Michael Bérubé - American Airspace

Back at home

“Michael,” no one has recently said to me, “you’re the Paterno Family Professor in Literature at Penn State and yet you never blog about college football. Why is that? Is there a clause about this in your contract somewhere?”

No, there are no clauses in my contract—it’s just that I know relatively little about college football and do not want to embarrass myself or anyone else at Penn State by suggesting that USC is overrated or that Virginia Tech should run more play actions from a broken-I formation or that the way to contain the Longhorns is to present them with eight defensive backs and blitz, blitz, blitz. You’ll not hear such things from me, I assure you.

But I will admit that over the past four years, I have heard a rumor or two about Penn State football. A small but vocal chorus of critics across the country has pointed out that Penn State has fallen on hard times of late, and that these hard times just happen to coincide with my arrival here in 2001. I’ve argued time and again that (a) we actually had a good year in 2002, except for some very strange officiating in Ann Arbor, which I’ll get back to later in this post, (b) our defense has never wavered all this time—it’s just been a question of getting some speed and power in the offense now that we no longer have a Larry Johnson-like back in the backfield, and (c) it is not customary to blame literature professors for a football team’s performance. But do these critics listen? No, they do not listen. “Bérubé must go,” they say, fingers in ears.

So I hope you all were paying attention this weekend. Penn State is now ranked eighth in the nation, having beaten sixth-ranked Ohio State 17-10 this past Saturday. On ESPN, in prime time. And together with 109,867 of our fellow humans, Janet and I were at the game.

More specifically, we had a pair of seats in the President’s Suite. No, we don’t do this kind of thing very often. This was our first-ever invitation to the President’s Suite. The invite (from President Spanier’s office) arrived about six weeks ago, and when I opened it, I thought, hey, Ohio State, October 8! Hmmm—that might be fun, but jeez, we’re going to be overmatched. Over the first three weeks, as Penn State went 3-0 against various Piñata State teams while the Buckeyes lost a heartbreaker to Texas, I didn’t see much reason to revise that assessment, though our flashy freshmen, Justin King and Derrick Williams, did seem like exciting players to watch. Then we pulled off a comeback against Northwestern; down 23-7, we rallied for a 34-29 victory on Michael Robinson’s last-minute pass to Williams (on a drive that started with a 4th-and-15 deep in our own zone). “Yeah, but that was Northwestern,” people said. “All you did was prove you could beat a weak team despite turning the ball over fifteen times (or thereabouts) in the first half.” Northwestern bounced back from that defeat (and a bye week) to win a shootout with Wisconsin this weekend, 51-48, in a game played with a live pig instead of a traditional football. But of course, no one could know that then, so we didn’t get credit for beating a decent team.

And then last week, back home in State College, the Nittany Lions ran for over three thousand yards (or thereabouts) against then-number-18 Minnesota, en route to a 44-14 trouncing of the lusterless Golden Gophers. I watched the second half on TV, and after we went up 27-7 early in the third quarter, the announcers suggested that we should start thinking about putting together a long, ball-control drive that would eat up the clock. Eat up the clock? That’s for wusses! We control the ball by running options and reverses for twenty, twenty-five yards at a clip, folks. So we scored again three minutes later. Speed kills! It’s so true. By the time that weekend was over, we were number 16 in the AP poll, and the pregame excitement for Ohio State began last Monday morning. On Tuesday, when ESPN announced that GameDay would be coming to our happy little valley, people began to run madly in circles until their heads exploded. Hundreds of students camped out in tents outside Beaver Stadium, creating what became known as Paternoville. Home jerseys flew off the racks at the local clothing stores. It was really cool, not least because no one took any of it for granted: yes, I was told, this kind of thing used to happen around here all the time, but back in those days, everyone associated with Penn State simply assumed it was their birthright. This time, it was tinged with all kinds of anticipation—and some worry: no one (either on ESPN or anywhere else) picked us to win this game. By Saturday afternoon, the smart money was saying that the Nittany Lions would lose a close one.

But now Janet and I had skybox seats in the President’s Suite for the biggest home game in six years, not to mention invitations to the pre-game President’s tailgate, which began three hours before kickoff, at 4:45. Janet hired someone to hang out with Jamie for the evening (he doesn’t really have “babysitters” anymore); she arrived at 4, and we left the house at . . . 5. One of us was ready to leave at 4, and one of us was ready at 5. Suffice it to say that in some respects we are a traditionally gendered household.

