Penn State AD and Sandusky Charged

lars10

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Just replying to one aspect of this, Lars. Believe me, in the 1970s, players who got into trouble downtown were detained only long enough until a coach could come down and pick them up. The cops would call Joe and he would send someone downtown to clean things up. We all looked the other way, but usually the offenses were alcohol-related, like the time a very famous player jumped up onto the Shandygaff Saloon sign and brought it to the ground.
By the mid-1980s, the local police stopped cooperating, as the nature of player offenses began to get worse. I was long gone by then and cannot speak to specifics. Joe's response was to close the doors to his program and blame the media. As the Internet media expanded, and Joe grew beyond initial retirement age, his willingness to protect the program's image grew out of control. His tunnel vision of Sandusky's perversion narrowed to how such a terrible story would harm recruiting. The solution was to force Jerry into early retirement in 1999. Out of sight, out of mind, except Sandusky's juicy retirement package literally gave him a set of keys to the Lasch Building.
Yeah.. I initially wrote that Paterno forced out Sandusky, but the administration made him a professor emeritus which gave him access to the university facilities, but wasn't sure if he forced him out so I deleted it.

I didn't know much about the 70s... I was in school there in the late 90s, but also around in the early 80s watching games..but as a kid. I just remember players like Curtis Enis getting suspended for a bowl game and such. But it also did seem that the football players were kind of kings on campus so the fact that they got away with things and were actually protected by Paterno and the cops also makes sense. My perception was probably shaped by being a kid in that era and seeing more what I wanted to see than the reality.

Edit: I shouldn't have said 'any minor infraction'.. but more infractions that didn't seem to be a big deal at other football programs.
 
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terrynever

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Yeah.. I initially wrote that Paterno forced out Sandusky, but the administration made him a professor emeritus which gave him access to the university facilities, but wasn't sure if he forced him out so I deleted it.

I didn't know much about the 70s... I was in school there in the late 90s, but also around in the early 80s watching games..but as a kid. I just remember players like Curtis Enis getting suspended for a bowl game and such. But it also did seem that the football players were kind of kings on campus so the fact that they got away with things and were actually protected by Paterno and the cops also makes sense. My perception was probably shaped by being a kid in that era and seeing more what I wanted to see than the reality.

Edit: I shouldn't have said 'any minor infraction'.. but more infractions that didn't seem to be a big deal at other football programs.
Your perspective is a good one, Lars. And you state it well. Growing up in a college town where football is king must have been a lot of fun. The program evolved, as did State College. Beaver Stadium seated 46,000 in 1966. Now it can fit 110,000. The region around campus similarly exploded in size.

Joe used to be able to run every aspect of the football program in the 1970s but it got too big for any one person by the 1990s. Joe persisted in making every major decision and that proved to be his downfall. His final athletic director grew up in State College. You probably know the Curley family. Tim idolized Joe. And that clouded his judgement once he became AD. Bottom line is, too much power corrupts and it got the best of even as good a person as Joe Paterno.
 

Average Reds

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Just replying to one aspect of this, Lars. Believe me, in the 1970s, players who got into trouble downtown were detained only long enough until a coach could come down and pick them up. The cops would call Joe and he would send someone downtown to clean things up. We all looked the other way, but usually the offenses were alcohol-related, like the time a very famous player jumped up onto the Shandygaff Saloon sign and brought it to the ground.
By the mid-1980s, the local police stopped cooperating, as the nature of player offenses began to get worse. I was long gone by then and cannot speak to specifics. Joe's response was to close the doors to his program and blame the media. As the Internet media expanded, and Joe grew beyond initial retirement age, his willingness to protect the program's image grew out of control. His tunnel vision of Sandusky's perversion narrowed to how such a terrible story would harm recruiting. The solution was to force Jerry into early retirement in 1999. Out of sight, out of mind, except Sandusky's juicy retirement package literally gave him a set of keys to the Lasch Building.
Anyone familiar with the way big-time athletics operates understood immediately when the story broke (edit: more specifically, after the grand jury report was released) that it was literally impossible that Paterno did not know about the 1998 allegations.

In that vein, it's important to remember that the 1998 investigation was handled not by the local or state police but by the Penn State University police force, which reported to (wait for it) Gary Schultz. And no matter what anyone said at any point after this, this incident was the reason that Paterno forced Sandusky to retire.

The truth of why they acted as they did is probably depressingly simple, which is that people of Paterno's generation simply did not understand the concept of pedophilia. (What it was, how pedophiles act, how the behavior escalates, what should be done about it, etc.) So instead of making sure that a suspected predator like Sandusky was never allowed to be with children, they forced him into retirement, thinking that the "cost" of his behavior would deter him from any future incidents. When they discovered the extent of their idiocy in 2001, the cover up was almost inevitable. (The entire incident brings to mind the phrase "the banality of evil.")

But regardless of why he lied, Paterno's claim about knowing nothing from the first incident was an obvious fabrication. The only questions that still remain are about McQueary and why he stayed on as a coach and said nothing for years after his initial report.

Bottom line is, too much power corrupts and it got the best of even as good a person as Joe Paterno.
I want to be careful in how I phrase this because I'm not trying to take shots at you Terry. But the fact that Joe Paterno is still viewed as a fundamentally "good person" is the core of the problem surrounding how outsiders view PSU and the Paterno apologists.

Joe Paterno was not a good person who made a horrible mistake. He was a power hungry college football coach who (along with the President and many administrators inside PSU) covered up unspeakable crimes by his top assistant for more than a decade in order to protect his reputation.
 
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wade boggs chicken dinner

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You think this story ends the defenses of Paterno? I think you'll find it barely moves the barometer if at all. When the evidence rises to being equivalent to that which would have conclusively led to an indictment, I think it would mean something. Maybe something like evidence that Paterno conclusively knew what Sandusky was doing and conspired to conceal his actions. This isn't that. Any new information she might present is no less ambiguous than what we've heard before. In the discussion where McQueary claimed Paterno said this wasn't the first time he heard of this - What incident was Paterno referring to? I think we're going to be hard-pressed to ever learn more beyond the morally suspect but legally defensible actions of Paterno. He's not really the story anyway.
On one point you are correct: I'm not sure it moves the needle at all for those who deify Paterno will continue to do so.

On the other, broader and more important point, you are absolutely wrong. If you look at all of the evidence that has presented in the various trials, including the insurance claims, I think you will find that there is more than sufficient evidence that Paterno knew about Sandusky. I'm not going to regurgitate it all here but there is first-hand testimony about victims telling Paterno; there is an email from the higher-ups that mention that they ran things by Paterno; etc. etc. etc. A good listing of some of the evidence is here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/new-court-documents-suggest-others-at-penn-state-knew-of-jerry-sandusky-abuse/2016/07/12/9752f5a6-4853-11e6-90a8-fb84201e0645_story.html?utm_term=.0810bd06b656.

I don't know if you believe that Paterno was telling the truth when he testified in 2011 that the first became aware of any potential abuse was in 2001 with McQuery's complaint. Were Paterno alive, and were it useful for anyone to go after him criminally, there is more than enough evidence to indict him. And to me it strains the logic to think that Sandusky was regularly bringing kids into the showers (which I'm sure he did) and no one - not one person - had any idea what Sandusky was doing, even though they moved him off the football team in 1999.

