How do you really measure a person's legacy? Is it apportioned by how many buildings are named after him or her? Is it the dollar figures on a ledger? Is it the amount of wins on a sheet or the quotes in a book? Of course not. Our personal legacies won't just be remembered for how many ridiculously long articles we put out on the internet or how many Red Bulls we drink in a day. When we talk about something such as legacy, it is about more than just numbers. Legacy is about the emotions evoked when we tell the story of a person. Legacy is the full narrative - both good and bad.

In the days following Joe Paterno's death, I have read multiple accounts of the late, great Joe Paterno. Paterno Ave had an excellent write-up here at OTE in which he gave us a great insight into what made Joe so great to so many at Penn State and abroad, "Joe Paterno will be remembered as an historically extraordinary man, the rare individual who stepped into our lives and made our community a family." Across the entire interweb and in every major newspaper near and far, accounts of JoePa's everyman greatness shined even though the lingering effects of a scandal hung over everything like a black cloud that was hard to describe.

Let me stop everyone ready to comment me to death about defaming the name of JoePa. This piece is not about the negatives or positives alone, but rather about the symbiosis between both. This is about how we need to look at the story of a man who was literally regarded with such great esteem that even in the midst of a scandal involving the rape of children, we could empathize with an old coach who might have made a grave mistake. This is looking at the story about Joe Paterno being larger than life and yet approachable at the same time. Legacies are cemented in the stories, and for us to really evaluate how we see Joe Paterno, it is important for everyone to consider the good, the bad, and everything in between. After all, we cannot understand a whole without understanding the pieces.

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We posted Part I of our Dave Revsine interview a day or so ago, which you can read right here if you're so inclined. Today we're going to talk the two Michigans, Nebraska's first year in the conference, Penn State and JoePa's legacy, Urban Meyer, OSU sanctions, Purdue, rookie coaches, and just about everything under the B1G sun.

[ED Note...Again, this interview was conducted last Friday, before JoePa's passing. All references to JoePa were made before anyone was aware of the gravity of the situation--Ted]

So part II, Dave Revsine...NNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!

You've mentioned Michigan and Michigan State, let's talk about them. Last year, they had the two biggest blowout losses in the bowls, and this year they both had the two biggest bowl wins for the conference. Will they be better next year or worse, and do you see one of those two as an early Legends Division favorite?

I agree with you on how important those wins were, but I hesitate to predict too much at this time of the year. I'm in the unique position of having the luxury to go out and watch these teams practice, and I like to base my predictions on what I see when we go out and look at these teams. So I don't want to necessarily make some bold proclamation on who's going to win the Legends or Leaders Division. I certainly think they are two teams at the forefront of the conversation going into the year, along with Nebraska, but I don't want to make a prediction. I think they're both going to be really good next year, but obviously MSU will have to figure out the quarterback situation. In the limited time that we saw Andrew Maxwell, I think he's got a chance to be pretty good.

It'll be interesting to see what happens at Michigan. Denard Robinson had, I think in some ways, a little bit of a step back this year. I want to see him throw the ball a little bit more consistently, but the fact that they started to develop a run game made them a lot harder to defend. And the defense, obviously, was immeasurably better. If they can be that good with guys that weren't their guys, I'm excited to see what they can do with a year under their belt.

Has MSU turned the corner and entered ‘elite' status as a B1G power over the last couple of years?

I think they have a chance to be an elite team. I think you measure that in larger spans of time than two years, but everything they have in place is really good. They have a really good head coach, some turnover at the coordinator position, but really good leadership at the top-a really good athletic director, and they have a lot of pieces in place. So, there's no reason to think that they can't be, but a lot of what Michigan State has built was when Michigan was down. So now, with the recruiting in the state of Michigan amplified again, with Michigan competing for the same players that Michigan State will compete for, it will be interesting to see whether or not Michigan State will be able to sustain it. And conversely, how much of Michigan State's success will cut in to what Michigan is trying to build.

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When I started classes at Penn State as a freshman in 2002, I didn't "get it." I was prepared for the academics and even the social life. However, I was a New York Giants fan expecting the Nittany Lions to be essentially the same thing as my favorite pro team but right on campus. I didn't have family members who had attended Penn State, and so I assumed the coach of the football team was just that: a coach, responsible for winning football games.