As a result, we got to the tailgate a bit late, and learned that we were seated at a table that included (alongside a few of our faculty colleagues) NCAA president Myles Brand, his senior assistant Wally Renfro, and Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany. At the next table were Ed Rendell and his wife Midge, as well as Cynthia Baldwin, chair of Penn State’s Board of Trustees, and her husband Art. In the course of the evening we spoke briefly to Brand, Renfro, and Rendell; on the shuttle bus after the game, Ms. Baldwin talked to us about her English M.A. thesis on the fiction of W. E. B. DuBois. You know, just your average football weekend in a college town.

Two things about the skyboxes: one, it is true that watching the game from a box is like being at the game at one remove. We’ve been in the stands and in the boxes, and the stands are certainly more intense. (In fact, the first game Janet and I attended just happened to be the October 27, 2001 comeback victory over Ohio State in which Joe Paterno passed Bear Bryant’s record for wins (323) by a Division-I coach. Note to interested Penn State readers: the Nittany Lions are now 2-0 in home games against the Buckeyes when Janet and I attend the game.) But two, it is not true that people in the boxes spend their time chatting and hobnobbing. Not on a night like this. On the contrary, everyone was intent on the game from the kickoff to the seal-the-deal sack by Tamba Hali with just over a minute to play. The people around me (including me!) groaned mightily at Jeremy Kapinos’ opening punt of eleven yards (yes, you read that right), which set up Ohio State’s field goal, and we screamed at Calvin Lowry for failing to field an Ohio State punt a bit later on, even if only to call for a fair catch (it took a Buckeye bounce and wound up as a 60-yard kick). But a few minutes later, when Lowry intercepted a pass in Ohio State territory and ran it back to the Buckeye one-yard line, we decided to forgive him. By that point we were up 7-3, thanks not only to the speed of Robinson and Williams (who scampered 11 yards for the touchdown), but also to Joe Pa’s decision to go for it on 4th-and-2 from the Ohio State 35.

The second half was less than pretty. After regaining a seven-point lead on Kevin Kelley’s 41-yard field goal, the Lions basically decided to go to the run-run-scramble-punt offense the rest of the way, betting that our defensive speed and savvy would chase the Buckeyes all over the field and shut them down. This turned out to be a good bet, but it had the effect of muting the crowd somewhat; at one point, in fact, people booed the offense as they left the field after another three-and-out. What in the world was that? “You’re 5-0 and up by seven against the number six team in the country with eight minutes to play,” I pointed out to the assembled 110,000. “You really shouldn’t boo the blue team under these circumstances.” “Sorry about that,” replied the 110,000. “We’re just nervous. You’re right, we’ll chant DEE-fense instead.” They really were nervous, not least because of that well-known law of football physics: the team whose offense fails to pick up a first down for the final twenty minutes of play and whose defense yields a tying touchdown in the final minutes invariably loses in overtime. But on this damp and raw Saturday night, there would be no tying touchdown, and there would be no overtime. And just like that, I’m teaching at a school whose football team is in the top ten, and chatting with the chair of the Board of Trustees about W. E. B. DuBois on the way back from the game. Congrats to the whole team, and especially to the truly tenacious D, led this time by linebacker Paul Posluszny—who had fourteen tackles and a sack, and who covered so much lateral ground that on a couple of plays, I wondered whether Penn State was playing two or three guys with the number 31.

Next week we play Michigan at Michigan. Now, last time Penn State visited the Big House, two funny things happened. First, near the end of the third quarter, James Millon tipped a Michigan punt and then tipped over the punter. Keen-eyed Big Ten officials saw the second tip but not the first (though both were clear as day on replay), and as a result, Penn State did not get the ball at midfield with a six-point lead, but, rather, was hit with a roughing-the-kicker penalty that gave the ball back to the Wolverines so that they could come down the field and score to go up 14-13. Ah, but Penn State kept fighting back, and with forty seconds to play and the score tied at 21, Zack Mills threw a pass that receiver Tony Johnson caught at the Michigan 22. Now, you all probably know that in college ball, a receiver needs only to have one foot in bounds in order to make the catch. Tony Johnson went up for the ball, and his first foot came down in bounds. Then his second foot also came down in bounds. Actually, his second foot came down about six or seven inches from the sideline. It wasn’t even close, and it couldn’t have been any less ambiguous if Johnson had also landed with both elbows in bounds and had begun to draw circles in the grass with them. But this was in Ann Arbor, where officials sometimes see things differently than you or I might, and Johnson was ruled out of bounds. We lost 27-24 in overtime.

