# It's time to officially Pit Joe Paterno and the Penn State football program. **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [November 7, 2011, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-time-to-officially-pit-joe-paterno-and-the-penn-state-football-program/602167 "2011-11-07T14:23:58Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 235
**Author:** ![gamerunknown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/6bbea6/32.png) [@gamerunknown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gamerunknown)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2012, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-time-to-officially-pit-joe-paterno-and-the-penn-state-football-program/602167/4683 "2012-10-02T13:47:26Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > Look, here’s the deal with me: you don’t charge people with crimes if the evidence doesn’t support it. A guy may have robbed ten drug stores and shot the pharmacist during nine of those robberies, but if you want to claim he also shot the tenth guy when what he really did was beat him up, and then tell me that according to your experience he very well may have shot the guy, I’m gonna say where are the bullet holes and call bullshit on charging him with shooting that tenth guy! As a cop you should know perfectly well that in this country we have processes in place specifically designed to protect us from being convicted of crimes based on assumption of guilt not supported by evidence, and from public and police and prosecutorial wrongdoing. Once you start assuming people to be guilty of crimes simply because they’ve committed similar crimes at other times, or because that particular crime especially pisses you off, or because the suspect is an all around bad guy, than at that point you become a far greater threat to the innocent and to society than the people you’re trying to prosecute. Here’s the analogy. The robber in question happens to be a script writer for Liberal Hollywood (say, Daniel Yost), writing plots about how great it’d be if there were no police or army, how everyone should quit their jobs and smoke weed and how we should all form mobs to get rid of people accused in paedophilia. People lap it up. Someone tells his boss in the studio that this script writer was responsible for the recent drug store robbery. Now, his boss knows that this script writer was acquitted of a drug store robbery in the past. He’s aware of the intimate details of drug store robberies since he’s involved in a religion plagued with accusations that the functionaries systematically covered up the drug store robberies their members were involved in. The studio boss does nothing. Later, online, an acolyte of this famous Hollywood icon claims that there was no reason to be suspicious that the robber in question committed this robbery, since script writers are too anaemic to actually pull a trigger and that we could test this theory by writing a stanza of a poem and then attempting to throw a paper towel tube. Also, for your viewing pleasure, a [60 year old man squatting 600 pounds](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETU6P3VeqcU). While I was looking up videos of old people squatting, I found [this too](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBn-ESaV8m8&feature=player_detailpage#t=35s). ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2012, 2:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-time-to-officially-pit-joe-paterno-and-the-penn-state-football-program/602167/4684 "2012-10-02T14:21:01Z")
> [@Loach](#): > > She had a “headache.” Maybe she just said that when she saw you naked, holding the paper towel tube.😃 ---
**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2012, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-time-to-officially-pit-joe-paterno-and-the-penn-state-football-program/602167/4685 "2012-10-02T15:20:50Z")
> [@kayaker](#): > > Maybe she just said that when she saw you naked, holding the paper towel tube.😃 Science marches on. ---
**Author:** ![Starving\_Artist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Starving\_Artist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Starving_Artist)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2012, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-time-to-officially-pit-joe-paterno-and-the-penn-state-football-program/602167/4686 "2012-10-02T17:19:33Z")
Again, I know I said I was out of here but also again I asked this guy a question and I felt his response deserved an answer and that a follow-up is required as well. Plus I may change my mind and hang around for a while anyway as I’m not feeling as burned out today as I was yesterday. > [@Loach](#): > > And thats where you are wrong wrong wrong. You have said repeatedly that the act was impossible. You state that the jury backs you up. WRONG. No, I’m afraid it’s you who are wrong here, **Loach**. For some reason people seem unable to separate my own conclusions from the jury’s ruling. To the best of my recollection I have never said the jury backs up the conclusions I arrived at myself regarding the physical possibilities of the rape. Where I’ve said the jury agrees with me is in concluding that a determination of rape cannot be drawn from Mike McQueary’s testimony. Period. > [@Loach](#): > > Some how you take that fact and believe that Sandusky was performing an innocent cock to ass pushing up against a wall with pelvic thrusts hug. It seems you’ve come into the thread late and either jumped to some erroneous conclusions or have been misled by nonsense posted by someone else. A great many things have been discussed and suggested in this thread in a lot of different contexts. In certain discussions and in regard to certain circumstances I’ve suggested that there could be an innocent explanation for a man and boy to be found in that position in a shower that had nothing to do with sex. With regard to this specific incident I’ve said repeatedly – including at least twice since the thread has started up again – that something of a sexually skeevy nature was probably going on. > [@Loach](#): > > I don’t think anyone would have much of a problem with you if you had said something like “I think its unlikely that penatrative rape occured.” Some would have explained why it could have happened. If you had still said due to his age and bad knees or whatever you still found that rape happened