The Assassination of Bobby Bowden by the Coward Florida State

If you are fortunate enough to live long enough and be really good at something, you may have to deal with forced retirement, just because you are perceived to be too old. I’ve never liked Florida State, or the state of Florida. I don’t like Bobby Bowden, but it is with a mix of sadness and satisfaction and historical relief that I mark his forced retirement from being the head coach of Florida State for 34 years.
It’s tough to see a living legend be forced out by the university before he felt it was his time to go. That he had bowed to the pressure of naming a head-coach-in-waiting and set off the ticking clock did him no favors.

Florida State’s “tradition” of dominance had fallen in recent years, but not nearly to the depths that his contemporary, Joe Paterno, had dealt with from 2000-2004. Over that span, Penn State was 26-33 with only one winning season and one bowl appearance.

The years 2000-2004 were tough for Paterno (who is five years older than Bobby), when had to deal with incessant retirement questions. There was talk of him being forced out. I never thought it would come to that, but that’s not to say I wasn’t worried. There was a lot of pressure on Joe, and the media and rabid, stupid fans can drive you (i.e., me) insane. I’m thankful that Penn State University had enough courage and loyalty to its legendary coach to stick with him in the fallow years. Their reward has been a 50-13 mark from 2005-2009, and yet another recruiting class (for 2010) that is rumored to be second best in the nation.

Compare Bowden’s 2005-Present, where he is 37-27, with zero losing seasons and four – soon to be five – bowl appearances, having split the previous four 2-2. How embarrassing. Let’s take him out back and beat the shit out of him.. The contrast to Florida State’s handling of Bowden’s exit is so jarringly different that it is difficult to watch, much less comprehend. Here’s a man who (hey, let’s not quibble about records – Joe will now not have to look over his shoulder at Bowden for most wins ever) is a fantastic coach who built Florida State football up from nothing. NOTHING. And his reward would have been the university allowing him to keep coaching in a limited capacity in his final year. Like a pet figurehead. Bobby said thanks, but no thanks. Who can blame him?

It’s a sad way to treat your living legend. I hope for a little more from Florida State. A little. On the other hand, this could also be exactly what I expected: stay classy FSU.

The Night College Football Went to Hell

To this day the most satisfying Penn State victory ever is the 1987 Fiesta Bowl, a game where the underdog of all underdogs fought and won an impossible victory against a swaggering juggernaut. The most satisfying article on the subject is the following piece by Michael Weinreb written for ESPN the magazine. The link is here, but as links tend to break, here’s the article in its entirety. Enjoy.
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The Night College Football Went to Hell
Two decades later, and the real world has been kind to the quarterback, even if no one can remember his name. He lives in what can only be described as a sprawling manifestation of the American dream, an enormous stucco house on a tree-lined cul-de-sac in a tony New Jersey suburb. He has a wife, and he has four children, and he has a den with a wet bar and a pool table, and until recently, when corporate restructuring rendered him a temporary stay-at-home father, he had spent 18 years as a star at Merrill Lynch.

Hardly a household name, John Shaffer won a national title and lost only one game as the starting QB at Penn State.

John Shaffer. The name, like the way he played quarterback, is bland and forgettable, which is why few people outside of the state of Pennsylvania even recall it anymore. When he graduated from Penn State as an academic All-American in the spring of 1987, he had a national championship ring and a reputation as a solid citizen who had no legitimate shot of making it in the National Football League. He went to training camp with the Dallas Cowboys as an undrafted free agent. By the end of August, he did something that many football players could never muster the courage to do: He asked to be cut. He had a degree in finance, with an internship waiting on Wall Street. He had another life to start. Maybe, he says now, he could have hung around for a couple of years, could have made a roster as someone's second or third option, could have spent that time aspiring to be something he'd probably never be. Maybe, if he had lost that one game, on a January evening in the Arizona desert, he would have felt he had to aspire to something more. Maybe, if he had lost that game, his entire life might have unfolded differently. But that was the thing about John Shaffer: He was one of those quarterbacks who specialized in not losing, one of those quarterbacks you hardly see anymore in major college football, one of those quarterbacks who not only shows up for class but actually cares about his classes, one of those quarterbacks whose job is not to alter the course of the game but simply not to screw the damn thing up. Shaffer was not fleet of foot, and he did not have a prodigious arm, and while he was broad-shouldered and generically handsome, he was not an imposing physical presence. Yet, in all of his games as a starter dating back to the seventh grade, Shaffer won 66 times and lost only once, on New Year's Day 1986, to Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl. This is not the story of that game. This is the story of a game that took place exactly one year and one day later, the last game, the best game, and the most important game Shaffer ever played. And it's a funny thing. Because if you go by the statistics of that night, if you measure a performance purely by the numbers, John Shaffer could not have been worse.

WINSTON MOSS, LINEBACKER, UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI: "Their quarterback? I don't remember their quarterback."

DON MEYERS, FIESTA BOWL SELECTION COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: "Joe (Paterno) had this quarterback -- I think his name was Shaffer. Joe told me, 'He'll never get a call from an NFL team.' I do think Shaffer would have a hard time playing big-time college football today."

BEANO COOK, COLLEGE FOOTBALL HISTORIAN: "Penn State had less firepower than Sweden did in World War II."

DANIEL STUBBS, DEFENSIVE END, MIAMI: "They couldn't throw the ball! All night, we're screaming at them, saying, 'Throw the ball!' They couldn't do it!"

But this was not the type of game you could judge by numbers. This was a game that turned every number and every statistical notion and every prediction upside down. This was a game shaped by its own hype and pregame story lines, by its own bloated sense of self-importance, by the fact that it served as a thumb in the eye of the bowl system and its antiquated sense of propriety.

