I wasn’t exactly surprised to hear this week that a Penn State alumnus sent running back Jonathan Sutherland a letter complaining about his dreadlocks and lamenting the era when football players conformed to a restrictive code of appearance. But maybe that’s because I grew up in central Pennsylvania, so I’ve been hearing sentiments like this for years. Dave Peterson, a 1966 graduate of Penn State, told writer Chip Minemyer that he didn’t mean to incite a social media firestorm after Sunderland's teammates shared online the letter that has widely been condemned as racist. “I was just disgruntled about some of the hairdos that we're seeing,” Petersen told Minemyer. “You think of Penn State as a bunch of clean-cut guys. And you do see so many who are clean-cut. But the tattoos and the hair –- there are a lot of guys with hair coming down their backs and it just looks awful.” This is not exactly an anomalous way of thinking, particularly among older generations of Penn State fans. It's a group that still feels a
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