The Unseemly, Sickening Endgame for Paterno and Penn State

Talking to a long-time and loyal PSU graduate/friend today reminded me that regardless of how “sickening” and “disappointed” JoePa’s supporters are, the football machine rolls on.

The Board’s investigation announced tonight will take months, just long enough for some more wins for JoePa’s legacy and a B1G 10 championship banner. Because regardless of the legal actions or findings in the future, league championship flags fly forever, regardless of what it took to get it there.

Just like OSU last fall, PSU will do whatever it takes now to win a B1G 10 division or league banner and hopefully go to the hallowed Rose Bowl. And then JoePa will depart next year similar to the scenario this spring at OSU.

I just read the grand jury indictment. Think I’m going to be sick.

Campus police ignored complaints for over 15 years regarding incidents between Sandusky and little boys……those orders came from somewhere and everyone knows who the most powerful man at State College is.

Joe Paterno makes me absolutely sick of my stomach. His interview tonight illustrated that he has a god complex of being untouchable and doesn’t give a DAMN about what happened to all of those kids. “Tough life..” REALLY JOE? REALLY?

We can only hope the old man sees the inside of a jail cell long enough the rest of his short life to get the same treatment those poor youngsters got or hell really does have that same sort of pain for this coward…..and make no mistake about it Joe Paterno is a COWARD.

He and all the powers in the last twenty years knew about this situation.

I suspect highly that all of this was discussed. Via email back in 1998. Penn State can’t possibly be thinking about the rose bowl now. They are worried they are about to hand over half of there billion dollar endowment to jerry sanduskys alleged victims.

Penn state won’t be able to hide behind soverign immunity the PR fallout would be unbelievable

Thanks for sharing the legal perspective.
 
1. You cannot allow Paterno in front of a microphone, not only because of the jeopardy for the defense, but because he’s not particularly lucid and completely insulated from reality. Watch the pep rally in front of his house. What plays well in Happy Valley is shocking the rest of the country. This a place that’s deeply institutionally unhealthy. When your AD and President are beholden to the head coach and it’s not exactly clear that the head coach is actually charge of his own person, you’ve got a really bad situation.
 
2. Paterno’s family and Penn St prop up Paterno like the dead guy in Weekend At Bernie’s for their own purposes. Scott Paterno is gleeful for this attention and the context is lost on him. He was begging for Twitter followers the other day. The guy strikes me as an utter buffoon who has spent his whole life trading off of his name.
 
3. I have no illusions of a satisfying conclusion and ultimate justice. I just want the people who failed and turned their backs on kids to be publicly noted and receive the appropriate contempt. Yeah, I know our society doesn’t do shame anymore. I’m a fan. I’d like to bring it back.
 
4. This will get worse and much more will come out. Once you start digging into the rot, you realize how many levels and layers were laid over it to conceal it.

First let me say I was born and weaned at the feet of the PSU football machine. I was born in PA and lived much of my early life in the Land of the Coal and the Steel Mill. Paterno and PSU are holy in these parts. I cheered them on until my redoctrination into the Longhorn Nation back in 1982. As such, I understand the mentality of my fellow Pennsylvanians. However, I am sickened by their support of this man and this institution.

Let me say, God Bless the University of Texas and their desire to do the right thing. Deloss Dodds may be the Darth Vader of college football (other peoples perception) but he would never put The University in this kind of position. Either for moral or business related reasons.

Paterno is held up as a moral standard that the rest of Humanity should aspire to. It was JoePa that we should believe in and his philosophy of always doing what was morally right, regardless of consequences, that should be emulated. Obviously that has been exposed and has exploded before our eyes. It has all been shown to be so much crap. Penn State lives for the football machine and worships at the alter of football success. They have lost all moral authority in all matters.

Paterno should be forced out and held accountable for these failures of conscience. The President of the University should be dismissed and held accountable. The staff of Paterno, while technically not accountable, should be dismissed to clean the slate. And PSU should be financially crucified for the transgressions of these men. It doesn’t heal the wounds they have created, but it begins to set things right. PS, Paterno and the respective figures involved should be excoriated for their failings. And salt should be spread over the land that was Beaver Stadium.

There is already a DA missing that looked away from this situation and many more characters with questionable backgrounds involved in Second Mile……yeah this is going to get much worse.

The seal has just been cracked on this deal, wait til it is fully opened.

People are going to be rolling over on each other like in a huge narcotics bust.

Wow, insulated is right. and lacking all faculties is right too. that debacle outside his house was just too weird. I was actually feeling sorry for him earlier in the day until I read the grand jury report. There’s a whole slew of people who will need to go before this is all said and done. I guess it’s not financially feasible for them to suspend their season, but it seems to me to be the right thing to do. I just don’t think they realize the gravity of the situation. which is quite amazing in and of itself.

Theres no way they (psu board) were caught flat footed. On college football live, matt millen said he heard about the reports this weekend (he’s on the board), and he was so angry about the situation that he was grinding his teeth while he slept.

People definitely knew this was coming down. You arlready hit it on the head. Everyone there seems to have thought this was no big deal.

The level of denial in State College is breathtaking. And I suspect other than what outside counsel is associated with PSU’s legal team, the Administration has still not come to grips with the hurricane about to hit the school.

“At the same time, Paterno’s first concern is probably his legacy.”

This is his legacy. It pains me, as a huge admirer of what Paterno seemed to stand for, to type this, but the fact is that Paterno had precious few accomplishments at PSU where he was not aided by a serial predatory pedophile.

While the board of trustees is gearing up for an “investigation” into these matters, the government (none with conflict of interests) should be investigating the university president and the trustees and any individuals than formerly held these positions. I find it highly unlikely JoePa is truly pulling the strings around there. How would he keep the victims and their families quiet for over a decade, for instance? Even with what’s been released publicly thus far, I believe they’ll find many more victims and much greater evidence of systemic cover up of the events. This, in turn, made it possible for more children to be victimized. Way to look out for the innocent. It’s a truly disgusting pattern of behavior by both Sandusky and the powers at PSU.

PSU should just forget about a line of defense: there is none. The series of moves made by the people in State College, PA can not be successfully argued in my mind. The state of Pennsylvania is much better off doing what the school should have done in the first place: reveal everything to authorities, apologize, get every last person that was responsible for running the university system off their payroll, and get out their checkbook for the victims. I don’t even know if their governor/legislature has the power to do all that, but that is what should happen. The actual results will fall well short of this; I’m sure.

Being fed to lions, Nittany or otherwise, is probably too kind for the alleged leadership of that university.

“While the board of trustees is gearing up for an "investigation" into these matters, the government (none with conflict of interests) should be investigating the university president and the trustees and any individuals than formerly held these positions. I find it highly unlikely JoePa is truly pulling the strings around there. How would he keep the victims and their families quiet for over a decade, for instance? Even with what’s been released publicly thus far, I believe they’ll find many more victims and much greater evidence of systemic cover up of the events.”

Saul you made some good points here…….this is just the beginning of this. All kinds of people were involved over a long period of time, but in the end the most powerful and influential man on campus (Paterno) didn’t attempt to put a stop to this for years. If you read the grand jury’s findings, a complaint was made to police in 1994, but the lead detective was told by the head of police to drop it. Well there was a different University President back then…..I think it is going to come out that Paterno knew about this and used his power to cover it up for years.

This is a sorry end to several careers. The one thing my parents taught me that has served me well through life was to tell the truth, even if it is a bad situation, bring it out and get it over with.

I’d put it at even money that Paterno ever sees a witness stand. This incident has thoroughly reduced the man to little more than a badly affected narcissist / egomaniac (and we had strong suspicions before - how else do you explain his refusal to step aside and insistence on “coaching” 21 straight games from the press-box? We knew the answer and so did Bobby Bowden).

The man is a frail 85 years old, his driving purpose remaining in life - further cementing and basking in his precious legacy - is irreparably tarnished, and all he can look forward to now is years of shame, media scrutiny and marathon legal meetings and trips to the courthouse.

He’ll never see another football sideline. He’s too old to write a book. I think there’s a fairly high probability this story plays out like Ken Lay’s.

It’s always the same: as stupid and morally bankrupt as the crime is, the coverup is worse. I wonder if, since Penn State is a state university, it is the taxpayers of Pennsylvania who will ultimately pay the millions of damages that are coming

RS, that is my understanding…yes.

I have a very uneasy feeling that continues to grow fueled by the new information that I read that Willow is correct and what we find is at the end of this rabbit hole is going to be something much, more worse than a few incidence by a man who badly needs help.

Great write up - thank you very much. You hate to see Joe Pa’s legacy ruined - but that is the reality, it is fair, and deserved. I personally believe that Joe Pa should not be spared legal charges, as he was part of the cover up machinery. Joe Pa handled the eyewitness account of a 10 year old boy being sodomized like it was a trite NCAA violation. Sure, he had a responsibility to the University to report the inappropriate actions of one their employees to the University, and he fulfilled that responsibility. But he also had a larger responsibility to the 10 year old being sodomized in his facility! That responsibility doesn’t get dismissed with a note to your boss.

I disagree that an internal investigation, if properly done by truly neutral counsel, is super-slow and/or pointless; I’ve been involved in several big ones and we moved pretty quickly (it helps to be ahead of regulators in that context). Further it’s pretty much required at PSU at this point to lay out in public all of the various institutional failings that allowed this nighmare to occur

However what can’t be argued is that one has to be concluded for Paterno & co. to be summarily dismissed - that should have happened 72 hours ago.

W.W. (can I call you Double Dub?) -

realmccoy hit on the the question that I can’t seem to understand. How is Paterno left out of the legal fiasco? The cynic in me thinks that the politics run that deep.

Soak up that admiration on your front lawn there Joe. Believe me, it doesn’t exist anywhere else. I have thought for a while that he is senile. That scene proves it.

Thanks for the insights. I think you hit the nail on the head. The competing agendas here (ratings, liabilities, convictions, legacy) will all interact to create a series of unsatisfying conclusions. I say unsatisfying because this has become a pure morality tale with the audience. I can’t remember a story generating so many figurative (and increasingly literal) howls for blood, and I’m not limiting that statement to sports.

Am I the only one who thinks the crowd situation at Saturday’s game could get very ugly, very fast?

Willow01,

I agree Paterno should also be held accountable. It’s just been bugging me that the ESPN coverage I saw yesterday seemed solely focused on him in their coverage. I know they are an entity that focuses on sports, but I think this goes way beyond him even while his involvement was at a minimum a bizarre performance of see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. For an octogenarian with not only children, grandchildren, and possibly great-grandchildren but whose life has seemingly revolved around preparing young men for life to take on that behavior in the face of pure evil is repugnant.

RS,

I don’t know where the money will come from, but the university has an endowment of over $1.5B. I assume whatever coffers can be legally accessed for punitive damages will be similarly large in scale.

Jinx - Note WW’s distinction: JoePa the witness serves far more legal purpose, criminal and civil, than JoePa the defendant. The DA has been careful to note that JoePa and McQueary are not targets “at this time.” You need witnesses that you can compel to testify. Making them defendants makes their testimony inaccessible.

I don’t think anyone on the DA side is trying to protect JoePa. JoePa has at least one feet on the right side of the legal line and probably both. The problem is that he should have been on the other side of the room and nowhere near the line to begin with. Charging an 84 year old icon with a fuzzy memory and at least one incontrovertible action that meets the minimum legal standard seems an excellent way to torpedo the broader legal effort.

More bombshells could come from Sandusky. His interrogation could reveal if anyone confronted him (Paterno, Spanier..) and knew what he was doing.

Will he break down and reveal everything or will he stay silent and think he’s protecting himself, PSU and Paterno? Of course, he could hang himself or get shanked. That would be the easy way out.

What I think is key here again is that the first complaint against Sandusky was made to police in 1994 and the detective was told to drop it by the head of police.

There was a different University President back then.

I think that many people no longer associated with Penn St are going to speak on this matter along with people that are still associated with Penn St. A lot of information will surface over a very long time period from many individuals that we involved in hiding this.

What is the most troublesome thing for me was in reading the Grand Jury findings was that Sandusky didn’t even try very hard to cover up his actions. He was seen by multiple eye witnesses on the Penn St staff and administration walking around showers totally naked with these young boys. This wasn’t a case of looking the other way……this was a cover up.

Always a silver lining: now no one’s talking about agy cult practices, or about Old Freak Nasty (speaking of coverups?).

Well, if the crowd situation at this weekend’s game doesn’t get ugly, I think it’s safe to say the tOSU crowd in two weeks is going to brutalize Penn St. That, in itself, is a good reason to shuffle Paterno off the stage immediately, to avoid the heckling he’ll take in Columbus.

Or maybe it’s a good reason to let him coach on and feel the full brunt of his legally acceptable, morally bankrupt behavior.

I think the program is done. Say I’m a blue chip recruit visiting, checking out the facilities: the question always in the back of my mind: “did a little boy get raped here….right here, at this spot?”
As mentioned before, the program is at a crossroads- act decisively, cut out all the morally necrotic components- physical locations and personnel and start anew on a more virtuous foundation or….circle the wagons, claim legal virtuosity and dry/paint over the cracks for the next 25 years.

Fong: I’d rather Bryant’s name and picture be on a billboard outside the stadium than for this to happen to kids.

As for PSU’s football schedule, I’m surprised to not be hearing anything about forfeiture.

It will be interesting to see if an icon, like Joe P, can be destroyed by a scandal like this. Have we seen anything comparable before? I mean, how do you erect a statue that will mock the desecration of youth in university facilities?

Willow01,

I copy and pasted the sections from links on the two presidents I found most laughable in light of their leadership in this travesty. Although I’m sure Graham “founding editor of the Journal of Family Issues” Spanier will get the chance to throw out the phrase “to the best of my knowledge,” if he hasn’t already.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joab_Thomas
“His father was the town’s superintendent of education, his mother was a music teacher. Thomas credits them, along with his brother, two sisters and his extended family, for his strong sense of character.”

http://president.psu.edu/bio
“A distinguished researcher and scholar, he has more than 100 scholarly publications, including 10 books, and was the founding editor of the Journal of Family Issues. A family sociologist, demographer, and marriage and family therapist, he earned his Ph.D. in sociology from Northwestern University, where he was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, and his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Iowa State University, where he has been honored with the Distinguished Achievement Citation.

A national leader in higher education, Dr. Spanier was the first university president to receive the Theodore M. Hesburgh Award for Leadership Excellence.

Dr. Spanier has chaired the Association of American Universities, the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges, the Big Ten Conference Council of Presidents/Chancellors, and the NCAA Division I Board of Directors. He led the Kellogg Commission on the Future of State and Land-Grant Universities, was a founding member of the Internet2 Board, and served on the Board of Trustees of the National 4-H Council. He was president of the National Council of Family Relations, chairman of the Board of Directors of Child Fund International, vice-chair of the Worldwide Universities Network, and co-chair of the Committee on Higher Education and the Entertainment Communities.

Dr. Spanier has been described as an unconventional university president. He loves spending time with students. He is a magician and has performed with Penn State’s Musical Theatre students, the Blue Band, the Glee Club, and the Chamber Orchestra. He occasionally substitutes for the Nittany Lion mascot. He has run with the bulls in Pamplona, has a commercial pilot’s license, and plays the washboard with the Deacons of Dixieland and other bands. He and his racquetball partner are the eleven-time Penn State co-ed intramural racquetball champions. He is the host of "To the Best of My Knowledge," the live, call-in program on public television and radio, and “Expert Opinion,” the sports topic program on the Big Ten Network."

Ironically, Paterno kept coaching because he didn’t know what the hell he’d do with himself if he ever retired.

I disagree. I think it was his ego and desire to pass Eddie Robinson’s record that kept him from leaving. He could have done the best thing for the program (unrelated to this scandal) and stepped down anytime over the last 15 years and been showered with accolades. But his ego kept him hanging on any way he could (even detached from any real coaching responsiblities anymore) to get that record. He just wasn’t satisfied with the legacy he’d already built.

Well Joe, congratulations. That ego kept you goin’. You’re gonna go out with quite a lecacy now.

Bateshorn said: November 9th, 2011 at 7:53 am
Well, if the crowd situation at this weekend’s game doesn’t get ugly, I think it’s safe to say the tOSU crowd in two weeks is going to brutalize Penn St. That, in itself, is a good reason to shuffle Paterno off the stage immediately, to avoid the heckling he’ll take in Columbus.

Or maybe it’s a good reason to let him coach on and feel the full brunt of his legally acceptable, morally bankrupt behavior.

Yep, if JoePa is still coaching when they go to OSU and Wisky, it’s going to be real ugly inside and outside the stadium.

ESPN reporting that Paterno will announce his retirement today, effective end of season.

So stunningly divorced from reality. Just wow.

A few points in response:

1. The exchange between jinx and G.O.F. highlights an important issue. At this stage of the case, Paterno is probably more valuable to the Commonwealth as a witness.

2. Paterno may very well end up a named defendant in the inevitable civil litigation.

3. In the middle of writing this, I see the announcement that Paterno announced his retirement. Money shot quote from Paterno: ""This is a tragedy. It is one of the great sorrows of my life. With the benefit of hindsight, I wish I had done more." Key question: When should he have done more? Again, I expect a torrent of questions regarding the circumstances of Sandusky’s early retirement after the 1999 season.

4. Willow01: there’s a story about the DA who wouldn’t press charges in ’98 in the New York Times. The guy literally vanished. Fascinating sidebar to this whole mess.

No way he coaches another game. If so there will be even more liability. Shit is going to get ugly. All coaches must go. All administrators with any knowledge at all must go. Forfeit the fest of the games this years. Start hiring new coaches. Pray you can recover some day.

Some of you people here disgust me. Joe Paterno has a long and storied history at Penn State and this in no way is his fault in any way, nor is it his responsibility what acts others may commit. He reported this, as he was required to do with his employer.

If you saints want to “blame” somebody, why don’t you “blame” the grad student who reported it to Paterno? I mean, why didn’t HE call the police??? This is the same argument many of you use against Paterno. The grad student should be publicly vilified because he did not call the police, right little angels?

I am tired of these type of witch hunts, the hysteria about “the children” every time. It is the public spectacle that disgusts me, not Joe Paterno.

This needed to be said by someone, so I am doing it as a service to the hysterical vaginas out there.

Now get back to your mouth-foaming and effigy-burning!

You know why they cancelled that presser? What if Paterno came out and said,“You know guys, I didn’t really know what to do. I didn’t see anything personally, I had it second-hand, and the guy wasn’t a coach anymore, so I passed it up to the administration.”

Now, what if the administration told him they (through the campus police) were investigating, and that nothing had turned up? That the boy couldn’t be located, Sandusky wasn’t answering questions, and nobody was talking? The guy’s a football coach, not a criminal investigator, nor a lawyer. If some university counsel told him he couldn’t make an accusation like that based on 2nd hand info, then his silence makes a sort of sense.