but he was being molested I doubt there would have been a ton of outrage. Man, you are new to the thread, aren’t you? I had already long been passionately accused they thread’s early hysterical nitwits of pedophilia, of being a pedophile enabler, of being a throwback to the 50’s when child abuse was tolerated and people looked the other way, of taking up for Paterno because he was a conservative and putting my love for a fellow conservative ahead of any concern for children being ass-raped, etc., etc., etc., for page after page after page before I ever even _began_ to look at the measurements and mechanics of what was going on in the shower room. You have a quite undeservedly high opinion of the character of most of the posters in this thread. > [@Loach](#): > > But your insistance in the face of fact that it is _impossible_ is so ludicrous people just have to keep responding. Somehow you got it in your mind that the physics don’t work. I think you mean physiology but whatever. No, I was talking about physics in the sense of shifting weights and balance and thrusting mostions and so forth. Physiology comes into play as well, but when you’ve heard someone referring to me as having spoken of physics, those are the things I was talking about. > [@Loach](#): > > You don’t take into account that of course Sandusky was moving. That by the testimony the victim was in the “assume the position” position. That there can be a great deal of range in size that a 10-12 year old boy can be. But you are so focused on the impossible you have built a scenario in your head and can not begin to think that it is incorrect at any time. Well, Sandusky’s “moving” as observed by McQueary seems only to have made its appearance at trial, and as I’ve mentioned already there is reason to suspect McQueary may have been embellishing his testimony, at least to a point (i.e., he apparently was still unwilling to state flatly that what he saw was intercouse). Then you have to consider that for purposes of this thread we are limited to what the parties involved say, and looking to averages attempting to draw conclusions for things their statements leave unanswered. So, given the fact that McQueary pegged the boy as being 10-12 years old (IIRC for most of the thread, including the suggested paper towel tube experiment, the meme was that he was ten) we have to presume there was nothing unusually large about his physique or McQueary would have pegged him as being older. Another element that has played into my belief that rape was not occurring was McQueary’s grand jury testimony that Sandusky and the boy turned to look at him in the 45 degree mirror as he was standing at his locker. One would expect that if he were to describe what he saw in that much detail he would also have mentioned it if the boy’s expression were one of distress, pain, embarassment or anxiety. But he said nothing about any of that, only that they looked at him. In regard to the boy’s being in the “assume the position” posture, to me this is indicative of the sort of crime Sandusky actually was convicted of in this case but not anal rape. “Assuming that position” does not elevate a person’s physiognomy. > [@Loach](#): > > I have not studied the PA law with regards to mandatory reporting. Maybe Paterno followed the letter of the law. As I have been given to understand, at the time of the shower room incident a decades-long protocol was in place, instituted in cooperation with the local police department, that reports of crime occurring on campus be reported to the campus authorities, who were then to investigate and contact the local police if necessary (given that Penn State university maintains a fully accredited police force of its own) should someone need to be jailed. This policy was instituted to prevent the local police from having to field multiple calls regarding the same crime. Again, this policy had been standard operating procedure for decades at the time McQueary reported the shower incident to Paterno and as a result I would imagine Paterno’s reporting the incident as he did came automatically and without a moment’s thought that he should report it somewhere else instead. In fact no one else ever thought a thing about it until some local police official puffed up his chest and tried to insinuate that had Paterno called the cops, by golly they would have done something about it! > [@Loach](#): > > But after he told the AD what had happened and then saw Sandusky hanging out in his locker room with kids FOR 10 FUCKING YEARS. Don’t you think he should have maybe had this conversation with the AD? “Hey remember that kid-fucking thing we talked about with Jerry? Anything happen with that?” Was he not at least curious? It was his football program. He was the God of Penn State. His role is nothing to be proud of. He allowed more kids to be raped. In his house. And in the end he knew it and it broke him. Look, **Loach** , in finding out you’re a cop and in reading more of your posts I’ve come to take you more seriously than the average bear in this thread and to have developed a certain amount of respect for you as well, so don’t take this the wrong way but there is just all sorts of wrong going on in that last paragraph that shows you’ve soaked up a lot of bad information on this subject. First of all, Sandusky wasn’t hanging out in Paterno’s locker room for 10 years after the incident, or at all. Sandusky was no longer a part of Penn State’s football program and had not been for several years at that time. Paterno was not his boss, had no regular contact with him, and had not for years. Further, two years prior to this incident Sandusky was reported to the actual police for hugging a kid in the shower. They investigated and found no serious wrongdoing and the matter was dropped. Would you have had Paterno endlessly enquire about it also? As far as he knew, this was just another case where an investigation determined that Sandusky hugged a kid in the shower and someone misconstrued it into something sexual when it wasn’t. Further, he said before his death that he didn’t want to ask questions or offer input so as not to have any influence on the case. So from his point of view, it was out of his hands, it involved a person no longer in his employ, and was most likely just another case of a hug in the shower blown out of proportion. I imagine after the first few weeks he rarely gave it another thought. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2012, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-time-to-officially-pit-joe-paterno-and-the-penn-state-football-program/602167/4687 "2012-10-02T17:21:06Z")
