Blue White Illustrated

Patrick Mansell couldn't believe the words filtering from my mind to my fingers, onto my laptop keyboard and through cyber- space to a colleague. "Kids these days," I said. Without irony and with complete dis- dain, I'd somehow evolved from a 32- year-old Peter Pan into an old crank. To read further is to understand why. It's a deep dive into a subject so stupid it barely deserves the summation I'm about to provide. The exchange in question was via text message, prompted by the words "No Talent Required, ehh?" sent from a friend who covers the Ohio State foot- ball program. He was playfully referenc- ing a motivational graphic tweeted out by Penn State head coach James Franklin earlier in the day on March 31 – one not far off from the corporate posters popu- larized in the '90s featuring photographs of climbers on a mountain with the word "ACHIEVE- MENT" plastered beneath. Instead, this one included the words "NO TALENT RE- QUIRED" above a list of adjectives Franklin had latched onto during the Nittany Lions' spring prac- tice sessions. "Energy," "Effort," "Doing Extra," "Body Language," "Being Coach- able," "Being On Time," "Attitude," "Work Ethic" and "Being Prepared." They were all there, combining to ex- press a sentiment that any coach at any level might use in hope of making a mark on his or her pupils. Essentially, the graphic was saying that whether you're an All-Big Ten per- former or a walk-on, the words con- tained within form the path- way to individual and team suc- cess. It was an earnest senti- ment meant to motivate 18- to 21-year-old football-playing kids, but its exe- cution was ripe for exploitation by the less-earnest among us. Cognizant or not, Penn State had pre- sented itself as a program in which the smart alecks of the world could claim that "no talent" would be required to I NEW MEDIA PSU's message gets lost in translation, but Internet culture is partly to blame J U D G M E N T C A L L

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