This was Jan. 2, 1987, and for the first time, the college football season had been extended beyond New Year's Day. Because of a quirk in the system, because Miami was ranked No. 1 and Penn State was ranked No. 2, and both schools were independents at the time, with no ties to any conferences, meaning no affiliations with any specific bowls, the Fiesta Bowl landed the dream matchup. Before this, the Fiesta had been second-tier, unable to stand up to the cabal of Rose, Cotton, Sugar and Orange, but now the Fiesta Bowl was in the right place at the right time, and so was NBC, which took the radical step of shifting the game to a Friday night and preempting its most popular television show to make room for, of all things, a college football game.
Two decades later, the men who played that game have become stock traders and broadcasters and salesmen and coaches and ministers. Some have fallen ill, and some have died, and some have spent time in police custody and some have spent time in the Canadian Football League and two of them, a punter and a quarterback from Miami, have defied the laws of genetics and are still playing in the NFL. But wherever they may be, wherever they may end up, they will remain united by this moment, a game between two teams with such contrasting styles that it felt like maybe something much larger was at stake, that maybe this was a referendum on where American sports were headed, for better or for worse.

BRUCE SKINNER, FORMER EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE FIESTA BOWL: "We had just signed a contract with Sunkist. It was the first title sponsorship of a bowl game. So, yes, I'll take the blame for that. There was a certain feeling that a title sponsorship should not be involved in a college football bowl game. But the Sunkist sponsorship allowed us to be competitive. Those other four bowls, they wanted to keep it as the big four, and I don't blame them for that."

MEYERS: "I started going down to Miami and talking to Sam Jankovich, their athletic director, and the coach, Jimmy Johnson. They said there was no way they were not going to the Orange Bowl, it was right in their backyard. But I kept going down there. We had to come up with a way to match the Orange Bowl's payoff, so we went to NBC and said if we could move this game off New Year's Day and move it into prime time, we could sell ads for a lot more money. They said, 'You're not moving it into prime time, because you're talking about preempting the most popular prime-time show on television. You're talking about "Miami Vice." ' But we sensed that this could change the entire bowl picture in college football. It was a true No. 1 versus a true No. 2, both undefeated, playing on a neutral field. And from NBC's perspective, it could change college football, too."

This was his vision, grandiose and bold, and Meyers was unwilling to compromise on the scope of it. He exploited every angle. He stroked every ego. He played off the media. He worked his way up the ladder at NBC, and eventually he twisted enough arms in the entertainment division that they agreed to accommodate him, if he could actually secure the matchup. Getting Penn State wasn't much of a problem. Joe Paterno was 3-0 in the Fiesta Bowl; why wouldn't he want to play there? His team had more than a dozen fifth-year seniors who wanted nothing more than another chance at a national championship after the loss to Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl the previous season. "If we have to play this game in a parking lot in Brooklyn," Paterno told Meyers, "we'll do it." But Penn State was never the No. 1 team that season, and in the end, the decision would not be Penn State's. There was never a question that Jimmy Johnson possessed the best team in the nation that year. The only question, in fact, was whether this was the most talented team college football had ever seen. It had a Heisman-winning quarterback in Vinny Testaverde, a top-flight backfield anchored by fullback Alonzo Highsmith, an unbearably cocky wide receiver, Michael Irvin, and a defense rife with size and speed and bubbling over with attitude. (Even the punter, Jeff Feagles, was one of the best at his position.) This was a new breed of college football team, an NFL developmental squad disguised as amateurs.Johnson was new to the politics of the bowl picture, having come to Miami from Oklahoma State as a no-name coach in 1984. He saw no real reason for his team to leave Florida, home of the Orange Bowl, the Citrus Bowl and the Gator Bowl. His team had outscored its opponents 420-136, had already beaten Oklahoma, the defending national champion, and had been No. 1 ever since. Whoever they played, wherever they played, it would be a formality, a culmination of a season guided by destiny. What was the point in hauling across the country to play a team that might have been undefeated, yes, but had nearly lost to Cincinnati and barely beaten Maryland? So even after Meyers had secured more money from the sponsors, even after he'd coaxed more money out of NBC, even after he'd set up a fundraising banquet with Bob Hope, even after he'd delivered black satin sweat suits to the entire Miami team, and even after he'd arranged for the wives of the Miami coaches to get free treatments at a highbrow desert spa, he realized he needed one more flourish, one last appeal to the ego of a coach whose immaculate coiffure had already assumed a mythical significance. As an insurance policy, Meyers said he began calling reporters. Jimmy Johnson doesn't want to play Joe Paterno on a neutral field, he told them. Jimmy's afraid. When anyone at Miami asked him whether he might be the anonymous source making such statements, he denied it. Immediately after Miami's last victory over East Carolina, Johnson stood in front of a room full of reporters and confirmed that his team would be playing in the Fiesta Bowl, in prime time, against Penn State. With this team, why should he be afraid of anyone?

TREY BAUER, LINEBACKER, PENN STATE: "As a group, they didn't seem very smart to me. No way that (expletive) would have happened at Penn State. But they were clearly at the front end of all that (expletive) you see now."

STUBBS: "They were just ... bland. And we were doing things that teams are still doing today. You know how everybody puts up four fingers when the fourth quarter comes around? That was us. We were the first ones to cut our jerseys, and the NCAA made sure that isn't around no more. When we played Oklahoma, we didn't shake their hands, and now there's a rule you have to do it. People didn't respect us? We didn't care."

