Archive For The “Penn State” Category
This weekend, HBO premiered the movie Paterno, a fictional representation of the two weeks covering the span of time between Joe Paterno’s 409th career game and his lung cancer diagnosis.
I watched the movie, curious to see how Barry Levinson would portray the events, and how Al Pacino and a litany of really great actors would put the whole thing together.
The movie had a Shakespearean quality to it, trying to make an interesting case study of Joe Paterno and an examination of two fateful weeks. Like many movies, it took actual events, and the writers formed a narrative around it – much like Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar wasn’t based on the actual conversations between Marcus Brutus and Cassius.
Predictably, in their response to the movie, the Paterno family chose to attack the movie’s credibility.
“The HBO movie regarding Joe Paterno is a fictionalized portrayal of the tragic events surrounding Jerry Sandusky’s crimes. Numerous scenes, events and dialogue bear no resemblance to what actually transpired,” Scott Paterno thundered in a public statement just prior to the movie’s release on Saturday.
For good measure, the family also pushed their own commissioned report on the scandal – a weak, broad characterization of the profile of child molesters. The report, which has been floated before, is another attempt to try to convince people to believe that Jerry Sandusky simply fooled everybody, which conveniently absolves everyone from blame – especially Joe Paterno.
Their attacks on the credibility of the movie are reprehensible and are yet another attempt by Paterno apologists to try to deny that anything was wrong with their father or the institutional structure at Penn State when their father was head coach there.
In effect, they are trying to replace the fictional portrayal of Paterno in the movie with their own fictional representation of Joe.
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This weekend, HBO premiered the movie Paterno, a fictional representation of the two weeks covering the span of time between Joe Paterno’s 409th career game and his lung cancer diagnosis.
I watched the movie, curious to see how Barry Levinson would portray the events, and how Al Pacino and a litany of really great actors would put the whole thing together.
The movie had a Shakespearean quality to it, trying to make an interesting case study of Joe Paterno and an examination of two fateful weeks. Like many movies, it took actual events, and the writers formed a narrative around it – much like Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar wasn’t based on the actual conversations between Marcus Brutus and Cassius.
Predictably, in their response to the movie, the Paterno family chose to attack the movie’s credibility.
“The HBO movie regarding Joe Paterno is a fictionalized portrayal of the tragic events surrounding Jerry Sandusky’s crimes. Numerous scenes, events and dialogue bear no resemblance to what actually transpired,” Scott Paterno thundered in a public statement just prior to the movie’s release on Saturday.
For good measure, the family also pushed their own commissioned report on the scandal – a weak, broad characterization of the profile of child molesters. The report, which has been floated before, is another attempt to try to convince people to believe that Jerry Sandusky simply fooled everybody, which conveniently absolves everyone from blame – especially Joe Paterno.
Their attacks on the credibility of the movie are reprehensible and are yet another attempt by Paterno apologists to try to deny that anything was wrong with their father or the institutional structure at Penn State when their father was head coach there.
In effect, they are trying to replace the fictional portrayal of Paterno in the movie with their own fictional representation of Joe.
Read more »
We’re approaching the end of 2017, and it’s been an interesting year where Lehigh football fans have experienced a multitude of emotions: anger; sadness; redemption, and, finally, joy.
As you all know, the Mountain Hawks came back from the precipice of a disastrous season to come back and win back-to-back Patriot League championships and back-to-back FCS Playoff appearances.
In that vein, I thought I’d share the best and most-read LFN pieces from last season, from No. 10 to No. 1.
Going through all my stuff from the past year, these were the pieces that really stood out to me.
Read more »
We’re approaching the end of 2017, and it’s been an interesting year where Lehigh football fans have experienced a multitude of emotions: anger; sadness; redemption, and, finally, joy.
As you all know, the Mountain Hawks came back from the precipice of a disastrous season to come back and win back-to-back Patriot League championships and back-to-back FCS Playoff appearances.
In that vein, I thought I’d share the best and most-read LFN pieces from last season, from No. 10 to No. 1.
Going through all my stuff from the past year, these were the pieces that really stood out to me.
Read more »
I know, I know, it’s strange when there’s no Lehigh football game result to pick apart. That doesn’t mean that the rest of college football stood still during the Mountain Hawks’ bye week.
Lehigh’s bye week came during a time when Penn State football, already rabid at the best of times, was at peak foaming-at-the-mouth after Happy Valley hosted ESPN College Gameday on Saturday morning and Michigan on Saturday night.
