American Sports Thread

[Rois]

Thanks J70 - a colleague of mine from Belfast works in our NY office and thought he could help me out with Knicks ones, but as it will probably be last minute I will def try the Nets.  It's just for the NBA experience, otherwise we could try to get to a college game in either Miami or NY but I'd rather go for NBA. 

The Knicks game I'd be there for is against Minnesota so not a glamour tie.  And just checked - the the Nets play Philadelphia when we're there (well, if it happens). 

[mc_grens]

Thanks J70 - a colleague of mine from Belfast works in our NY office and thought he could help me out with Knicks ones, but as it will probably be last minute I will def try the Nets.  It's just for the NBA experience, otherwise we could try to get to a college game in either Miami or NY but I'd rather go for NBA. 

The Knicks game I'd be there for is against Minnesota so not a glamour tie.  And just checked - the the Nets play Philadelphia when we're there (well, if it happens).

Go to the Knicks if at all possible. One of the NBA's best crowds.

[stew]

They will win the division easily regardless and probably have home field advantage.

I agree Seanie, i see them repeating and they will be a major factore for a decade to come, they are one of the youngest teams in the league.

Woodson will be moved to safety next season, time is starting to catch up with the man but he is a tremendous player, a bit like Paul McGrath, cant train during the week but shows up on Sundays and gets the job done like no other.

[Capt Pat]

Haynesworth just got cut by the Patriots.

[AZOffaly]

Sad story emanating from Pennsylvania the last couple of days. It looks as if Joe Paternos 46 year reign as head coach of Penn State is going to come to an end under very unsettling circumstances. Rumours abound that Paterno failed to report an incident of child sex abuse by one of his assistant coaches back in the early 2000s, and this man has since been charged with 8 counts, of which this is one. Chance are that Paterno will be fired, or resign, because of this, which will be a sorry end to a great career including the most Div 1 wins of all time.

Alex Ferguson is lauded rightly for his longevity as manager of Man United, but consider that when Paterno won his first game with the Nittany Lions (1966):

England had just won the World Cup, in Soccer!
No British team had ever won the European Cup.
Galway had just won the third of their 3 Sams in a row.
Lyndon B Johnson was president of the USA, after Kennedys assassination.
Pope Paul VI was in the Vatican
Dev was Irish PResident
Charles de Gaulle was a politician, not an Airport
Harold Wilson was PM of the UK.
The Vietnam War was in full swing
Jack Lynch was about to take over from Sean Lemass as taoiseach,



When you think about it, it is some time to be in one job, never mind a job like head coach of a big time programme like Penn State.

[Oraisteach]

It is a very sad story, AZ, not merely for Joe Pa and Penn State but of course for the kids involved.  Don't know all the particulars and was disappointed that Joe P's standard press conference ahead of the Nebraska game was cancelled.

The article by a diehard long-time Nittany Lion supporter on grantland.com is compelling reading.

It would be fair to say that "Happy Valley" is no longer the idyllic happy place it once seemed.

[Puckoon]

It is a very sad story, AZ, not merely remotely for Joe Pa and Penn State but of course for the kids involved.  Don't know all the particulars and was disappointed that Joe P's standard press conference ahead of the Nebraska game was cancelled.

The article by a diehard long-time Nittany Lion supporter on grantland.com is compelling reading.

It would be fair to say that "Happy Valley" is no longer the idyllic happy place it once seemed.

If there was so much as an inkling - then the legacy means nothing.

[Gabriel_Hurl]

I don't feel sorry for Joe Pa at all - the only ones that people should feel sorry for are those kids

[J70]

He's been fired, and rightly so. Its easy to sit in judgement and who knows how any of us would act in such difficult circumstances, but standards still have to be set and adhered to, especially with young children the victims. Close shades of what happened in the catholic church and Irish society for all those years with everyone passing the buck and turning a blind eye.

As for the moronic students rioting last night after his sacking....

[stew]

I don't feel sorry for Joe Pa at all - the only ones that people should feel sorry for are those kids

Agree 100%.

Paterno did report the incident to his AD as it was told him by someone else on the campus, that was all he did, he is in no danger of getting in trouble with the law however he failed to follow up and make sure the incident was being handled, not only that but the alleged rapist of multiple boys continued to work out at the campus as late as last week, that is reprehensible and Paterno should have been fired, they need to clean house.

The absolute worst though was the bastard intern who saw this child being raped, he saw what the kid being raped, what was his repsonse? to call hid daddy who told him to get the fcuk outta there, he left the kid to get raped and his father endorsed it by taking care of his son, they should do time and probably will as they lied under oath. I hope the cnuts rot in jail.

Penn State is no more, I will forever call the school State Penn because they are a corrupt, evil shower of bastards who put the almighty dollar over the safety of over 40 kids raped by this bastard since.

paterno is not legally responsible but he is by moral standards, he needed to go and I will shed no tears for him, were was his empathy for the victims, his legacy is forever tarnished due to this situation and he has no one to blame but himself.

