Central PA Fall Discussions and Obs

[Jns2183]

@canderson Everytime I watch his videos and see his Texas and Texas a&m characters I can't help but envision your family down there.

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[Mount Joy Snowman]

15 hours ago, Gordo74 said:

As a Gateway graduate during that time and as someone who was there during the "Justin King" debacle - it was just that. A debacle. 

King went to the school board early on and told them that they had to invest heavily in the football facilities or he was taking King elsewhere. Gateway did - gluttonously so at the direction of Smith. So much so that the academics suffered and still continue to 20 years later/never recovered. Just take a look at where they rank now amongst western PA schools - quite a far cry from just before Smith took over. There's no excuse to have Pentium 2's running Windows 95 when the new weight room has Xbox 360's on every TV. There was no money left for anything outside of football, but they had new everything all the time with everything paid for, despite other sports playing with broken down equipment and non-athletic organizations having to self-finance.

Then Smith skedaddled as soon as King went to PSU and left Gateway in the lurch. No mentoring of anyone, no hope for continued success. Just trying every way he could to get King ahead.

He was a diva and a selfish one at that, plain and simple. On top of that, and VERY UNFORTUNATELY, any time anyone said a word against him or his approach, it was turned into a race discussion. It had nothing to do with race imo, and everything to do with him taking the piss out of Gateway for all they were worth.

I suppose he's done okay at PSU, but in Monroeville? He's still public enemy #1 for taking a Blue Ribbon school and shifting focus to football, wringing them dry, and taking the midnight train away. 

And that's from someone who went to Gateway AND Penn State.

Quite an interesting post here. I wasn’t aware of any of that. Thanks for sharing.