Make no mistake, I’m not defending him. I believe he doesn’t deserve to continue coaching. However, I’m really curious what he was told by the university AFTER he told them what was going on. Because the silence wasn’t just Paterno. It was McQueary, the janitorial staff, the campus police, the university adminstrators, Second Mile, EVERYBODY. This was the worst-kept secret in Happy Valley. So here’s hoping the ax falls further than just Paterno’s neck, because there are plenty of morally culpable people here.

This is horrible, no doubt, I just find it difficult to understand why anyone would cover it up. I see everyone jumping to the conclusion that there was a huge systemic cover up to protect this Sandusky, would someone explain why? Why on earth would anyone protect a child rapist?

One more thing: Scip is also right about this — “This will get worse and much more will come out. Once you start digging into the rot, you realize how many levels and layers were laid over it to conceal it.”

We’re barely scratching the surface of this awful story.

As sad and gut wrenching as it is for the abused kids there are other victims as well.

The football team and the boys that trusted Paterno and set him up as their guiding light.

How can they play for him now?

I have been turned off by Joe Paterno since I read a few years ago in “Horns Hogs Nixon Coming” that Paterno turned down the 1970 Cotton Bowl against Texas to settle without a doubt who was #1 because he did not think his black players would be safe in Dallas because of what had happened to President Kennedy seven years earlier.

Really?

Higher Authority:

I would of thought you would have gone with “let’s let the process play out and see what the facts are” I’m surprised you went straight to “Joe did nothing wrong”. If it’s true that Sandusky retired in 1999 because of similar accusations that were then covered up by Joe Paterno and the university, and then they allowed him to continue using campus facilities for his Second Mile Foundation, and even worse found out about additional allegations in 2002 and still allowed Sandusky on campus with children, YOU DON’T SEE ANYTHING WRONG WITH THAT?

I haven’t seen one comment on this blog saying that the grad student is not culpable, but certainly you understand that nobody in the Penn State administration gives a fuck about Mike McQuerey. This cover-up was all about protecting the image of Penn State football and its legendary leader.

Higher Authority = Father Pedafeelya from the parish down the street

If not that, then HA needs a new lawyer because his/her divorce from reality isn’t going well.

The HigherAuthority – WTH? While I agree that the grad student should have reported it as well, the tone of your post makes it seem like the righteous outcry over children being victimized is somehow wrong. The fact of the matter is, children are victimized every day, all over the world (check the stats on trafficking victims here in the US… and abroad, for that matter). Unfortunately, people usually turn a blind eye to it because it happens in seedy places, not in the hallowed halls of a institution of higher learning. And here, you have a case where multiple higher-ups in this institution either knew or should have known that something horrible was going on, and they did nothing. This, unfortunately, includes JoePa.

I’ve liked JoePa, so it has been hard for me to change my perception of him. But if he had any inkling that children were being abused in any way, then he should be held accountable for it.

And finally: I usually ignore these types of comments because this is a sports blog and I get that most of the people commenting on here are guys who are trying to prove their manhood through their knowledge of football…

But can we STOP with using a woman’s body part as an insult or negative characterization of others? I realize that most of y’all don’t think much of it, but it is highly indicative of misogynistic tendencies and reinforces negative stereotypes of women. And using that type of abusive language in the context of this situation of abuse? Unacceptable. Grow up.

this whole deal is just absolutely disgraceful.

I will hate it if Paterno is allowed to retire at the end of the year as it will basically allow him to go out on his own terms. Assuming the facts presented thus far are true, I don’t think he deserves that.

It appears the only people in America that aren’t reacting with complete disgust are in Happy Valley. This is a time that calls for honestly and full candor. Those espousing legal arguments WRT JoPa’s responsibility and culpability simply just don’t get it.

It’s difficult to imagine a legacy that isn’t completely tarnished at this point. when such actions are so systemic in nature, a system-wide punishment is appropriate.

While the conduct of the grad ass’t for not calling the police, and instead calling in the Don Corleone of the program, and arguably the whole university, is questionable, at a minimum, and reckless at worst - the actions of the Don, who had dealt with this issue previously in 1998 (and that’s just what we know aboutt), andwho decided that nominally reporting “up” to a few minor flunkies who promptly quashed it, are even less justifiable by reason of his Higher Authority

mosshorned,

I can’t speak for anyone else, but consider the events we know about what has happened in State College.

In 1998 Jerry Sandusky is confronted on the telephone by the mother of one of his victims concerning repeated inappropriate sexual conduct between Sandusky and her son. Two State College Police Detectives listen on a bedroom extension and hear Sandusky confess to his actions with the boy and state his remorse for what his actions.

The detectives take that and other evidence to the State College District Attorney who tells them he will make a decision as to whether or not he will charge Sandusky. Two days later he tells the detectives he has decided to drop the charges, but never explains his decision. I can’t tell you that the DA spoke with anyone on the PSU campus, athletic department, Joe Pa, or Sandusky, but I do know State College is a town over around 40,000. The mother had also called Child Protective Services. Pretty hard to believe no one outside of the mother, kid, Sandusky, two detectives, the DA , and the social worker knew about it. Too many moving parts to conceal.

Sandusky shortly later resigns from his position at PSU to focus his time and energy on his foundation. The guy who many believed would be Joe’s successor steps down shortly after confessing to the Mom on the phone. I just don’t believe he made that decision on his own.

In 2002 we have the shower incident and what get’s overlooked is that McQueary’s father is a friend of Sandusky. The two McQuearys go to Joe Pa’s house, Joe tell his superior and we know that those three, the AD, the head of the school police, and the president seem to know about what took place. What degree we don’t know at this time, but they do know in the facilities Sandusky was found to be engaged inappropriate activities with a 10-year old boy.

There is enough complaints and smoke around this thing and a Grand Jury is convened. McQueary now states it was rape while the AD and the head of the school police perjure themselves. How is it two higher ups at PSU both deny what took place? Does anyone believe that they did not have legal counsel prior to their testimony, that they did not speak with counsel for the school?

In 2007 Sandusky is seen at the schools facilities with a young boy even though he is supposedly banned from the campus. It would seem to me that campus security would have been notified he as banned from the campus which would mean that they were never told or they were told to just let him come and go as before.

The last number I have seen is that there are around 20 victims over a 15-20 year period, there was a report to CPS, a report to the police that resulted in the investigation and confirmation of his abusing one victim, a decision by the DA not to pursue the case (Interestingly the DA in 2005 went missing, his laptop was found in a river, and the hard drive was destroyed beyond data recovery.), a second none event in 2002, we know that at least 4 PSU employees were made aware of what McQueary saw, and yet Sandusky was allowed to move around freely on the campus.

Can I prove there was a conspiracy? No, but in a town that small with that many victims, that many reported events, and that many PSU officials involved I truly find it hard to believe they all individually decided it would be best to keep their mouths shut.

I’d like to distinguish my point from Higher Authority’s, because we’re on different pages. My point basically boils down to this. We don’t know exactly what Paterno was told by McQueary, or by the administration. We’re assuming he was some kind of all-powerful dictator on that campus, but without a shred of evidence. I’m not saying he’s not the evil hypocritical out-of-touch ass anybody else is claiming he is, but that the evidence for it is lacking.

What I DO believe is this: If Paterno’s walk into the sunset becomes the final act of the coverup of Sandusky’s crimes, then the victims will have been very poorly served. He should not be ALLOWED to quit without first explaining the content of his conversations with the administration. Justice demands no less.

We’re assuming he was some kind of all-powerful dictator on that campus, but without a shred of evidence

In 2004, Curley, select board members and the university president, Graham B. Spanier, twice went to Paterno’s house in an attempt to get him to retire. Paterno declined,

So you’re saying that if you were secure enough in your job that , against the backdrop of your performance flagging, your nominal boss, the CEO and the Board of Directors told you to take a hike, and you said no, and were able to stay at your leisure instead- we don’t have a shred of evidence that you exercise significant power in the organization?

Higher Authority = Scott Paterno

Of course McCreary is just as guilty or more so. Instead of reporting to police, he took a promotion from Joe Paterno. But, I didn’t know that clown’s name until a couple of weeks ago. I did however know who Paterno was, and had an image of him as this father figure and one of the greatest guys in sports.

Now I think of Joe Paterno as a guy who thinks his legacy is more important than child rape.

Higher Authority,

Who here has defended McQueary? Who has defended his Father?

Mike Golic spent half his show this morning talking about how little he thought of McQueary and why in the hell he didn’t act or his father didn’t tell him to get the kid out of there.

On talk radio this morning in Houston a great deal of the time was spent bashing the McQuearys. Joe Paterno has gone out of his way to make sure people knew he didn’t cut corners in his program. We all know the famous quote about Barry Switzer and Jackie Sherrill. Yet at a time when he had an opportunity to go beyond what was legally required of him the very minimum was done. Doing what is morally right and acting with integrity at times means going beyond was is legally required and in at least my mind this was a situation that merited such action.

All I can say is I’d like the dipshit called Higher Authority to spout off what he just said locked in a room with a few of the victims. You’re a heartless bastard.

Arriviste: You just said it yourself. They went asking him to RETIRE, asking, not telling him. He declined to do so, and if someone asked me to retire, I’d tell them to go take a flying f*** at the moon. Are you actually arguing that they couldn’t have fired him? I don’t know Pennsylvania labor law, or the nature of his contract at that time, but if they wanted him gone bad enough, he’d have been gone.

They wanted him to walk on his own, to prevent any negative publicity associated with forcing out an icon when he didn’t want to go. They didn’t WANT a nasty fight, so THEIR decisions gave him the power to stay. But it’s power that Curley and Spanier GAVE him, by having the conversation on those terms. That’s not the same thing as an all powerful mastermind juggling a football program and a massive conspiracy to keep quiet the actions of a sexual predator. Not the same thing at all.

TexanNick,
Let’s put it this way. You’re a VP at a company and young, bright employee comes to you and says one of the jr. VPs is naked in the shower with a young boy. (which, by the way is watering down what may have actually been said).

Your response is to kick it upstairs.

Years go by and you see the accused constantly with little boys, and you know he runs an organization that supports young boys.

Are you fucking telling me that the VP in question deserves some slack from us? REALLY?

PATERNO ADMITTED TO BEING TOLD WHAT I TYPED ABOVE, WHICH MEANS HE MAY HAVE BEEN TOLD WORSE AND WAS WATERING IT DOWN.

Here is a quote from Paterno, “It was obvious that the witness was distraught over what he saw, but he at no time related to me the very specific actions contained in the grand jury report,” Paterno said in the statement. “Regardless, it was clear that the witness saw something inappropriate involving Mr. Sandusky. As coach Sandusky was retired from our coaching staff at that time, I referred the matter to university administrators.”

Again, REALLY? Do you think the witness went to JoePa and said, “I just saw something inappropriate” after witnessing a grown man ass-raping a young boy in the PSU showers? JoePa knows what happened. Again, fuck him.

Christ, I hate when people post shit without knowing what the hell they’re talking about.

They didn’t WANT a nasty fight, so THEIR decisions gave him the power to stay.

Your backing your way into the contention that it was not until 2004 that Paterno was somehow elevated to a figure that university administratiors is an assumption that is too openly and obviously stupid to have to rebut.

It bears no connection with the reality in which he was an iconic figure long before then, and sadly and disgustingly, despite being half (or totally) senile, remains one, still able to galvanize the faithful, while the rest of the non PSU community reels in shock and disgust.

^" a figure that was more powerful than university administrators"

TexOZ,

You seem to be under the mistaken impression that I’m defending Paterno or asking for “slack”. I’m not. What I’d like to think I’m doing is pointing out that the silence is not limited to Paterno, and that important information may be lost in the rush to judgment. And what I see is a national consensus building that this was all Paterno’s fault, and that conclusion comes without much of the information which would be relevant to that conclusion.

If Paterno stepping down means questions aren’t asked about the university administration, campus police, McQueary, the janitorial staff, Second Mile, etc., specifically why ALL of these persons and entities remained silent, then a much larger crime will have actually occurred.

And not for nothing, but you should probably read the grand jury report. Curley and Spanier said that the accusation (watered down, as you put it) was almost the exact same thing, and they’ve been indicted for perjury. That means that McQueary told the grand jury that he told Curley and Spanier much more specifically what happened. The grand jury’s failure to include Paterno in that means that McQueary did not dispute Paterno’s version of what he was told. In other words, McQueary isn’t saying he gave Paterno chapter and verse about what he saw.

Arriviste: How do you read what I wrote and get that I’m arguing that he wasn’t an icon before 2004? Again, I’m not defending him. But if him being the face of this scandal means that other guilty parties go free, I am NOT ok with that.

So what are we arguing about?

Nunna Yo - to your point below
 “I think it was his ego and desire to pass Eddie Robinson’s record that kept him from leaving. He could have done the best thing for the program (unrelated to this scandal) and stepped down anytime over the last 15 years and been showered with accolades”

I couldn’t agree more. If I was the NCAA - I would retroactively put the University on Probation for failure to protect these kids in their facilities, and vacate all of Joe Pa’s victories since his knowledge of events - circa 1998.

TexanNick,

Just curious, but where do you hear and read other parties are not going to be held accountable for their actions or lack of actions in this matter?

Jerry Sandusky was STILL ALLOWED ON CAMPUS after the 1998 and 2002 crimes he committed up unit A WEEK A GO!!

That is all you need to know about this situation.

The ENTIRE town is guilty of a cover-up….the press knew; law enforcement knew; the coaching staff knew; the administration knew; the Second Mile Foundation members knew; BUT NO ONE blew the whistle until AFTER Joe Pa got his winning record. Now the flood gates open up.

Anyone suspicious of the timing of this? I am and I’m repulsed by the entire lot in Happy Valley….burn the whole damn town down.

Two things, Nick.

We’re not blaming JoePa for what happened. We’re eviscerating him for what he didn’t do. You need to comprehend this.

Secondly, “In other words, McQueary isn’t saying he gave Paterno chapter and verse about what he saw.”

SERIOUSLY? Even if McQeary watered down his account to Paterno, in what universe does “grown man and a child naked in the shower” not reach the level that requires you to take a moral stand? As mentioned, many years passed since that incident and Sandusky was still associating with young boys and Paterno knew that.

Davey O -
Great summary and timeline - thanks for pulling it together. Thank God I live in Texas where Sandusky would have had to answer to a bullet.

If this does not define “lack of institutional control” and grounds for the NCAA death penalty, I don’t know what does.

Penn State football needs to be shut down, and not just for a year.

So, was the cover-up at Penn Shame worth it?

- McQueary, by ignoring the rape of a child in the PSU shower room when he was just one of several football graduate assistants, was rewarded with a football assistant coaching position that he retains today.

- Sandusky was allowed to continue leading his Second Mile charity, continuing to operate a constant pipeline of young boys from which to select his next victim. The FOX channel in PA is reporting that now more than 20 young men have come forward to authorities about abuse charges against Sandusky - many more than the original 8 mentioned in the grand jury report. It is reported that Sandusky continued to use PSU weight room, shower, and parking facilities as recently as last week all as a part of his severance agreement with PSU.

- Graham Spanie, University President for 16 years (covering all the time span since the original changes against Sandusky were reported in 1999), is the second-highest paid university president in the U.S. - paid over $600k/year.

- Paterno was allowed to continue coaching much past his prime just so he and the football program can celebrate his 409 wins (and counting), surpassing Jackie Robinson at Grambling State. No matter what happens from here on, those 409 wins will always keep Paterno at the very top of that list of all-time college football coaches. His achievement will be celebrated for another 100 years.

- the PSU football program is on track to be the inaugural winner of the Leaders Division of the Big Ten, putting them only one win away from earning a return trip to the Rose Bowl, a BCS game and its $20+ million payout.

There may be others, but obviously, this cover-up aided many people at PSU, and probably even more names will come out in the next year.

Penn Shame University, indeed.

If I was a team with a game at STATE PENN later this year, I’d seriously have to consider just not showing up. It’d be worth a forfeit in my book and whatever contractual penalties came with it.

A home game might be tougher as your talking about the home fans and a much larger amount of money. Nebraska is the only team left with a game at State Penn and it’s this Saturday. My whole view and esteem for Nebraska would completely change if they just didn’t show up, ideally with no notice and just left the stadium full of sycophantic fans and morally bankrupt coaches and administrators facing the cameras confused as there is no opponent to play.

On a side note, one of the Big12 tie-in bowls includes a Big 10 team (used to be Alamo, now I think is Insight?). I would hope the Big12 lets it be known that none of our teams are playing State Penn in that bowl game.

Also, can the BCS do anything about the automatic Big 10 winner bid if it ends up being State Penn?

In his tearful speech today, Paterno said “I wish I had done more”. I have a sneaking suspicion the victims and their parents agree with him and will demonstrate it soon. It’s an expensive statement for PSU and Paterno in the civil suit that is going to come.

I’m no attorney but I imagine that lawsuit doesn’t have to be limited to PSU. If so, I hope it isn’t. In so many of the cases against the Catholic Pedophiliocracy, parents were bought off and signed gag agreements (shame on them) so no civil suits ever happened, which was the primary enabler of decades of that shit. In this case the hay is out of the barn beforehand and I imagine we are going to see a ground-breaking class action against everyone who could possibly be involved. There will be no woriies about legal fees so there will be no reason to exclude anyone. We’ll see where the rabbits run when that happens.

This is a stain that will remain on Penn State University and all the participants for a very long time, and that is just.

Nice timeline located here. When it’s listed out like this, it’s even more surreal.

http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/football/news?slug=ap-pennstate-chronology

Hidden sin and fear make the worst kind of crimes possible. I hope and pray for the restoration of the victims and the criminals.

If I’m a penn st. booster I don’t know what I’m thinking right now. The school has to go to every length to convince me that this institution is worthy of even my best wishes, much less my financial support. Sucks for the kids playing there and everyone legitimately innocent but terrible sin like this wreaks tremendous consequences.

Holy sh……………………………………………… Texoz thanks for the think and I had not heard this part of the story yet.

“Fall 2000—A janitor named James Calhoun observes Sandusky in the showers of the Lasch Football Building with a young boy, known as Victim 8, pinned up against the wall, performing oral sex on the boy. He tells other janitorial staff immediately. Fellow Office of Physical Plant employee Ronald Petrosky cleans the showers at Lasch and sees Sandusky and the boy, who he describes as being between the ages of 11 and 13.

Calhoun tells other physical plant employees what he saw, including Jay Witherite, his immediate supervisor. Witherite tells him to whom he should report the incident. Calhoun was a temporary employee and never makes a report. Victim 8’s identity is unknown."

What level of Dante’s Hell is appropriate for those who just stood by and did nothing?

Paterno doesn’t get it.

“My wife and I, we have 17 grandkids, from (age) 16 to 3, and we pray for them every night,” Paterno said. "And we’re going to start praying for some of those kids that got involved with some of the problems we’ve talked about.

Start praying? Why start now? Should have started in 2002. Should have asked why Sandusky was still hanging around the school with young boys.

My goals now are to keep my commitments to my players and staff and finish the season with dignity and determination.

HE is begging for dignity? What about the dignity of the victims? This is a vain, shallow, out-of-touch man.

