Convicted, but not accused

            This should come as no surprise to anyone, but the NCAA, that great bastion of hypocrisy, has come up with a doozy. 

            The organization hit Penn State with $60 million in fines, a four-year bowl ban, a scholarship reduction and the threat of more sanctions if the school misbehaves again or if the NCAA feels like it.  The Big 10 decided to pile on by yanking $13 million of bowl revenue.

            All this because Penn State violated the NCAA’s rules against … well, that’s the rub.  Penn State didn’t violate any NCAA rules.  It violated the laws of Pennsylvania, of nature and of God, but it didn’t actually violate any NCAA rules.  (That we know of.  One theory has it that the NCAA and Penn State, knowing an investigation would uncover rules violations, skipped to the last page).

            Now the State of Pennsylvania has taken it’s pound of flesh, having convicted JerrySandusky of raping numerous boys, a case in which Penn State and its revered coach Joe Paterno, were all but unindicted co-conspirators.  And Paterno, having died, is getting his just reward from God himself (and finding out that he wasn’t God might be the cruelest punishment JoePa could suffer), Who, of course, knows exactly the extent and nature of Paterno’s guilt.

            But the NCAA, which holds itself above the duly constituted laws of the state and nation, has decided taking a backseat to God might give folks the wrong impression about who is omnipotent around here.

            Mark Emmert, the latest hairdo to serve as president of this August organization, has stepped up and proclaimed himself God.  At least Roger Goodell pretends to listen to a defense before handing down threats.

            Emmert, having put Penn State and the JoePa’s corpse in their places, will now presumably attempt to put Notre Dame on probation since the Catholic Church at it’s highest levels covered up child rape, the same crime for which Penn State stands, not so much accused by the NCAA as convicted. As for Baylor, it’s quite possible that Emmert will declare the death penalty for the Bears since they tried to cover up the murder of one of their own.

            The NCAA has ignored the rule of law here and they are doing it for PR reasons, the same reason that led Penn State to act as it did.

            But a closer inspection shows the penalties handed out are as meaningless as they are ridiculous.  Let’s take a closer look, shall we?

            First, let’s remember that Penn State’s football program made a profit of $43million last year. 

            So they’ve been fined $60 million, payable over five years.  That’s $12 million a year, leaving us with $31 million in profit. Then there is the $13 million in lost bowl money over four years, a loss of $3.25 million a year, leaving us with $27.75 million.  Then you have to add in the $280,000 a year the Nittany Lions will save from cutting 10 scholarships.  So the NCAA busted all precedent and threw out the rule of law in order to cut Penn State’s profit to $28 million a year.

            Then there is the 65-scholarship limit.  Well not exactly.  Recruiting is over this year, so they will have 85 on scholarship this year.  They lose 10 so they’ll have 75 on scholarship in 2013.  It won’t be until 2014 they’ll have 65 and then for just two years.

            And having 65 shouldn’t hurt.  That’s 3 deep on both sides of the ball. When was the last time you saw the fourth-stringer make a huge difference in big-time football?

Remember, Penn State, unlike SMU, doesn’t have 8 other instate teams to share it’s fertile recruiting home base.  It only deals with Pitt. Penn State will have to recruit a little smarter. But they can also tell recruits, “Son, we’re being super selective. We used to take only the best.  No we’re taking only the best of the best. Plus, if you come here, you’ll have less competition and a better chance to start.”

            Not to mention that they can tell their mamas that the program will be under such scrutiny that no one gets laid.

            Finally there is the bowl ban.  That will hurt.  But you can appeal to your current players’ pride and redshirt the next class so that they will be the first class to have a chance for a bowl.  It will be an honor.

            The bottom line is we won’t know if Penn State is suffering until the season starts. If they are selling out, then it’s all been for naught.

            But other schools need to be wary.  If Penn State can get hammered for not breaking the rules, so can you.  If the NCAA decides that the integrity of its member institutions is paramount, what happens when it realizes that Nick Saban makes 10 time what his boss does?  Or that Mack Brown is the highest paid employee of the state of Texas? Followed by Kevin Sumlin? Followed by Rick Barnes?  The NCAA adds very little to the football school and if they decide to walk, they can take the basketball tournament with them. 

            Of course, if they do, the NCAA will probably put Lamar on probation. 

You might be right, but you still aren't getting the guns

            I don’t own a gun.

            I am 43 years old and have lived in the South all my life.  Eleven years in Tennessee, 32 in Texas.  Growing up we had one gun in our house, an old carbine that belonged to my great-grandfather as legend had it.  Everyone once in a while my dad would go out and shoot it, reporting back to us that the bullets would go through trees.  I never saw him fire it, but Dad’s the most honest guy I know.