And if we were to assume without conceding that Paterno did know about everything, isn't that the real story behind all of this evil?

YMMV.
 

terrynever

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Anyone familiar with the way big-time athletics operates understood immediately when the story broke that it was literally impossible that Paterno did not know about the 1998 allegations.

In that vein, it's important to remember that the 1998 investigation was handled not by the local or state police but by the Penn State University police force, which reported to (wait for it) Gary Schultz. And no matter what anyone said at any point after this, this incident was the reason that Paterno forced Sandusky to retire.

The truth of why they acted as they did is probably depressingly simple, which is that people of Paterno's generation simply did not understand the concept of pedophilia. (What it was, how pedophiles act, how the behavior escalates, what should be done about it, etc.) So instead of making sure that a suspected predator like Sandusky was never allowed to be with children, they forced him into retirement, thinking that the "cost" of his behavior would deter him from any future incidents. When they discovered the extent of their idiocy in 2001, the cover up was almost inevitable. (The entire incident brings to mind the phrase "the banality of evil.")

But regardless of why he lied, Paterno's claim about knowing nothing from the first incident was an obvious fabrication. The only questions that still remain are about McQueary and why he stayed on as a coach and said nothing for years after his initial report.



I want to be careful in how I phrase this because I'm not trying to take shots at you Terry. But the fact that Joe Paterno is still viewed as a fundamentally "good person" is the core of the problem surrounding how outsiders view PSU and the Paterno apologists.

Joe Paterno was not a good person who made a horrible mistake. He was a power hungry college football coach who (along with the President and many administrators inside PSU) covered up unspeakable crimes by his top assistant for more than a decade in order to protect his reputation. Those are not the actions of a good person.
Agree with almost everything you said, Reds. Except Joe wasn't really power hungry. He had all the power he needed from 1976 on. Almost every university President after Eric Walker considered Joe a valuable asset in terms of marketing the school nationally. It was almost laughable how Graham Spanier subordinated himself to Joe, and that was key to why he received jail time for passing the buck in 2001.
You are absolutely right that 1998 was the key time frame to end Sandusky's ability to move around in public. Ironically, Sandusky almost got the University of Virginia head coaching job in 2000 before Al Groh wrested it away. Pretty sure Sandusky did not receive an glowing reference from Joe.
 
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lars10

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Agree with almost everything you said, Reds. Except Joe wasn't really power hungry. He had all the power he needed from 1976 on. Almost every university President after Eric Walker considered Joe a valuable asset in terms of marketing the school nationally. It was almost laughable how Graham Spanier subordinated himself to Joe, and that was key to why he received jail time for passing the buck in 2001.
You are absolutely right that 1998 was the key time frame to end Sandusky's ability to move around in public. Ironically, Sandusky almost got the University of Virginia head coaching job in 2000 before Al Groh wrested it away. Pretty sure Sandusky did not receive an glowing reference from Joe.
From what I recall it was often thought that Joe was the main reason that Sandusky never got a head coaching gig. Sandusky also wanted to spend more time with his charity which in retrospect is horrifying.
 

soxfan121

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Anyone familiar with the way big-time athletics operates understood immediately when the story broke (edit: more specifically, after the grand jury report was released) that it was literally impossible that Paterno did not know about the 1998 allegations.

In that vein, it's important to remember that the 1998 investigation was handled not by the local or state police but by the Penn State University police force, which reported to (wait for it) Gary Schultz. And no matter what anyone said at any point after this, this incident was the reason that Paterno forced Sandusky to retire.

The truth of why they acted as they did is probably depressingly simple, which is that people of Paterno's generation simply did not understand the concept of pedophilia. (What it was, how pedophiles act, how the behavior escalates, what should be done about it, etc.) So instead of making sure that a suspected predator like Sandusky was never allowed to be with children, they forced him into retirement, thinking that the "cost" of his behavior would deter him from any future incidents. When they discovered the extent of their idiocy in 2001, the cover up was almost inevitable. (The entire incident brings to mind the phrase "the banality of evil.")

But regardless of why he lied, Paterno's claim about knowing nothing from the first incident was an obvious fabrication. The only questions that still remain are about McQueary and why he stayed on as a coach and said nothing for years after his initial report.



I want to be careful in how I phrase this because I'm not trying to take shots at you Terry. But the fact that Joe Paterno is still viewed as a fundamentally "good person" is the core of the problem surrounding how outsiders view PSU and the Paterno apologists.

Joe Paterno was not a good person who made a horrible mistake. He was a power hungry college football coach who (along with the President and many administrators inside PSU) covered up unspeakable crimes by his top assistant for more than a decade in order to protect his reputation.
This is an outstanding post. I want to quibble / add one small addendum.

Joe Paterno did what Joe Paterno did to win football games. Clearly, he considered winning football games to be more important than anything, including the repeated sexual assaults on children. He was not a good person because a good person would have put the welfare of victims, and future victims, ahead of winning football games. And his actions - covering up, omitting, "retiring" - are all the actions of someone who placed winning football games ahead of "the right thing". For decades.

The myth of Paterno as a "good football coach" is technically correct; he literally let nothing come between him and victory on Saturday. His template for how to "run a program" led us to Urban Meyer & Aaron Hernandez, it led us to Art Briles and the situation at Baylor. Thanks, Joe. If there is a legacy for Paterno beyond PSU and Sandusky, it is that he taught a generation of football coaches that nothing is more important than the "program" and that any potential distraction should be mitigated as quietly as possible.

This was the "reputation" he sought to protect; his ability to win football games. In this vein, nothing would have hurt Joe Paterno more than to have his victories vacated, and his precious record obliterated. Thankfully, this happened in his lifetime. There's no way to balance the books on Paterno; his actions in enabling Sandusky were so vile and reprehensible that prison wasn't going to properly affect an aging man who would've gotten the King Treatment from "fans" on the inside. No, in this case the proper punishment was to take away his record and his wins.

That the next step, holding him forth as the exemplar of what not to do is unfortunately not going to happen in his lifetime, but the next generation of coaches will (hopefully) have the "don't be like Joe" meme drilled into them. Some things are more important than football.
 

lars10

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On one point you are correct: I'm not sure it moves the needle at all for those who deify Paterno will continue to do so.

On the other, broader and more important point, you are absolutely wrong. If you look at all of the evidence that has presented in the various trials, including the insurance claims, I think you will find that there is more than sufficient evidence that Paterno knew about Sandusky. I'm not going to regurgitate it all here but there is first-hand testimony about victims telling Paterno; there is an email from the higher-ups that mention that they ran things by Paterno; etc. etc. etc. A good listing of some of the evidence is here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/new-court-documents-suggest-others-at-penn-state-knew-of-jerry-sandusky-abuse/2016/07/12/9752f5a6-4853-11e6-90a8-fb84201e0645_story.html?utm_term=.0810bd06b656.