“Joe Paterno did what he was legally required to do. He reported it to his superior. "

This.makes.me.sick!

How would you feel this statement if you were the parents of one of these kids?

What Paterno and all the others of his ilk were required to do is go IMMEDIATELY to the police and have him arrested!

The son of a bitch should have been incarcerated and, FOR SURE, never allowed on campus again!

I also don’t get the bit that Paterno was ‘surprised’ and that he was ‘fooled’.

Sandusky was the heir-apparent. However in 1998, he was accused of giving a boy a ‘bear hug’ in the shower. This is the original complaint, and involved the State ans University police interviewing both him and the boy. He agreed not to shower with boys again. In 1999, Paterno tells him that he will not be the next coach of PSU, and his retirement is announced at the age of 55.

In 2000, he’s still on campus, in the showers with young boys. A janitor sees him giving oral sex to a boy pinned against the wall. They are afraid to report the incident.

In 2002, we get the McQueary witnessed-incident.

This cover-up goes way back.

http://m.post-gazette.com/local/state/timeline-of-events-in-sandusky-case-1188149?p=0

Davey:

The reason I suspect a continued coverup is simple. Paterno, as he continues to decline with age, will become a less reliable witness as time goes by. And good luck getting him in to a sworn deposition anytime soon. The questions that need to be answered are legion:

1). What did McQueary ACTUALLY tell Paterno he saw?
2). What did Paterno relate to Curley, Spanier, etc.?
3). What were Paterno and McQueary (and the janitorial staff, campus police, etc.) told BY Curley and Spanier about what the administration was going to do, or had already done about the situation?
4). Did Paterno have any knowledge prior to the 2002 incident about any allegations against Sandusky?
5). Was Paterno consulted or did he have any say with regard to Sandusky’s continued access to campus facilities?
6). Why did McQueary not take any additional action when he learned that Sandusky was still hanging around campus?
7). Second Mile has acknowledged being aware of allegations going back to 1998. Why was Sandusky allowed to continue working with the charity?

These questions may not get answered if Paterno rides his horse out of town as the sole scapegoat. And while Curley and Spanier may have to deal with criminal actions, they can’t be compelled to answer any questions unless they’re given immunity.

Texoz, I agree with you, he SHOULD be eviscerated for not doing more. No argument here. But just to make a comparison, take the Casey Anthony case. Opinions were formed very early on, and it prevented a meaningful investigation into other suspicious circumstances surrounding the case, which may have led to other involved parties. But the public hue and cry built to the point that a prosecutor was essentially forced into trying to make a murder charge stick where he couldn’t even prove a cause of death.

Now, when Paterno steps down, the staff, assistants, etc., will be scattered to the winds. When the time comes to actually try Curley on failure to report and perjury charges, the collateral witnesses that will prove what he actually knew and did will be gone. Penn State Board may have just orchestrated a massively successful coverup themselves.

BUT NO ONE blew the whistle until AFTER Joe Pa got his winning record. Now the flood gates open up.

Show Horn - This is a great point that hadn’t clicked with me. What a coincidence that the investigation is completed, arrests made, and all of this comes public the week after Paterno got that magical 409th win.

TexanNick,

Thanks for the response.

It is my understanding that Joe Pa in going to his superior did just enough to fulfill his legal obligation. If that is the case than McQueary would have met the same standard as he reported the incident to his superior.

As to why McQueary did nothing when he learned Sandusky continued to hang around the campus is it his responsibility to enforce the ban set by the school president?

I can’t see McQueary having a long life at Penn State, but don’t expect him to be fired since his boss hasn’t been fired yet and for Joe Pa to terminate him would seem to be hypocritical.

Davey,

I think McQueary DID meet the legal standard, just as Paterno did. That said, the “moral responsibility” that is being rightfully laid at Paterno’s feet, also belongs at McQueary’s. And it’s even MORE on Second Mile. Those f***ers have some SERIOUS explaining to do.

The first complaint against Sandusky was filed with Campus Police in 1994.

The second was in 1998.

Joe Paterno was notified and probably interviewed both times.

Nick,

Agreed, but as Willow01 points out Joe Pa was well aware of Sandusky’s “issues” before McQueary was on staff at PSU. In fact, Joe is the only constant through all of this if my understanding of the situation is correct.

McQueary needs to be held accountable for his lack of action and I can not see how it will be possible for him to continue his coaching career at PSU or anywhere else for that matter.

Look, the whole State College community is culpable and I find it ironic on two levels.

First, a friend of mine from the Pittsburgh area would give us shit when the book Friday Night Light’s came out and how he boasted that this would never happen back home. That they had their priorities right and we in Texas were a bunch on uneducated hicks who worshiped football over education.

Second is that over the past few years I have read and heard again and again how people wanted Texas to go the the Big 10 over the SEC on the matters of institutional integrity and a priority of academics. While the Big 10 in no way is accountable for this matter let’s do a quick check of the conference lately. We have the three issues at THE Ohio State under Tressell as well as the basketball team, Rich Rod’s tenure at UM, 1/5 of the Iowa team going to the hospital as the result of their off-season conditioning program as well as the kid dealing drugs, and now this wonderful story not only involving the winningest coach of all time, but also the head of the BCS.

The facades might be a bit snazzier, but are the heart and souls of the Big 10 institutions really that different from the SEC/

Reminds me of something a friend told me about living in Tyler. You had two types of beer drinking neighbors. One did it openly and was called a drunkard and a heathen. The other could be found burying the beer cans from the weekend at the bottom of their trash Monday at 5:00 AM.

From 7 fricking month ago. This is not “new” news around Happy Valley.

http://www.timesonline.com/columnists/sports/mark_madden/madden-sandusky-a-state-secret/article_863d3c82-5e6f-11e0-9ae5-001a4bcf6878.html#user-comment-area

To WW McClyde and any other lawyers or law enforcement peeps,

-can the FBI join this investigation since Sandusky took one of his alleged victims across state lines?

if any readers aren’t aware, one of the victims was taken to the 1999 Alamo Bowl.

Damn Texoz,

That does raise an interesting question. The Feds came in after Vick becomes he transported dogs across state lines for the purpose of fighting.

I guess what would have to happen is the victim to come forward and say that something happened during the trip to San Antonio?

@Texoz-

I would guess the feds are already starting to look at this.

While the matters brought forth by the grand jury are state matters, Title IX requires all educators at K-12 as well as at the university level to report all on-campus sexual violence to the police and for the police to file reports with the feds. While your question refers to possible violations of the Mann Act, federal law seems to have been violated here by the failure of certain individuals to comply with federal law. Those aware the school had failed to comply with Title IX and remained silent could face additional federal charges.

Davey, it doesn’t specify in the grand jury report if anything happened on the trips. I say trips because I just read that portion of the and the kid also went to the Outback Bowl in 1998.

wish I hadn’t read portions of that report. it’s disgusting. they should paper the campus of PSU with it.

Texoz,

That bowl game was the last game Jerry Sandusky coached for Penn State. A 55-year old man brings a kid with him on a trip like that 1 year after the incident in 1998 and five years after the complaint referenced by Willow01 and no one at Penn State has any concerns??????

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph the more I read and learn about this the more contempt I have for Joe Paterno and wish the NCAA would only enact one penalty against the school. A ruling that none of Joe’s victories since these events may be counted towards his career victory total.

I doubt the NCAA is going to do much against PSU, but in a perfect world they expunge all of JoePa’s victories & records dating back to 1998. Take away what is really most precious to him.

Those less ensorcelled by the Happy Valley image are unsurprised by these events. Many on here should read the Sally Jenkins article today in the WaPo.

Ask yourself: Isn’t the only difference between Penn State and, say, College Station the 409 wins?

Pederasts are all around us. If this didn’t involve Penn State and Joe Paterno, how much would we care?

Stolen today from another board: “Jerry Sandusky is going from being on top at Penn State to being a bottom at the State Pen.”

For what it’s worth, I’d retain some respect for Joe Pa if he were to resign immediately.

No way Paterno survives the entire season.

May well be likewise for PSU President, AD and sundry others. The national media outcry, from ESPN to MSNBC, along with the public’s, will only intensify until all involved are shown the door.

But, bottom-line, and sad to say, what will force the BOT’s hands hands will be $$$.

Alumni Big Cigars will close their checkbooks until the house is cleaned and the enablers eradicated. The BOT will be left with no other option.

Why?

TV money. Makes sense. If advertisers dropped Don Imus for what he - said - seems they’d do likewise even faster with future PSU games b/c for both what Paterno - did and didn’t do - if he remains on the sidelines or pressbox or wherever else they choose to prop him up.

Sad that money rather than morals and embarrassment instead of ethics seems to be what it will take to get PSU’s BOTs and the rest of Happy Valley’s attention to makes this happen.

But it will happen.

If it doesn’t, everything and everyone PSU will rue the day.

Texoz,

Here is the response to your questions from a friend whose sister is an asst. federal prosecutor and been in contact with her.

“Yes-the FBI can if the state requests or if more victims are found. You also have a possibility of child pornography-this guy appears to be the type of SOB that would do that……if he has a computer I am certain that is being as well.

And that is absolutely a FEDERAL offense."

Texoz and Big Al,

Didn’t even think about the FBI, Fed, interstate laws scenario.

That would definitely trump all.

All the ways this can metastasize.

Incredible.

@Palmettohorn -

Money from the Big Cigars at PSU is the least of the concerns for these people right now.

The aggie bonfire criminal negligence (yea, I spoke the truth) matter wasn’t much of a civil award because it was negligence. Sovereign immunity kept the civil damages to the state to $575,000 (or there about) in total. What happened at Penn St was an intentional tort, so sovereign immunity most likely won’t apply. That opens the university (ultimately the state) to the full weight of punitive damages. A settlement in the 9 figure range is not an outlandish thought, given the precedent set by the Catholic church matter.

So…we have multiple state felonies, we have violations of federal law and possibly 1$100,000,000+ going to the victims.

Add on the fact that they are going to have one hell of a time recruiting guys to spend four years showering in Jerry’s play room, we can expect the team to have quite a long period of losing seasons.

TV money isn’t even a factor in anyone’s discussions in Happy Valley right now.

Re: Delayed charges to get record:

I have a hard time believing they bottled the charges until JoePa hit his magic number. As of right now, they seem to have dotted every I and crossed every T in their preparation, which is crucial for a case which is going to go media-nuclear the moment it gets out. Don’t take that for granted. How many cases have we seen go down the toilet because the prosecutors and investigators fell behind the media cycle and never caught up?

They didn’t rush this, and as a result, think about what we don’t have yet - defense lawyers holding press conferences to point out the clear gaps in the state’s case. Whoever put all this together seems to, at this point, done an excellent and thorough job. The initial release has permanently shaped the media frame for this story in ways that will be of incalculable benefit for the prosecution on several fronts.

Seems like a job well done to me. Maybe WW can comment.

Big Al,

After scanning posts before and after mine - as I started, left and came back sometime later, I humbly agree.

I stand corrected.

@Palmettohorn -

The only thing these people can do to in any way mitigate the damages is self impose the death penalty.

 I don’t even know how they can recruit when the former Grad Ass’t who witnessed the shower scene is now the WR coach AND the recruiting coordinator. How can any parent let their kid go to Penn St knowing the promises made to care for their children were made by the guy who witnessed the rape of a 10 yr old boy in the shower, looked at the boy in the face and then simply walked away to allow Sandusky to finish?

Where is the shame and how can people know every one of the people that let this happened have been removed from the program and barred from NCAA athletics for life?

Jim Tressel has an effective lifetime ban for looking the other way when his kids were exchanging memorabilia for tattoos (any school that wants to hire him has to show cause why he should be allowed back into NCAA athletics and the NCAA will say yes or no when they get around to considering the facts). How can the people at PSU get anything less. Not just some of the people, but ALL of the people? (and don’t even start with the claims that doing so might harm an innocent person’s carer or adversely affect their life).

This is just ugly on levels people haven’t even started to consider.

G.O.F.

You may be right that this is just a well planned out prosecution. I tend to think that a drunk Marcia Clark could win the case against Sandusk (if the case isn’t tried on campus), multiple witnesses, multiple victims. The problem was the reluctance to bring charges in the first instance.

Makes you wonder what sort of things their players get away with in Happy Valley if the coaches are able to commit such heinous crimes.

Unfortunately I am cynical that the NCAA does anything here. Someone would need to educate me: What violations (appear to have) occurred, under NCAA rules?

More importantly, the NCAA may not need to do anything: When the dust settles, this mess will serve as an effective death penalty for the program. Parents of current recruits (who I understand have already begun to de-commit) will not allow their son to play for PSU; expect several under-classmen to apply to transfer. Most future recruits won’t want anything to do with PSU, at least for a few years. It’s unlikely any credible coach or high-po. assistants will want to have PSU on their resumes anytime soon.

Once the death spiral begins and on-the-field play approaches Colorado U. levels, future recruits who might have considered going to PSU — to be part of a re-building effort — will not want to play in a doormat and tinged program. (See SMU.)

Happy Valley will soon become a post-apocalyptic wasteland for football for the next 5-10 years; expect spillover to other sports as well.

I understand there’s already a movement afoot among self-respecting PSU fans to wear black this Saturday as a symbol of shame.

There’s a special place in hell for Sandusky; I hope Joe Pa has a reservation, too. Evil bastards, both.

Abe,
what respectable PSU fans should do this weekend is neither boo nor cheer. They should sit silently and stoic, much like the victims have most likely done in their rooms, alone with their thoughts of what happened at the hands of Sandusky.

Roach:

Exactly. Charges should have been brought long ago, which is why the Sandusky part of this case is not the tricky part at all. The “who-knew-what-and-when” part will be. Someone thought this thing all the way through, IMO. There’s a reason Spanier has not said “boo” since this thing broke, other than to let his buds know he’s 100% behind them.

Prosecutors and investigators could have aimed all their fire at Sandusky, which would have left everyone on the PSU side in the clear, pretending to shake their heads in disgust along with the rest of us. Instead, we’ve got separate indictments on two key PSU administrators and the legend coach in a position where he’s going to be compelled to testify. As Scip said, the rot here runs layers deep, and the prosecutors have definitely pulled out the crowbar to start finding out how deep.

Again — they do not seem to be messing around on this one at all, from my point of view.

Davey,

I think you’re right that McQueary is screwed, and I can’t see him finding work elsewhere.

As to the 1994/1998 allegations, maybe you guys have seen something I haven’t, but nothing connects those investigations to Paterno. The abrupt 1999 exit makes me think he did, but I can also understand why an investigation of that nature would have been kept VERY close, probably just the university prez, general counsel, and the investigators. The reason? Liability. So if you’ve seen something that indicates Paterno was told about those that isn’t pure speculation, please link it.

There’s one element to the idea of the massive coverup that bothers me. If you assume everyone involved knew everything we know now, then Paterno, Curley, Spanier, etc would all be aware that a victim’s mother was out there, and knew something was rotten in Denmark. Now, how was she expected to remain quiet? I mean, could any of them have expected that it wouldn’t break at some point, particularly if other victims came forward?

Nick,
this needs more verification-

“…at Sandusky’s retirement banquet, the normally gregarious Paterno spoke for less than a minute at this tribute to a man who had worked at his side for 33 years. "

http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2011/11/living-a-lie

Like I said, I would like have that recollection backed up from other sources, but it’s worth noting that if true, speaks volumes about what Paterno knew and when.

Texoz, it absolutely does speak volumes, and it may very well mean just what we think it means. But as of yet, those dots remain unconnected.

The only possible defense I can see for Paterno is that the administration may have told him ANYTHING. They could have said it was being investigated, that the authorities were involved, that Second Mile was informed, etc. Presuming for the moment that they did tell him something along those lines, how much follow up is he responsible for? Especially given that it’s a FORMER employee, a non-student, and he was never anything more than a hearsay witness?

Until somebody publicly answers some questions about what the adminstration’s actual responses were, and the nature of the previous investigations and why they didn’t result in charges, I’m not willing to completely throw an 84 year old man who’s entire LIFE has been about honor and integrity under the bus. Why? Because he’s a football coach, not an investigator or a lawyer.

 But that said, he needs to come out and define his position and answer some hard questions.

TexanNick -
 
The dots couldn’t be more connected on several key issues.
 
I understand your perspective, but you’re already gone into defense lawyer mode. Joe Paterno is not your client. My piece was specifically NOT about lawyerly wrangling. It’s about simple right and wrong and the obligation we have to each other. This isn’t about prison sentences or having Joe Pa hung from the yardarm. The guy failed to do his duty - not as a coach - but as a human.
 
Your attempts at introducing plausible deniability are borderline insulting given the larger issue and you seem to posit an almost an autistic conception of basic human interaction.
 
Joe Paterno sat down with his trusted former starting QB and current GA - a 28 year old man - who had just seen a 10 year old boy being raped in the showers by a man who was Joe Pa’s friend, once heir apparent, and longest professional associate.
 
We are to believe that an emotional McQueary tells Joe - AT VERY BARE MINIMUM - that he saw something very wrong with Sandusky and a boy, and Joe says,“Well, OK. Thanks, Mike! Thanks for popping in. Don’t want any details. Don’t need ‘em. Just a coach. No -don’t need details about my former assistant and friend of 30 years doing well, something, with a small boy at night naked in the showers together. We’ve heard all we need to - let me just run this up the HR flagpole. I’ll tell my boss (who I actually control, you know, small detail). That Sandusky’s a rascal. Would you like a mint? How is Michigan’s defense looking?”
 
Forget the human being aspect for a moment - have you ever been in charge of ANYTHING?
 
Now imagine that scaled x 100. Penn State football. The identity of the university. If your words to Mike McQueary aren’t,“Tell me every single thing that happened” and then you don’t question him backwards and forwards for another hour, you’re already in human being and managerial fail mode. That simple failure is enough.
 
Even the most bare description of those events would force me to keep asking questions until the truth was evident.
 
And if I believed McQueary was simply making it up or even exaggerating - then he’s not going to be promoted in my staff and eventually made my recruiting coordinator.
 
This shit is not hard.
 
Joe Paterno didn’t act. In any way. He deserves every bit of heat he gets.
 
And if we honestly believe that Joe Pa had no idea why Jerry Sandusky couldn’t succeed him or remain on his staff - as was the plan before Sandusky’s report in 1998 and the many rumors before that - and simply obeyed the recommendation of his higher ups at State College without question - “hey, what, I gotta let Jerry go for an unspecified reason? Well, shucks!” - then you don’t quite get the power relationships here.

I bet we find out that Second Mile was a conduit for young boys to more than just one pedophile at PSU. I hope they burn the place down, bulldoze the site and plant daisies all over it.

Ha. My bad. I thought this was under my piece. This piece IS about lawyerly wrangling.
 
However, since TexanNick is talking about reputation and not judging Paterno, my comments still stand in that regard.
 
I don’t need a full blown trial to make a basic moral judgement. I certainly want a trial before making a criminal one.

