Or maybe his recent silence on the Paterno subject is because he'd rather let the book speak for itself and stand or fail on its own merits.
That's a possibility, but given the timing of all this, and especially the Freeh report, either Joe never sleeps or the book and Joe stand a greater chance of failing on the merits because his attention is now on other things. I would hate that to be the case.Or maybe his recent silence on the Paterno subject is because he'd rather let the book speak for itself and stand or fail on its own merits.
Fair enough. I hope he pulls it off.Maybe, but I think Joe has at least earned the right to let the book actually be read before everyone jumps on him. There are lots of assumptions that Joe defends Paterno in the book, etc, but until the book is out we don't really know, and to me it would be a shame to condemn the guy without actually reading what's supposedly condemning him.
His writings have been really good thus far. Definitely up to his usual standards, it's my first visit in the morning right now.His London coverage is up to his usual standards - good stuff.
Edit - link to Joe's Olmpics blog - http://sportsonearthblog.com/
Yeah, this was great, and I barely care about gymnastics. Pos is killing it this Games, hopefully getting back some of his hard-earned rep after the Paterno fiasco.Agreed with all of the above, and I thought his break down of the women's all-around was killer.
The book came out already?Pos is killing it this Games, hopefully getting back some of his hard-earned rep after the Paterno fiasco.
Have you not read the last bajillion pages of this thread? Plenty of damage has been done pre-release.The book came out already?
Yeah, that was a phenomenal piece of "gotcha" by epraz there. I feel like I have learned my lesson. How about you Jimbo?Have you not read the last bajillion pages of this thread? Plenty of damage has been done pre-release.
Snark, not gotcha.Yeah, that was a phenomenal piece of "gotcha" by epraz there. I feel like I have learned my lesson. How about you Jimbo?
Either way, consider the lesson well learned.Snark, not gotcha.
I certainly hope so.Either way, consider the lesson well learned.
Yeah, that was legit. His Olympic work has been staggeringly awesome.Pos and the Olympics are, simply put, perfect together. His piece on Lu Xiang and Derek Redmond is vintage Posnanski.
Holy hell. It may be the bourbon talking- either way it helps- but that's the sort of writing that makes you appreciate the Olympics in ways you may not otherwise.Awesome.[/url]
As a bonus from that same article, Pos demonstrates why he's a better sportswriter than Peter King:Awesome.[/url]
I don’t think anyone cares — or should care — about the various inconveniences of being a sportswriter.
Looking it up would take far too much effort, but King's mentioned Posnanski glowingly quite a few times on Twitter, and did a spot on the Poscast.I wonder if King and Pos ever crossed paths. It seems odd that King (or Pos) never mentioned the other in any of his articles/MMQBs. Doesn't it? King mentions fucking EVERYONE of note that he bumps into, and Pos is usually quick to thank other professionals that do him solids, or make note of interesting things they say to him.
Pure speculation, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was some SI Writers clique that Pos was just never welcomed into.
Pos is dead to a lot of folks due to Paterno.Damn, how on earth is that piece not getting more love here of all places?
Their loss. His Olympics columns were stellar and the Pesky piece is just vintage Pos.Pos is dead to a lot of folks due to Paterno.
Am I supposed to feel sympathy after reading that? I don't. Maybe in ten years I will. Probably not. Maybe if you didn't enable child rape in the pursuit of "making that name mean something", I'd give a shit.On Thursday, Paterno met with his coaches at his house. He sobbed uncontrollably. This was his bad day. Later, one of his former captains, Brandon Short, stopped by the house. When Brandon asked, "How are you doing, Coach?" Paterno answered, "I'm okay," but the last syllable was shaky, muffled by crying, and then he broke down and said, "I don't know what I'm going to do with myself." Nobody knew how to handle such emotion. Joe had always seemed invulnerable. On Thursday, though, he cried continually.
"My name," he told Jay, "I have spent my whole life trying to make that name mean something. And now it's gone."
I actually find that pretty even-handed. To be honest, it makes me happy to know that, before he died, Paterno fully realized he'd destroyed his name and was miserable.Am I supposed to feel sympathy after reading that? I don't. Maybe in ten years I will. Probably not. Maybe if you didn't enable child rape in the pursuit of "making that name mean something", I'd give a shit.
Exactly. If that's the tone of the whole book I don't see how anyone could fault Posnanski. I don't want white wash but I don't want polemic either.Funny, what I got out of that was he was more concerned about his reputation than the children, which doesn't change my view at him at all.
Agree. But it helps to know that in his last days he was a broken and miserable man.Funny, what I got out of that was he was more concerned about his reputation than the children, which doesn't change my view at him at all.
There are many people out there whose lives were enriched, altered and elevated by Joe Paterno. This is simply true. There are also many people out there who were victimized as children by the unspeakable evils of Jerry Sandusky, and no matter where you stand on the news it is at the very least true that Joe Paterno was one of the people who should have done more to stop him.
