Photo Matt interviewing Curt Cignetti at IUP “No, I am not surprised he is where he is.” Curt Cignetti’s trek to the pinnacle of college football could not exactly be called a Horatio Alger story. In reality, though, many people had never heard of Curt Cignetti before he was hired as the head football at Indiana University two years ago.  Matt Burglund knew Coach Cignetti very well a few years ago as he has covered IUP football for 28 years. He is today, and was then, confide

Love thy neighbor as thyself Jesus Christ told us to love, but while many talk of it today, how many of us actually put that admonition into practice. A blind girl asked Pope Francis to allow her to touch his face to bring her closer to him -- and to God. This is what happened. So many talk about being Christians and following Jesus Christ, but we have to show that to others. And he did.

From the cellar to elite to perpetual mediocrity What many Pittsburgh Steeler fans realize today is the record of its founder, Art Rooney, Sr., the “Chief.” While he is now beloved, the won-loss record from 1933 until Chuck Noll was hired in 1969 was 164 wins, 267 losses, and 19 ties. That was a winning percentage of 38.5 percent, not exactly what the Steelers became known for during the 1970s. For example, the team had losing records from 1964 until 1972. However, the team a

The Curmudgeon When he was hired in November 2023 to direct the fortunes of the Indiana Hoosiers football program, one that had experienced little success in its history, the fans likely said, “Curt who?” Why would a program that wanted to develop a reputation as a Big Ten contender hire a guy who had been a head coach at Div. II Indiana-Pa., Elon, a school no one ever heard of, and James Madison, which had been an FCS school before he arrived? Well, the decision now makes at

I can still remember Frank Cignetti from my ventures as a young guy in the 1950s. During those years, my father used to officiate college football games every Saturday. He was an outstanding referee, and when I became about 10 or 11 years old, he asked me if I would like to accompany him to the colleges where he officiated those games. So, every Saturday morning, I would join him in our yellow 1957 Chevrolet and do something exciting: Watch a college football game. Sometimes

The greatest broadcast journalist in its history Americans are now being told that to be a great journalist you have to “love America.” Edward R. Murrow must be outraged that his network would ever say that. Who is Edward R. Murrow? He was the consummate broadcast journalist best known for his excellent reporting from Europe in World War II, and also for his  scathing critiques of Sen. Joseph McCarthy, who tried to destroy democracy in America. He is renowned for setting the

“Notre Dame and the Klan” Many contemporary college football fans do not understand that the moniker that has made Notre Dame famous was not one that the team earned on the field. Instead, the original "Fighting Irish" battled the Ku Klux Klan more than a century ago that featured Protestants against Catholics. In South Bend, no one died, and the battle was more physical than the use of weapons — guns — that killed three in Lilly, including my uncle, Phil Conrad. What is also

Brooks and Sergey Brin at Epstein dinner Hypocrisy: “The Epstein Story? Count Me Out” The Epstein story is not going to disappear, despite all of the attempts to kill it from the top of the country to other elites. The story is becoming clearer and clearer. Many of the wealthiest and most prestigious Americans were involved with Jeffrey Epstein and the worst sexual trafficking of your girls in history. The evidence is overwhelming, and some very powerful and well connected pe

He was beloved in Joliet The choice had been widely anticipated and desired by New York Catholics: A new leader who will bring a major change in style and substance to the archdiocese that has been racked by controversy over the past 16 years. Pope Leo XIV appointed a person who is very similar to him in every way and is a harbinger of a tremendous change to the American church that he hopes to bring to the American church, one that has suffered from a lack of leadership in t

Loving him from start to finish So many of us loved the show at the time: It hit the airwaves the year that I graduated from Penn State — 1971. As a student who had battled through the challenges of life in the 1960s and 70s, I could definitely relate to the philosophy of Michael Stivic in “All in the Family” which starred Carroll O’Connor as the now-iconic Archie Bunker. However, I could also understand the beliefs of Archie after growing up in a blue-collar area. The differ

Empty Pews The drops have been precipitous Recently, I viewed a photo of a beautiful church in Portage, Pa from many years ago. Not only did this show the beauty of the former Sacred Heart parish, but one commenter noted the large crowds who filled the pews. Those days are long gone. The sad part of this in America is that religious attendance has plummeted over the years to the point where people who express a desire to follow a belief still rarely attend services, if ever.