ALONZO HIGHSMITH, RUNNING BACK, MIAMI: "Yeah, Jerome Brown had a gun on campus, and that put the program in a bad light. But they didn't mention how many of us graduated, how we weren't allowed to take those easy courses like other programs get away with. We were brash, and we did a lot of talking on the field, but if you asked the majority of college players, they wished their coaches would let them play like us."

BAUER: "They made us out to be a bunch of choirboys, but that wasn't the case, either. It wasn't like we were locked in the library 24/7."

COOK: "The general feeling was that Miami was just a bunch of rogues. They made Penn State good because everyone wanted to say Miami is evil, and so it became good versus evil."

The idea? Two decades later, who can remember how the idea came about? According to Highsmith, it started with a few of the seniors, like him and like Brown, the incorrigible All-America defensive tackle. And then it spread, and it became the latest outlandish brainstorm of a team that felt like it could do absolutely no wrong, even as the improprieties and transgressions mounted and the self-righteous criticism came hard and fast. They were thugs. They were outlaws. They were the Oakland Raiders of college football. So when somebody came up with this new idea, the notion of wearing combat fatigues all week long, to show the world that they meant business, that they were there to do a job, they all seemed to think it made perfect sense. Johnson and Jankovich were already out in Arizona, so the players were flying out on their own, and there was no one to tell them otherwise. It wasn't until they stepped off the plane in their fatigues and saw the Penn State players walking around in suits and ties that they realized what their outfits had wrought. This had already become the most hyped game in the history of college football, and now here was an organic story line: The bad guys had dressed the part.

JANKOVICH: "I was decimated. We didn't know anything about it, and if we were on the plane, they probably wouldn't have done it. From that point on, it was really downhill."

STUBBS: "People need to understand, we didn't have a dress code. It's different now, with all the teams wearing shirts and ties. While we were out there, we visited some Army base in the mountains and we bought me some medals. I was a 17-star general, because I had 17 sacks that season. That was something we did. It ain't gonna be repeated again."

HIGHSMITH: "If we win the game, no one cares about it. It might be a fashion statement or something."

BAUER: " We thought it was absurd. Like, what are these guys doing?"

At a news conference in which he referred to Paterno -- anointed that week as Sports Illustrated's Sportsman of the Year -- as "St. Joe," Johnson affirmed that he didn't care much how his players dressed, or how they went about motivating themselves. He told the assembled horde -- and in the end, about 1,500 media members flocked to Phoenix to cover a game that was beginning to feel like a Super Bowl -- that he couldn't wait to see what they came up with next.

He had other things on his mind. Meyers had never seen a coach so ... uptight. Johnson complained about the carpeting in the locker room, so at the last minute Meyers had carpenters flown in from Los Angeles to replace it with something in Miami's green. The day before the game, each team was scheduled to do a walk-through on the field at Sun Devil Stadium. Meyers called Paterno and asked him what time he wanted. "Four o'clock," Paterno told him. He called Johnson. "What time does Joe want to go?" Johnson asked. Meyers told him 4 o'clock. "Then we want to go at 4," Johnson said. Meyers called Paterno back. "We're going out at 4," Paterno said. Jankovich called Meyers sometime around midnight that night. He was upset, claiming favoritism toward Penn State. According to Meyers, Jankovich might even have cried, though Jankovich says he can't recall any of this. All he knows is that the Hurricanes were promised certain things. They wanted the bigger locker room; they got the smaller one. They wanted to be the home team, but Penn State wore its home blue jerseys. When 4 p.m. came, Miami showed up for the walk-through. Penn State never did. By then, the Hurricanes were primed to implode in a bizarre display of rebelliousness that still lingers, two decades later. Both teams attended a steak fry, where they were supposed to deliver a brief skit. Penn State's players wore suits and ties. Miami's players wore their black sweat suits, only because, Highsmith insists, the Fiesta Bowl officials told them to. The Penn State punter, John Bruno, made a couple of jokes, dragged out a garbage can labeled with masking tape as Jimmy Johnson's Hair Spray, and made a crack about how much racial harmony there was at Penn State: "We're one big family," he said. "We even let the black guys eat with us at the training table once a week." So now it was Miami's turn. Jerome Brown stood up and unzipped his sweat suit to reveal his fatigues. "Did the Japanese sit down and eat with Pearl Harbor before they bombed them?" he said. "No. We're outta here."

Out toward their buses went the men in the fatigues, cementing a reputation that Miami still cannot shake, 14 years after Brown's death in a car accident. Bauer started to laugh. Bruno stood up, made some crack about Miami having to leave so the players could begin filming "Rambo III," and then delivered a quote that Penn State football fans still evoke, 14 years after Bruno's death from melanoma: Miami/Collegiate ImagesAlonzo Highsmith carried Miami's vaunted ground game.

"Excuse me," he said. "But didn't the Japanese lose the war?"

TIM JOHNSON, DEFENSIVE LINEMAN, PENN STATE: "When they walked out, that was the moment where the heat turned up 100 percent. I was ready to go find our locker room, suit up, and play right now. It's on. It is on."

STUBBS: "We weren't there to have fun. We had some mariachi band come on our bus, and they were passing out oranges, and we were like, 'We're here to win a game.' Then we went to this steak fry and they made us put on a show, and we said we're not here to do a show. But then the Penn State players get up there and they're ripping us, and they're ripping Coach Johnson. So when it's our turn, we just said, 'Dude, we're out of here.'"

BOB WHITE, DEFENSIVE TACKLE, PENN STATE: "If you're told a lie for long enough, you start to believe it. They were talented, but they bullied people by running their mouths." JEROME BROWN (from a pregame news conference): "I think they're nothing. Shaffer thought he had a bad bowl game last year. That was nothing. After this game, he'll wish he'd graduated. The dude's about to star in a nightmare."