In other words, we wuz robbed, robbed in broad daylight. And I don’t imagine that anyone around here has forgotten about it. So next week should be just as interesting as this week was.

Go Lions.

Posted by on 10/10 at 01:51 PM

Better be careful. According to my calendar, you’re scheduled to give a talk here (Ann Arbor) in about a month. Personally, I don’t want to be sitting in the middle of a bunch of angry Wolverine fans that day.

Posted by air on 10/10 at 03:24 PM
Go Blue.

Posted by Bob Davis on 10/10 at 03:39 PM
Oh, I’m supposed to be speaking at that University of Michigan? Now you tell me. Well, I’ve always liked Red Berenson, who’s been coaching the hockey team for the past twenty years. I wish you many more trips to the Frozen Four. But that 2002 Penn State game was a travesty. Really.

Go blue and white.

Posted by Michael on 10/10 at 03:43 PM
You are! Penn State!

Posted by DocMara on 10/10 at 04:04 PM
Michael,

You forgot one agonizing detail about the 2002 Michigan game: It was clear that Tony Johnson came down inbounds because his feet tore up a six-inch long patch of turf that was inside the field of play. They didn’t even need replay--they could have just made life the chair judges at the French Open, who walk over to the mark the ball made in the clay to determine if they missed a call. Considering that only came a week after he chased down the official at the Iowa game, I’m still surprised Paterno didn’t Lord of the Flies and try to spear an official with the down marker after that one.

Posted by on 10/10 at 04:12 PM
In your usual snide manner you hint at an important topic, but don’t really address it--the ethical status of college athletics, for better or worse. Why is say Paterno some minor American Deity (or Lombardi or Bear Bryant and 1000s of jocks as well) and say Paul Fussell or Behe are not? Obvious, yes. Nowhere in the world do the jocks and coaches have such prestige as they do in college and pro sports of the USA.

Colleges are not even really about education so much anymore, at least to the public--they are about football games, bowl games, TV shows, ratings. The alumni clubs are about getting together at bars to watch the Alma Mater get creamed by Texas or Okie or Cali thugs. Wow. The rare alum who is not behind the jocks and AD is viewed as a deviant if not commie-pinko.

Posted by Bing Bada Boom on 10/10 at 04:29 PM
Oops, the Michigan game was two weeks after Iowa. That might explain JoePa’s diminished bloodlust.

Posted by on 10/10 at 04:29 PM
Well, Mr. Boom, much of what you say is true. But Joseph V. Paterno just happens to be a Classics major with an M.A. in American literature who sight-reads Latin and counts Virgil as his favorite poet. And who donated more than three million dollars to the Penn State library (not to mention funding two Paterno Family chairs, one of them in the English department and one of them in the library itself). All while running a program with among the highest graduation rates in the country and no NCAA violations of any kind. That’s why he’s a minor American Deity, and that’s why I’m one of his millions of fans.

As for your claim that nowhere in the world do the jocks and coaches have such prestige as they do in college and pro sports of the USA, have you been to any soccer-playing nations lately? Have you asked anyone in Japan or the Dominican Republic about the MLB playoffs or the Little League world series? Or talked to any Canadians about the return of the NHL? Don’t get me wrong—I’m all for a world in which a showdown between Richard Rorty and Simon Blackburn draws a crowd of 110,000 and is televised by ABC, and in which the Butler-Nussbaum finals are held in Centre Court and beamed around the world. But we Americans are not alone in not living in that world.

Posted by on 10/10 at 04:43 PM
Michael: Although Mr. Boom overstates the case, there is a very clear difference between the examples you cite—yes, enthusiasm over athletics appears to be near universal—and the, ahem, peculiar American system wherein the NCAA Division 1A universities run at their own considerable expense the minor league and talent scouting agencies of the NFL, NBA, NHL and (or a lesser extent) MLB.

