I can never quite take the writer hat off. I attended last Tuesday night’s Boston Bruins – Winnipeg Jets game at the TD Garden, my first NHL game of the season. I average one NHL game a year. (Depressing, I know, but I lack time and funds.)

I told myself to just watch the game. I left my notepad in the car, and didn’t even carry a pen with me. I told myself I wouldn’t tweet either, since the service at the Garden when filled is seriously lacking.

Despite my attempts to just enjoy the game, I still had two quick notes I had to write up post-game. You can take the tools away from the writer, but you can never make them stop thinking like one. Here they are:

- Speed-  There was a time a few years back when I would attend an NHL game and be instantly impressed at the speed difference between the pro game and the college game. The difference was marked – the pro game moved quicker, players not only skated faster but had better skating skills, and a player’s reflexes were that much more automatic.

The last two times I’ve attended a Bruins game, that difference has drastically decreased. It could be possible that it is because I’m simply not getting to games to make the comparison as often. But it just seems that since 2008, hockey observers have seen a marked improvement in the quality of play of college hockey players. The quality of passes and puck work in the NHL has decreased at the same level the college game has increased. Skating skills and speed in both the pro and college game have woefully decreased (qualities I didn’t learn how to evaluate until I started watching hockey with hockey players, but once I did, you can’t help but notice stride, edge security and speed.)

There is no longer that marked difference, that “wow – this is a different level” feeling, when you watch a NHL game as opposed to a college game. That’s equal parts wonderful for college hockey and a shame on the pro game.

-Seguin’s Shifts Off - Talented Tyler Seguin is still a teenager. Though you cannot deny his playmaking abilities and his contributions thus far to the Bruins, you can’t see his play purely through rose-colored glasses.

Seguin, like other immensely talented young hockey players both before and after him, has two switches. One controls his effort, and the other controls his natural talent. Every shift, a player like him has to decide to turn either one on or both on.

The natural talent switch is stuck on. It’s the switch to that lackluster light in the corner of the living room that provides you with no truely useful lighting source – it’s usually the light your grandmother leaves on a timer to try to convince would-be robbers someone is home.

The effort switch is not a given. It’s the light switch on the wall on the other side of the room. You really don’t feel like shuffling over to that side of the room. It’s out of the way of your final destination: the couch. Unless you are going to read or type and really need that light, there are times where you just don’t want to take the extra amount of energy to flip it on. You’ll rely on the lackluster light and the glow of the television.

Everyone in this world is naturally talented at something, and when it comes to whatever that is, they have those two switches. For Seguin, it’s hockey. Before every shift, he has to make that decision – is he going to expand that extra amount of energy and turn the effort swtich on?

Last Tuesday against the Jets, there were too many shifts where he wasn’t turning on the effort. He’d jump out for a shift and coast. Good plays and meaningful contributions will still happen because he’s talented, but not with the same regularity as they would if he would skate out on a shift with both talent and effort turned on. And that’s why his stats appear streaky at times – he will be on scoring fits and then be seemingly and suddenly extinguished. For example, he went on a six game scoring streak from October 29th until November 12th, amassing eight goals and three assists, and then only scored one assist in the next four games.

Seguin is far from alone. This is the same problem that was always evident to me when Colin Wilson played with BU – he took shifts off, thinking that he could coast on talent, put his stick down on the ice and volia! He’d score or assist magically, without having to try. Charlie Coyle suffered from this more severely. The shifts he turned on the effort shifts were increasingly rare as his BU tenure continued. He relies too much on his wingspan and talent, and doesn’t always put forth the effort that would push his playmaking ability over the edge. Every team has one – the young kid who thinks he’s invincible and superhuman, and can coast on the same talent that made him the star of mites, travel team, high school, and juniors.

Seguin won’t be felled by this for long – he has a tough coach and experienced teammates that won’t allow it. But it nagged me during a few games I watched on television, and when I finally saw a game live and could see the entire ice, it definitely stuck out for me. The “Seguinistas” may sling snowballs at me for pointing it out, but it’s not a death sentence for the talented forward, just a blemish.