JERRY SANDUSKY, DEFENSIVE COORDINATOR, PENN STATE: "That game took on everything that went on around it until it became more than a game."

PATERNO (From "Paterno: By the Book," by Joe Paterno with Bernard Asbell): "I don't know whether Jimmy helped his kids plan their disgraceful walkout. ... But I know he was there. Nor did he raise a finger of caution when we were climbing out of our bus for the locker room as his team ... just about blocked our path, waving and taunting and yelling, 'We'll get you, you mothers.' (I'm only using half their word)."

MEYERS: "By game time, it felt like the place was going to explode."

A year and a day removed from the only loss of his football career, a year and a day removed from the moment when he insisted on accepting the blame for his team's 25-10 defeat to Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl, John Shaffer walked onto a field in Tempe and tried not to think of anything except the first play of the game. It was going to be a pass. They were going to throw on first down, to try to catch Miami off guard, and then Shaffer found himself distracted by the presence on the sideline of David Hartman, one of the anchors of "Good Morning America," who had been hanging around all week. And he saw all these famous alums from both teams -- Kenny Jackson, Curt Warner, Todd Blackledge, Jim Kelly -- and the whole thing began to sink in: This was bigger than last season. This was bigger than any college football game he had played in. This was bigger than any college football game anyone had ever played. For a few more moments, they had to muzzle themselves. Miami's Irvin walked over to Penn State's undersized safety, Ray Isom. "You're Isom?" he said. He was laughing; all week, Miami had been ridiculing Penn State's defensive backs, likening them to Smurfs -- they were too small and too slow to cover Irvin and Brett Perriman and Brian Blades. Penn State got the ball first. Shaffer called that pass play. Then he looked in the eyes of his offensive linemen, and they were glassy and unfocused. They're not here yet, he thought. He took the snap, faked a handoff to his All-America tailback, D.J. Dozier, and dropped back four or five steps. One Miami lineman, Winston Moss, came charging in from the outside, unblocked. Shaffer ducked, Moss overran him, but here came two more linemen, charging straight into him. Shaffer wound up twisted in the grass, 14 yards behind the line of scrimmage. He never had a chance. It would go like this all night for Penn State's offense. They could not throw the ball, and even behind Dozier, they could not run the ball either. At the end of the first quarter, they had seven total yards. Shaffer finished 5-for-16 for 53 yards. They managed only one sustained drive, of 74 yards, which ended in an ugly dive by Shaffer to tie the game at 7-7 in the second quarter, and negated Shaffer's only crucial mistake of the game, a fumble deep in Penn State's territory that led to Miami's first and only touchdown. That Nittany Lions drive accounted for nearly half of their 162 yards of total offense; Miami would finish with 445.

And all of this was fine with Paterno, and it was fine with Sandusky, because they had built this team on a philosophy that, two decades later, has begun to seem more and more quaint: You win with defense first, and you win with special teams second. And all your offense has to do -- and all your quarterback has to do -- is avoid screwing the whole thing up.

SHAFFER: "We really trusted authority. We felt like if we listened to the coaches, we'd be successful. And our offense was very comfortable taking a secondary role. I think for a young head coach today, with all these wide-open offenses, it would be very hard to win that way."

BAUER: "When I watched the film, I remember thinking, 'Are these guys that good or are the teams they're playing that bad?' It looked like a flag football game. But we had a veteran defense, and we had six weeks to prepare. We had 150 different looks on defense just for that game."

SANDUSKY: "They weren't very concerned in warm-ups. I remember Vinny and Jimmy coming over to check out our defensive backs and I'm thinking, 'Man, I wish we looked more impressive.'"

STUBBS: "I'm a Jersey guy, and the one thing I knew about Penn State was that their defensive backs could hit. They crushed Michael on one play, and he came to the sidelines and I said, 'I told you so.' "

BAUER: "Irvin got totally jacked up early in the game by one of our guys. I mean, he got hit. And I don't think he did much of anything the rest of the game. I think in the press conference afterward, he said the ball was slippery or something."

Sometime around the start of the second quarter, the talking subsided and this game settled into a rhythm: Penn State stalls, Bruno punts the ball deep into Miami territory, and Miami turns the ball over. At halftime, Bob Costas conducted a rambling interview with President Reagan. Meyers' vision had come to fruition. The ratings were enormous, larger than even the network could have expected: 25.1 percent of households with televisions (more than 70 million viewers) were tuned to NBC that night; no college football game has gotten that kind of ratings share, before or since. In the third quarter, All-America linebacker Shane Conlan made an interception for Penn State, then stumbled and fell on a bad knee that had been bothering him all night long. After Penn State gave the ball back, Miami missed a field goal.

On the first play of the fourth quarter, linebacker Pete Giftopoulos made an interception. Then the Lions missed a field goal. Penn State was rushing three men and dropping eight, and instead of running the ball with Highsmith, Testaverde kept throwing. He threw into coverage. He threw to the wrong man. His receivers dropped passes. Even so, Miami went up 10-7 on a field goal with 11:49 remaining because Penn State simply could not move the ball either. On Penn State's next possession, Jerome Brown sacked Shaffer, leapt up, and saluted the crowd. The swagger had returned. But after another Bruno punt, Testaverde, looking as perplexed by Penn State's shifting schemes and coverages as he had all night long, threw another pass directly into the arms of Conlan, who returned it to the Miami 5-yard line. Dozier scored, dropped to a knee and said a prayer. Penn State led, 14-10. Rob Tringali for ESPN.com. Shaffer left Tempe with memories and mementos that no one will ever take away from him.