In case you’ve been living under a rock, Penn State RB Saquon Barkley has a local connection: he went to Whitehall at the same time a guy called QB Nick Shafnisky was under center. Now, Barkley is the odds-on favorite to win the Heisman with the Nittany Lions after a 263 yard, 3 TD effort against the Wolverines as Penn State coasted to a 42-13 win.
Completing the return to 1986, Notre Dame also went to 6-1 after their own resounding 49-13 win over USC Saturday night as well, surprising in the ease in the way RB Josh Adams carved through the Trojan defense for 194 yards and 3 touchdowns. Oh yeah, Josh Adams’ high school isn’t too far from Barkley’s – he came from Central Bucks South in Warrington, the same high school where Lehigh freshman LB Nate Norris played.
Seeing the success of Barkley and Adams on college football’s biggest Saturday showcase serve as a fresh reminder that Lehigh’s football players frequently come from the same schools that produce some of these massive football talents.
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In the run-up to signing day, I caught up with a few of the new recruits to ask them about their recruiting stories and their high school football career.
Today our subject is DB Divine Buckrham, who competed at The Kiski School, which is based just outside of Pittsburgh, PA.
The Kiski School is an all boys, small, private school with an enrollment of 210 students.
Despite its small size, it has a long, storied history of football, too.
“From the early 1950’s to the present, it is well documented that Kiski has fielded teams deep in football lore and history,” Kiski’s team website says. “Many of the country’s greatest football players of the time started their careers at Kiski.”
Situated not far from State College, PA, Kiski graduates include QB Darryl Clark and RB Curtis Enis, two names which should be well known to Nittany Lions fans.
I have this vision.
It’s the weekend of the home opener at Murray Goodman Stadium, Labor Day weekend. It could be a Thursday, Friday, or Saturday.
And it’s 6:00 PM.
In 2018, the Lehigh football team will open the season with a big celebration of the football program – at Navy, Lehigh’s first game against an FBS team in over a decade.
In 2017, why not, as a one-off opportunity, try to have one Lehigh football game, the home opener, be the first-ever night game at Murray Goodman Stadium?
Will it cost money? Yes. Will it be easy? Probably not.
However, is it doable? I’ve got to believe the answer is “yes”.
Still bummed that Lehigh’s Patriot League Championship season is over? Yeah, me too.
That doesn’t mean that I’ve totally tuned out the college football landscape, though.
Starting tonight, there’s some terrific games on TV and online streaming that I’ll be watching, both at the FCS and the FBS level. Happily, the FCS Round of 16 games are not all going up against each other like last week, so the opportunity is there to catch one or more of those games – and you can bet that I will be.
Below the flip, starting with the MAC championship game tonight, are my picks for games to watch, and – why not? – some picks as to who I think will win.
(Yes, it includes Penn State. Stop asking.)
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Did you think you would get off easy on watching college football simply because it’s Lehigh’s bye week?First of all, it gives you time to catch up on watching ESPN’s College Football Gameday, where you can see the Lehigh flag that frequently makes an …
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| Paul Dashiell |
“A silver cup has been offered by Mr. R. P. Linderman, Lehigh ‘84, as a trophy of the foot-ball championship of Pennsylvania,” the Lehigh Burr reported in 1889. “Designs for the cup have not yet been prepared but it will be very handsome, of massive silver, while special care will be taken to secure a design thoroughly artistic and appropriate, and the cup will be fully equal to any college trophy of the kind ever offered. The [articles and conditions drawn up for the Championship] is not intended to form a foot-ball league, such a thing being deemed unnecessary, but to provide such general regulations as will fairly determine the state championship.”
The idea of Lehigh, Lafayette and Penn competing for the “state championship” has as its origins the student newspapers, who had started tallying the records of the games between each other in the hopes of crowning a mythical “champion of Pennsylvania”.
In 1888, Lehigh and Lafayette played each other twice, and played Penn once apiece in Philadelphia.
But the final records of Lehigh (2-1), Penn (2-1) and Lafayette (1-2) made it inconclusive as to who the state champion really was.
In 1889, with interest high in some sort of champions to be crowned, all three schools made an attempt to start a true “Championship of Pennsylvania”, complete with its own trophy. It was was founded in part to broaden the interest in football at both Lehigh and Lafayette, to be sure, but it also may have been a way to lock in Penn to playing return games in the Lehigh Valley, as Penn had already cancelled return games against both Lehigh and Lafayette in the past.
It made for a thrilling season, and one that further intensified the already-fierce Rivalry.
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