Scip,

You may be right about my understanding of power relationships, and you’re DEFINITELY right about me being in defense lawyer mode. No argument there. And when confronted with strange circumstances, you put your money where your mouth is, and I salute you for it.

And it ignores the fact that there are very real and compelling reasons why Paterno might not have known, or even been legally advised that he couldn’t say. I read your post to say that anything short of Paterno going to the police and publicly labeling Sandusky as a sexual predator based on nothing more than second hand accounts was inadequate based on his obligation as a human being. And I couldn’t disagree more with that. Maybe because in my profession, I understand the very real consequences that come with a false accusation of this nature, whether well-intentioned or otherwise.

 In your tale, you yourself left the responsibility about whether to notify the police to the child’s mother. Paterno left it to his ostensible superiors. Why? Because his job description doesn’t include investigating every crime that might occur on campus. And assuming your point about his power on campus is true, why would he even tell Curley or anyone else? If Curley is his bitch, then all he has to do in give him his marching orders, and no meeting between Curley and the GA is necessary. And again, assuming you’re correct about the power relationship, he doesn’t need ANYONE’s permission to name his successor. So you seem to acknowledge on one hand that his power was limited, but disregard that limitation in the next sentence.

It’s become very fashionable of late to take the first bit of news that gets reported, jump to a conclusion about what it means, and demand immediate action. Why do we all have to reach the same conclusion based on limited and entirely one-sided information? I’m truly sorry if my take was offensive to you, or even borderline, particularly as I’m a fan of your stuff here at BC. But I have legitimate questions about how this proceeded, and before I run an honorable man out of town on a rail, I’d like to see someone try to answer those questions, or at minimum be given an opportunity to do so.

My point is this, and if you think about it, it’s really not in opposition to yours: There are MULTIPLE actors who must explain their YEARS of silence in this matter. We don’t even know all their names yet. Before we condemn Paterno, let’s wait for an explanation from his mouth. You may already be convinced that there simply IS no justification for his lack of action, and it’s a reasonable position. From my take, his moral responsibility depends entirely on what he knew, what he was told, and what he believed was being done to address it. And none of those things are known at this point.

And hey, it’s your board, post where you want. I appreciate your responses regardless of where they land.

One final point. I’m not asking for a full blown trial. But a reasonable opportunity and forum to hear Paterno’s take seems little to ask before condemning a man who a week ago would have received nothing but plaudits from anyone on this board.

He has a forum right now. All he has to do is grab a microphone and give us every detail about what he was told or not told. He used it today to announce what should have been his immediate retirement based on his admisssion that he wishes “he’d done more”. If he has liability, I don’t care. If PSU has liability, I care even less. This is not someone who is being judged publically for keeping quite in the here and now. In fact, it’s his own lame statements in the here and now as much as his past behavior on the matter that are responsible for the firestorme around him. If he has something to say, I’m all for hearing it, but he does not and has not lacked a forum to say it before or since this wretched ugliness came to light via a grand jury indictment.

Jake, I’m with you in that regard, I think he could start talking anytime he wants. The fact that he hasn’t isn’t a good sign. But I’m willing to wait a little longer. Not much, but a little.

Nick,

The relationship between Paterno and Sandusky is complex and extends well beyond a working relationship.

Sandusky started at defensive end for PSU from 1963-65. Joe Pa was an assistant during this time and his first year as a head coach was in 1966 when Sandusky was a GA at PSU. I could not find what position Joe coached while an assistant or if he might have been involved in the recruitment of Sandusky to PSU.

Sandusky left PSU for 2 years before coming back to PSU as an assistant in 1970 and was named the defensive co-ordinator in 1977. Jerry turned down head coaching opportunities at some major schools on the East Coast with the hope/understanding that when Joe Pa stepped down he would be the successor at his alma mater. For Joe to spend so little time speaking at Sandusky’s retirement dinner speaks volumes when you consider that they have basically grown up together at PSU.

TexanNick,
The way I look at it is that Joe has had over 10 years to talk about this and hasn’t. I’m not willing to wait any longer. You can argue he didn’t know anything, but he knew enough to see the guy retire well before he needed to retire. Then he let the guy continue to hang around his program, even though at the bare minimum Sandusky left with some nebulous cloud of negative uncertainty regarding his premature departure. You don’t let a guy continue to hang around you and your program if his retirement didn’t seem kosher, especially if you are so willing to insulate yourself that you put your fingers in your ears and scream anytime anyone even voiced a suspicion about Sandusky’s retirement. That’s just not a reasonable risk any decent, sane person takes.

Well, now they are saying that Joe Pa gets to finish the season. What a nasty little mess Penn State has just essentially escalated. As more details start coming out every week, their programs’ story this season will be all about this crap. They just shit in their bed, rolled in it, and decided they like the sensation and want even more. Repugnant.

Davey, I hear what you’re saying, and it’s damning, I agree. But I’m not prepared to go back 12 years and interpret one night’s speech as evidence. I could think of a multitude of reasons they might have not been getting along. We’re all assuming that Sandusky was forced out because of the scandal. But what if Paterno simply pulled a Mack Brown and decided he wasn’t ready to hang em up? Think they might have had words about that?

I’m purely speculating, but we’re ALL speculating. Your speculation is just as valid as mine. I’m just not quite prepared to jump to the same conclusion.

Ricky, you raise a damn good point. Ghats the question I want answered. Why did he (and McQueary, and Second Mile, and Curley, and the police, and the victim’s parent) remain silent so long? Was he told he had to, for legal reasons? For publicity reasons? Did HE make that decision for the university, or was Curley in charge?

Nick,

I don’t seem to recall APD being involved in an investigation over Will’s off the field activities. Not sure where you grew up, but in a town that size Joe Pa knew anything and everything going on with his program that involved the State College police.

Academic arguments are great for the internet, but there are some many dots on Sandusky’s page to be connected it is damn near solid.

Davey, I respect your position on this. It’s an opinion-based board, so we’re ALL essentially having an academic argument. I respect yours, even if I don’t share it.

I don’t know how I got to be the official Paterno defender here, because if you go back to my initial posts, it’s really more about not letting Paterno be the scapegoat that allows others to escape scrutiny. It’s also a caution not to assume that the information we read today will turn out to be truth tomorrow.

And let me say this. I might be wrong. I might be giving Paterno more of the benefit of the doubt than the facts will show is deserved. And I may have to come back on here and eat a lot of crow.

But what I see is a rush to write THE DEFINITIVE POST about every scandal that crops us, and it’s simple arrogance to assume we know every relevant fact 4 days into it. What do we lose by waiting in this case? Sandusky is being watched, the threat has passed. What do we lose by gathering all relevant info before making judgment?

Nick,

There are too many articles by too many people that are in position to know the back stories that have consistently delivered the same message on this story since the very beginning. I am not talking about ESPN and the other national news outlets. Instead the local media, many of whom have followed the program for a very long time that are delivering this message.

I can’t give you any hard evidence, but I have too many friends in college athletics and I can assure you that if anything happens involving the police with their programs they know about it and these are guys who don’t nearly have the clout of Joe Pa. The man has run that town for decades and nothing went down without him knowing it.

Davey, if some assistant coach is stealing from the athletic department expense accounts, I agree, he probably knows about it. But with accusations like these, the orders come down hard and fast from counsel that this thing is kept QUIET. Because if somebody let’s it slip, it can expose everyone to ENORMOUS liabilities. Did somebody quietly tell him an investigation was going on? Probably. But if they told him it didn’t turn up anything, does it then become his responsibility to go out and investigate it himself? Or does he trust the professionals?

Again, you may be 100% correct. I just haven’t seen it.

Nick,

There is no doubt you know the legal world much better than me, but I can assure you that any major college athletic department has a very close and intimate relationship with the local police department.

This point isn’t debatable. It is an entirely different world from you and I and debate the Joe Pa was not contacted or did not know about the 1998 incident with Sandusky borders on naive. That might sound harsh, but every coach I know who has or does work in college has said Boone Pickens, Bobby Lauder, and Frank Erwin wished they controlled their campuses the way Joe does PSU.

Man, Nick, do you work for some sort spy agency? I have worked on campuses and in businesses and every bit of gossip that could be spread is spread no matter what the lawyers or bosses or HR people say liabilities be damned. Sometimes the gossip is wild, but rarely is it ever 100% wrong. Rumors of pedophilia, especially ones that have witnesses and occur on multiple occasions, just don’t get swept away by confidentiality rules and threats by counsel to the point that the alleged perpetrator keeps coming on campus and keeps bringing kids with him. These guys would have to have been more disciplined to silence than soldiers in a war zone are about their maneuvers. Christ, we know most of the details about Cleve Bryant’s interactions and that was under similar liability and confidentiality concerns with much less on the line than the continued rape of children.

Joe Pa has been terminated effective immediately by PSU.

Davey, I just don’t know. I mean, I’m not claiming any particular knowledge outside areas of my own experience. You might be right. He just got fired, so we’ll see where it goes from here.

Grope-pa is gone.

Ricky: investigations of sexual misconduct tend to be handled slightly differently than your typical office or campus gossip. See Bryant, Cleve. Rumors, yes. Facts? Harder to come by.

Nick,

There are very few positions in all of sports that have the power of a college football coach at a major university in regards to the resources at their disposal and their autonomy over their programs. Why do you think guys like Saban have come back to college after being in the NFL?
 
Joe Pa is an arrogant old man who ran roughshod over anyone in the media that he didn’t like and he did it for decades. State College is in the middle of nowhere and I am not talking about a place like College Station or Norman. It is hours from any major media market and the PSU SID and Joe Pa have basically strong armed the local media. It is well known that for decades if you asked Joe a question during a press conference or call that he didn’t like he would just ignore it. He did this for decades and it was quite a shock for the media in Chicago and Detroit.

Well I don’t think I’ll lose any sleep tonight over the lack of a public statement from Joe Pa prior to his well-deserved shit canning. Especially since he probably would have just relayed some random story from his youth about a soap box derby or some shit.

If he had some great explanation about how he isn’t culpable in any of this, I’m pretty damn sure we would have heard it by now.

I’ve caught the tail end of two sexual harassment lawsuits when starting new jobs once at a university and another at a private business. People talked and talked and talked. Starting a new job you get a lot of people wanting to share dirt. I have had dozens of conversations that began, ‘They say I am not supposed to tell anyone but…’ The first job was many moons ago and I was a flunky and the other flunkies loved to gossip. The second job I was in a much higher level position and others at my pay grade and above loved to gossip and shared things they learned supposedly from the depositions.

In fact, I haven’t worked a job where people didn’t love to gossip. Yes, it is rumor, but you learned not to trust the ‘drunk’ with work after hours because it will never got done. You didn’t send the ‘sleaze’ out to certain customers because you risked that account. I think retired ‘pedo-guy’ would not be welcome back to the office, even more so if he was coming around with kids you knew weren’t his own.

Davey, I’m as pro-press as the next guy, but I’ve seen Mack Brown ignore press questions, and I’m not sure what that really says about the powerful nature of a CFB coach. I’m not disputing your premise, but what does handling the press roughly have to do with knowledge of criminal investigations?

The handling of the press has to deal with Joe being an arrogant old man who thought he was above doing anything he didn’t want to do or was beneath him.

It also goes to your question about why wasn’t there more information at the time these events took place. If you think Bill Little tries to manipulate the information coming out of Austin and the media coverage of the program they are amateurs to what has been done at PSU for decades. It is one of the very reason why you see so many media outlooks coming in for the kill on this story.

In regards to the knowledge of criminal investigations it just is part of controlling all aspects and coverage of his program.

Davey, you make a compelling case for schadenfreude being what brought Paterno down.

I’m watching the BOT press conference right now announcing Paterno’s firing.
 
They connected the dots.

Just in - the Board of Trustees at Penn State does the right thing.
http://www.rollbamaroll.com/2011/11/9/2551048/joe-paterno-fired-by-penn-state

Too bad it’s about 15 years too late.

I find myself saying this way too often… Scipio, ftw.

The PSU SB Nation blog is in meltdown. Mostly Joe Pa supporters, but a lot of people angry, with good reason, that guys like Spanier get to resign while Joe get’s fired. Even McQ gets to keep his job. Curley is still on administrative leave rather than getting fired. Firing the whole lot probably would have made the most sense from the optics of ‘best interest of the university’. This sort of half-assed approach really allows for Joe Pa supporters to rail against the Board of the Trustees for being knee-jerk.

Still don’t understand the supporters. I am pissed at Mack over the Cleve Bryant fiasco and that isn’t even in the same stratosphere as this. I would want Mack’s head on a pike if I found out something similar had gone on at UT and all he did was pass it on to a superior.

TexanNick,
nobody wins on this one. It’s a modern day Shakespearean tragedy, and I don’t think the final act has arrived yet.

“I am pissed at Mack over the Cleve Bryant fiasco and that isn’t even in the same stratosphere as this.”

Hell of a double standard about unwanted sexual molestation. What if it was your daughter whose top OFN pulled down and proceeded to fondled her? Sexual abuse in both cases in my book.

He’s no longer the head football coach, but I thought someone asked Surma why JoePa wasn’t put on administrative leave, and he said those issues would be handled later. I could be and probably am wrong. Can you relieve someone of their duties as head football coach without terminating their employment by the university?

As for the rest of it…. Spanier offered to resign immediately. Paterno did not. Curly offered to accept administrative leave immediately. Paterno did not. I do see some consistency in there, not that anyone in that crowd would be interested in looking that hard.

Ricky -
 
It’s a total housecleaning. There’s not much half-assed about it.
 
Spanier was told: resign now or we fire you. He resigned.
 
Paterno informed the university when he’d be leaving and how. So he was fired.
 
Surely you can see the difference.
 
BTW, Paterno has been asked to resign before. In 2004. By his AD and President. He said no. Then continued coaching. It’s a banana republic.

Guess unwanted and molestation are redundant. .

Sex abuse by those in power over others in both cases is want I wanted to say. Guess I’m a bit hot under the collar.

Damn it, give me an edit function! What not want.

topwater -
 
A lecher grabbing a tit and behaving like a pathetic creep in the workplace and the systematic rape of vulnerable young boys over a decade plus aren’t in the same universe. The edit function you need is in your own brain.

Scip, I was saying from an optics standpoint they make themselves look weak by not just firing everyone. I didn’t watch the press conference so maybe they directly said, ‘We told Joe and everyone else to resign, and Joe is the only one fired because he refused.’ They also didn’t fire Bradley, who I think has been with Paterno for a long time. I am merely looking at this from the disgruntled views I was seeing over on the SB Nation comments where they think this looks like a media lynching. I could care less about how they get these guys to leave, but I have to admit I am surprised any of his current staff is allowed to remain, but then I guess they have a football game to play.

topwater, the woman whom Cleve molested was an adult and was able to hire an attorney and put Cleve in his place. Maybe Cleve pulled down other female employees’ shirts and made harassing advances on them, I would say it is likely his inappropriate behavior wasn’t isolated to this single case, but she was seemingly the first to bring it anyone’s attention. Some people like office flirtations and I have seen people say some pretty sick stuff to each other in the office and not bat an eye, but I have never met a child that I feel convinced would like to have anal sex with a 50+ year-old man so yes, this is a different stratosphere in my eyes. If she wasn’t the first to file a complaint and this behavior was allowed to go unchecked for years then I would want Mack, Dodds, and the lot gone yesterday.

Ricky: Every person has a different circumstance. One successful wrongful termination suit, especially under conditions like these, could fetch a 7 figure settlement. I think PSU has enough civil liability to worry about right now without summarily disposing an entire staff without due process simply for the optics.

If this were coming on the heels of a losing season the rest of the staff could be canned more easily. I guess there are also issues with guys like McQ, whom they might need to keep happy for the sake of protecting additional asses that need to be covered.

I think a 7 figure settlement seems like a reasonable risk when the university could be looking at a 9 figure civil suit from the victims as well as a certain Federal probe for not reporting the felonies in the first place. That said, I guess firing Bradley and the rest of the staff wouldn’t do anything to lessen the tensions either and any move as this late date is going to be questioned by the nuttiest of fans. At this point the BOT’s best move would be to provide flamethrowers to the kids on campus and tell them to have at it.

Jesus Christ on a bike. I take a few hours off to practice a little law and drive my family to Dallas and you sumbitches have been rewriting the Federalist Papers.

Texoz,

I think you’re right. The board pulling a Wednesday night massacre leaves us with more questions than it answered.

Ricky,

As far as I know Tom Bradley has not been linked to this situation in anyways other than he succeeded Jerry Sandusky as the DC at Penn State and he works/ed at PSU with Joe Pa and McQueary.

The same with any of the other staff members that are part of the PSU football program. PSU has every intent to complete the season and they have to have someone to do that. Why terminate people who weren’t responsible or in position of accountability. Chances are that much if not all of the staff will be gone when the new head coach comes in, but that will be done in time and in all honesty it is not the top priority of the Board of Trustees at this time. Only the BoT can say because only the BoT know what they know. As Scipio said it is very, very apparent that they have connected enough dots to act swiftly and decisively.

This tragedy mirrors Oedipus. The very principles and ideals that Joe talked about have come back to lead to his downfall. His teams did not have names on their jerseys and wore plain uniforms because they were part of a team yet it was the decisions of individuals that brought shame and dishonor to the entire program. Joe openly jibed at peers at their lack of ethics and morals and yet when he had to make the most important decision in the history of his program he seemingly did only what was legal and not what was moral

Davey, I thought Bradley came from under Sandusky’s tutelage. McQ saw what Sandusky did, reported it as ‘good’ soldier should, and then continued to watch Sandusky show up on campus with kids als did every other member of the coaching staff. If Joe and McQ knew what Sandusky was up to, how could Bradley and the others not know that something was rotten in Happy Valley? Yes, from a legal standpoint they aren’t in positions of authority and I don’t really know how much of an obvious presence Sandusky had after the 2002 incident, so I understand the moves made here. That said, considering the gravity of the crimes committed, they should can the whole staff and forfeit the rest of the season. Anything short of that doesn’t really impress me from a moral standpoint.

Ricky,

I agree with what you are saying, but I first need to thank you, the other contributors, and the writers of this blog. We all come to this specific site for our reasons. It might be the subject matter though more than UT athletics is discussed at times, it might be the writer, the pop culture references that I will admit not always getting (At times I think I am reading Dennis Miller in his prime.), the quality of analysis and depth of knowledge, but i do think for me the one significant factor is the civility and for lack of a better depth courtesy shown to each others when discussing at times very difficult topics. I will be quite honest that in some strange way these two threads have been carthotic for me on this matter and I think all those who contributed to the threads and those who make up this "community’.

Back to the topic on hand. I think that in following deductive reasoning your are correct that Bradley and the other members on staff at the least had an idea that something was not right. What has happened in State College was shielded by what I could only call an institutional conspiracy. Hope deep and profound the conspiracy we may never truly know, but with the veil on the program pulled back so no the media has access, the State looking into matters, and the Feds starting their investigation I am afraid we will learn it is deep and wide.