I don't know if you believe that Paterno was telling the truth when he testified in 2011 that the first became aware of any potential abuse was in 2001 with McQuery's complaint. Were Paterno alive, and were it useful for anyone to go after him criminally, there is more than enough evidence to indict him. And to me it strains the logic to think that Sandusky was regularly bringing kids into the showers (which I'm sure he did) and no one - not one person - had any idea what Sandusky was doing, even though they moved him off the football team in 1999.

And if we were to assume without conceding that Paterno did know about everything, isn't that the real story behind all of this evil?

YMMV.
As has been stated he was provided with access to campus buildings after he was out as a coach. In the article the victims do talk of assistants walking in on Sandusky and also of kids being in the shower with assistants and even with Paterno. I'm assuming in most of these situations we're talking a locker room shower where it's a big open room. With the rape McQuery witnessed..that was after hours I believe when nobody else was around?

Also, as per your article.. Sandusky set up Second Mile so that he had a trove of potential victims and also to normalize him having kids around all the time. Of course being in the shower with them is horrific, and the victims talking about that nobody else was bringing kids to the showers sounds true...but Sandusky had set it up that way. He set it up to look as though he was mentoring young boys who were disadvantaged. Also using his power and notoriety as a well known coach.

It is hard to know exactly what happened in 99. Sandusky and Paterno def didn't get along. And Paterno thought Sandusky was spending too much time with Second Mile. Was it because he knew of the abuse and wanted him out or because he thought Sandusky was too distracted? The incident in '76 doesn't make sense in one regard... Paterno had no reason to defend Sandusky at that time. Sandusky wasn't Sandusky at that point.. he was just an assistant starting out.

I also think as AverageReds said.. that Paterno and his generation didn't know what pedophilia was...or didn't see (or didn't want to see) what would be obvious to us now as predatory behavior. I think Sandusky picked a time and place with a charity that he created to hide his sexual deviance as much as possible.
 

wade boggs chicken dinner

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Ironically, Sandusky almost got the University of Virginia head coaching job in 2000 before Al Groh wrested it away. Pretty sure Sandusky did not receive an glowing reference from Joe.
Prior to the VA job, in 1996, a lot of people thought Sandusky was going to be a shoo-in for the Maryland job (he had taken himself out of the running in 1991 and it seemed like a natural fit).

There apparently was going to be an initial phone call or something about the job but Maryland's AD cancelled it. The story was that Ron Vanderlinden was her first choice, but I remember at the time that seemed strange to everyone.

At any rate, here's some information about Sandusky almost ending in MD: https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/dc-sports-bog/post/jerry-sandusky-maryland-and-virginia/2011/11/10/gIQAdvI18M_blog.html?utm_term=.91b5c9ed8aa2
 

terrynever

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Prior to the VA job, in 1996, a lot of people thought Sandusky was going to be a shoo-in for the Maryland job (he had taken himself out of the running in 1991 and it seemed like a natural fit).

There apparently was going to be an initial phone call or something about the job but Maryland's AD cancelled it. The story was that Ron Vanderlinden was her first choice, but I remember at the time that seemed strange to everyone.

At any rate, here's some information about Sandusky almost ending in MD: https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/dc-sports-bog/post/jerry-sandusky-maryland-and-virginia/2011/11/10/gIQAdvI18M_blog.html?utm_term=.91b5c9ed8aa2
Sandusky always thought he would succeed Joe when Paterno hit the mandatory university retirement age which I believe was 66. But Joe had no intention of retiring. Paterno turned 66 in 1992 and his next great team was coming in 1994. That would have been a good year to retire but Joe's distaste for Sandusky was part of the reason he kept on coaching. Plus, he loved the increased competition found in the Big Ten.

When Joe forced Sandusky out in 1999, he told Jerry there was no way he would ever be the head coach at PSU. What did he know of Jerry's secret life at this point? Enough to know he didn't like the guy, but that had been true for 20 years.
 

LeftyTG

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This is an outstanding post. I want to quibble / add one small addendum.

Joe Paterno did what Joe Paterno did to win football games. Clearly, he considered winning football games to be more important than anything, including the repeated sexual assaults on children. He was not a good person because a good person would have put the welfare of victims, and future victims, ahead of winning football games. And his actions - covering up, omitting, "retiring" - are all the actions of someone who placed winning football games ahead of "the right thing". For decades.

The myth of Paterno as a "good football coach" is technically correct; he literally let nothing come between him and victory on Saturday. His template for how to "run a program" led us to Urban Meyer & Aaron Hernandez, it led us to Art Briles and the situation at Baylor. Thanks, Joe. If there is a legacy for Paterno beyond PSU and Sandusky, it is that he taught a generation of football coaches that nothing is more important than the "program" and that any potential distraction should be mitigated as quietly as possible.

This was the "reputation" he sought to protect; his ability to win football games. In this vein, nothing would have hurt Joe Paterno more than to have his victories vacated, and his precious record obliterated. Thankfully, this happened in his lifetime. There's no way to balance the books on Paterno; his actions in enabling Sandusky were so vile and reprehensible that prison wasn't going to properly affect an aging man who would've gotten the King Treatment from "fans" on the inside. No, in this case the proper punishment was to take away his record and his wins.

That the next step, holding him forth as the exemplar of what not to do is unfortunately not going to happen in his lifetime, but the next generation of coaches will (hopefully) have the "don't be like Joe" meme drilled into them. Some things are more important than football.
I understand it happened after his death, so Paterno wasn't able to appreciate it, but it is a damn shame the NCAA restored the vacated wins. The wins record means a lot to the insane PSU fans who, collectively, helped feed and support the culture that Paterno desperately sought to protective. It's not that they won. They won the "right" way, unlike all those other immoral programs. A significant portion of the fan base still buys into this illusion, which is why losing the wins record stung so much and why they fought so hard to have it restored. Shameful.
 

Montana Fan

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I'm glad the 3 other PSU "leaders" got jail time for ignoring what Sandusky was doing. They sure deserve it. I wonder if Paterno was still alive, whether he would have joined them. Quite possibly I think. He got off easy!
 

Fred in Lynn

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On one point you are correct: I'm not sure it moves the needle at all for those who deify Paterno will continue to do so.

On the other, broader and more important point, you are absolutely wrong. If you look at all of the evidence that has presented in the various trials, including the insurance claims, I think you will find that there is more than sufficient evidence that Paterno knew about Sandusky. I'm not going to regurgitate it all here but there is first-hand testimony about victims telling Paterno; there is an email from the higher-ups that mention that they ran things by Paterno; etc. etc. etc. A good listing of some of the evidence is here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/new-court-documents-suggest-others-at-penn-state-knew-of-jerry-sandusky-abuse/2016/07/12/9752f5a6-4853-11e6-90a8-fb84201e0645_story.html?utm_term=.0810bd06b656.

I don't know if you believe that Paterno was telling the truth when he testified in 2011 that the first became aware of any potential abuse was in 2001 with McQuery's complaint. Were Paterno alive, and were it useful for anyone to go after him criminally, there is more than enough evidence to indict him. And to me it strains the logic to think that Sandusky was regularly bringing kids into the showers (which I'm sure he did) and no one - not one person - had any idea what Sandusky was doing, even though they moved him off the football team in 1999.

And if we were to assume without conceding that Paterno did know about everything, isn't that the real story behind all of this evil?

YMMV.
Does YMMV have meaning or is that a typo?