With all due gratitude for Mr. Paterno’s bequests back to Penn, I rather suspect that the balance of accounts is still vastly stacked in the opposite direction.

Posted by Doctor Memory on 10/10 at 04:49 PM
Michael, how could you help sponsor these regrettable examples of typical American Paternolism?

Posted by on 10/10 at 04:53 PM
oooh wouldn’t it be nice if we could experience a re-enactment of those fine days at the Coliseum when the lions fought the bruins. As an undergraduate and graduate alumnus of that other university in Los Angeles--not the one that fancies itself on top of the rankings with its idiotic white horse ridden by some brad pitt clone--i am struggling to stay hopeless so as not to experience the rush of silly pride from bleeding powder blue and gold when that game happens in the LA Coliseum on December 3rd. Should the team continue to be successful (hopeless i be due to too many years of despair and frustration) thence it might be possible for Penn State to play UCLA in the Rose Bowl.

Is that too much to ask?? Well, the reinvigorated Water Polo Team(my sport along with swimming) just defeated the #1 ranked Cal Bears Saturday morning, thus such victories are possible. Congrats to your Lions, and if all pans out by December 31st, we might even be able to come up with something to bet. And isn’t this particular freshman class of athletes an especially good one??

Posted by on 10/10 at 05:16 PM
Nonesense, Michael: you appear to know a great deal about football. I would simply point out that no drive in the history of the game has ever *started* with a 4th and 15.

Posted by on 10/10 at 05:17 PM
I’m a traditionalist about sports. As far as I’m concerned, it’s not really a ball game unless it’s played with the severed heads of your vanquished opponents.

Call me old-fashioned…

Posted by on 10/10 at 05:41 PM
Doctor Memory is right to call our attention to

the, ahem, peculiar American system wherein the NCAA Division 1A universities run at their own considerable expense the minor league and talent scouting agencies of the NFL, NBA, NHL and (or a lesser extent) MLB.

But he’s right more about the “revenue-producing” sports like football and basketball than about the NHL and MLB, which, unlike the NFL and NBA, have extensive minor-league systems—into which, it should be noted, the collegiate ranks were only recently integrated. Which is also to say that it was rare for young athletes in baseball and hockey to attend college before the 1970s.

Posted by Michael on 10/10 at 05:58 PM
Paternio...Virgilio....Pigskin fever?

Square-skis, man. What’s next, Berube does Blues for Richard Nixon?

Posted by Daddy-O on 10/10 at 06:22 PM
I’m a little surpised to see myself comment here, for I underwent a horrifying loss Saturday as my Bears lost to UCLA. Life must go on.

I am not surprised to find the hostile, combative, and snide comments about college athleticism and the personal, shitty remarks of the “elite” brains who prowl here (What’s next, Berube does Blues for Richard Nixon?).

After being a fan and student of college football thirty years, rooting for an academic school that is not a football factory and that has an excellent graduation rate, I can say this:

All the inevitable human abuses of college football are glady tolerated because so many alum, students and sports nuts love the game and happily take home the huge plusses from the simple enjoyment of a game.

Humans having fun. That’s all. If you’ve got some serious beef with college football, well, manipulation of players might garner some sympathy from me. Otherwise please shut the fuck up and let Mr. Berube have some fun.

Shame. The no-nothings and anti-intellectual forces in this country thrive on your snotty disdain. You make us dumber with sneers at college football.

Go Bears!

Posted by paradox on 10/10 at 06:47 PM
Michael - Maybe the rumors that you were the bad-luck charm for the Nittany Lions started because of your undergrad association with the Columbia Lions, who were then just about to start the process of amassing their longest-losing-streak-*ever* title (losing 44 games before finally beating Princeton at homecoming in 1988—which was suh-weet, btw—almost made up for that whole Hamilton-Burr thing). Of course, since they didn’t start losing continuously until right after you *left*, maybe that means you’re actually a *good* luck charm and you critics, as always, are just confused.

More important: when are you speaking at UMich and is it open to the public?