The only event that I can use as a reference point for what we are learning took place in State College is the institutional cover-up by the Catholic Church. I realize that this is a very touchy subject to one and as someone who was raised Catholic, went to Catholic schools for 12 years (thanks Huck for including the Friars in your high school power rankings), and with parents that still practice Catholicism i don’t use this as a reference point to take a back handed stab the Church. I pray that we find out that we find out that the institutional cover-up is the primary similarity and not that there were multiple abusers.

I remember reading the comments of a Priest as to why he did not say anything even though he suspected something wasn’t right with a nearby parish. He simply stated that he feared that the damage done to the Church would impair the Church’s ability to carry out its commission. I am not trying to derail this further and I truly don’t know what on the staff at PSU knew or what they were thinking. I do think however it could have been of a similar mindset. That by pulling back the curtain on this entire sordid mess at PSU they would undo the good things brought about by Joe Pa’s program and the University.

One point i do want to say about the decision to play this game on Saturday. I am not sure how in the world those players will even be able to focus upon playing the game, but I do recall something told to me by a friend who was a high school head coach about his thought process when he would decide to punish a member of his team. He wanted to make sure they would be punished, but he did not that decision to punish the other members of the team that had done nothing wrong.

Saturday is Senior Day in State College. Those players worlds have been turned upside and the only thing we know they did “wrong” was choose to play football at at PSU. Yes, the boys abused have had their worlds destroyed for nothing they did than trust someone there who said he was there to help them. Not allowing those seniors to walk out on that field for one last time will not put those boys lives back together, it won’t pay for the sins of Jerry Sandusky, or for those who did not do what they were capable of doing to protect those boys.

Maybe to some playing the game symbolizes that at PSU it is football first, but I believe that Saturday is key to show that just as the sun will continue to rise each day the PSU program will continue after Joe Pa.

The BOT knew they didn’t want a Joe Pa Full Hero Treatment Lovefest at Saturday’s game replete with former players and his possibly being carried off on his team’s shoulders as a horrified national TV audience, including the victims and their families, watched. Paterno had already announced his intentions to coach not only that game but the rest of the season, apparently indifferent to the pain (and damages) that could have inflicted on his University long-term and to those victims and their families.For those reasons, IMO, they had no choice but to fire him. Paterno made his choice by pre-emptively attempting to dictate his own terms.

In the end, all he cared about was himself.

As to the street rabble, they might want to use some of their energy to stage a campus rally in support of the victims and their families and stop the embarrassment they are heaping upon PSU and the rest of the student body.

While I suspect that the acting AD may can McQueary before the game Saturday, and that he simply wasn’t on the BOT agenda last night, is there possibly some kind of whistleblower/retaliation claim McQueary would have if he were canned?

After all, he reported it up the chain (both to coach and AD), and setting aside his moral obligations for a moment, if the university fires him for not going to the police as well 9 years ago that seems, I’ll say, strange, to say the least.

I don’t get McQueary being able to live with himelf for 9 years, but at this juncture, what is the University’s “cause” to fire McQueary considering any firing would seem related to the 2002 incident that McQueary reported.

This may all be moot as I think the whole staff will be gone when they bring in an new coach next year, but that might be the complication holding up any termination of McQueary (although, now I’m not sure why it wouldn’t apply to Paterno as well… technically of course. I am all for firing him last night).

Davey,
Agree with pretty much everything you said, especially your eloquent first paragraph.

While I see what you are saying about not punishing the players, this isn’t like 911 or the VT shootings where sport can have a unifying and cathartic effect and to stop living a normal life is in a way an insult to the victims. PSU football is the symbol of the evil perpetrated and the root of its continuance. Add to it the fact that so many of the student body also seem to be unable to see the enormity of what has occurred within the program, and it makes me think the that proper response is to stop playing and to drive home the fact that football is just a game and not something that takes priority over the lives of the children whose innocence was ultimately stolen for the protection of the PSU football program.

More allegations surfacing that Sandusky was also participating in a pedophile ring, selling out boys to boosters.

None of it verified but nothing would shock me at this point.

A-Tex, whistleblower/retaliation is an interesting idea. From a legal standpoint, Paterno would have the same claim at this point, wouldn’t he? As to the “cause”, it would be the same as it was for Paterno… that he failed to adequately follow up on an incident of sexual abuse of a child that he actually witnessed.

For the reasons I’ve outlined, I don’t know if I agree with the BOT decision last night. I think the Board’s failure to state a cause, and the waffling back and forth between saying there would be a full investigation and that all facts would come to light, but saying that they felt they had enough facts, and had no choice, didn’t really serve the cause the Penn State needs as an institution trying to rebuild faith. If the talking point had been,“We don’t think Paterno acted adequately by x,y, and z”, then at least there would be something to grip onto here. But when asked, the vice chairman specifically declined to characterize it, and that was unfortunate.

Setting my own opinions to the side, if Paterno had to go last night, and in the manner that he did, I think McQueary and the entire staff, or at least those hired before the 2002 incident (I don’t know the breakdown exactly) had to go. The message, according to the board, was the Penn State University was bigger than football. Well, that’s either true or not. I don’t want to see those senior players punished by having to forfeit, but if you follow the Board’s position to its logical conclusion, what choice do they really have?

Bradley, while probably not as culpable as Paterno, had to have heard rumors. So if we’re punishing people for not acting enough on 2nd hand information, why wouldn’t the entire staff be responsible? Let the kids coach themselves if you have to hold the game. Or really make a statement by firing the staff, and immediately starting your search for a new AD, coach, etc. Most of the ESPN commentary seems to be that Penn State could not have withstood the spectacle of Paterno coaching that game. Well, that game is going to be a spectacle now, for sure. And while McQueary remains, the questions will continue.

Okay, read another crazy ass rumor. Did JoePa really punish players for a bad game by making them wash his back in the shower? Someone please tell me this is just an example of rumors running rampant during a scandal?

Otherwise, holy fuck fuck.

Did they fire the grad student who didn’t drop a dime to the cops? (of course not)

Hypocrisy. I am deeply ashamed of the media and those who have called for Paterno’s job.

This is just the kind of mobthink overkill we see on almost every issue these days.

I wish you moral police, mouthbreathers and hysterical villagers with pitchforks would take up a hobby like stamp-collecting or something and calm the F down with this hysterical, pansy melodrama.

VoiceOfReason -

Are you just bad at satire, or are you part of a government experiment that has taught the functionally retarded how to get online?

Ricky,

Thank you. As a father of three this is the type of thing you hope you can protect your kids from, but know how truly evil people can be in regards to how we treat our own species.

Vasherized,

My wife and I talked and we were both worried about ourselves that we wondered if there were others beyond Sandusky involved with the abuse of the boys. I won’t go all morose and say that it is a condemnation of our times that we even thought this way because preying on the young and weak is in my mind a tragic flaw we as human repeat again and again and again over our history.

A friend sent me a link in which Sandusky’s attorney has been suspected of abuse in his past. Is it just an ugly internet rumor? I have no idea. Part of me truly hopes it is and unfortunately part of me knows that we as human can be that depraved and ugly.

TexanNick:

If you don’t think that a Head Coach at an institution like Penn St is notified or possibly interviewed when one of his CURRENT EMPLOYEES is accused of a FELONY against a CHILD then I don’t know what the hell to tell you. Both complaints in 1994 & 1998 were filed with CAMPUS POLICE.

Geez

Willow01 -
 
TexanNick is in defense lawyer mode. Inference and logic ain’t enough. Prove it.
 
And I don’t fault him if that’s where he wants to dwell. If it were an actual trial instead of an internet board, that’s exactly where the burden should be.

Willow and Scip,

We all agree that Paterno didn’t commit a crime right? So what we’re arguing about is his moral responsibility, and by what standard that responsibility should be judged. Reasonable minds can differ on that point. And to be honest it’s already been hashed out adequately.

My issue now is, and again, setting my own opinions about what’s happened so far aside, if it is right and fair - indeed, imperative - that Paterno had to go, does not the same logic mean that any member of the coaching staff in place in 2002 or earlier have to go as well? If not, why not?

nobis60 - Like the scarecrow, you lack a BRAIN. The Wizard is calling and your brain is ready for pick-up. Geez, what a retarded attempt at a witty retort!

Are you a student at the Austin State School for the Mentally Challenged?

Nick, I was asking the same question earlier and feel morally that they should fired everyone. I think the most likely answer was by GOF. The university risks getting sued for improper termination if they fire too many, too broadly. They fired or forced to resign the people that probably had some contractual language that made them more open to be fired on a broader slate of program-wide issues. The individual coaches may have more narrowly focused deals based on performance and individual conduct. Ultimately, they won’t hire Bradley as the permanent replacement so after the season the he and the rest of the staff will not be retained by the new PSU head coach and the university’s ‘problem’ is solved.

VoR -

So it was the second one, then.

TexanNick -
 
The obvious answer is that every member of the coaching staff may not know.
 
McQueary specifically may also be able to hide behind a whistle blower designation.

Ricky, I think you’re asking good questions, but as a lawyer, I can tell you that PSU’s exposure on coaching staff contracts is minimal. Hell, they can afford to terminate, pay out full value on those contracts, and still walk away grinning. Why? Because it will PALE in comparison to the exposure they’re looking at from the victims and their families. In reality, most would simply negotiate something in the middle. It’s NOT coaching contracts that are keeping PSU from doing the right thing on that.

Anybody and everybody at Penn State who learned of any of these incidents and failed to report them to the police - not the AD, not the campus cops, the police - should either resign or be fired. There is simply no justification for having credible information about a matter like this and failing to report it to the legal authorities.

People who defend Penn State remind me of people who defend Pete Carroll for purposefully “not knowing” what was going on at USC when he was head coach. The main difference, is that this is much, much worse than payoffs to a player’s family or anything else that went on.

TexanNick, isn’t PSU in the same position as any defendant who tried to cover something up and had the attempt fail?

Scip, have you not been following the thread? Everybody on this board has spent two days telling me all the reasons they couldn’t NOT know. See Davey O’s posts for good examples. And we don’t even know exactly what Paterno knew. And we damn sure know McQueary knew. So again, if I grant you that firing Paterno was the only rational, human choice, do you think retaining McQueary is defensible in any way?

To your point about whistleblower protection, whistleblower status does not apply here, because the causation for firing would not be his saying what he saw, but rather failing to do the proper follow-up after. Additionally, because Sanduskey wasn’t an employee of the University at the time, and thus would have no power to terminate McQueary, whistleblower protection arguably doesn’t come in to play.

Just for the sake of argument, if whistleblower status DID apply, it would protect Paterno too, since he did report it up the chain.

JG, I think you’re right, and the full inquiry can’t come fast enough for me. Astounding to me that the first Penn State representative to step in front of a microphone was the Interim Coach Bradley.

I want names of people in the campus police, State College (city) police, Second Mile, etc. Paterno, whether he deserves this or not, is not the end of the inquiry.

You’re having a tough time distinguishing between Joe Paterno being informed, as is plainly evident in the Grand Jury findings and by his own admission, and the rest of the entire Penn State coaching staff, sans McQueary, of which we have no information at all.
 
You’re trying to extend logic chains with spider webs.
 
And I’ve been clear on what should be done with McQueary. You asked why Penn St may not have acted on him.

This doesn’t seem to be a popular sentiment here, but I agree with Texan Nick that, in some cases, it is a very good idea to let more facts become known before making categorical moral judgments. This seems one of those cases. The counterargument seems to be that, when an offense is heinous enough, it’s imperative to form a judgment as quickly as possible. I believe that the exact opposite is true. And, to be clear, I’m not speaking about legality; it goes without saying, but I’m saying anyway, that the American jurisprudence system is founded on a presumption of innocence. I’m speaking about the morality of the actions taken or not taken. No one on this board knows with certainty what happened and when.

Side note: Some seem to be seriously arguing for opponents to boycott Penn State football games. Putting aside that this is logistically infeasible, what precisely would this accomplish? It shows that Nebraska is opposed to pedophilia? That collective punishment is appropriate for the apparent transgressions of one fiend and some alleged enablers? If Paterno had been fired yesterday instead of today, could Bo Pelini send his team on the field in good conscience?

While hurling stones, I’ll also say that at least some significant minority of PSU students have behaved with maximum classlessness the past 24 hours. Destroying campus property and putting others’ lives at risk with falling lampposts because your 84-year-old coach was fired? Really? There was no rioting when the Sandusky allegations came out.. This is what got them worked up?

Nick,
I had a similar take, that an improper termination suit paled in comparison to what else was coming down the line. I also don’t think the ‘that coach didn’t know anything’ defense has all that much to do with firing or not firing the whole staff. As you suggest, coaching contracts seem to be pretty easily dealt with…indeed entire staffs get fired all the time. In this case it isn’t for failure to perform on the field, it’s for a different failure, but a failure nonetheless. Many a good assistant has been canned for the sins of his head coach, why should this case be any different?

The only rationale I can come up with for keeping the rest of the staff on board is to play out the rest of the season. I personally find that reprehensible, but as Davey has noted isn’t fair for the athletes to have the rest of their season taken away over this. I don’t think player fairness has anything to do with why the school is going to play out the rest of the season. I think fairness to the players should take a backseat to the horrible things that happened but then when there’s money to be made I guess I am not too surprised at this turn of events.

The BoT has decided to go with the season and I think there are some very delicate decisions that have to be made in a very short period of time.

First, who truly knew what about the various incidents with Sandusky that we know about from the news reports? As Willow01 has pointed out and linked for us there are reports from 1994, 1998, 2000, and 2002. If we work under the assumption that anyone on the staff at the very least had to hear the rumors if not truly knew something about Sandusky, the Foundation, the repeated incidents, and the institutional cover-up then 7 of the coaches on the staff would have been there in 2002 (2 actually have been there over 30 years and 2 have 20+ years).

Applying the standard that if they knew, but did not do the morally right thing to do they should be terminated than you basically wipe out the staff. Odds are this is going to happen when you bring in a new coach regardless. The one guy who I truly believe should not be there on Saturday is McQueary and I hope he has enough integrity to not set foot on campus that day.

Why not the other guys? Nick you took the stance yesterday that Joe should be given the benefit of the doubt because we truly did not know nor could prove what Joe knew or did not know. Let me pose another hypothetical situation.

By firing those 7 coaches you basically are quitting the season which I know some people have called for, but what crime have the 85 players who are scholarship committed to merit that type of punishment? Look, I was at TCU when the cheating went on and I had friends at SMU when they got hit with the death penalty. Those programs benefited from breaking the rules, but how is that applicable to this situation?

If I recall correctly Barry Switzer did not get fired for cheating, but for a program out of control. In a very short period of time we saw a gang-rape by 4 players, one player shooting another, and there starting quarterback been arrested for trafficking. Someone please correctly me if I am wrong, but the NCAA did not hit OU for any of those things because as bad as they were they did not result in breaking any of the NCAA rules.

The only thing we know those players did at PSU was sign a letter of intent to play ball for Joe Pa and PSU. If they did something wrong then nuke the entire program, but there has not been one bit of evidence they were involved or knew any of this was more than possible rumors.

I don’t know Derek Moye from Adam. All I know is he is a senior wide receiver which means during his time there he was worked under the direction of McQueary. Might have been recruited by him, they definitely spent time together, he might be a great guy or he might be a thug. Don’t know him if he stepped on my big toe. His choosing to play ball at PSU, his doing what his coaches asked of him, his putting that uniform on and giving all he could does not make him guilty and in my mind merit his, the other seniors, or the other players on this team to be punished by either cancelling the season or putting them in a situation they can’t even compete.

Let’s not confuse being a player on the PSU football team and a concentration camp guard who claims he was only following orders to march the Jews and Gypsies into the showers..

The coaches who should be fired will be fired in time. Joe Pa wanted to be allowed to be retire with dignity and instead he gets fired over the phone following a messenger coming to his house and his legacy will always have this footnote.

You want to punish PSU? Take away the one thing left that matters to them. If you kill the program it only makes a martyr of Joe to some. If the NCAA however comes in and declares that every PSU victory in which Jerry Sandusky coached following the 1998 incident is voided takes away their precious record. They did it to Bowden for a great deal less.

Texan Nick -

Prefacing this that the below is only positing why the BOT didn’t let McQueary go, not a defense of McQueary’s (in)action, which I believe is still morally indefensible….

First — I don’t think the BOT had McQueary on the agenda last night. He’s small potatoes, really, and the acting AD or even Bradley can deal with him. Now they’ve apparently asked him not to be on the sidelines, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s gone before Saturday, but I feel the BOT is getting killed for something that frankly wasn’t of great importance last night.

Second. I believe whistleblower retaliation might apply in this case with McQueary. It’s not your standard fact pattern, but retaliation suits aren’t just limited to harassment by those in authority. McQueary reported the incident to superiors per his responsibility as a university employee. Now 9 years later you are going to fire him because he didn’t continue press his bosses on it? Talk about pushing people not to say anything in the future. McQueary should have gone to the cops as soon as he saw Sandusky still hanging around the locker room after he went to JoePa, but that’s separate and apart from his responsibilities as an employee.

And the difference between McQueary and Paterno is that Paterno could unilaterally tell Sandusky to hit the road in 2002 (whether officially or not). He didn’t. The BOT has canned or suspended everyone that knew about this that had the power to mitigate some already awful events.

Uh, sorry to interrupt with you know, facts, and shit, but we know Joe Paterno was informed. And there’s powerful circumstantial evidence he knew about 1998 before that, at minimum.
 
We know Mike McQueary saw what he saw.
 
Show me where we know anything about the Penn St OL coach or DB assistant?
 
I’m very comfortable making judgements on Paterno and McQueary. I’m not comfortable making judgements on every single person at Penn St who may have heard a rumor. Sure, fire everyone. I don’t really give a shit. That’s more about addressing a larger culture. Clean it out.
 
But I’m not going to assign the same moral culpability to every staffer that I will to Paterno and McQueary.

Davey, I am not suggesting the NCAA has any role in this and I doubt they will do anything about this situation. My take is the that the BOT’s most moral statement that they are indeed first and foremost an institution of higher learning would be to forfeit the rest of their season. They have fired or forced resignations from pretty much all the upper hierarchy of their football program and athletics department. That is a sign of some serious rot. Whether each and every person is accountable isn’t really the point. When a business fails due to bad decisions by upper management the employees are largely innocent and yet they all lose their jobs. This is much worse than that and the repercussion for ending the season today for the innocent players is rather small. No one is suggesting that any PSU football player lose their scholarship.

No, but you are suggesting they be punished for something they did not do nor had any control.

You are a bit incongruent stating that if the BoT were serious about being an institution of higher learning and not losing their athletic scholarships. If that was truly their intent why not get rid of all scholarships?

Look, I think people should be punished but cancelling the football season and punishing those players for something they did not do and in fact took place before any of them set foot on campus makes a much sense as saying their volleyball team should not advance.

What lesson is learned? You can get screwed over in life for the sins and actions of others? How does that make PSU a serious academic institution?

I think they got off track when they allowed Joe Pa to become bigger than the program and the institution and the only way to take steps to reverse that is to make sure there is a life to the program after Joe.

