On Penn State

It appears the day of reckoning is upon us. This morning the Joe Paterno statue outside of Beaver Stadium was removed and reportedly placed in “storage.”

Around the same time, a source within the NCAA that “unprecedented” sancations would be handed to Penn State at a 9:00 AM press conference on Monday morning. Immediately, speculation on what exactly “unprecedented” could be referring to began taking place on Twitter and the rest of the internet.

The one silver lining is that ESPN college football insider Joe Schad seems confident that Penn State football will not be cancelled this season.

Penn State facing loss of bowl/s and scholarships, but not so-called death penalty

—
Joe Schad (@schadjoe) July 22, 2012

Rather, the “extremely harsh” penalties could be even worse than the “death penalty.” I’m not sure how this is possible unless the supposed bowl ban is somewhere around 10 years long, but Schad did not rule that out.

PennLive.com did a great job rounding up various opinions on the matter of the possible sanctions. Peruse that at your leisure. It’s important to note that the NCAA may be opening up a can of worms by beginning to issue penalties on criminal issues that are not dealt with in the organization’s bylaws

If the NCAA is now in the business of punishing criminal issues unrelated to their bylaws, Mizzou should vacate wins for Pinkel's DUI.

—
Devon Edwards (@Devon2012) July 22, 2012

It will be interesting to see if future criminals acts such as DUIs are dealth with in a similar fashion or if Penn State is being singled out because of the horribleness (and high profile-ness) of the crimes.

On the Mets

The other silver lining (at least for Mets fans) is that Miguel Batista has been designated for assignment and will not pitch for New York again in the near future. Meanwhile, Elvin Ramirez has been called up to hopefully help the bullpen and Jeremy Hefner gets the start on Wednesday.

Still looks like Matt Harvey will start Thursday in Phoenix despite being roughed up last night, but Collin McHugh is also a candidate.

Anyway, the Mets faltered again yesterday by losing to the Dodgers 8-5. In just a few minutes, Jon Niese tries to avoid the sweep while Nathan Eovaldi pitches for Los Angeles.