Open letter to Tim Curley

(AD of Penn State)
I bleed blue and white, but I will never have any interest in seeing games against FIU, Buffalo, Temple, Eastern Michigan, Eastern Illinois, and their ilk. Of course, if that wasn’t enough, you scheduled a 1-AA team to fill out the slate (Coastal Carolina). Even if I wanted to watch those games, I live in Texas, and I will never have the Big Ten Network, nor will most of the country, where a heck of a lot of your alumni live.
If I don’t watch games, I get less enthusiastic about buying PSU stuff.
If I don’t watch games, I get less enthusiastic about donating money. It would be hard for me to get less enthusiastic about donating money, but you at least remove the possibility of a head-injury-induced bout of giving later in life.
Sooner or later, when nobody watches these games, ESPN stops putting the bigger games on TV too. Then, even more people buy even less PSU stuff and donate even less money.
This year, and possibly in earlier years, playing games like these, against teams we knew would suck, did nothing to prepare us for the games against teams we thought wouldn’t suck. And as a result, we got pantsed. TWICE! Plus, the one out-of-conference game which we thought was against a team which didn’t suck ended up being a laugher too. Which argues that scheduling only one game against a team that might not suck is probably not going to help us either, not that you’re committing to even _that_ going forward, since our ‘marquee’ opponent in the next couple years is Syracuse. Yes, Syracuse. And by the next couple of years going forward, I don’t mean next year, in which we have three of those cupcakes listed above plus a TBA slot to fill with Temple’s name on it. Syracuse is our big opponent to look forward to in 2009 and 2010. Yay!
You often claim that economics dictates these decisions. It’s my considered economic opinion that you are quite possibly the dumbest motherfucker in the history of college sports, if you don’t think that there will be a negative long-term economic impact to scheduling these kinds of games.
I would much rather watch PSU play a one-and-done away game somewhere like Florida than ever see this type of schedule again. If Joe Paterno is really calling the shots and forcing you to schedule this sort of stuff against your will, as is sometimes alleged, then you owe it to the world to resign immediately. Continuing to assist in the perpetuation of this kind of scheduling is just plain evil.
Your pal,
M1EK