Agree or disagree.
Believe or dismiss.
Care deeply or hear and move on.
Either way, by now you know what occurred at Penn State with the worse-than-death sentence they received. When I first heard the list, the item that jumped out the most was the $60million "fine." I have since heard this will go to fund an abuse program, which is where the money should be going.
The vacating of the wins means nothing to anyone, other than the NCAA. Penn State, their players, their fans, JoPa knows who won those games. And what occurred with that barbarian had absolutely no affect on the outcome between the sidelines. Making PSU vacate wins was a paper tiger way of NCAA saying they do have power. This meant nothing in the realm of the infractions or decision. (Other than Eddie Robinson and Bobby Bowden move up a rung.)
Which leads me to the line in the sand and moving forward.
A. Penn State has been a model of known fact for decades when it comes to the uniforms. Every spring when the new collection was unveiled, you were 99% accurate on your guess. The only question would be if there would be a blue stripe on the sleeves or not. Well, given this fact, lack of change, stick-in-the-uddiness, it's time for a change. Drastic change. Complete change. Maybe not going to green and purple change, but the entire set needs to be altered. Leave the past in the past. Forgo the white helmets. Make them blue with a white logo. Change everything. Forget "maybe a stripe." Put piping on the sides, around the neck, on the legs. Wear white shoes after labor day. Complete overhaul!!! This will send shock waves through the tried and true Penn Staters, but that plain white is associated with what you have been branded to be. Draw a line, change everything, and prove that you are not that. (And don't act like you deserve to wear all-white after this...)
B. The big conferences, and those looking in on them, must make a move in the next 10 years. Conferences have realigned. Schools have put in notice, put in notice and pulled it, not put in notice and just left, sued their old conference and had to have an uncomfortable farewell tour, or just sat on the sides hoping someone would ask them to dance. Here's time to simply put 64 teams in four 16-team conferences. Play your division every year, and 4 from the other side every other. There's 11 games. Forget the conference championship game. Take the winner of each division...8 teams. Playoff. Forget the NCAA. Forget the BCS.
Forget the remaining sports and the "we all need to be in the same conference" thought. There is absolutely no reason why women's volleyball should travel from Fort Worth, Texas to Storrs, Connecticut for a match on Tuesday just because of football.
Let the BIG 64 have at it. With their own sanctioning body. With their own playoff. With their own tv contract that will benefit all other sports at the school, and those conferences.
4 conferences...East, South, Central, West.
Things change, morph, grow, just as the college game has over the past 20 years. Well, that is, except the NCAA and those 3 little letters: BCS. Time to get with the new millennium and pull the trigger on this. Set a date: 2020. That gives all teams, schools, coaches, bowls, fans, AD's, TV networks to figure out that the past is dead. And beginning in 2021, there will be a new college football system. By that time, the NFL will have figured out some of it's issues with draft eligibility, the concussion issue, collective bargaining. Tie it all together. Make it happen. Just make sure Penn State isn't wearing all white.