The difference between great sports teams and bottom feeders is discipline. And the Buffalo Bills biggest problem since the start of this century? No systematic discipline in the organization from top to bottom.

Sunday’s poor showing by Bills wide receiver Stevie Johnson is a glaring example. His post-touchdown mime of New York Jets wide receiver Plaxico Burress’s accidental self-inflicted gunshot wound and a declining jet plane drew an unnecessary penalty (though it is somewhat amusing to see the Jets handed a taste of their own bombastic overstating medicine.) Johnson can’t claim naivety – he’s been a wide receiver in the National Football League for four years. He knows that the Merton Hanks, Deion Sanders and Terrell Owens post-play antics of the past are now looked down upon. But he did his display anyway, drew the penalty, and thus caused the chaotic kickoff that resulted in very favorable field placement and subsequent touchdown for the Jets.

Johnson then miffed two key catches on the last drive of the game – catches that presented a clear and easy run route ahead of him, and would have resulted in a game winning touchdown. Given that Sunday’s game was a must-win to keep the Bills relevant in the AFC playoff picture, that touchdown would have been the most important of the season to that date. The lack of extra hustle by Johnson to make them – or at least outstretch his arms a bit more and read the pass better – is disappointing.

Will any of Johnson’s lack of effort and focus – as demonstrated by the dropped catches and post-TD performance – be punished by the Bills? If history repeats itself, probably not.

The Bills have lacked systematic accountability since the days of Marv Levy. Levy was a coach that installed and rewarded responsible and vocal captains in the locker room and on the field, and didn’t mince words or actions himself. The Johnson/Flutie years saw some strong in-team leadership as well. Since then, the Bills coaching staff and roster have been more about leniency than accountability. Neither Chan Gailey or his predecessor Dick Jauron seem interested in asking for and expecting more from their team, and let antics and egotistical play slide, whereas in other NFL organizations it is not. And is it any surprise that the organizations that are most hard nosed about such things, like the New England Patriots and the Green Bay Packers, have a history of winning? (Further, if you read Michael Holley’s excellent War Room, you can see that while the Patriots still have a hard nosed coach, a lack of locker room leadership eroded the team at times, and it has shown since 2008.)

One could even surmise that this inability to discipline their team does not solely rest on the coaching staff, but the front office who hires such unaccountable coaching staffs and the owner, who we are unsure is even still alive. Buffalo’s front office showed a strong valuation of character and responsibility when late general manager John Butler was in charge, but began to wane when he departed for the San Diego Chargers. Ralph Wilson has been largely absentee for years, and his lack of leadership regarding key issues is apparent. Other owners get involved and step in when a lack of discipline is sullying their brand. When the Pittsburgh Steelers have their various situations of poor character, their owner, Dan Rooney, hurriedly steps in and tries to right the ship.

It is when owners are absentee, or when they relish a spirit of personality rather that team (categories the late Raiders owner Al Davis both fell into in points of his career), then lack of discipline runs rampant. You can’t expect a return on your investment if players think more of their own worth than the organization’s.

So Johnson’s Sunday antics may be making the national headlines today for their content, but what they are really indicative of is a culture of mediocrity and a lack of responsibility within the Bills. That Johnson had the sense that an extended touchdown celebration that would cost his team was worth it speaks to the inability of the Bills organization to instill a sense of responsibility across the board. The lack of effort Johnson showed on the final drive speaks to the lack of expectations instilled by the coaching staff. Until the Bills start seeking more from those that they hire across the board, they will be bottom feeders, and us fans, the laughing stocks of our non-Bills fans. How long must fans waste our time sticking up for an inept organization?

Colleagues, friends, and fellow Twitterers have been asking me my thoughts on the Penn State saga over the past few days, and I’ve remained mostly mum. I tend not to speak when I feel like my words would be redundant – we are a nation full of sports coverage all saying the same things.

But now that we are a few days into the mess (and that’s truly what it is, a mess), I finally have some quick insights that aren’t hackneyed. Most of these come more from the educational administrator part of me, and less from the sports consumer/writer side, but I hope you’ll find them useful.

