’s a franchise killing deal. And just imagine if the price of keeping Crosby is losing Evgeni Malkin? Then it only gets worse.

Which means it’s fully in the best interest of the Penguins to make sure Crosby is healthy. If they cannot get comfortable with his long-term health they must let him go, no matter how painful that would be. And for my money the Pens are one more Crosby concussion from that happening.

Given all this uncertainty what do they do? For my money you get quantitative and play the risk reward game. Simply put, there will ALWAYS be uncertainty and risk surrounding Crosby’s cranium. It is now a permanent part of his profile. The question is thus, when does the reward for playing him outweigh that risk of further injury?

Last March I published a blog suggesting the Pens shut Crosby down for the year.

http://habersp0rtsblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/short-term-pain-for-long-term-gain.html

My reasoning was very much based on the risk/reward premise. Clearly he had a significant head injury that was taking a long-time to heal. Nobody knew for sure how much time that would take. The offseason provided between 4 and 6 months of free healing time, meaning time for Crosby to get better without the pressure of missing games.

The caveat of course was scuttling what appeared on January 1st of that year to be a clear cut Stanley Cup favorite. So be it.  The Pens had already lost Malkin to a season ending knee injury. Without Geno, their chances of winning the cup were significantly reduced, even with a healthy Crosby. And by all accounts Crosby was not going to be 100% healthy. In the end, it did not seem worth risking Crosby’s long-term health when there was minimal (if any) chance of winning the cup if he returned.

This year my views are in categorical opposition.

Not only is Malkin healthy, he has regained his form as arguably the most dominant offensive player in the game. As ridiculous as this sounds, Crosby might be the second line center when he returns. Put Crosby and Malkin (in whatever order) and Jordan Staal on your top three lines and you are talking about a no brainer Stanley Cup favorite.

On top of that, championship windows are short. You never know when they will come crashing down; a point crystallized to Penguin fans by Crosby’s recent trials and tribulations. The Pens sacrificed a tailor made championship opportunity last year. I have no wish to see them repeat this act in 2012, especially given Sid's uncertain future.

The most critical point is this. Having watched the development of this issue for a year, I can now confidently say we have absolutely no idea how long Crosby truly needs to get healthy. Last year we speculated that Sid would get healthy over the offseason. Now we know it is not that simple. Crosby might return today and be 100% healthy, especially if his neck injury really was the primary issue. Or he could sit out until October and immediately suffer another trauma. There is simply no way to know.

What it comes down to is this. If Sidney Crosby wants to continue as an NHL hockey player, he must at some point prove that he stay healthy and perform at the highest level. Given what I’ve described above, there is no time like the present; assuming the Pens get comfortable that he truly is symptom free.

Almost.

Which leads to my final point on the risk/reward matrix. The playoffs start on or about April 11th. The risk of playing Crosby now seems pretty much equivalent to the risk of playing him then. The major difference is the reward. The Penguins get no reward for Sid playing Sunday in Boston. They have nothing to gain and everything to lose. The opportunities for reward exist only come playoff time.

In short, there is zero upside to rushing Crosby back during the regular season. The Pens have survived, even thrived without 87 all season long. Another few weeks will not change anything.

I’m not advocating needlessly holding him out, just to hold him out. I am saying make sure that “symptom free” sticks before he comes back. Any game he plays before April 11th is gravy in my opinion. Nobody knows how long is long enough. That said, 3 ½ months of symptoms compared to “a few days” of symptom free is too tight a tolerance for what is at stake.

There is precedent in for players returning from a long absence at the start of the playoffs and performing well. Gary Roberts did it in 2008 and was still fully capable of terrorizing Ottawa. Peter Forsberg did it in or around 2001. Sid has already shown this season that he needs only about two shifts to get back to top speed.

Here’s hoping for a healthy return of Sid the Kid as soon as possible, but not a minute before.

Time to Embrace Life After Crosby…for Now

The most significant on ice decision of the Mario Lemieux ownership era is less than 17 months away. That’s when your Pittsburgh Penguins must decide whether to lavish what figures to be an eight figure annual salary on the NHL’s preeminent superstar (when healthy), one Sidney Crosby.

Before Sid the Kid became the poster child for the NHL’s recent concussion epidemic, such a deal was academic. The question was not IF the Pens would keep Crosby, just how much it would cost. The only legitimate concern regarding Crosby’s future was whether he would stay in the Burgh or head back to the mother ship in Canada.

Oh how we Penguin fans long for the days when the picture was that simple.