Let them go Bud Kilmer on his statue for all I care, but quitting instead of moving forward isn’t the way to enact change in my mind.

“Sure, fire everyone. I don’t really give a shit. That’s more about addressing a larger culture. Clean it out. "
This is my point. If the BOT wanted to make a statement it should be about the failure of the larger culture and they should clean house to make that clear rather than keeping on the rest of the staff just to keep playing football for a few more games this season. As I said, perfectly good assistants get fired all the time when they have the misfortune of hitching their star to a bad head coach. Why should Bradley or the OL coach or anyone else on the staff be protected for hitching their star to Paterno?

I just don’t think cancelling 4 football games is really that draconian as far as unwarranted punishment goes. Other college sports cancel and forfeit games all the time and rarely does the cancellation have anything to do with player malfeasance. Sometimes the bus breaks down or the weather doesn’t cooperate or the AD runs out of money and just shuts the program down. Let’s not make the players victims because they wouldn’t get to play a few more games this season. The seniors who have performed in the classroom would get their degrees, the players who have a pro football future would still get their chance, and the rest of the team would get a new coach and prepare for next season. I have seen a lot worse happen to a lot more deserving people than these college football players…in fact, there are at least 20 kids out there who have had a lot worse happen to them.

Anyway it’s a moot point, PSU’s football players get their deserved and well-earned right to hit the field on Saturday…though supposedly all the seniors are going to sit out in protest of Joe’s ouster.

Scip, just because YOU or I label something a “fact”, does not make it so. We know that McQueary told Paterno something bad had happened. Whether Paterno was initially told it was sodomy or horseplay doesn’t really seem relevant to me, the response should have been the same. (Though for the record, if you’d actually read the the grand jury report, you’d see that McQueary didn’t dispute Paterno’s assertion that he wasn’t told specifics, but disputed Curley and Schultz saying he didn’t tell THEM specifics. This is why they perjured themselves, and Paterno did not).

My larger point is, we don’t know what they told Paterno AFTER that. And I think that matters because to me, his moral responsibility doesn’t kick in until he reports it up the chain, and sees what the chain DOES with the info. Why? Because at that point he’s a mid-70’s football coach, not a professional investigator. If they told him that a criminal investigation was taking place, then I think his responsibility pauses until some future point when the investigation either bears fruit or doesn’t. So I want to hear from him about what he was told, not by McQueary, but by his ostensible superiors.

As to other coaches and their knowledge, like others on this board, I would have trouble believing that they didn’t hear something at some point, particularly those like Bradley who was DC in 2002 when the incident occurred. But I’d be arguing that they deserve the benefit of the doubt until the conclusion of the investigation… except that you and the BOT have established the standard that we’re NOT going to wait for the facts to come out. So why is there one standard for Paterno, and another for everyone else?

Scip, I really don’t think you and I are as far apart on this as your posts make me think you do. I think we’re in agreement on McQueary, and I can live with Paterno being forced out. I just want the same standard applied to him. If assumption and speculation are enough to tear down a legend, they’re more than enough to take out a staff.

Major Major: Well said, and thanks.

Davey: punishing the Penn State seniors makes me sick too. But I’m not willing to preserve for even a few weeks a coaching staff under this kind of cloud for that. I’m not saying mine is the only viable opinion on it, and if you’d rather see them play, I can respect that. I just don’t think it’s consistent with the standard they applied to Paterno, so I feel like that standard must apply to all. It ISN’T fair, but that’s a life lesson too. I’m not saying kill the program, but kill the coaching staff. Hell, I’d be fine with granting every senior another year in exchange. Or allowing them to transfer.

A-Tex: I agree with you the this scenario nibbles at the edges of the conduct that whistleblower protection is designed to prevent. But here, McQueary wasn’t fired for airing dirty laundry. His silence was rewarded with promotion. It’s not his acts that are the problem, it’s what he didn’t do that causes the firing.

Ricky, it’s just not the case that people forfeit games “all the time.” And involuntary cancelations for weather or budget shortfalls are clearly pretty different from self-imposed, expressly punitive cancelations, where the punishment in question was for something that happened when the players were (sadly) about the age of the apparent victims here, or younger. I just don’t see what forfeiture is supposed to accomplish. You take a clearly awful situation and make it worse for not just the PSU players but their opponents.

No one’s arguing anyone has some inalienable right to play varsity football. It’s just, like, what’s the point of taking this right away in this instance? Get through the rest of the season, turn the staff over completely, rebuild.

Re: McQueary, one of the things that I’ve seen speculated on elsewhere (maybe somewhere in the briar patch above) is that he could be the prosecution’s star witness here. Again, simply speculation, but you’d think that his testimony along with identification of that particular victim alone (who I don’t think they’ve identified yet) would be enough for a pretty severe conviction.

I don’t know how that plays, or doesn’t play, into his current employment, but, well, just throwing it out there….

Then there is this:

AG questions why Paterno fired, others not: http://abcnews.go.com/US/joe-paternos-firing-penn-state-attorney-general-concern/story?id=14925158#.TrxUUFY9Zf4

Based on last night’s press conference with the Trustee (who I thought did a great job), there are contractual issues with each of the individuals that had to be addressed before out and out termination.

The cynic in me sees an elected AG asking a politically savvy, but ultimately substantively empty, question that will be well received in the state considering local reaction to Paterno’s ouster.

By the way, the media asking questions at the BOT announcement were largely a disgrace.
 
If you want to understand why blogs need to exist, watch that press conference.
 
“So who will be the coach on Saturday?” (And do you think Nebraska will run any Veer looks?)
 
“Aren’t you just making him a fall guy?” (Paterno is the real victim here!)
 
“How can you call this investigation thorough?” (2 year Grand Jury Findings burst into flames spontaneously)
 
Hacks and clowns. There is no educated “professional class” on this planet more incompetent.

A-Tex:

He absolutely will be the star witness, because he’s the only identified eye-witness. That statement applies both to Sandusky as well as Curley and Schultz. His current employment doesn’t really have any bearing. The prosecutors are going to have to beat him up a little bit themselves about the actions he didn’t take, just to prepare him for cross examination.

One other point about whistleblower: it’s designed to allow you to make public disclosure without worrying about losing your job. It does not mean you can’t be fired for NOT disclosing or acting when you should. That’s my take about why it wouldn’t apply here.

Head of BoT ousted, knew about the cover up. The guy who spoke last night, US Steel, should be the one to take over. He handled himself very well. Bet the cancel the season soon if the rumor about 2nd Mile is true.

2nd Mile is rumored to have pimped out little boys to wealth donors.

http://dfw.cbslocal.com/2011/11/10/sandusky-scandal-rumored-to-include-pimping-out-boys-radio-host-says/

Mysterious, do you have a link on the ousted BOT guy? I wondered why the vice chairman was doing the talking.

http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2011/11/jerry_sandusky_penn_state_trus.html

the Chairman of the BOT is about to get ousted. From the article he’s “the former Penn State treasurer and vice president for finance and operations.” Basically he was an admin insider, unlike the Trustees.

Apparently he is close to Spanier, Curley, and Schultz and has known about the investigation for some time and failed to inform majority of the board about the upcoming indictment. In fact, most of the BOT didn’t learn about the allegations until this weekend when it was made public. This is the reason for the early confusion and the failure to react in a timely manner.

Suma is the guy from last night. For Penn St. sake hopefully he will calling the shots now.

Thanks MP!

People have been fired for far less. When you want to throw someone in jail, then I think the certain checks and balances are necessary to level the playing field between the State and an individual. That’s Civics 101. I’m pretty sure everyone on this board gets that.

However, we’re not jurors, and we’re not discussing the merits of JoePa’s activities as criminal. We’re discussing a business. I seem to remember that being an important distinction around here recently.

This comes down two pretty basic question. Does JoePa’s past earn him the benefit of the doubt, given the circumstances? Or… does the nature of the crime AND the nature of the circumstantial evidence outweigh (the circumstances) outweigh JoePa’s service?

Legal standards of guilt do not apply for me here. The business clearly was being run with enough knowledge of Sandusky’s activities to prohibit him from bringing children onto the State College campus. Exactly how many coaches and former coaches walk around these days with that sort of prohibition to their name, anyway (“Hey, you’re welcome here anytime, but please don’t show up with any minors”). If some people want to run down exactly who can be proven to have known what and when, and who tips the scales the most when it comes to sweeping things under the rug, PRIOR to dismissals, then I can respect the opinion.

But I don’t agree with it. The business was being used by a prominent former employee to facilitate the rape of young boys. The people running the business knew something was wrong. Now the brand is shit. Guess what? Time to clean house.

I’ve seen entire TV stations emptied because of a few bad rating periods, tossing out decades of loyal service. I’ve seen entire staffs at lesser programs summarily dismissed for similar on-field results to Joe’s last decade. But the rape of two young boys in the coaching offices? Somehow we - and the Trustees - must reserve judgement before we can form an opinion about JoePa’s continued employment.

Speaking solely for myself - nope.

Been traveling since Wednesday afternoon and just now catching up with most of the thread. I’m once again impressed by the caliber of this community.

Paterno has hired a very high profile CRIMINAL DEFENSE ATTORNEY for a reason people. We are talking about Joe Paterno here and two charges myseriously dropped for no reason in 1994 & 1998 to go along with an eye witness account in 2002. Hell the police have a taped CONFESSION by Sandusky from the 1998 charges.

Paterno helped cover this up from at least 1994 til 1999 and then enabled Sandusky to continue to lure kids with Penn St facilities and molest them. Plain and simple.

Just a few points to make and I’m not defending Joe Paterno, but I think he has earned the right to have the facts come to light, but that hasn’t happened in this public lynching by the media. The man devoted 62 years of his life to a community, young people, and a state. He has had a profound impact on thousands of people and by all accounts has lived a decent life. I am reserving judgement and I think we as a society should too. His quote that “With HINDSIGHT, I wish I had done more” is very telling and is by no means an admission of guilt.

Below are a few things that are getting lost in this firestorm.

1) Sara Ganim, who reports for Penn Live, has been on top of this story. She reported on November 7th that "Paterno’s son, Scott has been assured by Penn State’s lawyers that Joe did not know about the 1998 incident which was also investigated by University Police. Why aren’t people upset with the DA, AG, and the State of Pennsylvania for not bringing charges 1998? Why weren’t charges brought? Is it possible Paterno didn’t know about 1998? We do not know yet.

2) We do know that Paterno witnessed nothing in 2002. According to the Grand Jury report, we also know that McQueary reported to Paterno on Saturday after witnessing something “sexually inappropriate” on Friday. What exactly did McQueary tell Paterno? We do not know yet.

3) Joe followed the letter of law as Pennsylvania’s statute 42.42 b reads:

(b) Staff members of public or private agencies, institutions and facilities. Licensees who are staff members of a medical or other public or private institution, school, facility or agency, and who, in the course of their employment, occupation or practice of their profession, come into contact with children shall immediately notify the person in charge of the institution, school facility or agency or the designated agent of the person in charge when they have reasonable cause to suspect on the basis of their professional or other training or experience, that a child coming before them in their professional or official capacity is a victim of child abuse. Upon notification by the licensee, the person in charge or the designated agent shall assume the responsibility and have the legal obligation to report or cause a report to be made in accordance with subsections (a), © and (d).

We know Joe followed this to a T by informing Athletic Director Tim Curly about an incident that was reported to him by Mike McQueary. Paterno reported something that was told to him NOT witnessed by him to his superior to investigate further. We also know that McQueary met with both Tim Curly and Gary Schultz 10 days later about the incident. After the ACTUAL WITNESS had been called in, Paterno could see that an investigation was under way. Had Paterno conducted his own investigation or pursued this any further than he did at that time he could have been fired for insubordination or opened both himself and the university up to a libel suit from Sandusky. How could Paterno be absolutely certain that what he was TOLD was fact?

Do people realize that Gary Schultz and his office oversaw the university police? A police force that is advertised on its website as proclaiming that its 256 person force are governed by a state statute that gives our officers the same authority as municipal police officers? What did Gary Schultz do with the information given to him by the actual witness as a person whose office oversees the University Police? We do know what he TOLD McQueary? That he took Sandusky’s keys away and informed Second Mile. Did Paterno ever follow up with Curly and/or Schultz? Did Curly and Schultz report back to Paterno about their findings and what did they say? We do not know yet.

Lets not lose sight of the victims and the alleged atrocities committed against them. But shame on the media for using Paterno as a scape goat for the failures and alleged crimes of others. Should he have done more? As he said, in hindsight, yes, but I believe he made the decisions that he thought were most appropriate at THAT time. The man committed his life to helping young people, PSU, and a community and this is how he is repaid by PSU and the media that has followed him for so long. Firing by telephone after 62 years? Really? There are a lot of inconsistencies and questions, but everything will come out in due time and if it is determined that he was involved in lying or a coverup he deserves everything that comes his way.

Give me a break……anyone that believes that the Head Coach at an institution like Penn St wasn’t aware or got interviewed when felony criminal complaints against kids were filed with campus police on the Head Coach’s EMPLOYEE are just stupid.

Not only did he know, he has TESTIFIED for the Grand Jury that he was aware of a ’situation" with Sandusky and a 10 year old child in the shower and STILL let Sandusky utilize facilities for Second Mile events involving these children.

Geez people are BLINDED SHEEP when it comes to sports and sports figures these days.

God Help us.

When did he “let” Sandusky use facilities for Second Mile following 2002?

There are a lot of unknowns and publicly lynching someone who did NOT witness, REPORTED what was told to him to his superiors as is the law, has NOT been indicted for a CRIME, and as it stands right now is NOT accused of lying or covering up is both dangerous and irresponsible.

If you believe that the Head Coach of Penn St. University (who has hired a criminal defense attorney for a reason) wasn’t aware of multiple felony complaints made against one of his employees involving sexual misconduct with children….then you believe in Santa.

Happy Holidays.

Whatever happened in the 1998 case? Why didn’t the DA pursue that case? In hindsight it’s easy to say Sandusky was a pedo, but if charges aren’t filed then what is one supposed to believe? Do you think it’s outrageous for Paterno to think or believe at that time if in fact he knew of the 1998 incident and a case isn’t pursued that it’s a little boy or mother with a bit of an imagination? Come on, man. Judging a situation in hindsight is easy. It’s clear what paterno should have done, but it was a very fluid situation and you don’t know all the facts.

Belief is one thing and fact is another. Please see Duke Lacrosse case when reading my post on many levels.

Merry Christmas

After the 1998 Charges were dropped (for no reason given) the DA eventually went missing and Sandusky was forced to retire at 55 years old.

And you REALLY think Paterno didn’t fucking know?

Geez people are amazingly stupid.

I know all about what’s been reported and I know about the missing DA. Did you know that same DA’s brother allegedly committed suicide by “jumping” from a bridge before the DA went missing? Should we blame that on Penn State too?

I don’t know if Paterno did or didn’t know. It’s been reported that he didn’t, but again who knows but it will come out. Even if he did know about 1998, what is he supposed to believe if the case isn’t pursued.

Before calling people stupid why don’t you brush up on Pennsylvania law with regards to reporting child abuse and the potential lawsuits if Paterno had done what everyone says he should have done based on hearsay.

BTW, Darrell Royal retired at 52.

It is being reported that Sandusky was offered retirement in 1999 for a coverup for the 1998 charges. If you don’t think that Paterno was involved in that then you also believe in the Easter Bunny.

The timeline on this is OBVIOUS, it will get out that Paterno and Administrators were involved in a coverup. Madden has been spot on about this for awhile.

http://www.nesn.com/2011/11/jerry-sandusky-rumored-to-have-been-pimping-out-young-boys-to-rich-donors-says-mark-madden.html

Keep letting perception fool you from obviously what happened here.

Yes, read that article too. And yes, it’s been reported that a fourth person will be indicted soon who is not Paterno.

I’m not defending Paterno, I’m simply saying that it is completely disgusting to publicly lynch someone without knowing all the facts. Especially someone who did NOT witness, did NOT molest, REPORTED what was TOLD to him, and directed the ACTUAL witness to his superiors; the administrators one of whom is in charge of overseeing the University Park Police Department. If Paterno in fact was part of a coverup then we will know that in due time. In the meantime, he deserves the benefit of the doubt.

This guy nails it:

http://joeposnanski.si.com/2011/11/10/the-end-of-paterno/

Guy doesn’t nail anything but put more “Poor Joe” out there.

Again—-the timeline is obvious and Paterno was obviously involved in Sandusky’s 1999 retirement. The charges were dropped to save face for the University and Paterno was definitely involved in that. It is well known that Paterno was the most powerful man at Penn St and possibly in the whole state.

Yeah…yeah he did coach a lot of young men for many years, but his actions (inaction) since 1994 tarnishes all of that.

Groundhog, cut the ‘lynching’ shit. Paterno’s situation and lynching have absolute no relation. When a crowd yanks Joe from his house and hangs him from a tree then we can talk lynching.

Paterno deserves what he has gotten up to this point. If it comes out he was just a doddering old fogey who understood none of what was going on his firing still makes sense considering the gravity of what occurred. If he isn’t a doddering old fogey and he didn’t know that something was rotten with Sandusky then shame on him for being either an idiot or pathetically out of touch with what was going on right under his nose. The truth will come out, but either way a horrific series of crimes were committed under his watch and what he did or didn’t know doesn’t absolve him as the leader of the program.

I’ve seen the timeline and now you’re making the assertion he should have known about things reported as early as 1994? Based on what? And Paterno coerced the DA from 1998 not to pursue charges? Do you believe that he and/or Penn State had a hand in his disappearance in 2005? Where is the boy from 2002?

You might be right, but here’s the thing you MIGHT be wrong and if you are wrong will you and all the burn at the stake people out there feel bad about piling on? Will you and everyone else out there write Paterno personally apologizing for fanning the flames in public? My guess is probably not. You will go on about your lives like nothing happened and Paterno will forever be known as a man who aided and enabled a child molester just like those kids from Duke will always be known as rapists.

That’s the thing. There hasn’t been any “poor Joe” out there. There has been a pile on for a man who graduated 80% of his players over 46 years who stayed for 4 years, followed all the rules, gave back so much to the university and community, and impacted thousands of lives. It doesn’t add up that a man who prided himself as a man of honor, high character, and integrity would have a known pedophile running around campus.

We will find out soon enough.

Sandusky getting his retirement in 1999 at 55 years old after multiple complaints against him molesting children filed with police show that Paterno and the Administration knew what was going on.

Again if you believe that the Head Coach at a State Institution like Penn St wasn’t notified or interviewed when one of his EMPLOYEES WHO IS AROUND YOUNG MEN AND CHILDREN WITH THIS FOUNDATION on University property had complaints filed with police on them then you just aren’t very smart.

If Paterno didn’t know it’s either because he willfully chose not to know (see no evil, hear no evil, etc.) or was criminally (and impossibly) negligent. Either way, fuck him.

TV! Hope you’re well.

Say Paterno had sought justice on his own and the witness was incorrect in what he told Paterno he saw, would Paterno and the university be liable for lawsuits from the accused?