Indict him for what? Being pretty damn sure that Sandusky was committing felonies? Unlike now, where Commonwealth law has been changed to require a far broader group of professionals to report suspected child abuse, Paterno in his position was under no obligation to report a suspected felony, particularly one for which his report would have been considered hearsay without the actual witness to the then-alleged crimes.

The CNN article notes that McQueary claimed Paterno indicated this wasn't the first incident he knew of, but provides no detail what the earlier incident might have been. Paterno testified to the grand jury that he knew of no incidents outside the one McQueary told him about, which conflicts with with what Paterno told them (McQueary's testimony was mute on Paterno's reaction vis-a-vis previous suspicions). Would they indict Paterno for perjury? Given the inherently cautious nature of the profession, I'm highly skeptical any prosecutor would have rushed to indict without first bringing both men back in front of the grand jury to clarify previous responses, confirm that McQueary believed Paterno was aware of past incidents, and ask Paterno about his alleged reaction in the conversation with McQueary. If Paterno was referencing the 1998 wet head incident, the prosecution would have to charge him with lying about an incident which the DA decided wasn't worthy of bringing charges. That would be a new one. Would Paterno really lie about an incident which the grand jury already knew about? Would the grand jury really try to entrap him? He's not the prime suspect in the investigation. For his part, Paterno would have to incredibly bold or incredibly stupid to lie to a grand jury. If it was a different, previously unreported allegation of child abuse by Sandusky that Paterno were signaling in his alleged response to McQueary, that wouldn't automatically indict Paterno either. He was an 85-year-old man with no criminal record and a distinguished career, and as I implied in the first paragraph, did not directly observe Sandusky molesting children. Maybe I'm wrong; I only play esquire for fun. I think you and a few others are taking liberties with the evidence that a prosecution wouldn't dream of trying.

I don't think anything has changed. The failure for Paterno and many others was moral in nature. That's undeniable. What was reported by CNN might highlight that a little more, but it certainly doesn't change the lack of apparent criminality in Paterno's actions.
 

Fred in Lynn

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My mileage may vary. I realized after I posted I had the interwebs and could look things up.

"No" on your last paragraph. The real issue was that Sandusky set up a charity so he'd have easy access to troubled children, set about weeding out those who were most likely to talk, and built trust in adults so they couldn't possible imagine he'd do what someone would inevitably accuse him of. I'm all ears on Paterno, but the evidence, such as but not limited to "covering up" for Sandusky by reporting what McQueary told him, doesn't come close to suggesting a conspiracy.
 

wade boggs chicken dinner

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Does YMMV have meaning or is that a typo?
YMMV = your mileage may vary.

I am no longer sure what you are arguing. In your first post, you made a reference to evidence not having meaning unless it "rises to being equivalent to that which would have conclusively led to an indictment". Well, lying to a grand jury is equivalent to evidence that could lead to an indictment, but I guess you are looking for something more than that.

Well, guess what - none of us are going to get it because Paterno is dead and as of right now, everyone was too busy trying to get compensation for the victims than to try to figure out what JoePa knew and when he knew it. So if you're looking for some evidence to magically appear that would make it clear that JoePa would have been convicted of a crime, that's a convenient burden since almost literally no one but the one reporter for CNN is looking for it.

So maybe to you that gets him off the hook and you can somehow or for some reason believe that over all those years, JoePa really had no idea what Sandusky was up to or perhaps you don't think it's just not important for anyone to make a calculus of what JoePa probably knew and when he knew it.

I disagree. For one, I think he's a huge part of the story. Maybe that's the first place and most fundamental place we part.
 

wade boggs chicken dinner

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I'm all ears on Paterno, but the evidence, such as but not limited to "covering up" for Sandusky by reporting what McQueary told him, doesn't come close to suggesting a conspiracy.
I don't know if Paterno was actively helping Sandusky, but don't you think that covering it up (or not reporting it) for 20, 30, or 40 years is as bad as a conspiracy from the perspective of history?
 

soxfan121

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I understand it happened after his death, so Paterno wasn't able to appreciate it, but it is a damn shame the NCAA restored the vacated wins. The wins record means a lot to the insane PSU fans who, collectively, helped feed and support the culture that Paterno desperately sought to protective. It's not that they won. They won the "right" way, unlike all those other immoral programs. A significant portion of the fan base still buys into this illusion, which is why losing the wins record stung so much and why they fought so hard to have it restored. Shameful.
Indeed. It feeds the delusion, and the "beast" of the PROGRAM.

I hold out hope that the situation at Baylor is going to be the nail in the proverbial coffin of this era but I doubt it. But as opposed to the delusional PSU "fan", anyone with a functioning soul has come out of this understanding that "the right way" was so much bullshit and that some things are more important than winning football games.

Incremental progress, I guess? It's all we've got.

I'm glad the 3 other PSU "leaders" got jail time for ignoring what Sandusky was doing. They sure deserve it. I wonder if Paterno was still alive, whether he would have joined them. Quite possibly I think. He got off easy!
I could not agree more. Though I think any prison time for "Joe Pa" in Pennsylvania would have been the cushiest non-punishment possible. Dying in disgrace? Yeah, that'll have to suffice. Perhaps the prison time for Spanier, Curley, and Schultz will give future administrators the pause needed to do the right thing.

Again, not holding my breath.
 

BigSoxFan

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I went to the BC/PSU bowl game in NYC in 2014 and tried to engage some PSU fans on this topic. It was a pretty eye-opening experience that I could only best describe as being cult-like.
 

LeftyTG

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I went to the BC/PSU bowl game in NYC in 2014 and tried to engage some PSU fans on this topic. It was a pretty eye-opening experience that I could only best describe as being cult-like.
Truly. If there ever existed a people/culture that just needed to have their beloved football program shut down and just reboot everything oriented around football, it is State College.

I do child abuse/neglect cases for a living (family court side, not criminal court). It's the only thing I've ever done vocationally. I've seen a lot over my 14 years. I've handled many - too many - sex abuse cases. I've watched the interviews, read the reports, seen the destruction and listened to the excuses. I'm pretty even keeled, which you have to be in my line or work or you'll be burned out and in therapy before long (happens a lot to new attorneys).

Despite that, even all these years later, this story still makes me blind with rage every time I think of it.
http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2011/11/alleged_jerry_sandusky_victim.html

The 17 year old kid, one of Sandusky's victims who was courageous enough to come forward, was bullied and driven from his high school because they blamed him for getting Paterno fired. Let that sink in for a minute.

Not even five years later, the same place honors Paterno with a video tribute before a game against Temple.

If there was justice in this world these wretched people would lose their wretched program. But it's not. There's money to be made and laundry to be rooted for, consequences be damned.
 

BigSoxFan

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Truly. If there ever existed a people/culture that just needed to have their beloved football program shut down and just reboot everything oriented around football, it is State College.

I do child abuse/neglect cases for a living (family court side, not criminal court). It's the only thing I've ever done vocationally. I've seen a lot over my 14 years. I've handled many - too many - sex abuse cases. I've watched the interviews, read the reports, seen the destruction and listened to the excuses. I'm pretty even keeled, which you have to be in my line or work or you'll be burned out and in therapy before long (happens a lot to new attorneys).