Now of course there is a legitimate question of whether the Pens can afford to keep Crosby. With Crosby healthy, an eight figure contract is a bargain. With Crosby beset by concussion issues and regularly unable to play, it’s a potentially franchise killing contract. Especially given Evgeni Malkin’s return to prominence as arguably the best offensive player in the NHL.

I do not envy Lemieux or Ray Shero the decision they may face in June 2013.

Alas, that decision is well off in the distance. Beyond even the clouds of the NHL’s uncertain labor situation which could potentially confuse the issue further. In short, there is still time, albeit a rapidly decreasing amount to deal with Crosby’s long-term future In contrast, the more pressing issue is less than ten days away.

The 2012 trade deadline arrives a week from Monday. That is the hard deadline for the Penguins to accept if they are willing to concede a second lost season for Crosby. And to my way of thinking, this is exactly what they must do.

I do not know a single Penguin fan who wants anything less than a healthy Sidney Crosby in the line-up before the post season starts. I also do not know a single Penguin fan who did not want to win last week’s $350 Million Power Ball either.

As much as we don’t want to accept it, reality is setting in. And that reality is that Sidney Crosby is unlikely to play again this season.

There is a déjà vu aspect to this situation; we lived the same scenario last spring. We watched the Penguins battle heroically night after night without the two headed monster of Crosby and Malkin in the line-up. And even as we knew that Malkin’s season was over, we hoped beyond hope that somehow, someway, Crosby would return in time to save the team’s Stanley Cup dreams. We hoped as we would in any season but especially last year when the Pens looked darn near invincible, until their apocalyptic post New Year’s injury run.

It never happened. No matter how good Crosby looked skating in practice, no matter how many reports were issued on his “improvement” he could not shake the concussion symptoms. The wait became an exercise in utter futility and the Pens eventually succumbed to superior talent in the Tampa Bay Lightning. The series exposed the most basic lesson in sports; great talent beats hard work when great talent is willing to work hard.

Championship opportunities in sports are precious and rare. They do not come along very often.

And in a strictly sports sense, true championship opportunities lost are a travesty.

The 2011 Penguins lost such an opportunity. They cannot afford to let another slip way while desperately hoping Crosby will return. Quite simply, it’s time to move on and accept the unpleasant reality of Sid’s short-term future.

A year ago I was more resigned to the team’s fate, what with Crosby and Malkin both out of the line-up. I refuse to make such concessions this year; especially with Malkin dominating the league in Crosby like fashion. Most teams in the league would dream of having a Malkin type superstar leading their club. Only in Pittsburgh would we suggest that it takes two such players to win a cup. In point of fact, it does not.

It takes one such player, healthy of course, with the right supporting cast. The Penguins are close but not quite there. Simply put the team as comprised is not Stanley Cup caliber without Crosby…but it can be. And thus Ray Shero MUST act.

The Pens to my way of thinking needs a top six forward, a checking line center, and possibly a depth defenseman. Crosby alone would solve the first two concerns. His return to health would allow the Pens to add arguably the game’s best player to their top six and push Jordan Staal back to the third line. There is no better group of centers in the league…when healthy…than Crosby, Malkin and Staal.

Crosby is so dominant that he can elevate a Pascal Dupuis to top 6 forward status. Staal, for all his strengths cannot. Jordan Staal is the game’s preeminent third line center. As a second line center he needs help. A second line of Staal with Cooke and Dupuis (or Sullivan or Kennedy) is acceptable in February, not in May. Especially given the likes of Cal O’Reilly and/or Dustin Jeffrey are centering the third line.

On the contrary, a line of Staal, Cooke, and say Teemu Selanne is a championship caliber option.

The Penguins’ answer may or may not be the Finish Flash but it needs to be a legitimate top 6 forward (Jaromir Jagr would have been nice solution but alas that's revisionist history now). Shero should be willing part with anybody in the organization short Simon Despres to make that happen. That includes the likes of Jeffrey, Ben Lovejoy, Kennedy and the rapidly fading prospect that is Eric Tangradi.

The Penguins also need a legitimate third line center if Crosby does not return. Stanley Cups are not won with waiver wire cast-offs like O’Reilly or Richard Park, or even Joe Vitale in that role.

Such acquisitions will almost certainly put the Pens over the salary cap with Crosby on the ledger. This accepts as unlikely the miracle that would be adequately replacing Paul Martin’s bloated contract. Which means quite simply that Crosby must come off the ledger until the end of the regular season. That calculation does not even contemplate adding another defensemen which may be a consideration with or without Martin in black and gold.

In the event Sid the Kid performs a miraculous recovery by season’s end, the Pens can still exploit the NHL’s ridiculous cap loophole and bring him back for the post season. There is precedent for this in Penguins’ Stanley Cup history and I’m willing to go way out on a limb and suggest that Sid might add a bit more to the line-up than Miroslav Satan.