We all know what he should have done, but without knowing all the facts it’s tough to condemn the man.

Willow,

You don’t know when all those complaints were filed. You know about one; the 1998 incident, but again the DA and the state of Pennsylvania failed to pursue the case. My guess is from reading the GJ report is that it was an extremely flimsy case. And no, the DA didn’t disappear because Joe Paterno called the gambino crime family and put a hit out on him.

Yeah real flimsy case! They have him on TAPE ADMITTING TO HIS GENITALS TOUCHING THE BOY and saying that he wishes he was dead.

Are you kidding me guy?

I never accused Paterno of murder, but of conspiracy of covering this up and that is why he has hired a criminal defense attorney because he knows he is guilty of that. Will he be tried for it? Probably not because he will be needed as a witness. The damn judge that issued him only an unsecured $100,000 bail is a damn volunteer for the Second Mile Organization.

I’m sure you think that is ok too……..

Again, why didn’t Gricar pursue the case, guy? Gricar wrote a report saying the claims were unfounded.

No, I don’t think any of this is ok. I think it’s disgusting. I think it’s disgusting that kids were violated, I think it’s disgusting that Sandusky got away with this for so long, and I think it’s disgusting Curly and Schultz didn’t do their jobs as required by law as administrators. And hey, we agree I can’t believe Sandusky is out on a $100K bond.

Now Second Mile is disputing exactly what Schultz told them. Apparently, they claim Schultz lied by saying he investigated it and found nothing.

If Paterno is guilty of anything it’s what Toadvine alluded to above; he didn’t want to know.

And don’t kid yourself. If Paterno is guilty of conspiring to cover up sex crimes they are going to go after him. They always go after the famous folks.

Time will tell, guy. In the meantime, I will not stand in judgement like others until the facts are known. That’s been my point all along.

Groundhog: I’ve been singing your tune for days, and the only conclusion you can come to is there are people on this board who don’t have the courage to challenge conventional wisdom or their own second-hand assumptions. I’m with you, the firing of Paterno before conducting an inquiry to get at some actual FACTS about who knew what and when is a shame, and probably part of an ongoing Penn State effort to deflect blame, if not coverup entirely.

But seriously, one thing on this thread is clear: People’s minds are made up, and if in a few months or years it becomes clear that Paterno didn’t know or was misled, they’ll say they were with us the whole time, or convince themselves that a rush to judgment in a case like this doesn’t really matter anyway.

Well said, Texan. They will call you names and gang up that you believe something you didn’t actually say. It’s a fascinating example of the mob mentality when atrocities have been committed. The need to run out and take retribution on anything because they believe it to be so. Your second paragraph is perfect and the Iraq war was the most recent example of this.

I don’t know what Joe Paterno knew or didn’t know and when. I don’t know what Joe Paterno did or didn’t other than what is in the GJ testimony. To fire him based on what we know is a reach and the fact that more people aren’t questioning this is scary. You’re right and an anonymous quote from a trustee last night stated that the only reason he was fired was because of the public outcry and they felt they had to calm the storm for public perception. This alone should tell you that Paterno wasn’t involved in a cover up. Also, Paterno stated when he announced his retirement that the University has bigger problems than worrying about him. This statement says a lot as well. His 62 years of work carries a lot of weight with me regarding this last statement and patience to see how this all shakes out.

The idiocity on this thread is amazing and a prime example why common sense isn’t so common any longer. What is downright scary are several of you that don’t have a lick of common sense when it comes to Public Institution Environments and really believe that Paterno wasn’t aware of one of his employees being accused to police of a felony attack on a child!

AND it was just a coincidence that the same employee decided to hang ’em up and ride into the sunset of retirement the next F*cking year huh?

It is downright frightening how absolutely stupid some people are……this is Joe Paterno we are talking about.

There was a willow01 on Orangebloods back when I was a subscriber to that piece of shit of a site. I believe he got kicked off for being a prick.
Who knows if this is the same guy or not.

Paterno and Penn State have been irrelevant for years. He should have retired more than 10 years ago and if he really cared about he school instead of personal goals he would have stepped down.

Groundhog: They were the subject of national scorn for about three days. They had to make it stop. Keeping Paterno on would keep the conversation going.

Remember, Paterno basically told off the BoT and kept his job in 2004, when he’d had one winning season in the last five years. This time, he announced his retirement. That tells you how bad this was and that he comprehended it.

Groundhog,

Hey man.

All I’m saying is that it’s the head man who gets the glory and the grime. That’s the way of the world. In that light, he had to go, at least IMO.

Bob,

PSU handled the whole situation poorly, no doubt. They did what they thought was in the best interests of the university, but there was immense pressure to do something by the media.

Willow,

You stated that his inactions from 1994 erases all of “that”. Can you point to anything in the GJ tesitmony or anything that’s been reported that he knew of the alleged crimes starting in 1994 or hell even before 2002? Can you point to anything in the GJ testimony stating that those victims besides the 1998 incident came forward before 1998 or even 2002? You can’t. That is one enormous assumption you make with absolutely no evidence. You don’t know when those other victims came forward.

The only thing that was reported that we know about was 1998. Like I said, Sara Ganim of Penn Live reported on Nov 7th that Scott Paterno said he was assured by Penn State lawyers that Joe didn’t know about the 1998 case. Now is this the case? Who knows, but again you make a statement based on assumption not FACT. There is absolutely no evidence that Paterno knew of the 1998 incident, but you call people idiots and state that he knew of the 1998 incident as FACT when in fact it is an assumption. Again, you could be right about your assumptions but you could be wrong too. There are many compelling reasons why Joe would have been kept in the dark from a legal and liability standpoint. Why did Sandusky retire at 55? I don’t know for a FACT and neither do you. We know that Paterno was aware of one incident. The 2002 incident that Mike McQueary reported to him and he reported the incident as is required by law to his superiors. What happened from there involving Paterno is a mystery at this point.

Again, why didn’t Gricar and the State of Pennsylvania pursue that case in 1998. That’s not Paterno’s fault. You are so full of rage that you are blinded by what we know to be fact at this particular time. I’m not going to sit in judgement of someone until we know all the facts. I’m happy to hear you can.

http://www.cbssports.com/collegefootball/story/16076958/franco-harris-defends-paterno-mcqueary-blasts-trustees

GH: How would things be better for PSU if Paterno had not been fired?

Sorry if i missed this in all the comments earlier, but do any lawyers out here know how much liability Paterno and the school could face in civil lawsuits from the victims, especially the ones in the last decade? Seems like it could be a monstrously high number, but I dropped out of law school after one day so I don’t really know.

Bob,

Would it have been wrong to put him on administrative leave pending an investigation? As we know today, he didn’t witness, reported to his superiors what was told to him about someone who was not under his employment, has not been charged with a crime, didn’t commit perjury, and as we know today hasn’t been accused of lying or covering up the matter.

Does that help PSU? I don’t think so.

I find the ‘skeptics’ taking an odd stance here. So at what point did the media ‘lynch’ Joe? He said he was retiring at the end of the season. Was that the point of the media ‘lynching’? Joe should have been able to stay on as long as he wanted, or at least until the legal system and the potential years of investigations tell us the ‘truth’? Or was it when the BOT fired him now rather than waiting for his retirement in January? If its the latter then big fucking deal, so the BOT decides to fire him a few months prior to his retirement! Each day Joe stayed on the job was another day of increased damage to the university.

Would it have been wrong to put him on administrative leave pending an investigation?

Not at all… provided you make sure he can’t set foot on campus, let alone in the showers, and you put a qualifier on it that if he opens his mouth to any reporter of any media (including the innertubes) that he will be terminated with prejudice.

No, it doesn’t, but Paterno has been made the fall guy for the failures of his superiors and administrators when he in fact he followed University and State protocol.

Ricky,

“lynching” is a figure of speech. I’ll stop and say he has been made a scapegoat or a fallguy by an overzealous media.

GH: Protecting Paterno’s reputation got engulfed by the enormity of the charged crimes and his relationship to the perp.

But he is not the normal “football coach.” Doing the minimum doesn’t keep him from drawing the attention considering his career and obvious influence. It permeates every aspect of this issue. His continued presence was an obstacle to getting the issue off the national news and stopping ESPN from running constant rehashes.

Is it fair? I suppose not. But coaches suspend players in the wake of legal issues all the time, before there is a conclusion. Guys get thrown off of teams. Paterno’s status and impact dwarfs that of the average player. This took down the president of the school. Paterno was still trying to save himself on his terms, and there is no discussion that can do that without keeping the whole affair connected to the school.

If I were on that board, I would have done the same thing.

Paterno’s defense is a legalistic defense, but no one here is saying Joe should be put in jail based on the evidence at hand. We are saying that Joe should have been fired and his firing was deserved from many perspectives regardless of the specific details. I can understand to a degree the ‘we don’t know’ or ’don’t rush to judgment’ calls, but by the same token there are at least 8 victims who do know something about how PSU was running their football program and Joe was the face of that program. Fairness to Joe, by allowing him to retire in a few weeks, seems unfair to those victims.

Tjarks:

As a lawyer, I’m really not sure what Paterno personally might be liable for. It depends on the power structure and decision-making power at Penn State, which at THIS point, is one confused heaping mess.

Groundhog: I can live with the argument that the BoT had to do something to change the conversation. From that standpoint, if they’d fired Paterno, McQueary, and anybody on staff from 2002 or earlier, it would have at least been equal treatment. But the idea that Paterno himself was somehow the sole football staff member responsible for this seems incredibly naive, and basic fairness seems to require SOME inquiry into actual fact.

I guess I could understand the reaction if this had happened at a program run by a guy like Lane Kiffin or Butch Davis. But Paterno has maintained a clean program for DECADES. That seems to me to have earned a bit of benefit of the doubt, at least until some facts come to light.

Nor do I understand why these rushes to judgment are so NECESSARY. Are the victims’ somehow hurt worse by Paterno getting a chance to defend himself and his actions?

“Nor do I understand why these rushes to judgment are so NECESSARY. Are the victims’ somehow hurt worse by Paterno getting a chance to defend himself and his actions?”

In a word, yes, they are. Because it has been covered and sat upon and they have never had a voice. A reasoned defense from a CEO coach, about how he didn’t know that one of his trusted lieutenants was a raging pedophile who used football facilities and prominence to act out his perversions on harmless children is very damaging to those victims.

The point is not whether he knew, at least not for termination. The point is that he SHOULD have known.

Groundhog:

Again if you don’t believe that Paterno knew the reasons for Sandusky being forced into early retirement by the Head Coach, the BOT, administrators or a combination of both RIGHT AFTER the SECOND FELONY COMPLAINT FILED WITH CAMPUS Police on him…..then you are simply not intelligent enough for my time. Yeah it was just a coincidence was all!!!

It seems that you are another stupid attorney and I choose not to chase my tail when things are obvious. Go try to create your shades of gray elsewhere away from me.

Willow,

Did I miss something? Was the 1998 incident the second recorded complaint? I’m not an attorney, but I’m simply raising the question as has been reported that Paterno didn’t know about the 1998 incident and there is no proof to the contrary. I seem to have struck a chord with you, but if you wish to stoop to namecalling then by my guest.

All I’m saying is that some things don’t add up here and his life’s work deserves more investigating than a rush to judgement. I agree with you that Sandusky’s sudden retirement looks fishy, but we don’t know the details of that retirement and right now its just speculation not fact. It doesn’t make sense to me that Paterno would blatantly ignore a known pedophile on campus if he had these incredible ideals that is proof of his 62 years of service.

It’s easy to say Paterno should have done more, but what in god’s name was the DA, the State of Pennsylvania, and Child Services doing in 1998. They were all notified. What in god’s name did Schultz, Curly, Spanier, Second Mile do with the information relayed to them by both the ACTUAL witness and the ACTUAL witnesses boss concerning a non PSU employee? Why didn’t McQueary pursue further if what he saw truly happened? Don’t you think we are entitled to these answers before villifiying a man who followed state and university procedure and wasn’t an ACTUAL witness. My antennae is up regarding Paterno, but for now I’m in a wait and see mode as any rational person should be.

And if he did know about the 1998 incident, Paterno did take action. He got rid of him which is all he could do since the POLICE and DA didn’t pursue criminal charges. What would you want him to do? Shoot the man himself.

I would want him to follow up four years later when he gets a staff report of a possible sexual assault of a child and nothing is done.

Paterno was the most popular person in the state, but he suddenly went by the book and didn’t inquire further after multiple incidents/rumors of such conduct? It was Paterno that chose Curley for the AD job, not the other way around.

Every time I begin to feel sympathy for the guy, I stop and think of what he was and how he chose not to get involved in this tragedy. It is becoming clear that he was protecting what he had built.

Groundhog:

You are striking a cord with me because you are blindly defending the most powerful man in the state of Pennsylvania during the time both police complaints were filed in the 90’s and in this past decade. The detective involved in the first complaint filed in 1994 was told by the head of police to drop the charges—-no reason was given. The same thing happens in 1998, but this time it was the District Attorney dropping the charges with no reason given.

What the hell do you think happened here with one of the top defensive coordinators in college football abruptly retiring in 1999 after these two incidences were filed with police and there was an admission on tape? You can continue to chase your tail with bullshit trying to paint Paterno as naive, but as the Head Coach issuing an early retirement to an Employee for no public reason but to “run his foundation” that is now being exposed as a child prostitution ring using campus facilities is Paterno being involved in an obvious coverup. I mean Geez…..in 2004 Paterno was powerful enough to not lose his job and after refusing the President and AD to step down after only having one winning season out of the last five.

After Sandusky was issued his early retirement, Paterno’s teams only made one bowl in the next FIVE seasons up until 2004 and Paterno was still able to retain his job in 2004 when the well known meeting at his home happened with the President and AD—-but people like you don’t think he was involved in covering up this horrific behavior in the 90’s by his EMPLOYEE?

I’m not saying that Paterno will be tried as a criminal because I think he is going to be needed as a witness is a criminal case against Sandusky and possibly MANY others associated directly or indirectly with the University.

But to say that he shouldn’t have been fired or shouldn’t be lynched publicly considering the timeline of this obvious coverup by him and administrators is just pathetic on your part. Paterno helped cover this up for WINS and for football revenue for the University he gave his life to instead of help protect children.

That is the bottomline here and there is no better evidence than Sandusky’s abrupt retirement in 1999 after making NINE STRAIGHT BOWL GAMES and Paterno’s record after that. If Sandusky doesn’t end up dead or missing, I think he will eventually admit to many things including the horrific fact that Paterno and Penn St Administrators not only knew; but covered it up to protect big money donors and football revenue.

I suspect:

Politicians were involved in this.
Big Money Donors were involved in this.
School Administrators were involved in this.
School Faculty were involved in this.
Members of the coaching staff (including Sandusky) were involved in this.
Second Mile executives (including Sandusky) were involved in this.
Victims parents (not all) were involved in this.

Big hush money (directly or indirectly) from Penn St. was paid out while children were molested.

I am with you, Groundhog.

Until we know the unambiguous facts, Paterno is innocent until PROVEN guilty - even in the court of public opinion.

Let’s wait and see the facts before we rush to judgment on Joe Paterno.

I’m sure you wingnuts think Casey Anthony was innocent too riding around with her kid’s dead body in the trunk…..

Willow,

What did you think of the Duke Lacrosse Case?

Please linK where you’re getting your information about the 1994 case. The only thing I have seen is the Grand Jury report and there is nothing in there stating that something was reported in 1994 or when those incidents were reported.

If your suspicions are proven to be true, it will come out. But all we have are the facts right now and his life’s work deserves for this thing to play out.

My instinct in the Duke Lacrosse case was instantly Tawana Brawley. It was just way too tidy.

Willow,

You are excellent at mixing the few facts known about Paterno’s knowledge/involvement and adding a heavy dose of your own suspicions and conjecture. Perhaps you are right about all of your hunches, but the absolute moral certainty of claims such as yours are quite troubling.

All that anyone knows for sure is what is in the grand jury testimony. Based on that, McQueary came to his house and said that he saw Sandusky in the shower with a boy and that he thought his behavior was inappropriate. He did not say that he witnessed any rape of a child to Paterno. This is a fact that seems to be convienently left out when discussing what Joe knew. Joe then reported this info to the AD and the chief of campus police.

 In the report, McQueary claims that the only PSU officials he reported witnessing a rape to was the AD and the VP. You can choose to ignore that and say “C’mon, he’s Joe Paterno!! He had to know more,” but that would be your opinion vs. sworn grand jury testimony to the contrary. Adding further credence to Joe’s testimony that McQueary never told him more is that the AD and VP were accused of perjury for saying that McQueary never told them of a rape. The grand jury found Paterno’s testimony to the same thing to be truthful.

I am not attempting a full-throated defense of Paterno as no one is squeaky clean in this mess. But neither am I so blinded by the emotion that a case like this stirs up that I am willing to set aside rational thought.

This moral rightousness and the certainty with which so many have already condemned Paterno is what has become so shocking to me. It is disturbing to think that with such little actual information Joe has been cast as such a villian.

And how is it being a wingnut for not jumping to the conclusion that Paterno was a mastermind behind a child sex-abuse scandal based on the absence of facts or evidence to support such a theory? I suppose we could just throw him in a lake and see if he floats.

What does this situation have to do with Duke lacrosse? He hasn’t been arrested like the Duke lacrosse players and he certainly hasn’t been lynched. He got fired rather than getting to coach another two months until he retired…big whoop. Even if Joe isn’t the evil puppet master some on here have suggested he is or might be, it still doesn’t absolve him as head of the football program for what happened.

You can argue that he should be able to be so out of touch with the goings on in his locker room and you can argue that somehow he really thought Sandusky was retiring to spend more time with his family and you can argue that even though Sandusky was banned from bringing children to the facilities Joe shouldn’t have any obligation to show any curiosity for why Sandusky’s behavior with children kept coming up as an issue. But if you want to argue that then you should have no problem with Penn State firing him for whatever reason they wanted to fire him, fair or unfair, since they were perfectly within their rights to do that especially since we have no idea what his contract looks like.

Toad vine: “The point is that he SHOULD have known.”

Ok, I call. What should he have known?

I’m not mixing anything up, too many on this thread doing their damndest to play lawyer and shade the obvious gray.

Groundhog:

The 1994 charges are f*cking everywhere, you don’t need me to provide “evidence”….the sworn testimony and POLICE testimony are easily found on the internet, but here it is again on CNN.

http://articles.cnn.com/2011-11-07/justice/justice_pennsylvania-coach-abuse-charges_1_abuse-case-grand-jury-young-boys?_s=PM:JUSTICE

The Man:

You and the other wingnuts on this thread continue to ignore that Paterno was directly involved in his EMPLOYEE’S “early retirement” in 1999 after multiple police complaints were filed for child molestation on this employee. WHY DID PATERNO AGREE TO THAT EARLY RETIREMENT FOR HIS 55 YR OLD DEFENSIVE GENIUS THAT DELIVERED HIM INTO 9 STRAIGHT BOWL GAMES? HUH? Sandusky was on RECRUITING TRIPS in Utah last year for Penn St and is currently on this Penn St payroll! There is multiple testimony stating the actions…..but I’m sure all those people are liars. Poor JoePa! He’s so nice and has done so much winning so many games! This isn’t fair!