Despite that, even all these years later, this story still makes me blind with rage every time I think of it.
http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2011/11/alleged_jerry_sandusky_victim.html

The 17 year old kid, one of Sandusky's victims who was courageous enough to come forward, was bullied and driven from his high school because they blamed him for getting Paterno fired. Let that sink in for a minute.

Not even five years later, the same place honors Paterno with a video tribute before a game against Temple.

If there was justice in this world these wretched people would lose their wretched program. But it's not. There's money to be made and laundry to be rooted for, consequences be damned.
Absolutely. And now they have a Top 5 program once again because the NCAA completely let them off the hook. Sickening.
 

Fred in Lynn

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I am no longer sure what you are arguing. In your first post, you made a reference to evidence not having meaning unless it "rises to being equivalent to that which would have conclusively led to an indictment". Well, lying to a grand jury is equivalent to evidence that could lead to an indictment, but I guess you are looking for something more than that.
I don't know if you're trying to be snooty or just can't help yourself because of the subject, but it's annoying on this end to craft a response and have you ignore what I wrote. Read the post to which you're responding! I provided justification for what I wrote. In short, if I were a prosecutor and handed the CNN article, it wouldn't provide information that would lead me to rush and indict Paterno for reasons I explained before. It still doesn't seem like there's probable cause to charge him with a crime. (I won't respond to the perjury subject because I went on about it at length in my last post and you didn't acknowledge that you even read it.)

Well, guess what - none of us are going to get it because Paterno is dead and as of right now, everyone was too busy trying to get compensation for the victims than to try to figure out what JoePa knew and when he knew it.
Obviously, I'm aware he's dead. The grand jury was not too busy to assess the information and determine whether they had probable cause to charge Paterno, among others, with a crime. I don't think that we're going out on a limb to assess what could have hypothetically happened were McQueary's allegation reported before his death or if he were still alive. The alternate scenario is that they didn't feel they had probable cause, which based on my pea-brain technical assessment seems about right. I'd like to meet the prosecutor that would. Just say what crime you think the new information would have hypothetically given prosecutors probable cause to charge him. That would be a fair response.

So if you're looking for some evidence to magically appear that would make it clear that JoePa would have been convicted of a crime, that's a convenient burden since almost literally no one but the one reporter for CNN is looking for it.
You just wrote that studying a case to make a layperson's determination of whether evidence provides probable cause to charge someone with a crime is a "convenient burden." Come on, wade. For better or worse, we live in a liberal democracy, not Russia. Anyway, I'm just assessing what is reported. Don't make the mistake of confusing my (again, pea-brain) assessment with a wish that he not be found in absentia to have committed a crime.

So maybe to you that gets him off the hook and you can somehow or for some reason believe that over all those years, JoePa really had no idea what Sandusky was up to or perhaps you don't think it's just not important for anyone to make a calculus of what JoePa probably knew and when he knew it.
There's different hooks for different fish. Criminally, I don't see it for reasons I wrote yesterday. The fact that the result of the grand jury didn't lead to an indictment against Paterno provides some basis for this view. Morally, Paterno owns it. He indicted himself in the court of public opinion when he ignored it. Because pedophiles can seem like normal even gregarious and popular members of the community, rushing forward to claim he was molesting children wasn't a step that was as easy as it sounds now (I guess, although the preponderance of stories is overwhelming). Still, the plain fact that he knew a felony was potentially committed by Sandusky provided a basis for justifying a report to the police and explanation to Sandusky if it turned out he wasn't molesting children. I don't know. I don't defend that. All arrows of that moral responsibility flow chart should have led to "report to police" at that point.

If you're judging what you would think I would do in the last half of that sentence I quoted, I think you're way out of line and should go fuck yourself. I have three young children of my own and think about this case all the time when leaving them anywhere (one takeaway: groomer pedophiles apparently abandon a child in the face of a parent who just asks questions). Don't take that personally unless my suspicion is correct. If my suspicion is wrong, then disregard.

I disagree. For one, I think he's a huge part of the story. Maybe that's the first place and most fundamental place we part.
Maybe you're right that he's a major part of the story, but he's a bit player in the criminal case.
 

wade boggs chicken dinner

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In short, if I were a prosecutor and handed the CNN article, it wouldn't provide information that would lead me to rush and indict Paterno for reasons I explained before. It still doesn't seem like there's probable cause to charge him with a crime. (I won't respond to the perjury subject because I went on about it at length in my last post and you didn't acknowledge that you even read it.)
I read your posts, all of them. I agree with you that no prosecutor would charge Paterno based on the CNN article. No one was ever going to charge Paterno with a crime since he apparently had terminal lung cancer.

I simply have no idea how that is germane to the discussion of Paterno's culpability (non-criminal) in the evil that Sandusky perpetrated and because it appears we are basically talking in different languages, I'll just leave it at that.

Maybe you're right that he's a major part of the story, but he's a bit player in the criminal case.
I can't speak for anyone else, but just to be clear, none of my comments concerned what role Paterno had in the criminal case. I - and most of us I think - were talking about his role in helping a pretty evil endeavor in occurring. Which to me is the part that people should be talking about, whether or not Paterno could be prosecuted for anything.
 

berniecarbo1

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I went to the BC/PSU bowl game in NYC in 2014 and tried to engage some PSU fans on this topic. It was a pretty eye-opening experience that I could only best describe as being cult-like.
I also attended that game and during it (mind you this is the first post season game for PSU since the NCAA lifted sanctions...3+ years +/- after Joe Pa's death) and during the game they showed football greats from both schools on the center field jumbo screen. When they flashed the picture of Paterno on the board, the place erupted and shook for like a minute (BSF, am I right?) . The place exploded more for Joe than for any touchdown or big play that occurred that night in Yankee Stadium....eerily weird and proves the "cult" point. Was hard to comprehend to be honest.
 

garlan5

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One of the main reasons Sandusky wasn't offered the UVA job is because he refused to step away from the charity group in penn where he planned to travel back and forth. Thankfully he didn't end up at UVA
 

SoxJox

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I’ve thought long and hard about contributing further to this thread, but I thought I’d add a couple of observations and thoughts.

A lot of water has flowed under the bridge since Paterno passed, Sandusky was convicted, and Spanier, Schultz, and Curley either pleaded or were found guilty.

There will always remain some – perhaps even many – in the Penn State community that will just never budge on their image of and reverence for Joe Paterno. I am no longer one of them. I waited patiently for the legal proceedings to run their course (although Spanier’s case remains open on active appeal). And even though Paterno did not live long enough to defend himself should it have become necessary to directly do so in the face of a potential subpoena, there now appears enough smoke and dot-connecting to strongly suggest there is more to his longer-term knowledge of the whole affair, with sufficient time available for him to have done something more, which even he confessed to wishing he had. Sadly, that whole truth will never be known.