That scenario presumes of course that Crosby is healthy and ready to play by mid-April. That is not a presumption I am willing to make with Sid still experiencing concussion symptoms as of today.

It’s time for a harsh, in your face reality check for all Penguin fans. We are now well in to year two of the Crosby concussion battle and there is little evidence that this issue is going to resolve itself any time soon. Even as we cling to the “soft tissue injury” as our Crosby lifeline, the reality is that Sid’s career right now is very much in jeopardy. I continue to hope beyond hope that Crosby returns healthy but I’m simply no longer willing to bank on it, not at the cost of another lost Stanley Cup.

In the pre salary cap days, such concerns were not mutually exclusive. Today they are. The Pens must bite the bullet and upgrade to championship supporting cast around Malkin. That means moving beyond Crosby…at least for now.

Déjà vu all over Again

I love hockey. That’s not exactly breaking news to those who know me well.

In fact one might say I have a cult like devotion to the sport. Die hard hockey fans tend to be that way; a product of both our genuine passion for the game and the constant uphill battle it faces for mainstream acceptance.

I’ve come to grips with hockey’s place in the sports pantheon, which is to say I’ve stopped trying to convert non-believers to the NHL like some kind of skating Jehovah’s Witness. At the same time I am fiercely protective of the game. And yes I will concede that can result in overreactions on my part to short term concerns. However…

There is a fundamental problem that comes with being an NHL fan; one that is nearly impossible to overcome. Simply put, the people who run the sport we love seem hell bent on its destruction. With the possible exception of major league baseball owners, there is no group that consistently works harder to destroy its own product than those who run the National Hockey League.

Every once in awhile, say after a season ending lockout they have an epiphany about doing the right by their game. The epiphany lasts some length of time but eventually the NHL guardians regress back to the mean. The mean in this case is the boring, defensive minded, clutch and grab hockey which caused Mario Lemieux to famously coin the term, “garage league” for the NHL.

And in case you have not been paying attention the league is regressing again.

I noticed last year a shocking decrease in the number of power plays per game. At first I attributed this to players getting comfortable with the post lockout rules and fully adapting their games. Alas, the trend has gone in to overdrive since calendar flipped to 2012. The Penguin stats were posted during their game in Montreal the other night and they were an eye opener; less than 5 power plays per game, TOTAL, between both teams since January 1st. Which means for once Steigy and Errey are not simply blowing homer smoke when they complain about the Pens not getting calls.

Lest you think this is an aberration I’m seeing the same trend in Blackhawks games as well. And it’s starting to affect results such as Anaheim beating Carolina last night after a blatant trip that was not called. I’ve also noticed a subtle increase in the number of sticks around mid-sections that are suddenly being ignored, especially in New Jersey.

In short, the NHL is once again prioritizing grit, tenacity, clutching, and grabbing over skill. That’s wonderful news for the Max Talbot’s of the world but a disaster for the league as a whole.

Lest you think I’m overreacting here are some simple numbers for you:

• In 2003-04, the last year before the lockout the average total goals scored in an NHL game was 5.14.

• In 2005-06, the liberated first year after the lockout the average goals score in an NHL game was 6.16, a 20% increase.

• In 2011-12, through last Sunday the average goals scored have dropped to 5.48 per game; an 11% decrease from the first year post lockout.

That of course is only part of the story; the quantifiable part, which I as a certified numbers geek tend to cling to when presenting an argument. There is also what we see and feel when watching the game. And there is an unmistakable sense that once again offense is slowly being siphoned from the sport.

It’s early of course and the evidence is for now is primarily circumstantial. And yet I feel like I’m having a déjà vu, to the early days of the dead puck era. In those days I found myself apologizing every time I took a non hockey fan to a game. It was a period that chased away all but the most ardent supporters of the NHL.

I understand the league cannot cater solely to the peripheral fans who want 10-8 scores every night. That said, when the NHL threatens to scare me off it has a SEROIUS problem. My memory is not what it used to be but did they not cancel an entire season in part to address this problem?

There may be no better barometer of the NHL’s problem than the Devils who, in spite of breaking the bank for Ilya Kovalchuk are back to destroying any semblance of excitement in the game. Worse yet they now have disciples. After 1,562 NHL games this season, there were four teams whose games feature an average of less than 5 goals, led by Los Angeles at an embarrassing 4.36 goals per game. All four teams, LA, the NY Rangers, Minnesota, and St’Louis are in serious playoff contention right now.