Posted by Tina on 10/10 at 07:16 PM
I 10-4 that sentiment Paradox, and you know as well I do that there’s really no need for these sob sisters and malcontent types to berate Doc Berube. Berube’s one tough customer and I’m sure he could fend for himself and stick these little sniveling pansies were they man enough to show their miserable punk-asses around the gym.

GO LIONS

Posted by Coach Putolavski on 10/10 at 07:18 PM
Hey, paradox, thanks for the shout, but rest assured there’s no reason for me (or anyone else) to take these hostile-snide-combative comments personally. Or seriously. Coach Putolavski, Daddy-O, and Bing Bada Boom are all the same guy, and he’s been here before. Last time around he was mightily delighted with himself for “fooling” me by commenting under different names and IP addresses. And was I ever fooled!

Tina, I’ll be leading a class on disability and narrative, following from my recent PMLA essay, and presenting a paper on the post-9/11 left—very much like the one I did at U Delaware, but more streamlined. That one, I think, had too many notes. I believe the second talk is open to the public.

Posted by on 10/10 at 07:29 PM
You got me Detective! Yr right, I am being nice and not using proxies, O Sage of Eastern Pennsylvania. Did I break a rule or something? Anyhoo I have about 40,000 other addresses, so go ahead and block me, Crimefighter.

Yr another neo-con pretending to be a ‘head. Admit it: you have some Chrissy Hitchens essays tucked underneath your favorite Schports Illustrated, frat boy.

Posted by Sam Spade on 10/10 at 07:46 PM
I concur, Mr. Spade. Berube puts on the act as the Onion-gonzo satirist type, but as Zappa and the Mothers said years ago, he’s Only In It for the Money. Paterno, egads. But I suspect even FZ manga is a bit above the Berube the Company Man; it is he who should be ignored, and filed under “Academic Literary Hacks, East Coast, Misc.”

Posted by Sal Paradise on 10/10 at 08:15 PM
Joe Paterno gets paid how much?

And star English profs get less, but still more than most people, yeah?

And the President of Penn State does all right, I’m sure.

The only people who get shafted are the unpaid student athletes.

Oh, yeah, and at my (not unusual school) everybody else: the athletic department has a four million buck annual deficit, which is covered by tuition.

I wouldn’t expect Mike to care about, oh, exploited grad students. Somebody’s gotta teach freshman comp. But missing the injustice done to unpaid, exploited student athletes? It takes a free trip to the president’s box to achieve that.

BTW, Penn State may have great football, but academically the place is pretty mediocre.

Posted by on 10/10 at 08:42 PM
Paradox - the staggering “snatching defeat from the jaws of victory” Cal loss to UCLA was the fault of my friend’s new boyfried. He’s not a big sports guy, and has no clue. Early in the 4th quarter he put a major whammy on us by saying of Cal, “Oh, don’t worry. They got this game won”.

Game over.

Suffice it to say, he’s deep,deep, deep in the doghouse and will not make that mistake again.

Posted by on 10/10 at 09:06 PM
In other words, we wuz robbed, robbed in broad daylight. And I don’t imagine that anyone around here has forgotten about it.

No one here in Lincoln has forgotten a bright afternoon in Happy Valley just 23 years ago when an official ruled that certain Penn State receivers require *zero* feet in bounds for fourth down ball control receptions on game winning touchdown drives with less than a minute to play. Only game the Huskers “lost” that year. ( Years later the receiver confessed to being out of bounds. )

As a game football is structurally flawed because so much of the outcome depends on the arbiters’ vision and interpretation. Their job is physically demanding, made harder by rules that sometimes require divining the intent of a player—a quarterback can legally throw the ball to the ground to stop the clock, can legally throw the ball out of bounds to avoid an intercepted pass, and can be penalized for intentional grounding of the football. Institutionalized situational ethics.

Posted by on 10/11 at 09:13 AM
black dog, 1982 is ancient history. This should be a happy time! Let’s not bicker and argue about who was “out” of “bounds.” After all, it’s just a game!

But that’s an interesting link to McCloskey you provide there. Tell you what—you Cornhuskers can have that one call back, and we N. Lions can have a share of the 1994 national title. Deal?

O. Girl, you say your friend’s boyfriend is a “big sports guy,” and yet he appears not to know better than to comment on a game in progress? To declare it over, no less? Sounds to me like he’s never watched a game on TV before.