In the Fall of 2002, the "Joe Must Go" movement was gaining steam. Over the next two and a half years it snowballed into a crisis. I was young and didn't know too many Penn State alumni, so for a while I was an advocate of a new coach. As far as I knew, that's just what you do after a couple losing seasons.

I didn't get college football in the beginning, I didn't get what the team meant to the university at Penn State, and I certainly didn't get how Joe Paterno fit into it all. I'm happy to say that by the time I graduated in 2006, though, I did "get it." Somewhere between seeing the football program at both its depths and its heights, and watching one man negotiate those turbulent times, I understood that Joe Paterno was a lot more than just a coach.

The Sandusky scandal has complicated his legacy, dashing an impeccable record. But Penn State fans don't need to remember him as an infallible legend. To us, Joe Paterno will be remembered as an historically extraordinary man, the rare individual who stepped into our lives and made our community a family.

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[Editors Note: This is the first of a two part interview conducted on Friday, before we found out about the tragic news on the passing of Joe Paterno. Part II discusses JoePa's legacy, and will be posted soon...Ted]

Back in August, right before the beginning of the season, we were fortunate to be able to sit down with Dave Revsine, the studio host for the most popular shows on the Big Ten Network--the football Saturday pre game and post game wrap ups. How that happened, I'll never know, so imagine by stunned surprise when he agreed to sit down with me again and review the B1G 2011 season. He must've forgotten that my interviewing skills are little bit below Chris Farley's when he's got Paul McCartney one on one, but he probably realized that once we were about 10 or 11 seconds into the interview.

Seriously, Dave was very gracious with his time on Friday, and we spoke for almost 45 minutes. Due to the length, we've got this split up into two parts. On today's segment, find out his take on the Pac-12 partnership, modifications to the bowl system, ESPN bias, and if he was King For A Day, whether or not he would be a benevolent dictator or not.

Dave Revsine, on OTE...NNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!

First off, thanks for sitting down with us again. Most of what we're going to talk about is on the field stuff, but Commissioner Jim Delany made some news off the field recently. He and Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott announced a sports partnership that has fans from both conferences excited. What's your impression of that deal?

I think it's brilliant. I didn't totally understand what it was going to be until I sat down with Commissioner Delany when he came into the office and explained, in so many words, that it's an alternative to expansion. It's a way to improve the reach of your conference, in terms of the scope of it. You become relevant in another area of the country, you increase the value of your TV package because you have some more appealing games, and you do this without sacrificing who you are. I didn't really get it until I sat down with him and talked about it, and it just reinforced my belief that he's a really brilliant commissioner. He really gets it on a lot of different levels, and this was an example of that.

With the Pac-12 partnership, Commissioner Delany has said that the 9 game conference schedule will be abandoned. Is that a good decision, or bad one?

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I have this morning ritual on the weekends. I get up, I make coffee, and I read the New York Times. It's something I've done since I was in high school, and something I probably will do until I die or the world has ended in a fiery Mayan prophesied apocalypse.

So today when I pulled up the New York Times I noticed an article in their Education Life section entitled, "How Big-Time Sports Ate College Life." I rolled my eyes. You see, before even clicking on the article, I had a feeling I knew what was waiting for me inside. And I was right. Amidst recaps of recent college athletics scandals (including the tragedy that occurred at our very own Penn State, which we'e discussed at length in our recent potluck), the article quotes some cantankerous academics who are jealous about the position of, oh I don't know, the medieval art history department vis-a-vis major college football. And of course the story wouldn't be complete without references to a few new studies, one that purports to show that male college students at Oregon drank and partied more while studying slightly less when the Ducks football program was doing well, and another which inversely charted the number of electronic article downloads from campus libraries to the length of participation of the school's basketball team in March Madness.

Well you know what? I've had enough.

I am so tired of the articles that malign college sports as a corrupting force on our sacred institutions of higher learning. As a cancer whose size (as calculated by athletics budgets) somehow acts to warp the priorities of students and seemingly will cause the end of the world if we don't get it under control.

I've had enough of all this, because, frankly, it's wrong.

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