You may also have noticed a bevy of goaltenders once again allowing less than 2 goals per game; lead by such luminaries as Brian Elliott in St’Louis. That’s the same Elliott who was so bad against the Penguins two years ago that Ottawa started the ghost of Pascal Leclaire in two playoff games. Before we start polishing Elliott’s hall of fame bust, let’s remember that the dead puck era was so awful it made Jocelyn Thibault in to a superstar. If that’s not a serious indictment of the game at that time, I don’t know what is.

Thankfully we’re not there…yet. That said, the trend is disconcerting, at least since the refs stopped calling penalties in January. It’s simply too obvious to be an accident or coincidence.

It’s possible the NHL is looking to slow down the game in lieu of the shocking increase in concussions over the last 12 months. If this is the case than the league can at least be somewhat lauded for its motives if not its actions. Addressing the distributing head injury trend is absolutely a necessity; but there has to be a better way than by removing speed and excitement from the sport.

That said, I think there is more to the story. The NHL power base is still dominated by thick minded, “old school” hockey guys whose first love seems to be 4th line grinders and goons. These folks have been decrying the so called “new rules” as an abomination almost from the moment they were introduced. They worship at the altar of Don Cheery, a man who continues to preach this as gospel of “old school” hockey at the expense of skill, excitement or sanity in the sport.

I’m reminded of Tom Barrasso’s famous refusal to have a battle of wits with Cherry because Cherry was unarmed. And yet I still believe the Cherry mentality dominates the NHL’s direction (read Colin Campbell’s mockery of disciplinary action throughout last season). Those who feel different, like for example a certain hall of fame, French Canadian superstar who runs the Penguins get shouted down and decried as whiners when they protest.

Make no mistake; the game is at it best when played with speed, skill, and physicality. I don’t care how great Tim Thomas and Henrik Lundqvist are; something is seriously wrong when goaltenders are approaching a 94% save percentage. Check out how many 1-0 games have been played in the NHL since January 1st, several of which were actually 0 – 0 but for the shootout.

For now there are only signs of distress. Understand though that there were similar such signs in 1998. The league ignored them and tacitly endorsed the horrific clutching and grabbing in some misguided attempt to smooth out economic disparity. Such disparities were supposedly solved after the lockout.

The simple solution is enforce the rules as written. That has always been the solution and it has always worked. The alternative is a gradual decent to another dead puck era. That issue is bad enough at face value, worse with impending labor pains on the horizon.

If you think you can live with that I urge you to go back and watch the 2003 Stanley Cup final between New Jersey and Anaheim. It was the singular low point for NHL hockey in my lifetime; two teams that would just assume the puck never leave the neutral zone playing for the sport's most cherished prize. Compare that to either Pens/Detroit final or the Hawks and Philly. The difference is staggering.

The NHL can stop this trend immediately if they want to. I’m not sure they do.

Rest in Peace

The Penn State community once again finds itself united; united in profound sorrow and despair.

A ten week surreal nightmare, the likes of which we dared never imagine has dealt its cruelest blow yet. The untimely death of the man we affectionately call JoePa, Coach Joseph Vincent Paterno.

The doctors say he died of lung cancer and clinically speaking that’s likely true. And yet most who truly knew him believe he died of a broken heart. The exact reasons for that heartbreak are now between Paterno and his creator and I will not debate them in this blog.

Ten weeks ago we mourned a spiritual death; the death of Paterno’s legacy. Today we mourn his actual passing. Both seemed indestructible; a rare constant in an ever changing universe, before November 10th, 2011.

Let me start with this; if you believe that Paterno engaged in a carefully orchestrated cover-up of sexual assault against children you should probably stop reading this column. If that truly is your belief than you likely are unwilling to see beyond it; notwithstanding a lack of any facts to collaborate that position. As the great Walter Payton said upon announcing his terminal illness, “For those who will say what they are going to say, may G-d have mercy on your soul.”

If you believe that Paterno was a good and decent person; a man who spent six decades trying to do right and likely made one horribly flawed decision than by all means read on. If you believe that good people can make terrible mistakes when put in situations beyond their comprehension, you may understand my grief and that of hundreds of thousands of proud Penn Staters.

Excepting a five second, passing conversation in 1991, I never met Joe Paterno. And yet I mourn for him as I would a member of my own family. The emotions are real and undeniable. And I assure you I’m not alone.

As former Nittany Lion Adam Taliferro so eloquently stated yesterday, Penn State has lost its heart. Joe Paterno was quite simply the heart and soul of our community. And with his death, our hearts are truly broken. There will never be another Paterno or anyone like him. There will never be another relationship like the one between Paterno and Penn State. I do not expect those outside of that relationship to understand it. I hope they have the decency to at least respect it.

