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I think the reason why the NCAA didn't give the program the death penalty is because it would hurt so many people outside of the program (other athletes/vendors who worked at the games etc...) who were basically innocent. I was satisfied with the penalties that were handed down, especially stripping Paterno of those wins. I think they did a good job punishing those who deserved it the most.
I'm surprised by this, but I find myself rooting for the players who are left. I think it's admirable that they stayed behind even though they had opportunities to play elsewhere.
I have no ties to Penn State, not particularly a Penn State fan, not even Italian, as someone on here assumed. But I always have admired Paterno just for the way he ran his program. He was one of the few (probably the only, actually) major college football coaches who truly placed a greater emphasis on academics and character than he did on wins and losses for his football team. He started The Grand Experiment at Penn State, in which he believed that it was possible to field a competitive football team while still stressing academics and fielding a roster of true student-athletes. There is over a half century of evidence, and thousands of former players and coaches who would attest to that.
The reason I don't want to let this go is because I feel that a tremendous injustice was done by the media to the Paterno name. For some reason, Joe Paterno was guilty until proven innocent in all of this from the very start. You have all of these media stories about how Joe Paterno masterminded a coverup of Sandusky's crimes, without a shred of evidence to support such a claim. Why was it assumed that Paterno was in on all of this? Why can't it be possible that Joe Paterno underestimated what he had heard about Sandusky, and turned the matter over to those who he felt could better handle the situation? Is that not reasonable? I just don't understand it.
Now, public perception is that Paterno is some sort of evil monster who would do anything to protect his football program. When in reality, that is the complete opposite of what he was all about. I can't imagine how the Paterno family must feel about all of this. They must be mad as hell.
I think the reason why the NCAA didn't give the program the death penalty is because it would hurt so many people outside of the program (other athletes/vendors who worked at the games etc...) who were basically innocent. I was satisfied with the penalties that were handed down, especially stripping Paterno of those wins. I think they did a good job punishing those who deserved it the most.
I'm surprised by this, but I find myself rooting for the players who are left. I think it's admirable that they stayed behind even though they had opportunities to play elsewhere.
I think the reason why the NCAA didn't give the program the death penalty is because it would hurt so many people outside of the program (other athletes/vendors who worked at the games etc...) who were basically innocent.
That doesn't matter. The reality is that innocent people pay for the bad decisions made by those who are less innocent -- collateral damage, let's call it. It happens when civilians die because of some dictator's decision to go to war, or when a family watches a son or a husband/father get sent to prison for crime. The fact that other people are affected by someone's bad decisions doesn't in any way supersede the need to impose justice. Penn State football is not that important, but we've made it so. It was the public's decision to make it so important - economically, socially, otherwise - that put Penn State in the humiliating position it now finds itself.
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Originally Posted by Kramer68
I was satisfied with the penalties that were handed down, especially stripping Paterno of those wins. I think they did a good job punishing those who deserved it the most.
It's purely symbolic, and of all the punishments, stripping Paterno of his victories is actually the punishment that seems least appropriate. Paterno may have made bad decisions in dealing with the Sandusky affair, but he earned those victories on the field as far as anyone can tell. If anything, I think using Paterno's wins against him seems to be the least appropriate thing to do. Because even if you buy into the idea that it hurt Joe Paterno - and I have no doubt it would have - I just don't accept the idea that you can use currency in NCAA football (wins) to apply it to a much bigger social problem that requires a real-world fix.
In an ideal world, Joe Paterno would have been allowed to keep his wins. But he would have been forced to pay restitution to the victims - I think his estate should. Joe Paterno never repaid the victims in life, but there's a way to do that in death, by paying for their continued psychological treatment and counseling, and by funding charities that support the victims of abuse.
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I'm surprised by this, but I find myself rooting for the players who are left. I think it's admirable that they stayed behind even though they had opportunities to play elsewhere.
And this is what I was afraid would happen all along. Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying you're wrong to cheer for the players on some level. The problem isn't the players; the problem is that Penn State has a football program. It would be better if we could cheer for those players more legitimately - by having them play for other teams. It is not right that the very institution which essentially used its football program as a cloak under which to conceal the worst of human abuse could somehow be turned into a source of pity, from which to rewrite this into some sort of feel-good script. This is horrible. It just is. This program should have been shut down. Period.
And this is what I was afraid would happen all along. Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying you're wrong to cheer for the players on some level. The problem isn't the players; the problem is that Penn State has a football program. It would be better if we could cheer for those players more legitimately - by having them play for other teams. It is not right that the very institution which essentially used its football program as a cloak under which to conceal the worst of human abuse could somehow be turned into a source of pity, from which to rewrite this into some sort of feel-good script. This is horrible. It just is. This program should have been shut down. Period.
And I repeat, the discovery of Sandusky's criminality was spin-doctored into an attack on Penn State in general within hours; a rush to judgment usually doesn't allow for time to determine the facts.
There was, no doubt about it, bad blood between Paterno and much of the Board of Trustees. And most of us who question the severity of the accusation don't deny that Paterno acquiesced in, rather than originated what has been lumped under the general description of "cover-up" (of which most of the details -- particularly the roles of Spanier, Curley, Schultz and the Board need further investigation). But as any review of the Internet traffic in the first hours of the scandal will verify, the deliberate attempt to intensify the original outrage was stage- managed with Paterno and the image of PSU as the primary target -- just like the "riot" with perhaps 50 participants and one overturned vehicle.