[stew]

I was one of two coaching directors at the club I coach for, there were severe doubts about one of the coaches in the club who had been acting weird for the three years he had been coaching, he was supposed to be fired by my fellow director the year before but he is a fan of the guy and kept him around. The upshot of it was he had taken pictures of 13 year old girls in the swimming pool and no one ever saw the pictures and he had taken one of the kids to a game 30 miles away without the parents permission, shit like that he was at all the time.

I had two conversations with him and told him he was on his last legs and that he had to have an assistant with him at all times, practices and games, he freaked out, another red flag.

The final straw was when he sent the president of the clubs daughter a facebook friend request on her 15th birthday, she was having dinner with her family and she look at her phone and said" who is this creeper" her dad looked at it and went ballistic, he was the one who wanted the guy fired the year before but he stepped down as his term was up.

His older daughter was there and he had also contacted her, in fact, after investigation it came out that he had over 200 female friends on facebook and 3 male friends, his brothers and a cousin. The youngest of his friends was 11 and he had even started to branch out and hit up the clubs players friends who were 11 and 12.

I wanted him gone, you cannot take a chance, my fellow Director said no, that he had worked hard to bring the guy back and he would vouch for him, given the fact that people had finally stepped up and come forward with stories about this guy and more things surfaced it went to the committee, when it became apparent my votes to oust him would carry the day the new President, who was a family friend decided she would decide what to do, .......................she put him on probation.

The reason for this drawn out story is this, by the time two members of the board were finished, this guys woes were my fault, the parents of the childrens
fault and the children themselves fault, they blamed everybody except the coach himself, the kids were at fault because apparently you have to be thirteen to be on facebook.

I resigned  but before I did I got to fire the fcuker because he was seen to poke the breast of a 14 year old girl prior to a game, he was adamant he had nothing done wrong and I told him i was disgusted by him and that he was not to be anywhere near the sidelines of any of our teams games, we own the land and he is not welcome there ever again.

Based on this experience I can tell you that people do not want to deal with issues like this, they would rather hide in a hole in the ground and pretend it is not happening, I found the parents cowards because they didn't want their names used and I also saw the worst of people, the people who will stoop to blaming the children rather than admit there is a problem with a grown adult.

I would say that there would have been a lot of similar feelings going at State Penn, the people who cannot hold Paterno accountable for his inaction because of what he means to them, in our case the coach is under investigation as we speak and the club tightened up their policies considerably, we also had a 26 year old coach from a club across town who claimed he thought he was in a boyfriend/girlfriend relationship with a 14 year old girl who was not even old enough to attend high school, he picked her up from her middle school three days in a row and had sex with her each day. The mind boggles.

[Tyrones own]

He's been fired, and rightly so. Its easy to sit in judgement and who knows how any of us would act in such difficult circumstances, but standards still have to be set and adhered to, especially with young children the victims. Close shades of what happened in the catholic church and Irish society for all those years with everyone passing the buck and turning a blind eye.

As for the moronic students rioting last night after his sacking....[b/]

Shows the mentality of these protesters....riot and wreck the place
over the firing of a coach yet not a peep about the disgusting acts against
these poor kids 
The latest being reported now is that the kids were being pimped out to wealthy
donors  if this turns out to be true the f**king roof will come down on the whole thing and rightly so!

[mc_grens]

He's been fired, and rightly so. Its easy to sit in judgement and who knows how any of us would act in such difficult circumstances, but standards still have to be set and adhered to, especially with young children the victims. Close shades of what happened in the catholic church and Irish society for all those years with everyone passing the buck and turning a blind eye.

As for the moronic students rioting last night after his sacking....[b/]

Shows the mentality of these protesters....riot and wreck the place
over the firing of a coach yet not a peep about the disgusting acts against
these poor kids 
The latest being reported now is that the kids were being pimped out to wealthy
donors  if this turns out to be true the f**king roof will come down on the whole thing and rightly so!

The people who rioted absolutely disgust me.

[stew]

He's been fired, and rightly so. Its easy to sit in judgement and who knows how any of us would act in such difficult circumstances, but standards still have to be set and adhered to, especially with young children the victims. Close shades of what happened in the catholic church and Irish society for all those years with everyone passing the buck and turning a blind eye.

As for the moronic students rioting last night after his sacking....[b/]

Shows the mentality of these protesters....riot and wreck the place
over the firing of a coach yet not a peep about the disgusting acts against
these poor kids 
The latest being reported now is that the kids were being pimped out to wealthy
donors  if this turns out to be true the f**king roof will come down on the whole thing and rightly so!

The people who rioted absolutely disgust me.

Times two mcgrens

[Club Rossa]

Chargers are in meltdown.Didn't see the Raiders winning that one without McFadden but Bush had a good game.