I wrote this a few weeks back and it bears repeating. Penn State is a massive extended family. Our family has hundreds of thousands of members. It stretches across years and decades and thousands of miles. We are incredibly broad and diverse, different in so many ways. The one thing that binds us is an undying love of The Pennsylvania State University.

Understand this, whatever you may think of him right now, Joe Paterno was the patriarch of our family. He was quite literally the physical embodiment of this place we hold so sacred. His death is a death to our entire family. For that we mourn.

Some people cannot fathom Penn State football without Paterno. I cannot fathom Penn State University without him. As I sit here today I cannot believe he is gone any more than I can accept the callous indifference with which he was discarded. As his wife so simply and accurately stated, after 61 years he deserved better.

There is nothing more than I can add about the horrific scandal that ended his career and perhaps his life. It’s been analyzed, debated, and scrutinized. Questions have been asked and for the most part not answered. We may never know the whole truth. We may never truly know if Paterno enabled these horrific crimes or was served up as a sacrificial lamb to a blood thirsty public and media. As always the truth is likely somewhere in between.

History will ultimately pass judgment on the life of Joe Paterno. That history is still being written, for better or sadly for worse.

And it is irrelevant today.

Today we mourn the loss of a good man. Not a perfect man by any means but then he never claimed to be. I believe in my heart that this man tried to live a profoundly decent life. As I listen to the overwhelming tributes from virtually everyone who knew him, I am more and more convinced this is true.

We do not really know what he knew or did not know in 2002. And sadly now we may never know. We do not know what motivated his action or worse perhaps his inaction. All I can say is what I said last week; the idea that Joe Paterno willfully ignored the sexual abuse of children is in categorical opposition to the way he lived his entire life. I simply refuse to accept it without proof; not with this man’s track record.

If that makes me naïve or an enabler I will live with the charge. It is easy to rise upon a pedestal and pass sanctimonious judgments without facts. It is harder to open your heart, to try and truly understand. To ask the question of why virtually everyone whose life has been touched by this man so reveres and respects him. Perhaps because real life is complex; perhaps because the story is not so simple as many choose to believe.

I am remiss to use the word tragedy in the context of sports. Tragedy is about life and death; not about athletic competition. But it is absolutely a tragedy if a man who gave so much of himself to so many, is remembered first and foremost for crimes he neither perpetrated nor witnessed. It is a tragedy if this scandal, to whatever extent he is culpable caused his death. And you can add me to the long list of people who believe that is exactly what happened.

It just seems far too much a coincidence that such a strong and vibrant human being succumbed to death only ten weeks after his life was torn asunder. I cannot even fathom how painful it would be to devote your entire life to building something; a program, an image, and ideal, and then having it irrevocably destroyed in the span of four days. I know how devastating this has been for me; for all of us in the Penn State community. It terrifies me to think how painful this must have been for Paterno.

I understand that this scandal made his position untenable. That does not make it right that a man who spent 60 years of his life coaching, teaching, mentoring, and impacting young people was sacrificed to a blood thirsty public. Not when so many others bare as much or great burden in this terrible tragedy. Not when the ultimate villain in this horror appears less reviled publically than Paterno.

Unless and until somebody proves to me that Joe Paterno deliberately covered up sexual abuse of children I will stand behind this belief; a person with his track record deserves and in fact demands the presumption of innocence. At the very least he deserved his day in court, a day he now will never get.

If and when it is proven that he participated in an orchestrated cover-up of child sexual abuse, his legacy will be indefensible at any level. Until that happens, I will maintain that a good and decent human was taken down for a terrible mistake. I will never believe without proof otherwise that he acted with malice at the expense of innocent children, because his entire life stands for just the opposite.

I am truly saddened by the passing of this man whose influence was so profound for so many. And I am angry that I have to justify my emotions. That is the greatest tragedy here. If not for this scandal we would without hesitation celebrate his life while mourning his death. Instead we are forced to temper our emotions lest they be construed as empathizing with the abuse of children. For what seems the thousandth time, we all recognize the horror of what occurred here. The children are the only real victims of the scandal. At least until yesterday.

I hope that even Paterno’s staunchest critics will take a moment to mourn his passing. Even those who believe the worst of him in this situation must recognize who this man was and what he lived for. If you are so sure of his guilt that forgiveness is impossible, at least take a moment to grieve for his soul. He’s earned that much from all of us.

I hope the rest of us will grieve a remarkable yet simple man whose primarily goal in life seemed to be as simple as “make an impact.” He impacted more lives than most of us dare dream

Rest in peace coach Paterno. We will never see another like you.