Both defenses stood up once more. Miami tight end Alfredo Roberts fumbled the ball away, but Penn State could not manage a single first down and Bruno punted the ball back with 3:18 left. A minute later, after Bauer dropped a potential interception, Miami was facing fourth-and-6 on its own 26-yard line.And then, as if perhaps they had both finally awakened from an evening's slumber, Testaverde found Brian Blades for a 32-yard gain. Soon the Canes had moved to the Penn State 26, and then Testaverde hit Irvin at the Penn State 10 with a minute left. Conlan went down on his bad knee, stopping the clock. Testaverde hit Irvin again, and it was second-and-goal at the Penn State 5 with 45 seconds left.

SANDUSKY: "After Conlan got hurt, Bauer came over to the sideline. He looked at me and I said, 'I can't help you. Good luck.' Then I asked Trey if he knew what to call if they went without a huddle and he said he did. And then he got lockjaw."
BAUER: "That's (expletive)! The coaches were confused! They never sent in the play!"

STUBBS: "On the sidelines, we're all saying we should run the ball. Run a delayed draw to Alonzo, and he'll carry somebody in to the end zone. But Vinny wanted to throw."

HIGHSMITH: "To this day, I have no clue what happened. All I know was they weren't gonna stop me that day. I always figured I'd get one or two carries on the goal line."

On second-and-goal, Testaverde dropped back, and Tim Johnson burst through the line, wrapped an arm around Testaverde's neck and sacked him. On third down, Testaverde dropped back again, and threw incomplete in the flat. And on fourth down, with 18 seconds left, Testaverde dropped back once more, looking for ... well, who knows? In one last burst of confusion, he threw left, toward the end zone, toward several Penn State players, and Giftopoulos, the soft-spoken linebacker from Ontario, Canada, intercepted his pass -- Testaverde's fifth interception of the game, and Miami's seventh turnover -- and then, not knowing what else to do, started to run aimlessly, like a foal lost in the woods.

SANDUSKY: "I've always prided myself on being able to handle pressure, but on that fourth down, I couldn't even speak to make the defensive call. When it was over, I just walked over to the bench and sat down by myself and started to cry."

SHAFFER: "Joe was going crazy to get people off the field, because there was still time on the clock. We had to snap the ball once more, and I told our center, Keith Radecic, just hold the ball up and don't move your hand."

BAUER: "I lost 12 pounds that night. Afterward I couldn't go out, I couldn't celebrate, I couldn't do anything."

COOK: "I had picked Penn State to win. But I was one of the only ones. A few years ago, I saw Joe at a dinner and he told me, 'To this day, I still don't know how we beat Miami.' There's always a game that every Hall of Fame coach loses and wakes up years later at 2 a.m. in a cold sweat thinking about it. For Jimmy Johnson, this was that game."

MOSS: "We thought we were the superior team. And I still feel that way. But we've won, what, four titles since then? And we won the next year, in '87."

STUBBS: "The next year they made us sign some paper, saying we'd be good. I don't even know what it said. I just signed the (expletive)."

COOK: "That game did cement Miami's reputation, though. And they still pay for it. A lot of it is unjustified, but it's true -- that was the college football equivalent of the scarlet A."

SKINNER: "Not only did it mean a lot for both programs, but I think it really implemented the idea that we need to have a national championship game. It was a big domino, at least for the BCS."

Of course, even today's BCS system is deeply flawed. Games like this do not take place every year, and even when they do, the hype is often manufactured and artificially inflated. Rarely is the contrast so stark, so obvious, and rarely is the game so competitive, and rarely is the emotion so palpable. To play with a swagger, to high-five and taunt like those Hurricanes once did -- this is, for better or for worse, the rule, not the exception. So much so that even Penn State, long an oasis of high-mindedness, is no longer immune from harboring such an attitude.

Two decades later, the game has changed, both because of and despite what happened that night. But one thing has not changed: The anonymous quarterback, one of the last of a breed nearing extinction, still has trouble proving his worth. Not long ago, Shaffer watched the most important football game of his life with his son, and while they were watching, his son turned to him and said, "Did you actually talk to Joe Paterno?

The Road

Cormac McCarthy's 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction novel, The Road is barren, bleak, and haunting, but not necessarily a book I would recommend, and certainly not one I care to see translated to screen. It's a story of survival in some post-apocalyptic section of the eastern United States, between a father and his very young son who face starvation, sickness, and the scum of whats-left-of-society.

It's not a futuristic tale, but one where all the remnants of a recently (nuclear fallout appears to be the cause) hostile earth environment conspire in a real and cold manner. The majority of dialogue is between the father and son, and it's brief and repetitive to the point of irritation. I was surprised that the book was as short as it was, but thankful in the end.

Aside, there's a purveyance of guilt, perhaps with a bit of confusion I feel when I read a highly-praised novel and I come away with disappointment. McCarthy's work may be lauded by critics, but the material is a lacking follow-up to the film No Country For Old Men. Of course, I never read the book, but read repeatedly how it was very faithful to the book. Maybe the books really weren't up to snuff and the translation by the Coen brothers (and Javier Bardiem) made up for the source material. Or maybe each book is different in its own way. Regardless, The Road didn't do it for me, whatever 'it' is.

PS. Upon further review, the award Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, deals with "distinguished fiction by an American author, preferably dealing with American life". My interests in fiction generally do not fall in the everyday American life category. Wrapping the folksy tale in an apolocalyptic blanket clearly didn't help.

