Penn State needs to burn for this.

[sd'sker]

they did this to protect their football team and image. there is an attitude and culture at that institution that has to change. they need to be made an example of to teach everyone that football has its place. protecting your image and football team is nothing compared to protecting children. this can never happen again.

That's the thing. The NCAA (since SMU) has sent a clear and repeated message that they will not seriously punish anyone for anything. Look at the precedent.

USC? Those draconian sanctions resulted in a 10 win season in 2011 and a top two recruiting class in 2012.

Ohio State? Hire Urban Meyer and immediately have a top 10 recruiting class in 2012.

Penn State has committed far more egregious crimes than those programs. They have earned a real punishment.

they do deserve a real punishment. but it is tough for two reasons. one, this is so unprecedented and broad. two, this is way beyond the scope of the incompetent NCAA (which we are still waiting for miami's punishment). i think any punishment would almost have to be self-imposed. first, it would be a goodwill showing that they are committed to changing and re-prioritizing their institution, so they almost need to if they want to pretend to have any integrity. second, they are really the only ones who could adequately punish themselves.

 

[NUpolo8]

Penn St football as a whole is responsible for this because, were it not for the entity of PSU football, it would have never happened.

In the literal sense, yes, the current crop of players, or even ones for the past few years, had nothing to do directly with Sandusky's actions, but that's also not the point at all. The demagoguery of the Penn St program, identity and legend of Joe Paterno is obviously responsible for letting this behavior continue far too long. Sandusky would have found a way to harm children were he not a coach at Penn St., I think that's obvious, but look how easy it was for him to do so because he was. And they, as an institution of higher learning, with mission statements and charters dedicated to improving other's lives, making men and women of people, and asking parents to trust them to do so made a conscious choice to do as litt

le as possible to stop it, and instead chose to cover their own a$$. For the chief reason of protecting their brand and the legacy of an iconic coach. Recruits over sodomy. Football respectability over not scarring troubled kids for the rest of their lives. And knowing they probably had a better than decent chance of getting away with it because they have built a fiefdom that spanned their small area, where they could control the limited media coverage and intimidate those who dared dig just a little below the service. The whole thing is so appalling that it just boggles the mind.

And it continued on for years because there was a concious choice that football was more important.

That's why they don't deserve to have it anymore.

Big college football is responsible for this. College football should simply be discontinued.

Uh-huh. Yep. Totally my point.

 

[zoogs]

It's true though. Penn State football isn't so uniquely big and mighty that it led to something like this. College football in general, the major players are big institutions that people will do sketchy things to protect. In the end, it is the people in power who acted or failed to act irresponsibly who are at fault. If you are making the argument that Penn St. football being as important as it was was the problem, then the real root is the craziness that surrounds college football (at least at the FBS level) in general.

My point: neither Penn State football nor college football should be scrapped.

The people responsible get heavy penalties and lose their jobs. It should be heavy enough to ensure it never happens again. Going on and punishing all the student athletes who might follow, that's aimlessly pointless and hurting people just 'cause you're angry and want something or someone to hurt.

Let the next A.D. and the next staff bring the program back into the right and start the healing process.

 

[huKSer]

It's true though. Penn State football isn't so uniquely big and mighty that it led to something like this. College football in general, the major players are big institutions that people will do sketchy things to protect. In the end, it is the people in power who acted or failed to act irresponsibly who are at fault. If you are making the argument that Penn St. football being as important as it was was the problem, then the real root is the craziness that surrounds college football (at least at the FBS level) in general.

My point: neither Penn State football nor college football should be scrapped.

The people responsible get heavy penalties and lose their jobs. It should be heavy enough to ensure it never happens again. Going on and punishing all the student athletes who might follow, that's aimlessly pointless and hurting people just 'cause you're angry and want something or someone to hurt.

Let the next A.D. and the next staff bring the program back into the right and start the healing process.

And if they don't (can't) THEN shut them down

 

['SkersRule]

I think Joe was a good man.

You are certainly free to think whatever you want.

But a "good man" does NOT:

1) Look the other way while children are being abused.

2) Cover up abuse of children.

3) Protect the abuser of children.

These are ALL things that Paterno did...none of which would be done by a "good" man.

 

[Blackshirts007]

I stumbled across Taylor's post game interview after that game and started laughing at his response to the question, bo was up here a second ago and questioned whether the game should be played or not, did you and the players feel the same way?

Response was, "no, but we tipped our hat off to the kids who like got injured during the thing and stuff and the families of them too." I realize he was starting to get better with his public speaking last year but that was a really awkward response

 

[zoogs]

I think Joe was a good man.

You are certainly free to think whatever you want.

But a "good man" does NOT:

1) Look the other way while children are being abused.

2) Cover up abuse of children.

3) Protect the abuser of children.

These are ALL things that Paterno did...none of which would be done by a "good" man.

