The Lions King

Ladies and Gentlemen

I write this article with mixed emotions but probably not for the reasons that some of you and the national card carrying character assassins would believe.

Joseph Vincent Paterno, the Great “Coach Joe Pa” to you and I and the winningest coach in Division I football history passed away Sunday morning of a broken heart at the age of 85.

I don’t have enough room in this column to write what a fine outstanding person Coach Joe Pa was or what a great coach and mentor he was to young student athletes. I certainly don’t have a command of the English language to capture what he means to Penn State and the Mighty Nittany Lions Football Nation.

But I know he was a Giant in the world of College Football….

A Legend walking amongst us mere mortals…..

Joe Pa will always be The Lion King

I didn’t know Coach Joe Pa although he shook my hand on January 1st 1979 when Alabama defeated Penn State for the National Championship and along with the handshake he said “good game son” and I didn’t have anything more to do with the outcome of that game than any other bench warmer, but Joe Pa shook every Alabama players hand that evening, because he is a man that was “class” personified and….

Integrity – Sportsmanship – Honor – Loyalty……

And he still is that man, even in death.

Certainly that’s not what the hosts of national character assassins want you to believe about Joe Pa.

But then again those are some of the same people that believe you folks at home are incapable of thinking for yourselves, you know like sheep.

You know who I am talking about right?

The same people that tell you President Obama can’t do anything wrong and President Bush couldn’t do anything right.

The same people that want you to believe that every white person in the South is a racist but Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton aren’t.

The same people that enjoy ridiculing Tim Tebow’s Christian faith but wouldn’t dare say anything about Muslim men’s love of little boys and little girls because that would be “insensitive” to their culture.

The same people that don’t want prayer before a high school football game or a nativity scene on public property because “it promotes religion” but whole heartedly support a radical Muslim mosque in New York City at 9/11 ground zero.

Have I made my point or do you need any more examples?

Here are a few examples of what the character assassins had to say about Joe Pa….

Mark Bradley Atlanta Journal Constitution……

“In the 2 1/2 months between Jerry Sandusky’s indictment and his employer’s death, we’ve had the chance to review our feelings toward Paterno. Was he enabler or scapegoat? Was he a villain for not speaking up louder and sooner, or was he a victim for being shunted aside in the wake of a media storm unprecedented in American sports? Was he a good guy who’d done a bad thing, or was the thing he did — or, in this case, didn’t do — so bad that all claims to goodness were forfeit?”

Stewart Mandel Sports illustrated

“This is a truly and indisputably sad day, but that sadness is now part of a complicated array of emotions…..”

Paul Finebaum also known as the Jerry Springer of “sports”

“Joe Paterno, the longtime Penn State coach who won more games than anyone in major college football but was fired amid a child sex abuse scandal that scarred his reputation for winning with integrity, died Sunday of lung cancer. He was 85.”

EDITORS NOTE: Yeah this is same guy that said 20 years after Coach Bryant’s death….

“Coach Bryant didn’t do enough to help segregation in the South”…

EDITORS NOTE: I would listen to a trailer trash meth head before I would take the time to listen this dumbass on any subject much less anything to do with college football.

Then of course my “very” favorite article hot off the press from CNN….

LZ Granderson, who writes a weekly column for CNN.com, was named journalist of the year by the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association and a 2011 Online Journalism Award finalist for commentary. He is a senior writer and columnist for ESPN the Magazine and ESPN.com and the 2009 winner of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation award for online journalism.

EDITORS NOTE: O’ Yeah this guys knows a lot about college football….

“I look at the way people lionize President Ronald Reagan and I wonder how they feel about Reagan letting years go by without publicly addressing the AIDS epidemic (possibly because the disease initially was seen as primarily affecting gays) or that he vetoed a comprehensive anti-apartheid act that would have placed sanctions on South Africa……

I do not know how to compartmentalize the good from the bad. Just as I am incapable of thinking about Reagan without seeing the thousands and thousands of ailing Americans he didn’t even try to help. Or how hard it is to listen to a Michael Jackson song and not wonder about the boys he was accused of molesting — or how hard it is to watch reruns of “Seinfeld” and not recall the racist rant from the actor who played my once favorite character, Kramer.”