The other participants had everything to save and nothing to lose by complicity in directing the maximum amount of culpability to a dying man and the misplaced faith of a more-simplistic following. And I am prepared to wait until there are ice cream parlors in hell for the true record to be ascertained.
Last edited by 2nd trick op; 09-21-2012 at 05:48 AM..
Probably not quite as mad as the families of the kids that were raped after Paterno chose not to pursue this further.
If you're going to parrot the accusation which was spoon-fed and repeated from the earliest hours of the scandal, it's only fair to ask you to respond to the question originally asked in the post you criticized.
"Why can't it be possible that Joe Paterno underestimated what he had heard about Sandusky, and turned the matter over to those who he felt couldbetter handle the situation? Is that not reasonable? I just don't understand it."
Personally, I don't hold Paterno blameless; the nature of big-time college football is such that a certain percenage of individuals will always step over the line. There were a few stories and accusations regarding other behavior during the time I returned to Happy Valley a working adult in the mid-to-late 70's. Every program has them, and the "necessity?" of polishing an image for a diverse fan base creates its own distortions. That, in turn, can lead someone to turn a blind eye at the wrong time.
But Paterno's culpabilty needs to be measued by the same standard as all the other players in this sordid game. It should not be expanded because an ideologically-motivated clique with an axe to grind and a few proclivities of their own is desperate to drag someome else into the gutter and provoide them with a scapegoat for their own frustrations.
Last edited by 2nd trick op; 09-21-2012 at 06:28 AM..
And I repeat, the discovery of Sandusky's criminality was spin-doctored into an attack on Penn State in general within hours; a rush to judgment usually doesn't allow for time to determine the facts.
There was, no doubt about it, bad blood between Paterno and much of the Board of Trustees. And most of us who question the severity of the accusation don't deny that Paterno acquiesced in, rather than originated what has been lumped under the general description of "cover-up" (of which most of the details -- particularly the roles of Spanier, Curley, Schultz and the Board need further investigation). But as any review of the Internet traffic in the first hours of the scandal will verify, the deliberate attempt to intensify the original outrage was stage- managed with Paterno and the image of PSU as the primary target -- just like the "riot" with perhaps 50 participants and one overturned vehicle.
The other participants had everything to save and nothing to lose by complicity in directing the maximum amount of culpability to a dying man and the misplaced faith of a more-simplistic following. And I am prepared to wait until there are ice cream parlors in hell for the true record to be ascertained.
An independent investigation was conducted by a former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Are you suggesting that he wrote the report to salvage the Board of Trustees? Oh, and was 9/11 an inside job?
I'm a senior (Busuness Logistics '71) grad who was on campus when it all started, plus two years in Happy Valley as a working adult in the mid-Seventies, but like a lot of people, my connection to the University began to wane as my own circle drifted apart. I haven't attended a PSU game since 1994, and sometimes a year or more passes between the times I set foot in Centre County.
Like almost everybody else, I had occasional contact with people affiliated with the football program, so like most alumni, I recognize that Happy Valley is a special, somewhat over-shelteing environment, not subject to some of the pressures which were applied so viciously by outsiders who smelled the blood in the water last November.
And I have not been the least bit enthused by the tacky commercialism and sclockmeister-ship which began to infect my alma mater during the 1980's, When I learned that, in return for donatons that seemed like little more than a bribe, my own College of Business Administration was "renamed" for alumni I didn't even recognize, I was not receptive.
With regard to "the facts", I can accept Jerry Sandusky's guilt without question and admre the jury's willingess to place the facts before reputation. I can also believe that Paterno might easily become so obsessed with his own legacy that he could be manipukated into participating in a cover-up.
But I am not prepared to subscribe to the theory that Paterno was the spider at the center of some conspiratorial web. I am willing to believe that his immediate family knows more than has yet been brought to light, and I would urge them, no matter how great the possible damage, to make a clean breast of it now.
But there are so many unanswered questions --- the possiblilty of ill will between Paterno and Sandusky, the person who lost the most when Paterno began to fight retirement. And as was disgustingly depicted by some of the behavior at yesterday's rally, there is a substantial clique of the Very Politically Correct on the Board of Trustees who, in their desire to turn PSU into a watered-down version of Harvard, (or maybe just Bucknell) would have no reservations about throwing an aging, vulnerable Paterno "uder the bus."
Penn State has over half a million living alumni, many just entering their most productive years. The nature of campus life provides each of us with our own exposure, and our own view of what this University really stands for. With that diversity, it would be impossible for any cover-up, sanitized to serve the purposes of a manipulative few, to hold together.
And we have all the time in the world to discover what really happend -- without the aid of a lynch mob.
You know, all you mentioned were Sandusky and Paterno. What about the guys up on perjury charges, are they being lynched too?
I just hear a lot of comments from the PSU fans complaining about their treatment and they are constantly trying to spin spin spin that it was just Sandusky, just the one bad apple....
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