I do believe, however, that even in this relatively short time the pitched fever has greatly diminished among some of even the most steadfast supporters, notwithstanding the “explosive” applause noted at the PSU-BC bowl game 3 years ago, and vocal and promotional evidence at more recent events. But even in the aftermath of horrors revealed, it is not hard to imagine (yet not condone or agree with) why many might feel the way they do. The image of doing things the “right way” was such an iconic and long-standing record that Penn State fans had developed a great sense of pride in it. And, up until the scandal, let’s be honest – the record supported development of such pride – near-highest graduation rates, dozens of Academic All-Americans and, with notably few exceptions, a basically “clean” record of player criminality or misbehavior (even if we want to attribute a major influence on that record to Paterno and his staff’s intervention with local authorities).

To have that foundational and enduring pride so unexpectedly wiped out or at least so quickly pushed aside or minimized over such an astonishingly unanticipated event, was and is a shock that many either just can’t or won’t deal with. I will leave that and just say to them, as many have pointed out on this board and elsewhere, and with which I agree: one holy-shit-f**k-up wipes out a gazillion attaboys, and rightfully so in this case.

Many Penn Staters and I have come to the stark realization that something went terribly wrong, and Joe Paterno, for all his notable accomplishments beforehand and during, was in the middle of it. For me, this scandal washed away completely any moral high ground upon which Paterno’s reputation might have been standing. There’s just too much physical and circumstantial evidence – and self-admission – to suggest otherwise. I can no longer look past the rationale or excuse of “it-just-wasn’t talked-about-in-his-generation”.

Finally, I will add that If any good has come from this, it is the measures that Penn State has put in place to comply with the terms of the Athletic Integrity Agreement, and with independent monitors George Mitchell and Charles Scheeler both emphatically recognizing Penn State as now having one of if not the most collectively robust and compliant programs in the country. To be sure, the program’s actions were ordered, but they are now in pace with active and ongoing oversight and support. It is just so sad that it took all of these painful events to get to where we are.
 

terrynever

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Well said by a loyal alumnus. Pretty accurately portrays the journey most of my alumni friends have taken. The hard core will never change.
 

kenneycb

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The image of doing things the “right way” was such an iconic and long-standing record that Penn State fans had developed a great sense of pride in it. And, up until the scandal, let’s be honest – the record supported development of such pride – near-highest graduation rates, dozens of Academic All-Americans and, with notably few exceptions, a basically “clean” record of player criminality or misbehavior (even if we want to attribute a major influence on that record to Paterno and his staff’s intervention with local authorities).
This part isn't even remotely true, though. This article is from 2008 but cites that from 2002 to 2008, 46 players faced 163 criminal charges. Of those, 27 plead guilty/were convicted on 45 of the charges. That is not clean in the slightest and a sign of a guy that has either lost institutional control of his football team or is selling out his moral compass to get victories on the field. Knowing what we know now, it was probably both.

http://www.espn.com/espn/otl/news/story?id=3504915

Edit: Some rough math, let's say rosters are at 100 per year to account for scholarships and walk-ons, with 20 new people coming per year to replace 20 people leaving. That leads to 220 people cycling through the program from 2002 to 2008. Based on the linked article, about 20% of players would face charges and about 10% would actually be convicted. That's a filthy program. Penn State got good again so nobody really cared, of course, and continued to push this false narrative.
 
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SoxJox

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OK Kenney, I stand corrected. I centered my statement around image, and would even still extend that characterization to "clean" record. Why? Because I think if you took a poll of 100,000 PSU alumni, only about 3 would have suspected those numbers because they never heard or read about them. I certainly hadn't.
 

BigSoxFan

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OK Kenney, I stand corrected. I centered my statement around image, and would even still extend that characterization to "clean" record. Why? Because I think if you took a poll of 100,000 PSU alumni, only about 3 would have suspected those numbers because they never heard or read about them. I certainly hadn't.
End of the day, it doesn't really matter what the numbers are. 99.9% of PSU alums are going to go to their death beds thinking that Dear Leader was a man of impeccable character who got railroaded and scapegoated by an unfair process. The PSU fans on this board seem reasonable and are probably in that 0.1% but the overwhelming majority just don't care / won't acknowledge the facts.
 

terrynever

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I must be one of the three. Those numbers have been out there. The 2007-08 felonies could not be suppressed, not in the expanding media era.
If you go back in time, Penn State athletes began getting arrested downtown in the mid-1980s instead of detained for a coach to take them home. The State College cops got fed up with the shenanigans of drunken football players and wrestlers. The borough had doubled in size since the 1960s. Cops had no time to hand out special favors.
Joe wasn't happy. He had been able to manipulate the national media for 20 years, focusing on the academic all-Americans on his team while suppressing bad news. His team resided in a sleepy college town where everyone supported the program, except for local bar owner Jack Sapia of the My-O-My, but that's a story for another forum.
Penn State was no different than any other big-time program in terms of hooligan players. But Joe owned the New York media from 1967-1990. He had friends in high places at ABC and Sports Illustrated especially, back when both outlets basically shaped the college football conversation. Joe sold them on his "Grand Experiment." His p.r. people highlighted smart players who took exams on game day, like Dennis Onkotz, an all-America LB in the late 1960s. The players who screwed up either left the program or continually got second chances, like Mike Hartenstine, a future Chicago Bears standout DT.
Johnny Majors and Jackie Sherrill at Pitt could not believe the hypocrisy. But they were southern boys with no clout in NYC. Paterno once famously said he could never retire and leave the sport to coaches like Barry Switzer and Jackie Sherrill. He may have been right but the arrogance of that remark really turned the coaching fraternity against Joe.
All of this has nothing to do with Jerry Sandusky.
 

berniecarbo1

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SoxJox

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Yeah but Terry, you were covering sports State College back in the day and have probably had your ear tuned more toward the media reports since. I was traveling the 7 seas and never really close to reports other than what was in the newspaper weekend score summaries or the occasional game broadcast which I was able to catch from afar. Although I do remember the comment about Switzer and Sherrill.
 

terrynever

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Journalists are different than alumni or fans. I started rooting for Penn State after I left town. But whenever I came back, my friends would tell me about the latest antics downtown. Eventually, I would read about the stuff in national newspapers. But the worst thing happening was completely underground. Sandusky fooled everyone, even close friends.
 

SoxJox

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End of the day, it doesn't really matter what the numbers are. 99.9% of PSU alums are going to go to their death beds thinking that Dear Leader was a man of impeccable character who got railroaded and scapegoated by an unfair process. The PSU fans on this board seem reasonable and are probably in that 0.1% but the overwhelming majority just don't care / won't acknowledge the facts.
And your comment is exactly why I struggled with even contributing. You obviously blew past the rest of my post and focused on something that spoke only of image, but in the end admitting just how unreal that image can turn out to be.

I'll just go away now because it's clear from your comment that there remains a fog around this issue. to the extent that even when a Penn State alum can come in and admit to the foolheartedness of continuing to extol Paterno's virtues, folks like you will still throw out overwhelming generalizations about Penn State - 99.9%, really? -, and will never acknowledge that some, perhaps many (tending more to the latter based on my interactions with other PSU alums), have had a change of heart. It's a fool's errand to continue the discussion.
 

terrynever

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My advice to fellow alumni is to not listen to message board voices, including mine. Find your own truth and then move on.
 

BigSoxFan

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And your comment is exactly why I struggled with even contributing. You obviously blew past the rest of my post and focused on something that spoke only of image, but in the end admitting just how unreal that image can turn out to be.