The Fantastic Mr. Fox

Wes Anderson movies are difficult to evaluate on first viewing, so it is with hearty 'meh' of assurance that The Fantastic Mr. Fox was something less than that, but certainly one day could be like the title. Anderson's adaptation of the beloved children's book (beloved in the sense that that is what I heard -- I never heard of the book until last month) is successful as a fun, quirky, sometimes funny tale of some wild animals struggling with their duties as domestic beings while still embracing their wild side.

The film itself is clever, perhaps too clever to take in one sitting. There was a direct line stealing / homage to an older film early on that caused me to drift off and think about what movie it was from. Minutes later when it finally dawned on me that the line was James Dean from "Rebel Without a Cause", I was wondering just what audience that line was in there for -- a film reference from an (relatively) obscure line from 55 years ago probably didn't get recognized by the target audience. I enjoyed it nonetheless, but only because I happened to remember the film line, which makes me wonder how many more subtle references are made in the movie. Wonder and irritate.

My gut feeling is that repeating viewings will make this film more enjoyable, perhaps on a fantastic level, but I don't know if I'm going to invest the time and effort to getting there.

PS. I had no idea Roald Dahl (author of Fantastic Mr. Fox) also wrote the screenplay to You Only Live Twice. This might explain how the giant volcano base came to be.

Aliens

Decidedly different from the masterful sci-fi horror original, Aliens in its own right is a thrilling action/suspense sequel that launched the series -- really re-created the series in its own image -- and took no prisoners. Boasting a colorful and memorable cast, the film hits all the right emotional notes. Sigourney Weaver owns the character Ripley, but she has plenty of talent to work off. From Michael Biehn's reluctant corporal-turned-commander to Jenette Goldstein's tough-as-nails Vasquez, to Bill Paxton's quote-making-masterpiece as doomsayer Private Hudson, to Lance Henrikson's quiet but emotional performance as the android Bishop, you feel for the characters and their hopeless situation of escaping from hundreds of Aliens.

James Cameron's ultimate strength remains in weaving memorable characters to a well-paced plot and action. (Did I mention James Horner's score is awesome?) Once caveat is that length does not necessarily make a film better, so I'll have to disagree with him that his 1991 director's cut (157 minutes) is better than the original theatrical cut (135 minutes). I have to side with the studio that the twenty minutes of footage actually serve to draw out the lengthy beginning of the film -- you don't even see an Alien until well-over an hour in. While this works in Jaws, I didn't feel it worked to make a better film here. In the original, Ridley is rescued, you get her situation, get the urgency of the colony, and bam-- we are on our way. Forty-five minutes of tension is plenty before all-hell breaks loose, but either way, Aliens still stands up as one impressive piece of action-filmmaking.

Neuromancer

Imagine a story featuring a world-class hacker whose foolish double-cross of his bosses led to them forcing him to undergo surgery that prevents him from jacking into the matrix. And now imagine that a slender female, who has surgically implanted mirrors for eyes and retractable razors for fingernails, and a former soldier whose personality has been replaced, recruits the hacker on behalf of a ruthless Artificial Intelligence who wants to be set free from its network. Pretty cool concept, kind of a The Matrix meets Terminator meets AI meets The Cell. Now imagine this story was written before any of these movies were made, 25 years ago.

To call Neuromancer a ground-breaking work is an understatement. I've read the work four times now, and there are things about William Gibson's novel that never get old.

Certainly, the further along we get in technology, the more interesting and astounding it is to read about these visionary concepts when the vast majority of people had little idea what a network was let alone RAM. Virtual reality was years away from being even a cult phrase, and hacking was a threat without a target -- who even had a computer at their desk at work in 1983? I still get a tingly thrill reading a story whose made-up-technology coined many of our current concepts and language and remains for the most part (the size of RAM needs updating, but EVERYONE who wrote about advanced computers in the 80's and 90's got the rate of growth wrong).

Of course, the concepts are fascinating, but without the story and Gibson's breathtaking description (opening line: "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel."), it would be as interesting as a Nostradamus portent. The first act of the story involves the hacker, Case, working with his hired-gun Molly, to break into a highly-guarded computer facility to retrieve the "flatline" of a former hacker. The "flatline" is a self-contained program that resembles the personality of the former hacker and will work with Case to break through the security that houses the AI. Using an implant, Case can 'jack-in' to Molly to receive all her inputs during her break-in, including feeling the actual pain of a gunshot wound and her playful nipple pinch. That caper proves simple compared to the ultimate goal, which they must recruit a sociopath who can project holograms and travel to an orbiting multi-layered mainframe to accomplish their mission.

Wildly creative and original, Neuromancer remains the holy grail of cyberpunk novels, and stands up today as strong as it did 25 years ago.

Clash of the Titans (1981)

With one minute of teaser trailer footage, the 2010 Clash of the Titans remake has firmly grabbed a hold of my youthful nostalgia and nearly made me frothing with desire to see this film in March. This is not because I thought that the original was lacking, but rather that 1981's Clash of the Titans holds up as great adventure tale whose film techniques could use a 21st-century treatment.

1981's Clash was a "big-budget" film using stop-motion animation, the premiere technology at the time for special-effects. While stop-motion animation is still in broad use today, it is relegated to animated films; CGI effects have all-but replaced the technology for realistic effects. Although it was obvious back in '81 that the Krakon was a big clay sculpture, it was enough for the time to get absorbed in the film. Today, watching the piece, it is a lot more noticeable as times have changed and we are used to digital characters that seamlessly integrate with real ones.