A fundamentally good man who was blinded by his deference to a beloved colleague and made a terrible, unforgivable error.

I suppose my perspective is a little different because I know a few people who are from the area and value and remember all the good that he built up there. I think Tom Osborne takes the same perspective, as a friend of JoePa, that I outlined above. He always ran his team with integrity and ran it the right way. In an age where many feel young athletes are entitled and spoiled, I remember articles here extolling praise for JoePa for - what was it, forcing his team to pick up garbage in the stadium or doing community service as a measure of discipline? something like that.

I can't condone what he did in letting Sandusky go off into retirement rather than hang him out to dry publicly. I don't think anybody can. Which is what makes this situation so tragic, that a guy that spent decades doing good and doing things the right way will have his legacy forever tarnished by a mistake of massive proportions.

 

[TonyStalloni]

The decision to bring the PSU program to it's knees would be a difficult one. The only legitimate reason to do so in my mind would be a warning shot across the bow to all institutions to maintain control of their programs. By not allowing power to be vested in one man or a few people, and coaches....even the football coaches would know that the AD and Chancellors won't cover their tracks. Let it be known that anyone under the umbrella of the university has a duty to report abuse in all forms and if nothing is done to go higher.

 

[holvy83]

What makes me sick is that bad stuff happens on college campuses, rapes, assults, drugs etc... and if reported to the universtiy they are all over it, but when it is KIDS they try to hide it???? Penn St. as an institution should always carry the burden of this tragedy, but I dont feel that giving the football program the death penalty should be a part of the healing process, let the other 99% of Penn St students, staff and alumni that had nothing to do with this start the healing process.

 

[HUSKER 37]

Reilly's take: (Rapidly changing my feelings on Paterno)

http://espn.go.com/e...rno-true-legacy

"Are you here to take part in hagiography?" he said.

"What's hagiography?" I asked.

"The study of saints," he said. "You're going to be just like the rest, aren't you? You're going to make Paterno out to be a saint. You don't know him. He'll do anything to win. What you media are doing is dangerous."

.....

​

Twenty-five years later, when former Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky was accused of a 15-year reign of pedophilia on young boys, I thought Paterno was too old and too addled to understand, too grandfatherly and Catholic to get that Sandusky was committing grisly crimes using Paterno's own football program as bait.

But I was wrong. Paterno knew. He knew all about it. He'd known for years. He knew and he followed it vigilantly....

.....

​

...Paterno knew about a mother's cry that Sandusky had molested her son in 1998. Later, Paterno lied to a grand jury and said he didn't. ...

It gets worse. According to Freeh, Spanier, Schultz and Curley were set to call child services on Sandusky in February 2001 until Paterno apparently talked them out of it. Curley wasn't "comfortable" going to child services after that talk with JoePa.

Yeah, that's the most important thing, your comfort....

What'd they do instead? Alerted nobody. Called nobody. And let Sandusky keep leading his horrific tours around campus. "Hey, want to see the showers?" That sentence alone ought to bring down the statue....

More at the link.

Paterno comes from "father" in Italian.

 

[The Dude]

Paterno was a piece of sh#t. We're far beyond pretending he was a decent human being.

 

[knapplc]

Paterno was a human being. As such he was neither fully good nor fully bad. He did good things, great things, that helped many, many people. He also did at least one truly horrific thing that hurt many, many people.

He should be viewed as a whole person, flaws and praiseworthy behavior together.

 

[The Dude]

Tell that to the children who were raped because he enabled it. When you enable a child rapist, all those "good" things become secondary.

 

[Stumpy1]

I have a guy that comes into work all the time to get fuel and his son is a professor at Penn State. His boy was saying that it is going to get A LOT worse then what is being said in todays papers. The local newspapers got ahold of the police reports that were filed against Sandusky and I guess continue to harrass the local police on why they didn't follow up on the matter. The State Police also got complaints against Sandusky and never followed through on checking it out. He also said that the Volleyball coaches knew about it and did nothing to prevent it and that might come back to bite them in the butt as the NCAA knows about that also.

 

[zoogs]

Paterno was a human being. As such he was neither fully good nor fully bad. He did good things, great things, that helped many, many people. He also did at least one truly horrific thing that hurt many, many people.

He should be viewed as a whole person, flaws and praiseworthy behavior together.

I agree with this.

Yeah, the rape victims have every right to loathe him. My perspective is this:

It is very convenient and the easiest response as a society, an outraged society, to simply shutter Joe Paterno away into a separate corner. "He's not one of us." To exile him from the realm of normal good folk like you or me, and to view him as somebody who was fundamentally, intrinsically a bad apple.

It is far less convenient to wrap our heads around that one of us, and indeed, a fairly extraordinary one who has been such a positive force throughout his life, could also stoop to such a monstrosity. That not just the morally empty are capable of this. It's complicated, shocking, and tragic.