EDITORS NOTE: What a minute, so Michael Jackson was “accused” but Joe Pa is guilty, of what exactly? President Ronald Reagan and the television program “Seinfeld”, what the Hell does that have to do with Joe Pa? Frankly I am surprised this idiot didn’t mention how racist toilet paper companies are because all their toilet paper is some shade of “white”.

Then yet another article from the Communist News network (CNN)

“Gov. Tom Corbett ordered state flags to fly at half staff beginning Monday in honor of former Penn State University football coach Joe Paterno, who died Sunday.

The flags will remain there through sunset on the day of Paterno’s funeral, according to Gary Miller of the governor’s staff.

The support has not been universal.

EDITORS NOTE: Here we go again…

A group for survivors of sexual abuse by Catholic priests released a statement questioning the praise for Paterno, who critics say should have done more in 2002 when an assistant reported seeing former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky engaged in a sexual act with a young boy.
The survivors’ group, Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said Monday that ignoring what it called Paterno’s “egregious wrongdoing” was insensitive to victims of molestation.

“And publicly honoring Paterno sends precisely the wrong message to others who have or may hide child sex crimes — if you achieve enough professionally, we’ll overlook your role in enabling, ignoring or concealing heinous crimes against kids.”

EDITORS NOTE: So let me get this straight….
Your organization is called “SNAP” as in “O’ SNAP”? Seriously?

Last time I checked Coach Joe Pa didn’t commit any crimes, none.

Zero

Joe Pa wasn’t even accused of committing any crimes was he?

Unless “could have” should have” and “didn’t do enough” is a crime.

And former assistant Jerry Sandusky hasn’t even gone to trial has he?

But the cowardly media assassins want to vilify Coach Joe Pa and they want you to believe the venom they write because they don’t believe you can think for yourselves, can you?

And I assume by their lofty perception of events concerning the Penn State football program the media cowards themselves are beyond reproach.

So let me say this….

I am too flawed a human being to attempt to attack and hold the moral high ground in any conversation on any subject. Not to mention it’s a real slippery slope to climb, I know because I have scaled it a time or two only to slide back down to the bottom. And any grown up who buys their own toilet paper and pays taxes has probably experienced the same thing in his or her life.

If “could have” should have” and “didn’t do enough” is a crime in this life, then how many of us are guilty of seeing something wrong and “not doing enough” to rectify the situation?

I know for a fact I would have gotten the electric chair a long time ago if that was the case.

But give me a minute, because I am getting in front of myself here…

Last year the Great Clarence “The Big Man” Clemons of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band passed away. He played the saxophone in the E Street Band.

There will never, ever be another like him. Period.
I don’t know if “The Big Man” ever saved a child from a burning building or refused to sign an autograph or burned ants with a magnifying glass as a child.

And I don’t care because that’s not what I loved him for….

But I do know he was one hell of a saxophone player and “Jungle Land” and “Tenth Avenue Freeze Out” will never sound the same again and that’s all that matters.

Joe Pa was one hell of a college football coach and the assassins in the media took everything away from him, but yet they don’t want to be judged by the same standards themselves.

They never do though, do they?

They stole his dignity, his integrity and everything he worked and slaved for his entire life until he had nothing left to live for and he died of a broken heart on Sunday morning.

Coach Joe Pa will always be one of the greatest to ever walk the sidelines…

He will always be a Giant in the world of College Football….

He will always be a legend that walked amongst us mere mortals…..

Joe Pa will always be the Lion King

And hard as some may try, they can never take that away from him.

God Bless you Joe Pa and all the faithful Nittany Lions everywhere

RTR

THE CFB WIZARD

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