I'll just go away now because it's clear from your comment that there remains a fog around this issue. to the extent that even when a Penn State alum can come in and admit to the foolheartedness of continuing to extol Paterno's virtues, folks like you will still throw out overwhelming generalizations about Penn State - 99.9%, really? -, and will never acknowledge that some, perhaps many (tending more to the latter based on my interactions with other PSU alums), have had a change of heart. It's a fool's errand to continue the discussion.
I didn't directly insult you, yet, here you are getting defensive about it. In fact, I commented on how reasonable the PSU fans on this site were. With that said, the overwhelming majority of alums I've interacted with have not changed their position on this. It was quite sickening talking to your fellow alums 3 years ago, which was years after the initial report came out. I was generally curious and came away incredibly disheartened. There's no "fog" here, there's a bunch of people who value their school's reputation and football wins over anything else, which is sad.
 

SoxJox

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Sincerest apologies. I did not mean that to sound the way it obviously did. I didn't take it as an insult, but rather as an example that further discussion is near pointless. The topic will continue to go round and round until it reaches an oblivious or non-responsive state, if indeed it did not some time ago. I don't disagree that many Penn State alumni and fans remain in the unmovable camp, and I also agree that it is a sad state. But I do take exception to generalizations such as the one you offered. It serves no useful purpose and disregards those many Penn Staters and fans beyond the confines of this site - perhaps far more than you realize or I might estimate - that, upon introspection, examination, and presentation of evidence, have come to the same conclusion as many if not most others. I hear and appreciate your disappointment in your discussions with my fellow alums. But those discussions, as you state, were 3 years ago. There has since been additional evidence and opportunities for soul searching among the fan base - including some very recent revelations. I can't say that it has moved X % in the positive direction, but I can without doubt state that it has moved in the positive direction. I would not let the raised voices at a single or series of individual events continue to characterize Penn State. Those are vocal self-identifiers, and they remain audible and recognizable. In time, I sincerely believe those voices will grow silent.
 
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lars10

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I didn't directly insult you, yet, here you are getting defensive about it. In fact, I commented on how reasonable the PSU fans on this site were. With that said, the overwhelming majority of alums I've interacted with have not changed their position on this. It was quite sickening talking to your fellow alums 3 years ago, which was years after the initial report came out. I was generally curious and came away incredibly disheartened. There's no "fog" here, there's a bunch of people who value their school's reputation and football wins over anything else, which is sad.
But you're still generalizing hundreds of thousands of people you've never met or spoken to based off your interaction with fans at a football game or the ten other people you've met.
 

BigSoxFan

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But you're still generalizing hundreds of thousands of people you've never met or spoken to based off your interaction with fans at a football game or the ten other people you've met.
It's actually closer to 70-80 all in because I knew several alums before going to the game but, yes, I am obviously generalizing and using hyperbole with my 99.9% comment. Of my admittedly imperfect sample, there were about 35-40% who remained effusive in praise for Paterno, about 35-40% who were lukewarm in their criticism of the school/program, and the remainder actually had changed their opinion significantly. I had expected the last group to be larger by 2014. To soxjox's point, maybe that group has grown since.
 

mauf

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I didn't directly insult you, yet, here you are getting defensive about it. In fact, I commented on how reasonable the PSU fans on this site were. With that said, the overwhelming majority of alums I've interacted with have not changed their position on this. It was quite sickening talking to your fellow alums 3 years ago, which was years after the initial report came out. I was generally curious and came away incredibly disheartened. There's no "fog" here, there's a bunch of people who value their school's reputation and football wins over anything else, which is sad.
Penn State -- State College has about 40,000 undergraduate students at any given time. There are probably over a million alumni scattered around the country, to say nothing of the folks who taught there, held staff positions, sent their kids there, lived in State College, or are otherwise connected to the university in some meaningful way. You have peddled a caricatured view of that vast community in this thread based on your interactions with a comparative handful of them. And you're rightly getting called out for that.

Like just about everyone reading this thread, I have some strongly held opinions about what happened in State College and how the community (both locally and in diaspora) reacted to it. But I'm also aware that until about 40 years ago, our society's (and really every society's) reflexive reaction to child sexual abuse was to look away, to cover it up, to pretend it didn't exist. Everyone knows Mike McQueary would've intervened if he saw Joe Sandusky punching a kid in the face, but instead he saw him fucking a kid in the ass, and he turned away. That says something about him, but it says something much more profound and disturbing about human nature. Because from the dawn of time until about 1980, pretty much everyone who was confronted with incontrovertible evidence of child sex abuse did something like what McQueary did.

I know some of the white-hot, boiling anger at ordinary folks in State College comes from people who are survivors of child sexual abuse, or from people whose loved ones are survivors, or from people like @LeftyTG who have made protecting victims their life's work. That's more than understandable. But I can't help but wonder if a lot of the hot-takes are coming from people who would rather not confront the abuse that occurs in their own communities, and maybe even their own families. Because State College is hardly the only place where children get raped; it is far from the only place where men who lust for young boys seek to form relationships with troubled youth, who by definition tend not to have strong parental figures to protect them. These things happen in every community in America. All of us (including me) would do well to obsess a little less about State College, which we can't influence, and look a little more closely at what's happening in our own communities, which we might be in a position to influence.

Edit: BSF posted while I was typing, and obviously walked back some of what he said. But the last two paragraphs weren't directed specifically at him anyway, so I'm leaving my post unaltered.
 

BigSoxFan

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These responses are fair. I let my emotions get the better of me and sincerely apologize to the PSU fans here. My intent wasn't to disparage them. I also want to be clear that this isn't a PSU-centric problem. Some of the stuff coming out of Baylor, Norte Dame, etc. is just as bad. To me, it's sickening that we, as a society, are so concerned with having a super awesome football team of 19-22 year-olds that we forsake our fellow human beings and we're stuck in a vicious cycle because of it. Victims who come out get insulted, discredited, vilified, etc. I am not the victim of abuse so I can't even begin to imagine the pain and agony it causes, both physically and mentally. I was incredibly offended by too large of a group of fans who were more concerned about JoePa's vacated wins than they were about these victims' lost innocence. Many of them are a lost cause but many have come around and I need to do a better job of accepting that late is better than never.
 

wade boggs chicken dinner

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I stopped really following this a few years ago, but if I recall, didn't the Paterno family drop their lawsuit earlier this year against the NCAA? they were trying to reclaim the legacy of Joe Pa and "get to the truth" but finally realized...."damn, the old man was more involved than he ever let on."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/early-lead/wp/2017/07/01/paterno-family-very-quietly-drops-lawsuit-against-ncaa/?utm_term=.24d14d3f4af2
Yes the Paterno family dropped their lawsuit. However, their stated rationale if I recall correctly was that the "suit served its purpose" and there was no point in going on.

I would applaud them if they dropped the suit because they couldn't deal with what they've learned but they've never publicly admitted that.