The Mob Mentality of College Students - College students will gather en masse for anything except truly useful things. I learned this first as a student government executive board member, had it hammered home as a resident assistant, and live with it as a reality as a professional. The most powerful and informative programs will draw two students, and a flash mob in center campus will draw 500. It is a conundrum that hundreds of higher education administrators have tried to solve for years, but despite coming close, no one has ever found the golden answer.

Students are going to gather in large groups when there is an element of risk and when they know administrators aren’t behind it. Consider it their version of jumping out of a plane or making out with someone you met two hours ago in the backseat of a car at Lookout Point – it’s dangerous, stupid, but gosh darn it, it’s a rush of adrenaline to do something you aren’t supposed to do. Why else do you explain my residence hall at Binghamton University “rioting” (milling about and cheering, not really rioting) in the parking lot after Syracuse won the 2003 Final Four? It was truly stupid – why were we celebrating the school up Route 81 winning a basketball championship? (Because we weren’t post-season eligible and never thought our school would make the big dance, so we adopted the Orange. Makes no sense now, but did at age 21.)

I’m not defending what the students did in any way – they look like horribly confused and morally corrupt human beings by doing so, and their activities were truly dangerous  – but I honestly believe most will eventually regret doing it. Most of them probably justified participating by saying, “I just came outside to see what was going on,” and hopefully will learn the lesson that what the large group is doing is not always the best option. The administration of Penn State could have done a few things to lessen the mob. For example, that Trustees press conference didn’t need to be at 10pm, which is prime procrastination time for students. Have that presser at 8am, and your rioting would have been lessened. You would have less of the bystander participation, which is what fueled that fire.

Emotions - To fully grasp how residents of the community of Penn State must feel, I think you can best relate this to the range of emotions felt in individual parishes during Catholic Church sex scandals. I grew up in the Church, so I saw some of this first hand.

Your priest, especially when you were lucky enough to have one that stayed for years (a rarity in the late 1990s as generations of them retired and a shortage resulted), was someone you trusted for anything and everything. So when a scandal involved your priest, you were devastated. The parishioners would have a range of emotions with one truth behind each individual reaction: you couldn’t really understand why the priest did what he did. How you reacted to that truth was different for every person, but it was akin to the priest passing away – he no longer was the person you knew. That trustworthy persona you knew was dead.

This is exactly what’s going on with Penn State. I know several people from the area, and Penn State football is their regional cultural identity. It is their secular Saturday religion (which raises all sorts of issues for theologians, but that’s another topic for another day.) And Joe Paterno is like their priest. And no matter what each residents’ reaction is, there is one truth behind it: they don’t know how those people could do what they did. For some people, that results in a rational thought; in others, it results in a denial; and in most people from the region, it results in swirling middle ground of acknowledgement of the awfulness, but a personal grief for the ideal that was and no longer is.

Internal vs. External - There are some in this world that believe that when abuse or hurt occurs by the hand of an known entity, it is best dealt with internally, without using the external manner for punishment and investigation that societies have set up for such a thing. These people think that processing the abuse should be done within the victim’s self, and that the family or group should handle punishing (or not punishing and just acknowledging) the perpetrator internally. They take their own “action,” and then never speak again of what happened. This is a very Old World mentality that some Americans still hold to, and you see it represented by those with the opinion that no one except the physical abuser should be punished in the Penn State situation.

To a victim, that is like being hurt all over again. Victims want their feelings acknowledged, to be believed and to know it can’t happen again. And when the accused doesn’t go through any substantive punishment process, the hurt’s haunting lingers within the victim with an increased drumbeat. It could happen again, it could happen worst than last time, and no one will do anything to help, because no one did anything to help last time.

The Old World mentality that “somethings are better handled internally” that leads to abuse being swept under the rug needs to go. Internal handling breaks down the victim’s ability to trust. A victim’s trust was betrayed by someone hurting them, and so how can one ask them to trust that the accused is being handled appropriately internally?

So to hear some say that situations like Penn State’s are best handled internally is a knife in the heart and a punch in the gut. It’s a type of denial that lets the remnants of abuse hallow out the victim. How can anyone actually want that to occur?