By HUGH CONRAD On a Friday evening [56] years ago, one day after Thanksgiving, I left a class at Penn State’s Willard Building to return to my dining hall for supper. I heard a large number of sirens near the Pattee Library, which was just about a block away from Willard. I thought that was odd because most students had left campus Wednesday and stayed home, cutting classes the day after Thanksgiving. Only four students out of 66 remainded in the fourth floor of Beaver Hall -

Ken Starr was probably the most powerful force behind Jeffrey Epstein’s secret plea deal. Julie K. Brown The guy acted like an obnoxious preacher screaming about the evils of Bill Clinton’s affair with a young intern more than two decades ago. He spent more than 60 million dollars investigating a consensual affair between a president and a young 20-something. Today, Clinton looks like a choir boy when compared to the sleaze of Jeffrey Epstein as the worst sexual abuser of you

Remembering JFK — 62 Years Later Those of us Baby Boomers who can remember exactly where we were on Nov. 22, 1963, when we learned about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy are becoming fewer and fewer. However, that event was the start of a horribly violent period of American politics and public life. While some say that the 2020s are terribly violent, pointing to the killing of a young conservative a few months ago, that event had none of the national emotional i

Photo from Alamy During my four decades of teaching, I — fortunately — did not have to deal with the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) or ChatGBT. Certainly, in my later years, we had to confront the use of Wikipedia, but I tried my best to explain to college students how that should never be used in an academic essay or paper -- as a citation. Today, however, teachers and professors and instructors must deal with the reality that students use these tools to actually write

Claremont students misinformed at the   Center for Writing and Public Discourse (CWPD)   a I first started teaching English grammar and literature in August 1975, more than 50 years ago. Ironically, today I am still communicating the rudiments of the English language to students, albeit in a very different technological environment than I used five decades ago. Thus, I was utterly shocked when I read a headline on the LinkedIn website earlier this year that said this: “Correc

General Dwight D. Eisenhower, leader of the Allied forces When Tom Brokaw created the name of those veterans who carried the United States to victory against Germany and Japan in World War II, it was so apropos. The Greatest Generation. They destroyed the vestiges of the Nazis in Germany and Hirohito’s Japanese who brought us into the battles at Pearl Harbor. The world truly was a bastion of freedom because of not just our founding fathers but because of those who fought to s

Jerry “Brogie” Brogden, RIP As a young teacher, I first heard about this great place to buy suits back in the 1970s when I asked a person had purchased a particularly attractive one. That was when I learned about a store named Brogie’s in Dale, outside of Johnstown. And met Jerry Brogden, whom I forever knew as “Jerry” or “Brogie” In reality, I still have suits that I purchased from Jerry over the years. Since I retired, I had no more use for wearing suits other than for spec

When I confronted an FBI agent, called him duplicitous, and sided with the priests The corrupt case of the Harrisburg Seven and “Molly’ Never in my life could I have such a great opportunity to confront a person whom I abhorred. And never could I express my animus toward the FBI agent whose code name was Molly, who saw his 20+ year career with the FBI careening off the rails because he hated two anti-war Catholic priests. I was able to tell him what I thought of him since I

When a person has family members who are diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, they naturally become fearful of what can happen to them or to others in the family. Since my family does have a history of this dreadful disease, it is always in the back of my mind. Even at the age of 78, I have been fortunate. I am working with high school and college students every day, teaching them the rudiments of the English language. My communication skills are still strong, and my memory and abilit