I would give them a standing ovation if they admitted that in public. But they won't: https://www.landof10.com/penn-state/sue-paterno-ncaa-lawsuit-vendetta-penn-state.
 

wade boggs chicken dinner

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Sincerest apologies. I did not mean that to sound the way it obviously did. I didn't take it as an insult, but rather as an example that further discussion is near pointless. The topic will continue to go round and round until it reaches an oblivious or non-responsive state, if indeed it did not some time ago. I don't disagree that many Penn State alumni and fans remain in the unmovable camp, and I also agree that it is a sad state. But I do take exception to generalizations such as the one you offered. It serves no useful purpose and disregards those many Penn Staters and fans beyond the confines of this site - perhaps far more than you realize or I might estimate - that, upon introspection, examination, and presentation of evidence, have come to the same conclusion as many if not most others. I hear and appreciate your disappointment in your discussions with my fellow alums. But those discussions, as you state, were 3 years ago. There has since been additional evidence and opportunities for soul searching among the fan base - including some very recent revelations. I can't say that it has moved X % in the positive direction, but I can without doubt state that it has moved in the positive direction. I would not let the raised voices at a single or series of individual events continue to characterize Penn State. Those are vocal self-identifiers, and they remain audible and recognizable. In time, I sincerely believe those voices will grow silent.
I admire your honesty when posting but I'm going to say that I disagree that further discussion is pointless. Further discussion is important. I'm glad that there are those like you of PSU supporters who have been able to work past football and wins but I still have to think you are in the minority. Jay Paterno was elected to the Board of Trustees after all.

And for now, the case should remain in the public eye as much as possible.
 

lars10

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I admire your honesty when posting but I'm going to say that I disagree that further discussion is pointless. Further discussion is important. I'm glad that there are those like you of PSU supporters who have been able to work past football and wins but I still have to think you are in the minority. Jay Paterno was elected to the Board of Trustees after all.

And for now, the case should remain in the public eye as much as possible.
We just got through talking about how it didn't make sense to generalize about a million people... what is your opinion based on? How many PSU alumni do you know? As someone who went there it's infuriating that interactions with football fans or in passing or some anecdote you heard from a friend or some story you read is your basis to then turn around and basically say my colleagues, friends, family, professors are wholly incapable of a nuanced discussion or view about Joe Paterno. Your first thought is of course everyone in State College is a football fan and only cares about the football program... literally seconds ago someone else was apologizing for generalizing.

It's as if sexual assault of children is only true of the PSU campus.. and everyone who has lived there, gone to school there or gone to a game there is complicit with the abuse that happened there...
 

wade boggs chicken dinner

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Mar 26, 2005
30,502
We just got through talking about how it didn't make sense to generalize about a million people... what is your opinion based on? How many PSU alumni do you know? As someone who went there it's infuriating that interactions with football fans or in passing or some anecdote you heard from a friend or some story you read is your basis to then turn around and basically say my colleagues, friends, family, professors are wholly incapable of a nuanced discussion or view about Joe Paterno. Your first thought is of course everyone in State College is a football fan and only cares about the football program... literally seconds ago someone else was apologizing for generalizing.

It's as if sexual assault of children is only true of the PSU campus.. and everyone who has lived there, gone to school there or gone to a game there is complicit with the abuse that happened there...
As my post said, it's based on the fact that Jay Paterno was elected to the Board of Trustees.

Until you or someone else can point to some recent scientific poll, we're all generalizing - or perhaps better said guessing - one way or another. My opinion is that the people who have come to an honest realization concerning Paterno are the minority of PSU fans. Your opinion seems to be different. We'll have to agree to disagree.

But hopefully we can agree that the discussion about Paterno's role shouldn't end.
 

LeftyTG

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Jul 18, 2005
1,345
Austin
September 17, 2016 - less than a year ago - Penn State, prior to a game against Temple, played a video tribute honoring Paterno. PSU fans made a shrine honoring Paterno outside the stadium.

This was a sanctioned event. The decision makers at PSU thought this was a good idea, and had enough support in the PSU community to follow through.

So pardon me if I agree with WBCD.

Let me know when Baylor has a public celebration of Art Briles before a game in the next couple of years.
 

kenneycb

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Dec 2, 2006
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Tuukka's refugee camp
It's as if sexual assault of children is only true of the PSU campus.. and everyone who has lived there, gone to school there or gone to a game there is complicit with the abuse that happened there...
And this is a symptom of another problem, turning PSU fans into victims. You may have changed but many haven't. Unfortunately you have to suffer the consequences of that because there are a lot of dumbasses that cheer for a football team.
 

Average Reds

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Sep 24, 2007
35,330
Southwestern CT
We just got through talking about how it didn't make sense to generalize about a million people... what is your opinion based on? How many PSU alumni do you know? As someone who went there it's infuriating that interactions with football fans or in passing or some anecdote you heard from a friend or some story you read is your basis to then turn around and basically say my colleagues, friends, family, professors are wholly incapable of a nuanced discussion or view about Joe Paterno. Your first thought is of course everyone in State College is a football fan and only cares about the football program... literally seconds ago someone else was apologizing for generalizing.

It's as if sexual assault of children is only true of the PSU campus.. and everyone who has lived there, gone to school there or gone to a game there is complicit with the abuse that happened there...
If you are going to lecture others about generalizing, you might want to start by not vastly overstating the number of alums. (I believe that PSU has the largest alumni base in the country of approx. 350,000.)

Second, I absolutely agree that this case - like almost all cases of child sexual abuse - has elements of nuance, complexity and unfathomable depravity. For the most part, we focus on the depravity, because that is where the greatest amount of preventable damage comes from.

This case has more than it's share of depravity. And it is the unwillingness of a significant number of Penn State fans (be they alums, residents, or just casual fans) to accept that Saint Joe was closer to Art Briles or Dave Bliss than he was to the image he built up over the years that drives the scorn and generalizations.

I should add that I say this as a Pennsylvania native who grew up idoizing Joe Paterno, went to college in Pennsylvania, counts more than a handful of relatives as alums and who has a best friend with the last name of Paterno and it's not a coincidence.
 

lars10

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Jul 31, 2007
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If you are going to lecture others about generalizing, you might want to start by not vastly overstating the number of alums. (I believe that PSU has the largest alumni base in the country of approx. 350,000.)

Second, I absolutely agree that this case - like almost all cases of child sexual abuse - has elements of nuance, complexity and unfathomable depravity. For the most part, we focus on the depravity, because that is where the greatest amount of preventable damage comes from.

This case has more than it's share of depravity. And it is the unwillingness of a significant number of Penn State fans (be they alums, residents, or just casual fans) to accept that Saint Joe was closer to Art Briles or Dave Bliss than he was to the image he built up over the years that drives the scorn and generalizations.

I should add that I say this as a Pennsylvania native who grew up idoizing Joe Paterno, went to college in Pennsylvania, counts more than a handful of relatives as alums and who has a best friend with the last name of Paterno and it's not a coincidence.
Wasn't intending to lecture..although maybe I was. I was using the number maufman listed... but there are definitely a lot of alumni.. State College alone graduates 30,000 or so every year?

And I appreciate your perspective and intimate knowledge of the situation.

Edit: The conversation has been a very good read..and it is helpful to understand how others feel. Not trying to be a victim, but I don't think it's easy for anyone outside of the university to understand how much the image of Paterno has altered and how much it was engrained in us growing up.