What sets Clash apart is the execution of a gang-buster story. Interweaving dozens of classic Greek mythological heroes, gods, and villains, the story still resonates with urgency and menace. One of the classic scenes involves Perseus' confrontation with Medusa, the Gorgon who cannot be looked upon without turning to stone. Perseus must use all his wits and skill to defeat an opponent who has acidic blood, a marksman's skill with arrows, and a face that literally could kill. It's obviously claymation at work, but the scene still to this day carries palpable menace and tension throughout.

The legacy, and challenge, of this remake is to take what was once great and make it great again for a new audience. It's probably the easiest upgrade I can think of; you've got the story, now all you've got to do is throw in some one-liners and adjust the action. And maybe lose the comic-relief gold owl.

The Men Who Stare At Goats

It's often in IT that you see a case where an idea is brilliant in concept, but in execution the flaws become obvious. This is the reason most IT projects or code go through pilot testing to shake out the flaws. If caught early enough, the flaws can be corrected, or the requirements changed to something more practical. But at some point, the cost of changing what you have outweighs the benefits of change, so you have to just do your best and hope the product works out.

In The Men Who Stare At Goats, the main character and narrator, Bob Wilton, is a reporter who travels to Iraq to find some worth in his life. There he meets a man who claims to be part of a secret army crew who are referred to as "Jedi". Throughout the film, Bob plays the neophyte follower who is trying to learn about their "Jedi" ways. As such, he often asks plenty of questions about the "Jedi" and acts confused when new concepts of the "Jedi" are discussed.

In a brilliantly clever, but ultimately undoing casting decision, Bob is played by Ewan McGregor. Anyone who has seen the recent Star Wars films can see the ironic humor of Obi-Wan Kenobi going around befuddled by these New Age "Jedis". If this had been a throw-away concept, a one-time joke, it would have served the film as a clever aside. But, with Ewan / Obi-wan glaring back at you as the narrator constantly confused by references to Jedi, I found it impossible to relax into the film. Instead, it became a meta-character. When the character is not so much enhanced as dependent on the actor being recognizable in another role, and that joke is hammered home repeatedly, the result is you have reminders that these are actors.

Yes, I realize that I was sitting in a theater, and I paid money to watch a film, and yes, these films have actors, and no, it's not real. My problem come in with suspension of disbelief -- the ability of the audience to accept the concept of the film in order to enjoy it. For instance, it's very difficult to enjoy Star Wars if every time you see the Millenium Falcon jump to hyperspace, you snort and deride that is ridiculous. An instance more similar to the casting problem is breaking the fourth wall, where one of the characters address the audience directly. This does not break suspension of disbelief BECAUSE the characters stay in character. It would never work for Woody Allen in Annie Hall to say "You heard that! I know because I wrote this script!" versus "You heard that!" Ewan McGregor as Bob doesn't break the fourth wall, it sneaks around it. It's funny as a Saturday Night Live skit, but not as film.

If the character of Bob is played by ANY other actor (except Liam Neeson or Mark Hamill -- the latter being the most distracting), then entire feel of the film changes. Instead, I have to wonder if the script was written precisely with Ewan in mind, if the producers where intending you to go, "that is ironic and funny that Ewan is asking about Jedi again" every time he's up there, or if there was a pilot process to any of this.

And then there's the ending. The very last scene changes the entire feel of the preceeding 110 minutes. I'm not going to spoil it for you, but I'll guess that you, like me, expected an entirely different result to Ewan's experiment. Where most of the film is grounded in psychic powers that may-or-may-not exist, but if they do they certainly aren't capable of some things, then the end is completely head-shaking.

Did I mention I liked the film? It's a solid 'B' experience, except for those two things. Casting and end. Come to think of it, that's grounds for an official "bungling in execution" label. Next time get Harrison Ford. Wait, maybe not...

The Girl Who Played With Fire

As a sequel, Stieg Larsson’s The Girl Who Played With Fire is as satisfying a follow-up as they get, if not downright superior to the first book, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. Indeed, while I was reading it, I was savoring each page of character development, malicious characters, and odd anti-heroes. This is the kind of book you are sad that it is so good, because you don’t want it to end. You are also sad because you realize towards the end that the author has given you a giant fucking cliff-hanger. And while you are thoroughly satisfied, thirsty and irritated by the thrall Larsson has over you in his fascinating tale, you really, really hope that the late author wrapped up the story in the third book to be released next summer. Anger, fear, aggression. Well-played… for a book.

Just a note about the movie, and there will be a movie. (There is the Swedish Men Who Hate Women -- the original title of the Girl With the Dragon Tattoo -- which ostensibly looks to have gotten it right. I’m guessing there will be an American series when all is said and done.) The absolute crucial (and probably most sought-after role) casting that will make-or-break the film is for Lisbeth Salander. I could try to explain it using a bunch of adjectives, but suffice to say she’s one of my all-time favorite characters and an absolute joy to follow. Kind of like how Harry Potter fans rabidly follow the casting of those films, this one will be for adults. Or at least those without brooms.

The development of Salander is the most intriguing thing about the series. As I’ve mentioned before, the original title of the first novel, actually the current title in his native Sweden, is “Men Who Hate Women”. This is certainly an appropriate descriptor of the book (and sequel), but somewhere along the line, I get a sense that Larsson discovered what a wonderful character he had developed and slowly, perhaps unconsciously, the book(s) became more about her and her interactions with the plot than the plot itself. And we are rewarded for it.

I wrote a bit about The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo previously, but I am now more struck by the emotional denouement of the piece. At once heartrending, appropriate, and realistic, the end could have entirely been left out of the book, and the novel would have been just as complete. Including the last bit about Salander not only develops the character more, almost as an afterthought, but demands more to the story. Contrast to the end of The Girl Who Played With Fire, which is a downright cliffhanger. Larsson knocks us over the head with one, and teases us with another. Both ways left this reader salivating for more.