Well what is the great JoePa’s winning percentage since Sandusky retired and how many bowl games has he been to? Huh?

Geez you people could walk in on this man doing what McQueary saw him doing and say “ohh well I don’t know if it was in or not” so not exactly sure if it was just horsing around?

I swear this world is going to hell in a handbasket because common sense isn’t so common and people aren’t smart enough to see when others are doing nothing but painting a grey area when things are obvious.

Once again, you people are pathetic.

Gentlemen:

Thank you all for the patriotic display that can only be generated by a head-on collision between the 1st, 4th, 5th 6th and 14th amendments to the Constitution for the United States.

The Man! You da man! Spaceghost and TexanNick too. Some people are starting to step away and say, you know, this isn’t right. Not because Joe Paterno is innocent of lying or covering up, but because he has been publicly vilified and his morals have been called into question based on assumptions.

Willow, you have stated many things to be facts which are not true or are assumptions. Ricky, I cited the Duke Lax case as an example of people rushing to judgement because of a media storm that drastically impacted people’s lives. Also, I completely disagree with what you said that who cares if they fired him early. If he is not involved the way people say he is, his firing is a great travesty for someone who devoted his entire adult life to a community and young people that will forever be tarnished. And oh, Sandusky was NOT part of the football program in 2002.

Willow,

Now you’re pissing me off. You have repeatedly stated that he ignored 2 police reports prior to 2002 and that his inactions dating back to 1994 tarnish his legacy. Not fucking true. Yes, there are allegations about what might have occurred in 1994, but there was no police report filed in 1994 that we know of as you stated. Do you understand that? Do you also understand that we don’t know when the victims came forward about what happened in 1994. So how is Joe Paterno responsible for not knowing about what happened prior to 1998? Jesus man.

Again, your response to The Man is based on ASSUMPTION. The scariest people in this world and history are people who react with emotion based on assumption. You are aware of the Witch Hunts, aren’t you?

Sandusky stated tonight that to his knowledge Paterno didn’t know about the incident in 1998 and never said anything about it to him. He may have known, he may not have known, but these things will come out as the FACTS become known.

Willow: just an example of how the information changes. According to ESPN, a source close to the investigation says that McQueary did in fact act to stop the 2002 incident when he saw it in progress. This is directly in contrast to all prior information.

I don’t play a lawyer, I actually am one.

It’s one of life’s little ironies that idiots are the only people who assume they know everything, and they’re usually the first ones to call others idiots.

The fact that Sandusky was not part of the program in 2002 but was still granted access to the football facilities is probably what bothers me the most. Had Sandusky retired and never set foot on campus and all these new allegations occurred at Second Mile camps or at other venues, then we could blame the DA and police for not following up on the incident in 98 and PSU and Paterno potentially get some blowback but its probably a situation they weather.

But Sandusky was a fixture around the program after he retired. At one point he was even banned from bringing children with him when he came on campus, but I believe after that ban he was still bringing kids. Isn’t there some point where you just say, I can’t have a guy like Sandusky around my program anymore if he going to shower with young boys in our locker room? How many instances of naked horseplay between a 60 year old and a 10 year old is too many? I would have thought once was enough and yet Sandusky was hanging around the program well after that incident.

All fair points, Ricky. These things will not be answered until Curly and Schultz answer some questions. You seem like a curious dude. I think you might enjoy this.

http://www.blackshoediaries.com/2011/11/13/2559388/psu-trustees-caved-to-media-frenzy

TexanNick:

If you really are a lawyer, then heavens can you not f*cking read and understand my main point involving Paterno and the whole Penn St. staff? The grand jury testimoney by the eye witness testified to the grand jury that he witnessed Sandusky and the boy engaging in anal intercourse in the shower and that eyewitness also testified that both Sandusky and the boy saw him and that he IMMEDIATELY and that it shocked him and he immediately left distraught.

Of course now him and many other of the staff or Administration may try to change their testimony because it may implement them into possible criminal charges along with the fact that they will try anything to work together to save face of the University or of their own. This same eyewitness (who you now believe tried to stop it) received a promotion a year later and still saw Sandusky around campus after witnessing this without contacting the police. Almost all are in on the cover up! Hell Paterno himself testified to the grand jury that initially he wasn’t aware of the sexual assault, but it was just fondling or something of a sexual nature……then last week he admits that there are victims.

Look I have to deal with attorneys all the time attempting to play chase the tail and paint shades of grey so I’m not interested in doing so with you here. I have to waste enough time and money weekly with you wingnuts.

Groundhog:

1994 Police testimony is available everywhere including names, geez I could hit you over the head with proof and you will always go into spin mode. You just aren’t very intelligent if you think Paterno was involved in Sandusky’s early retirement in 1999 forcing him out without knowing about a felony complaint involving police with him just the year before. You are blinded sheep….go waste someone else’s time.

I’m done here.

Willow: Yes, I think I do understand your point. I’m just not sure why you take the grand jury report as gospel in some ways, but treat it as unreliable in others. 9 years after the fact, it’s pretty tough to deconstruct exactly what happened. The main point Groundhog, myself and others are trying to make is that NOBODY knows everything in this mess yet, but that people seem to be willing to go ahead and jump to conclusions because of the nature ofnthe crimes alleged.

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/11/07/justice/pennsylvania-coach-abuse-timeline/

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11311/1188149-143.stm

I haven’t attached the GJ testimony, but it’s linked in the above article.

Willow the Wingnut,

Read the above very carefully and I want you to sing along. The Alleged abuse dates back to 1994, but the investigation dates back to 2008. Reading Comprehension. Do you know what this means? The FIRST report was filed in 1998 and the DA, the State of PA, and Child Services took ZERO action. If it’s true Paterno knew about this 1998 incident, then you can say he took action when nobody else did and used his full authority as Sandusky’s boss and put Sandusky to pasture. You obviously didn’t read the link you attached. What’s your point?

 In 2002, according the GJ testimony it’s not clear what Paterno knew. He didn’t witness anything, he reported the incident to his superiors as is State and University protocol about somebody who wasn’t on his staff and he directed the actual witness to speak to both Curly and Schultz (who oversees the Campus Police Department). We don’t know what happened from there involving Joe Paterno. All we know is the supposed action that Curly reported back to McQueary.

Hindsight is 20/20 about what Paterno should have done, but Joe Paterno was not an investigator or administrator. But I’m sure in your little fantasy land people like you think that Joe Paterno should have played the role of Sherlock Holmes. Get a grip until we know the FACTS.

And yes, he says they are victims. What is he supposed to say? His comment, “In HINDSIGHT, I wish I had done more” is not an admission of guilt.

“With Hindsight” Sorry that’s a huge distinction.

TexanNick,

That he had a kiddy raper using his status on the staff, access to facilities, and profile to gain further access to kids. That kind of thing is the sort of knowledge which decision-makers are always charged with, at least constructively. That’s just a fact. I don’t know what kind of law you practice, but I assure you I could pin negligence on him based on the timeline.

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Toadvine: Negligence in legal terms is based on what a reasonable person would do, given the circumstances. It takes into account the person’s position, authority, and most importantly, their knowledge. And that’s what’s lacking here.

The CW consensus appears to be that Paterno, upon hearing a report about a former staff member with continued campus access privileges, should have stopped being a football coach, and make himself a full time criminal investigator. It assumes that he couldn’t trust Curley or Spanier, or the campus police to do THEIR jobs, and it assumes that at some point he REALIZED they weren’t doing their jobs.

But what did Curley and Spanier tell him? Did they tell him it was being investigated? Did they tell him that an investigation hadn’t turned anything up, or that it had actually DISPROVED the allegation? We don’t know any of this. If a reasonable 75 year old man would have believed them that they had the situation PROPERLY under control, then he wasn’t negligent.

None of this is to say that he WASN’T negligent, but some important questions remain to be asked, at least publicly before that kind of determination can be made.

And I’m currently practicing criminal defense, but have also been a prosecutor, fwiw.

One other thing about the Paterno angle that I am confused about. When did the meme on him shift so drastically?

Granted I am not a PSU follower, but I am pretty sure that he had been rather consistently portrayed as a figure head “coach in name only” for at least the past 10 years. It was my impression that he was pretty far removed from any day-to-day operations with the football team and that he was just sticking around until he got to 409. He was constantly compared to Bowden as the out-of-touch old man who needed to retire years ago. I can’t ever recall seeing him wearing a headset either on the sidelines or up in the box, and watching some of his press conferences over the past few years I have seen ESPN and others use subtitles as it is almost impossible to hear him or understand him.

Then this scandal hits and suddenly (according to the extreme conspiracy theorists) he is a power player making shrewd decisions about covering up a serial child abuser?? He now pulls the strings of the BoT, the PA DA’s office, and any/all official agencies involved in the investigation??

Again, not meant to absolve him of all blame, but it is puzzling how the book on Paterno was rewritten over night to fit the justified outrage built into the narrative.

No, dude. He should have hired a lawyer to figure out how to cut all ties with the man and to keep him off campus, our of the lockerroom, off the sidelines, and from running camps with the Penn State name. This is corporate risk management 101. And he should have followed the playbook — it exists for a reason.

I am well aware of the negligence standard.

I am not a criminal lawyers, but a civil one, and one who deals with risk management matters on a daily basis. I assure you, I’m looking at this from the BOT perspective and liability perspective. From both perspectives, firing Paterno was necessary.

If Paterno was really just a figurehead then why would McQueary report the incident to Paterno? Wouldn’t he have an actual, acting superior to whom he should have reported the incident?

Again, I don’t see anyone suggesting legal action against Paterno at this point. What he knew or didn’t know doesn’t somehow magically protect his job when it didn’t protect any of his superiors. Either everyone should have been fired (or forced to resign) or they should have all been allowed to continue with their jobs and the university could pray to the almighty that none of them were actually negligent, or worse, complicit in Sandusky’s actions. Getting rid of them all allows the university to begin to repair itself while they wait for what could be years of legal actions. What good could any of these people do the university by continuing in their jobs? Any of us could be fired from our jobs tomorrow and unless we had some sort of ironclad guaranteed contract we would have little recourse. These guys obviously didn’t have ironclad guarantees and they have been let go because their performance doesn’t meet the university’s standards.

Art, here’s the thing. He wasn’t silent. He reported to the AD and Schultz who oversees the campus police which has full authority to investigate crimes on campus (like UT) and apparently has equal force and authority that the Municipal Town police has.

TV, can Penn State be considered a corporation? I don’t know I’m just asking.

Also, TV and TN, what could the legal liability have been if Paterno had taken matters into his own hands on something he did not see? What if he was told something that was incorrect or couldn’t be corrobated by the 10 year old boy, would he have subjected both himself and the university to Libel suits?

Also, is it possible that Schultz and Curly reported back to Paterno that it was investigated and taken care of and didn’t get into to specifics for legal reasons for all involved? What if Schultz actually spoke to Sandusky and the boy about what happened and their stories were different from McQueary’s? What if Schultz covered up the matters himself and lied to Paterno about what he had done? Does anyone honestly believe that Schultz would have told Paterno about a coverup? If Paterno was interested in a coverup, he wouldn’t have gone to Schultz and Curly. The guy followed university and state protocol. This is not consistent with someone invovled in a coverup and we don’t know exactly what was told to him by McQueary.

It’s not a corporation. I would assume that the analysis of responsibility for a head coach to his program would be similar to that of a CEO of a mid-sized corporation though.

If he fires the dude improperly, the worst he faces is a breach of contract case (or maybe a wrongful termination case, which isn’t too big a deal). That is a known liability. That’s why you hire outside counsel, or let university counsel handle it, and you negotiate a severance. If you run an organization then allegations of this sort create a stigma — you immediately quarantine the stigma. The risk management analysis here is simple — known contractual liability is much better than unknown, possibly massive, tort liability.

I am not suggesting that Paterno participated in a cover up. There’s not enough information for me to say and, frankly, I find that hard to accept personally. I do believe he should have handled it differently. It may well be, in part, a generational issue. My point is that he SHOULD have known (from a tort standpoint), based on the overall circumstances. Nick is wrong about one key thing — he won’t be evaluated as a 75 year old, but as a man. Like I said, the risk management playbook is there for situations like this and any decent commercial lawyer knows it. Quarantine and inoculate. Take a known liability that is manageable over an unknown one.

My point is only this — the BOT had no other rational option. They had to follow the protocol! Quarantine and inoculate required getting rid of Paterno.

Thanks for the response, TV.

If Paterno did know about the 1998 incident, then you can argue he did all he could to take care of it considering the fact that the DA, the State, and Childrens Services did nothing. You could also make the argument that he did all he could about someone who was not in his employment about something he didn’t see in 2002. The facts will come to light. With Hindsight, it’s a different story.

I don’t disagree about the options facing the BOT due to the public outrage directed at Joe Paterno which was fueled by the media.

My point or argument during this entire thread has been the ire directed at Paterno, fueled by the media of course, calling into question his moral makeup, integrity, character, and 62 years of service and doing things the right way when we don’t know all the facts regarding this case except the facts that he witnessed nothing, reported what was told to him by the witness to his superior, directed the person who witnessed something by somebody not in his employment to his superiors one of whom was in charge of overseeing the campus police. That’s what we know about this man regarding this situation and the premature bashing by the media who has lived his life like Joe Paterno has been nothing short of disgusting.

Maybe there is a rush to judgment. So what? The BOT had to act decisively and quickly. They cant sit back and deliberate.

These guys will get their day in court, but the court of public opinion does count here because of the horrific nature of the allegations. You cant wait 5 or 10 years for this to clear out so the pragmatic thing is to fire Paterno and the second highest paid U president in the country. People get fired every day for less.

Duke lacrosse isnt the analogy in play. The decades long Catholic Church coverup is the right comparison. Paterno was all powerful up there so this notion that he is just a good ol’ ball coach is bullshit.

When it comes to bad news, be it this case or financial disclosure of whatever, you are well served to double the bad news and take the over. There will be way more than 8 victims, and the more they peel the onion the worse this deal is going to get and the more people will get ensnared in this.

Reporting something of this magnitude to the campus cops and leaving it there is ridiculous. If that was Paternos grandson would he have left it there? No way.

After the church cover up, I am more inclined to take the grand jury indictment, complete with eyewitnesses, at face value. Eyewitnesses are pretty rare in these cases I would wager.

People act like these guys are rotting in a jail cell what all that has happened is they lost their jobs coaching football. Not all that important really.

Toad and bullzak:

If I step back from this, I’m not sure that we’re actually arguing about anything substantive. I’d argue a couple of things with regard to the BOT’s options:

1). The idea that they had to acquiesce to media and public pressure strikes me as moronic. They bought into the meme that no investigation was necessary and that the nature of the charges compelled action without consideration. Maybe they had evidence not yet publicly available, but if they had, I imagine it would have leaked by now. But they could have held a press conference, and fought against some of the misinformation that was out there, or called for calm. They could have stood by the man who stood for them for 62 years. Would it have entailed negative consequences? Sure. But what part of this hasn’t?

2). The idea that an investigation would have taken a long time is a bit silly too, considering that the AG’s office had done a lot of the legwork.

Nick, here was the clincher for me:

The vision of the players putting Joe Paterno on their shoulders for a victory lap after his last game ever and then seeing that about 1000 times on TV this week.

No way they could let that happen.

If this were the offseason they could have had plenty of time, but with his last home game ever looming within days they had to give him two in the head and take the chances that the entire grand jury report and everything else was 100% bullshit.

As a lawyer you know to favor the specific over the general. You have 23 pages of heinous acts outlined in painstaking detail. No DA worth shit is going to start that fight unless they have their ducks in a row because you cannot be wrong on any substantive piece of this. Its a career ender.

Now that Sandusky has admitted on national tv that he showered with boys and “horsed around” its pretty clear that there is at least some fire there.

Look, the legal system is one thing, and crisis management is another. I am not a trial guy but I have done plenty of crisis management stuff and when time is your enemy you make your best judgment and do something decisive. This was a business decision and it wasnt even really a close call IMO.

Again, taking the over on this. It is going to be an even bigger trainwreck if thats possible.

Oh, and probably the point us UT assholes can identify with most is that the checkbooks from the donors were snapping shut permanently unless Paternos head was served up.

Bullzak, I’m pretty sympathetic to that. Although I had to comment after the last point. Are these the same big donors who were allegedly procuring children through 2nd Mile?

I think the whole 2nd Mile child prostitution thing is far-fetched. I imagine if donors were involved it probably has more to do with checks being written to pay off the families of the children Sandusky molested as part of the more plausible cover up. If it really comes out that donors were also ‘horseplaying’ with kids then Penn Stat will never live down the Pedo State moniker.

bullzak has basically hit it out of the park with regards to why the BOT did what it did when it did it. Though I think I’ll take the under, if the over is the whole 2nd Mile child buying rumor.

Two in the head for 62 years of service and loyalty?

This just reported on ESPN for all the McQueary and Paterno bashers out there who have rushed to judgement:

In the email, first obtained and reported Tuesday by The Morning Call of Allentown, Pa., McQueary said he “did have discussions with police and with the official at the university in charge of police” after the alleged incident.

Loyalty, perseverance and commitment are sometimes rare qualities in today’s world; I have learned those qualities from you. It is not through your speeches or lectures or teachings, however through your actions in relation to me and others that I have observed the aforementioned traits."— Mike McQueary in “Captains Letters to Joe”

Oh, how right McQueary is!

So if Paterno knew the police were aware, what more needed to be done?

Another thing, TN, is that Penn State is exempt from Public Records laws in the state. That’s the reason we don’t know exactly what happened regarding who knew what and when and what Paterno did/didn’t do.

Again, Paterno’s statement on the day he announced his retirement, I’m going to finish out the season, the university has bigger more important things to worry about that me.

Exactly, what TN said. Again, we will find out what is documented in the campus police department which by the way has jurisdiction to investigate crimes on campus and “are governed by a state statute that gives our officers the same authority as the Municipal Town Police”.

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Now ESPN is reporting that neither State College or PSU police have any record of McQueary reporting the 2002 incident. So does that mean McQueary also didn’t stop Sandusky that night? Could it mean the cops are more involved in the cover up than McQueary is suspected of being?

We are unlikely to every know the real truth and its obvious just because Paterno or McQueary says they did something doesn’t make it any more or less true than anything else we have heard. This why the BoT acted quickly and decisively, because this is going to go on for years. The criminal investigation will probably happen a bit more quickly, but it won’t likely tell us anything about PSU’s role and will focus mostly on Sandusky’s actions. It will be the civil suits that will tell us more, but those will take longer and in fact are just as likely to be settled out of court, which means the truth may never have a public airing.

Poor Ol’ JoePa putting his house in his wife’s name (won’t matter) four months ago tells us all with common sense all we need to know.

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