It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

When I was a child, my parents would stuff me and my five siblings into our Ford Country Squire Station Wagon and head to the drive-in movies for a triple-feature. I don’t remember most of the movies we saw, but two of them stick out in my mind: The Dirty Dozen and It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.

The latter film was a madcap comedy from 1963 starring Spencer Tracey, Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Buddy Hackett, Ethel Merman, Mickey Rooney, Phil Silvers, and Jonathan Winters with Jimmy Durante “kicking the bucket” in a cameo appearance. It was slapstick comedy at its best!

Reading yesterday’s news headlines, I realized that we are living in a mad, mad, mad, mad world today… but there’s absolutely nothing funny about it. Here are just a few examples.

In Mississippi, nine people were killed and dozens were wounded in five different shootings over the weekend following three high school and two college football games. That’s right; I said football games.

Six people were shot dead and 20 were wounded along the main street in Leland, a town of just 3,600 people, following Friday night’s homecoming game. In Heidelberg, MS, an even smaller town with just 640 residents, two people were murdered – one on the high school’s baseball field and one in a tailgating area near the bleachers – during homecoming.

The shooting at Alcorn State left one dead and two injured, while a child was struck by gunfire at Jackson State University during its homecoming festivities.

"It was the most horrific scene I'd ever seen,” said Camish Hopkins, an eyewitness to the Leland massacre. Hopkins described seeing people wounded and bleeding from various parts of their bodies and four people lying dead on the ground.

"No one was trying to really help," Hopkins said. "Leland failed Leland yesterday, but I know that we can do better because this isn't Leland."

Speaking of football, Penn State University fired its longtime head coach, James Franklin, yesterday after the team lost its third consecutive game. Penn State had started the season with high expectations, rising as high as #2 in national polls before losing a nailbiter to Oregon at home, followed by an embarrassing loss at UCLA, a team that was previously winless and hadn’t led a single opponent all year. The final nail in Franklin’s coffin was a humiliating 22-21 homecoming day loss to lowly Northwestern, whom they were favored to beat by three touchdowns.

During Franklin’s 11-year tenure at PSU, he compiled a 104-45 record but was only 6-6 in bowl games and a disastrous 4-21 against AP top-10 opponents, including 1-18 against top-10 Big Ten teams in conference games. According to ESPN Research, Franklin's .160 winning percentage against AP top-10 teams is tied for the third-worst record by a coach (minimum 25 games) at a single school since the poll era began in 1936.

Now, before you shed a single crocodile tear for poor Coach Franklin, consider the following: under the terms of his contract extension that was signed in 2021, Penn State owes Franklin a whopping $49.7 million buyout that includes his base salary of $500,000, supplemental pay of $6.5 million, and an insurance loan of $1 million through 2031.

You read that right. Penn State will pay James Franklin almost $50 million over the next six years not to coach its football team. In case you’re wondering, that’s the second highest buyout in college football history, topped only by the record $76.8 million Texas A&M forked over to Jimbo Fisher when they fired him midway through the 2023 season.

Meanwhile, the cost to attend PSU for in-state students – including tuition and fees, food and housing – is $35,118. Out-of-state students pay $56,264 and international students pony up $57,764.

I realize that college football is big business, but this stinks to high heaven.

Speaking of heaven – and hell – the latter is about to receive a new resident on November 13th. His name is Bryan Frederick Jennings, age 66, and he has been on death row in Florida since 1979 when he was convicted of kidnapping a 6-year-old girl from her bedroom and then raping and killing her.

Why this monster has been allowed to live 46 years on the taxpayers’ dime is beyond me but thank God that Gov. Ron DeSantis finally signed his death warrant last Friday.

Better late than never, I guess.