PS. The third book is not due for US release until May 2010. So I paid the extra to get it now from the UK. Speaks for itself.

The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death: A Novel

I can't quite put my finger on it, but I think there's something about making your hero a self-avowed and proud-of-it slacker that's an instant turn-off for me. Instead of conforming comfortably into Joseph Campbell's hero arc, or partaking in the ridiculous humor of his situations, I found myself reading Charlie Huston's 'The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death: A Novel', brooding, wishing the "hero" would grow up a little, and get exasperated with his bad attitude. Not a good place to start.

Charlie Huston has written better books, more enthralling books. In fact, every book that I've read of his prior to this one -- seven, the three Hank Thompson series and four Joe Pitt books (going to dig into book five eagerly soon!) -- was better. This story seemed a little too cute for me, a little watered down compared to his other pulp noir works, and just a little too mainstream. That sounds a little strange about a book where its main character makes his business cleaning up gruesome crime scenes. In those areas, the book is interesting, engaging, and amusingly gory, true to Charlie-form. And if you take this book by itself, I think it was good, just good, but not really representative of what Charlie can do. Anyone else, I would give this book a B+, but Charlie gets a B-, because as my favorite 'student', I know he can do better.

Angels & Demons

Angels & Demons, the first book written with character Robert Langdon, is not a prequel of The Da Vinci Code; Da Vinci Code is a true sequel to Angels & Demons. And an inferior one at that, both in novel and film. Not that the film Angels & Demons was any great work, but it's source material was much more tailor-made for screen than it's predecessor. Er, successor. Er, something.When it comes to how so many people I have encountered inexplicably either think The Da Vinci Code book is better than Angels & Demons or the same book is beyond me. Perhaps a clue can be found in the order in which the novels are read. I won't say definitively that every person (let's say my sample size is about 10 people at this point -- in other words, statistically irrefutable so don't even try it!!!) falls in this category, but I found that 9 out of 10 preferred whichever of the two books they read first. The only circumstance I can recall where the audience tended to prefer whichever they saw first was between Austin Powers I and II; in that case, the audience didn't like the second as much because it was mostly the same jokes over again.

I can totally understand that case, but it baffles me where the two Dan Brown books are concerned. You have some common elements -- the church, conniving priests, and mysterious symbology that leads our hero Langdon on a time-intensive desperate search. Granted, the books are similar in this regard, but these are common themes that are expected. Langdon is a friggin' symbologist. This is what he does. It's the formula Brown is using. To expect him to do otherwise would be to expect Indiana Jones 5: Courtroom Drama!

And after that, all the similarities subside. There is science-fiction, more murder and mayhem, more danger, more action, and better pacing in Angels and Demons. Ultimately, The Da Vinci Code is a story about finding the truth, whereas Angels & Demons is a thriller about a race-against-time to save the Vatican from a technological time-bomb that reveals to be a power-grab maneuver from multiple parties. So when people (say of the 5 that liked Da Vinci better) say it's "just the same stuff all over again", I wonder (a) did their parents beat the sense out of them and (b) did I leave the iron on this morning? The answer to both is usually "yes, sadly".

Angels & Demons is a worthwhile, fun and riveting read, but I can't say it fared much better with me at the theater. I can understand (as I have a keen understanding) how The Da Vinci Code would fall short as a film -- it's not exactly a thriller book. But all the potential made me somewhat bitter as I slowly became bored with the film version of Angels & Demons. It's not that I have a problem with Tom Hanks' hair (problem solved in this one!) -- but more of the editing and direction. Historically, Ron Howard has been a drama director (Apollo 13, A Beautiful Mind, Backdraft, Frost/Nixon), and the only thriller on his list that I can see is Ransom, although I think that's again mostly drama -- you know who the kidnapper is most of the way through. This film doesn't excite, and it should. I mean, who isn't excited about priests getting murdered? Who??

In short, your scoring guide, and only reference you'll ever need, for Angels & Demons is book: A, movie: C. For Da Vinci Code, book: B, movie C.

Unknown Pleasures

The cover to Joy Division's debut album, Unknown Pleasures is at once minimal, striking, and thought-provoking. The image was:

originally published as a green-white image in 'The Nature of Pulsars' by Jerry Ostriker, Scientific American 224, #1, Jan 1971, page 53. It shows 80 successive pulses of the first pulsar observed, cp1919 stacked on top of one another using the average period of 1.33730 seconds.

From those galactic beginnings, just beats in the distance representing awesome powers, come this amazing debut.

My reaction to listening to Joy Division was akin to the first time I heard Morrissey's voice, but a slow, delayed reaction. Of course I had heard Joy Division's seminal swan song, "Love Will Tear Us Apart", but very little else. I don't know if I can chalk that up to having young ears (again, first time I heard it was in college), or the fact that the song was so unlike Joy Division's other music that I didn't explore their other songs more. Whatever the reason, these songs I had only marginally noticed suddenly became the ones that made my heart thumb nearly 20 years later. It's hard for me to fathom how now anytime I hear Peter Hook's driving, devastating bass line, Sumner's spare and suddenly thickly one-note guitar, Stephen's pounding drums and Ian's compulsive, desperate lungs on "New Dawn Fades", that I could be so drawn in and given pause now, where I would dismiss the song years ago. Unknown Pleasures is just a stunning album filled with that sound, the garage-punk-new-wave-lyrically-tight-somber-jumparound sound. You know, that one. The Joy Division sound. Or if you don't know it, or even if you think you knew it, listen again. You may now be ready for it.