            I don’t have guns for a simple reason.  I have no reason to own one.  Crime is down significantly from the time when I was a child and I live in a low-crime area.  I have children in the house and as anyone with any curiosity knows, a gun in the house is six times more likely to injure a friend or family member than a bad guy.  I don’t hunt.  I prefer to stalk my meat in the aisles of my local H-E-B. 

            Most importantly, I believe I am free of the insecurity and machismo that seem to prerequisites for most people I know who own weapons.  The gun culture that has always pervaded the South and seems to be spreading across the nation comes from fear.  In the old days it was fear of the Indians (a realistic one) or fear of the slave uprising (a logical one, if not that realistic).  It has evolved into fear of The Other, to use a fancy literary term.

            When Hurricane Rita hit my hometown my father returned home almost before the storm had blown out.  He lives on five acres in a development about 10 miles out of Beaumont.  Beaumont had no power.  Streetlights weren’t working, power was out, gas stations couldn’t pump gas.  Our subdivision was worse. Heavily wooded trees made getting in or out problematic.  Dad had cut his way, having to walk the last quarter-mile to our house and use the tractor and chainsaw to get back.

            I was there on assignment and I tried to get him to come back with me.  Despite the fact that he was wobbling around on knees that needed replacing 20 years before and despite that fact that there was no way to call for help if he got hurt or sick he stayed.  Stayed there with the pistol he had inherited from my grandfather and, of course, Grandad’s old carbine.

            There was no looting going on in town and you can rest assured no one was going to waste precious gasoline to try to loot Bevil Oaks.  But he was staying and he wasn’t giving up his gun.  He was scared someone was going to take his stuff, so he was staying to fight them off, cowboy style.

            That’s the thing that gun owners forget.  They assume the bad guy will come calling, setting up a time to meet in the middle of the street, preferably High Noon, then the fastest will win.  It never enters their mind that the bad guys are likely to act out of self-interest when flouting the norm of decent society.  They never think their enemy might sneak up behind them, point the gun without so much as humming a Journey tune a moment before the screen suddenly goes black.

            The horrible news from Colorado has already brought out the gun control people, arguing that guns should be banned, an argument that is infantile and pointless.  It’s the right policy.  Guns do far, far more harm than good in this country.  One needs only look at a SWAT team outfitted like the Marines as they serve a warrant.  This militarization of the police is justified because they have to assume everyone has a gone, and they do.  No one is going to go hungry if all the guns are banned and a lot fewer people will be killed.

            Don’t listen to the fear mongers who want to tell you that guns are needed to defend us against muggers, rapists, druggies and other assorted misfits. And really don’t listen to the morons who tell you that we need guns to defend ourselves against a tyrannical government.  You really think you are going to bring down the tank, the RPG and that drone sneaking up behind you with the deer rifle?  There are a thousand reasons people will give to justify clinging to their guns. My favorite is heritage.  Well, I've got a family heritage with guns too and it's nothing to brag about.  

            There are no good arguments to allow this country to have such a lax gun policy.  But to all my liberal friends, especially those who aren’t from these parts, it doesn’t matter.  You are not going to get the guns.  The fear that creates the gun culture runs too deep and is too irrational.  We are having a run on guns because we elected a president who has never, not once, not a hint, not a single time made the slightest move toward gun control.

            You can bloviate all you want, but banning guns will be about as effective as banning marijuana.  You can talk a good game.  You can even throw a bunch of black people in jail. But the people who really own the guns aren’t giving them up.  They aren’t giving up the rifle their granddaddy used to show them how to hunt. They aren’t giving up the pistol Ma-Maw kept under her pillow. That gun is in their blood.

            You can get all fired up for a month or six months or a year or even until the next shooting. But you don’t care as much about getting the guns as my friends and family do about keeping them.  So you’ll keeping on yelling and you’ll keep on losing and the NRA will keep on raising a shit load of cash of your words.  And reasonable people who keep their guns locked in safes with the ammo locked in a separate safe, people like my dad who might be amenable to things such as registration, a ban on cop-killer bullets, better training an stricter laws against felons and lunatics wielding weapons, those people will feel the only options are all or nothing AND THEY WILL NOT GIVE UP THEIR GUNS.

            So you can ignore the fact that the salient point in Aurora, as it was in Columbine as it was in Oslo was some crazy motherfucker running around free because the treatment needed isn’t available and keep yelling about the guns.  You can continue to focus on the irrelevant and unchangeable or you can look hard and try to solve problems that are solvable.

It’s in my blood and I wouldn’t give up the family guns if I ended up in possession of them. I’d lock them away in a storage facility far from home, but I’ll be Goddamned if some Yankee liberal know-it-all son of a bitch is going to take my family’s guns.