Still crazy after all these years

Bobby Parsons could have been a great QB -- spent 12 professional years as a punter ... They had a 22-game winning streak to protect, but Joe chose the wrong QB He was a fabulous punter, but the Nittany Lion faithful were simply salivating about his taking over as QB of the Penn State football team. Entering the 1970 season, the Lions were protecting a 22-game winning streak, but they had lost some fabulous players to graduation.  Altoona’s Mike Reid, the All-American defensive lineman, and All-American linebacker Denny Onkotz, for starters.  However, they had a great nucleus coming back — including All-American linebacker Jack Ham — with some tremendous young talent.  If only Joe Paterno would start Bobby Parsons at QB.  And after the spring game that year, the fans were even more ecstatic about Parsons. He was the quintessential drop-back QB for the time, standing about 6-5 and weighing about 220. He could throw the deep ball, the short pass — he could ...

Wilt Chamberlain … will probably never be broken When contemporary basketball fans think of the greatest basketball player in history, they invariably talk about Michael Jordan or Lebron James.  Perhaps Kobe Bryant enters the mix.  However, the awesome big men of yesteryear have records that may not be broken. Kareen Abdul-Jabbar scored 38,387 points in his career, yet fans today do not mention him as one of the greatest.  The record that will likely never be surpassed occurred 60 years ago this month in Hershey, Pa. On that night, Wilt Chamberlain, the 7-2 inch center of the Philadelphia Warriors, scored 100 points in a game against the New York Knicks. 100 points? Only one person has ever come close to that since, and he missed by 19 points.  That was Kobe Bryant. The current players on the Philadelphia 76ers recalled that night in a game earlier this week, Chamberlain, a product of Overbrook High School [in Philadelphia], was later traded by the Warriors, who had ...

Russian businessman puts $1 million bounty on Putin … it may never recover Trying to enter the demented mind of Vladimir Putin is a challenging task. The man who watched the Berlin Wall fall and blamed Soviet leaders for the fall wanted to restore the Soviet Empire.  The Russian people want to eat, not destroy Ukraine, though, and now, just a week after he invaded the country, it is isolated and the people face a year of starvation and return to Soviet destitution.  The strange part of this is that Putin worked to develop the economy so that it could trade with Europe and the West.  And then his megalomania or paranoia entered into the picture and he became Stalin II.  It could end in his death. His trip to Britain 19 years ago In the early years, Putin was careful to do what the Russian Oligarchs who controlled the economy wanted. Now, one of them has put a million dollar bounty on his head.  They realize that their gig is up. How did he let this happen? It all...

Bob Lombardi, the latest nefarious PIAA "leader" … Just the latest in tone-deafness I was surprised by seeing something on Facebook about the notorious PIAA, the group that runs high school athletics in Pennsylvania.  The post said that admission to district playoff games would cost almost ten dollars — for adults and students.  And that the tickets could be purchased only online.  How stupid is that? It is a reflection of the arrogance that the organization has demonstrated over the years.  I am going to go through this in more detail in another post, but this is not a new story. In fact, in 1998, the state legislature investigated alleged PIAA corruption — but did nothing.  No surprise there. The legislature is as corrupt as the PIAA is, so it is like one criminal investigating the other.  Granted, some many not look on this as criminality.  It is not in the technical, legal sense, but since this reflects treatment of young high sch...

The Ukrainian ambassador lays down the gauntlet Does Ukraine hold the moral compass now? … what about Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld? I always wondered about purgatory from the time that the nuns taught us about it at St. Brigid’s School.  “Certainly, that is better than going to hell,” I probably thought.  “But, how long would I be there?” Crazy thoughts in a crazy time.  So, when the Ukrainian ambassador to the United Nations clearly informed Vladimir Putin and his cohorts of their eternal life, I began to wonder about other people who had started unjust, evil, immoral wars.  Such as the Americans responsible for the invasion of Iraq in 2003 that resulted in between 185 thousand and 208 thousand “violent” deaths. Not included in these are the 25 to 50 thousand innocent women and children who were killed or approximately 40 thousand who suffered debilitating injuries.  Can people who inflict that kind of death ever be forgiven? Sergly Kyslytsya does no...

Brian Flores … hiring Flores probably rankled Goodell To place this into context, understand that the only reason that the Steelers hired Mike Tomlin 15 years ago is because he was black.  Why? He had never even been a coordinator anywhere, never in the NFL. The only reason that he was interviewed was because of the “Rooney Rule.” That rule is one named after the late Dan Rooney who led the effort to force every NFL team to interview at least one black coach when it had head coaching openings.  The Steelers had focused their coaching search after Bill Cowher left on Ron Rivera, then a defensive coordinator for the Chicago Bears. Their interview with Tomlin was a peremptory one, something to satisfy the smell test.  After all, why interview a guy who was just a defensive coach? Coordinators are the people who are hired for the big gig.  Tomlin, though, is a great talker, and he wooed Dan Rooney so much that he was hired for the position.  Which begs the q...

James Harrison, 2008 NFL Defensive Player of the Year, won that Super Bowl with 100-yard return … responsible for 14 point turnaround On paper, the Steelers should never have won their sixth Super Bowl, number XLIII. They were thoroughly outplayed offensively by the Arizona Cardinals, but the key play — and the MVP performance — occurred on the final play of the first half, not late in the game.  On that play, the Cardinals were on the 2-yard line, and 37-year-old QB Kurt Warner completely misread the Steeler defense. Dick LeBeau blitzed from the outside, and that put pressure on Warner. Warner flipped the ball on a short look-in but did not see Harrison. The rest, as they say, is history, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqnQwKAI4OE Why is that such an important play? Not only did Harrison intercept, the ball he returned it a record 100 yards for a Steeler touchdown.  At the time, the Steelers were leading, 10-7, and if Warner completes that for a TD, it would be 14-10 Cardina...