Nobody would argue — and certainly my book does not argue — that the good Joe Paterno did in his life should shield him from the horrors of his mistakes. Some would argue, especially in the white-hot emotion sparked by the latest revelations, that Paterno's role in the Jerry Sandusky crimes invalidates whatever good he might have done. My book does not argue that either. My book, I believe, lets the reader make up his or her own mind. When people ask me if Penn State was right in tearing down Joe Paterno's statue in light of the Freeh Report's conclusion, I ask a different question: "Should they have built a statue to him in the first place?" When people ask me if the NCAA was right in unleashing draconian penalties against Penn State, I ask a different question: "Should they have held up Joe Paterno as a paragon of purity and virtue for more than four decades?"
Seems like a reasonable and professional take.No, I don't feel about Joe Paterno the same way I did when I started writing the book. But I don't feel about him the way his most blistering critics feel. He was a human being, filled with ideals and flaws, honesty and hypocrisy, charity and selfishness, modesty and the refusal to abdicate his throne. There was little simple about him. I chased the complicated story of a man and his long life. I hope that is the story I wrote.
Interestingly, I did not realize that this book was fiction until I saw the words investigation in relation to the Fact-Freeh report and the same old tired (and erroneous) line that Joe Pa did not contact the police.
Agreed. I also found the parts where he discusses his motivations for writing the book to be interesting:Seems like a reasonable and professional take.
There was not just one thing that drew me — there never is just one thing with a project like a book — but if I could point to one thing it might have been one of the themes about sports that fascinate me, something about winning … and what that word really means. Paterno had always said — quite loudly and with perhaps too much righteousness in his voice — that winning football games wasn't what mattered. And yet, he won more games than anyone. He kept coaching into his 80s, long after even his most most devoted fans thought proper. That riddle fascinated me. Why? What is this about? What is HE about?
It was everything you could reasonably hope for as a Joe Pos fan, and of course the USA Today comments section was predictably moronic and depressing.Seems like a reasonable and professional take.
Regarding a 2002 incident in which then-graduate assistant Mike McQueary witnessed Sandusky in a Penn State shower with a boy, Paterno told Posnanski a similar story to what he told a grand jury.
"Did you consider calling the police?" Posnanski asked.
"To be honest with you, I didn't," Paterno responded. "This isn't my field. I didn't know what to do. I had not seen anything. Jerry didn't work for me anymore. I didn't have anything to do with him. I tried to look through the Penn State guidelines to see what I was supposed to do. It said that I was supposed to call Tim [Curley]. So I did."
Among some of the other excerpts of note:
On people saying he protected Sandusky over children
"How could they think that?" he asked, and no one had the heart to answer. "They really think that if I knew someone was hurting kids, I wouldn't stop it?"
They looked at him.
"Don't they know me? Don't they know what my life has been about?"
On Jerry Sandusky
In 1993, Paterno wrote what the family would sometimes call the "Why I Hate Jerry Sandusky Memo." In it Paterno complained that Sandusky had stopped recruiting, seemed constantly distracted, had lost his energy for coaching, and was more interested in his charity, The Second Mile. "He would gripe about Jerry all the time," one family member said.
On son Jay Paterno
Did he hope that someday Jay would replace him as coach? It's hard to imagine a father not thinking along those lines, but Joe insisted that wasn't in his mind. "Are you kidding me?" he scoffed. "You think I would want Jay to have to deal with that?"… "Jay's a good coach, a darned good coach. And I think a lot of people refuse to see that because his name is Paterno."
On the Paterno statue
Paterno disliked the statue. Not because of the craftsmanship or the dimensions or anything like that. The statue and the stone wall behind it and the words carved into the stone, it all felt like a celebration of self, a mausoleum. But even these were not the reasons for Paterno's distaste. The reason was a single finger, the index finger, the statue of Joe Paterno raised to the heavens. We're No. 1.
On The Second Mile
Paterno would say again and again that he did not see anything perverse in Sandusky's dealings with children. His problem with The Second Mile was much simpler: the kids annoyed the hell out of him. … He did not want kids around when there was work to do.
On a 1998 investigation
There is reason to believe that, whatever Paterno was told, it did not make much of an impact on him. The coaches' meeting that leads this section was held on May 26, 1998 -- precisely at the time Sandusky was being investigated -- and his detailed and pointed notes make no mention of the investigation. Also, by the late 1990s, he had explored numerous options for removing Sandusky from his coaching staff. … If Paterno did know the details of the 1998 investigation, he might have used it as a way to get rid of Sandusky. He did not.
On Sandusky's retirement in 1999
[Paterno] told Sandusky he would not be the next head coach at Penn State. Sandusky mentioned the early retirement package, and Paterno suggested it might be a good time for him to take it. Both men later said that the 1998 incident was never discussed.
On Sandusky's retirement package, which included access to Penn State facilities
When I told Paterno that people would find it hard to believe the could not have influenced Sandusky's retirement package, he said, "People like to give me too much power. That's Tim's department. I told Tim how I felt. He worked out the deal as he saw fit."
On conclusions of the Freeh report
The general media takeaway from this email chain [discussing how Penn State officials should handle McQueary's testimony] was that Paterno had convinced Curley to back off reporting Sandusky and to handle this in-house. Others familiar with the emails believed instead that Paterno had demanded they confront Sandusky.