July 22, 2012

Max Kellerman Speaks Truth About Joe Paterno Statue (TMZ)

The Joe Paterno statue is coming down, and Max Kellerman tells TMZ that it’s “about time.” It’s always nice to hear someone speak the truth, especially when it’s so obvious and so few people are saying it.

The whole culture of JoePa worship has baffled me since I became aware of it. I’ve been saying for years that I believe college football is inherently corrupt. (Yes, I actually used those words, just not in print so you’ll have to take my word for it.) I’ve always felt that it was wrong for player-athletes to be paid nothing while coaches get paid millions. The book ‘The Blind Side‘ makes it very clear that the NCAA is less than perfect when it comes to policing college athletics; that’s putting it mildly of course. (The movie version always shows this but the book goes into more detail and makes the NCAA look particularly silly with regard to the way they treated Michael Oher.) To be clear, I’m not saying that college sports are just bad. It’s the way the schools handle the programs.

Also troubling is the way that students seem to place sports above all else, and the behavior that attitude leads to. When Penn State students rioted in the wake of Paterno’s firing, I was embarrassed for anyone who ever went to that school and has a brain in their head. Rioting? Seriously?

Here’s a couple of video clips. Some four-letter words so NSFW.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6R9U1c6k0wM]

This one is called “Penn State has JoePa’s back”. Ugh.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcJHyQm0iZo]

Even if they thought Paterno had been fired for a bad reason, how exactly do you get yourself so worked up that you decide to riot? Rioting is generally a bad idea. But I might be capable of finding sympathy if there were a serious political cause involved, or if the riot started by accident. I’m grasping at straws here. Rioting isn’t good. But rioting because a college football coach was fired, especially given the reasons for the firing, is even worse.

I didn’t really care if they took the statue down or not. Still, if the powers that be at Penn State believe what was in the report, that Paterno was involved in hiding Sandusky’s horrible actions in order to protect the football program, clearly the statue had to go.

I was a big fan of Kellerman’s radio show when he was on ESPN New York a few years ago. I thought he was poised to become the next Howard Stern, or at least as close to that extremely high mark as anyone can get in our newly fragmented media climate. Then he left and went… somewhere. I think he’s back on ESPN in L.A. but I haven’t looked into it. I’m busier than I used to be. Dad stuff. Y’know.

Speaking of Howard Stern, here he is talking about JoePa. Satellite radio, so again, may be NSFW. That means there could be cussin’.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDn3kWTGbMU]

Max Kellerman — ‘About Time’ Penn St. Took Down the Joe Paterno Statue | TMZ.com.

Related: watch me talk about the Jerry Sandusky scandal on HLN.


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