Which reminds me: with regard to baseball games, does the TV viewer have more power over the ball when s/he watches the pitcher or the batter?

Posted by Michael on 10/11 at 09:44 AM
Wally maybe is confusing Penn State with Penn when he claims they’re only mediocre academically. Shame on you, Wally.

Fight on State!

Posted by on 10/11 at 10:07 AM
The only thing possibly lower in the food chain than Padre Paterno’s Nittany Lions would have to be a mutha-f-n Cornhusker. When those red-sweatered puercos arrive to destroy the pastoral bliss of Flatiron Village, it’s time for reasonable subversives to head to a Denver stripclub for the weekend.

Like, Go Buffalos

Posted by Bing Bada Boom on 10/11 at 11:05 AM
so this one is the game with the pointy ball, right? and the other one has hooky sticks and a flat wood thing.

I learn so much hanging with the academics…

Posted by julia on 10/11 at 11:54 AM
"so this one is the game with the pointy ball, right? and the other one has hooky sticks and a flat wood thing. “

The puck is not wood. It only seems like it because it is frozen. It is actually a frozen rubber.

Posted by on 10/11 at 01:56 PM
So, did Rendell challenge anyone to throw anything at the Ohio State bench? I understand an incident like that is the only thing holding him back from a presidential run.

Posted by on 10/11 at 01:58 PM
I’m just glad that the solid Penn State start means they’re won’t be any efforts to get you onto the field for any remaining eligibility you might have.

Posted by Bulworth on 10/11 at 02:26 PM
"the ball when s/he watches the pitcher or the batter?”

my money would be on impacting the batter, in the Babe Ruth tradition of focussing collective attention on hitting home runs. It is hard to visualize the next pitch in a collective consciousness sort of way, unless one is part of the technologically savvy sign stealing systems employed by the various ball clubs.

Posted by on 10/11 at 03:28 PM
My, Michael’s innocent support of Penn State football (my second favorite team, I’m a grad of Maryland) brought out more venom than his political satire. Some folks need to chill!

Posted by on 10/11 at 04:37 PM
Undoubtedly, some people (really, one person) could stand to chill. But Wally up there has a point: I have long insisted that graduate students who teach freshman composition should also be required to serve drinks to senior faculty in the President’s Suite at home games. Why? Because I’m not just in it for the money—I’m also in it for the perks.

Posted by Michael on 10/11 at 04:44 PM
Michael - I’m prone to typos for sure, but not this time! I said my friend’s new boyfriend is NOT a big sports guy. See, this is what happens when you read a gazillion words per second!

And yes, the new boyfriend is currently undergoing intensive “Sports Fan 101” tutoring.

Posted by on 10/11 at 06:13 PM
My profuse apologies, Oaktown Girl. That’s what happens when I read a gazillion words a second—minus one word.

I hope the “Sports Fan 101” tutoring includes injunctions not only against saying “they got this game won” but also against saying “hey, we haven’t picked up a single penalty,” speaking blithely about something called “momentum,” and pointing out that your guy is in the midst of pitching a no-hitter.

Posted by Michael on 10/11 at 06:28 PM
Earlier comment on unpaid student athletes: there are perhaps 5 or 10 Penn State football players who are economically exploited. A disproportionate number of them are African American and this is not an easy problem. But the vast majority of student athletes, at Penn State or elsewhere, are NOT exploited. They receive a free education of approximately $25,000. There are so many of them, and so many with the dream of playing college football, that they couldn’t possibly unionize. So if we had an unexploited free market, most would get paid far less than $25,000 (as the difference between them and the next guy on the depth chart just isn’t that much).

Posted by on 10/11 at 11:05 PM
Yes, the boyfriend has had the whole whammy thing explained to him in great detail...in words of one syllable (except for academic, I couldn’t fine an acceptable single syllable substitute), that is is NOT all right for Cal to lose a game “so long as they still win their division or whatever”.

He actually is a sports kind of guy, played football in school, but just never really believed in the concept of whammies before. Now he’s spending so much time with a CAPB that he’s learning they can be dangerous (ask Oaktown Girl what I did to poor ref Phil Luckett one Thanksgiving back in the late 90’s)

Kiera

Posted by on 10/13 at 09:41 AM

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