> [@Loach](#): > > Science marches on. And when mankind discovers controlled fusion, this thread will be there. And when mankind breaks the lightspeed barrier, this thread will be there. And when mankind invents 2130s-style death rays, this thread will be there. And when beekind fills the environmental niche left by death-ray-self-extincted mankind, this thread will, well, probably not still be there, but I wouldn’t rule it out. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2012, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-time-to-officially-pit-joe-paterno-and-the-penn-state-football-program/602167/4688 "2012-10-02T17:24:47Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > I imagine after the first few weeks he rarely gave it another thought. Yeah, that’s kinda the problem. ---
**Author:** ![Starving\_Artist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Starving\_Artist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Starving_Artist)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2012, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-time-to-officially-pit-joe-paterno-and-the-penn-state-football-program/602167/4689 "2012-10-02T17:32:15Z")
mn ---
**Author:** ![Jack\_Batty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jack_batty/32/3201_2.png) [@Jack\_Batty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jack_Batty)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2012, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-time-to-officially-pit-joe-paterno-and-the-penn-state-football-program/602167/4690 "2012-10-02T17:33:44Z")
I’m getting pretty sick of \*\*Starving “Men and Boys Sometime Shower Together” Artist \*\*handwaving things away by claiming a hug in the shower is nothing to bat an eye at. You need to fucking realize, you creepy fucking weirdo, that a man bringing a boy into a shower, in a deserted locker room, getting him naked and giving him a hug … IS NOT FUCKING OKAY! Jesus Christ what is wrong with this guy? ---
**Author:** ![Enderw24](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ba9def/32.png) [@Enderw24](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enderw24)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2012, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-time-to-officially-pit-joe-paterno-and-the-penn-state-football-program/602167/4691 "2012-10-02T17:35:19Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > No, I’m afraid it’s you who are wrong here, **Loach**. For some reason people seem unable to separate my own conclusions from the jury’s ruling. To the best of my recollection I have never said the jury backs up the conclusions I arrived at myself regarding the physical possibilities of the rape. Where I’ve said the jury agrees with me is in concluding that a determination of rape cannot be drawn from Mike McQueary’s testimony. Period. > [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > \*\*\*\*The Paper Towel Tube was a perfectly cromulent way of illustrating the fact that the scene described by McQueary almost certainly precluded rape as being what he had happened upon, a finding confirmed by the Sandusky jury who knew a great deal more at the time of its deliberations both about what McQueary said and Sandusky’s other crimes than did anyone in this thread. Do you think this thread so large, people can’t tell when you’re lying? Stupid fucktube. Stop lying to us. You can go on lying to yourself if you want to. ---
**Author:** ![Starving\_Artist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Starving\_Artist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Starving_Artist)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2012, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-time-to-officially-pit-joe-paterno-and-the-penn-state-football-program/602167/4692 "2012-10-02T17:41:15Z")
> [@Jack\_Batty](#): > > I’m getting pretty sick of \*\*Starving “Men and Boys Sometime Shower Together” Artist \*\*… Men and boys do sometimes shower together. There was testimony to this effect at the trial, as a matter of fact. > [@Jack\_Batty](#): > > handwaving things away by claiming a hug in the shower is nothing to bat an eye at. It ain’t anal rape! > [@Jack\_Batty](#): > > You need to fucking realize, you creepy fucking weirdo, that a man bringing a boy into a shower, in a deserted locker room, getting him naked and giving him a hug … IS NOT FUCKING OKAY! I don’t believe I’ve ever cheerleaded the practice. > [@Jack\_Batty](#): > > Jesus Christ what is wrong with this guy? Not a thing, chum, not a thing. ---
**Author:** ![El\_Kabong](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/el_kabong/32/496_2.png) [@El\_Kabong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/El_Kabong)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2012, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-time-to-officially-pit-joe-paterno-and-the-penn-state-football-program/602167/4693 "2012-10-02T17:42:24Z")
I’d be for a new rule making overuse of the word “cromulent” a bannable offense. ---
**Author:** ![Enderw24](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ba9def/32.png) [@Enderw24](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enderw24)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2012, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-time-to-officially-pit-joe-paterno-and-the-penn-state-football-program/602167/4694 "2012-10-02T17:47:12Z")
> [@El\_Kabong](#): > > I’d be for a new rule making overuse of the word “cromulent” a bannable offense. Maybe the reason the paper towel tube isn’t a cromulent test is because of how embiggened one becomes while trying it. ---
**Author:** ![Starving\_Artist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Starving\_Artist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Starving_Artist)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2012, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-time-to-officially-pit-joe-paterno-and-the-penn-state-football-program/602167/4695 "2012-10-02T17:48:09Z")
> [@Enderw24](#): > > Do you think this thread so large, people can’t tell when you’re lying? Stupid fucktube. Stop lying to us. You can go on lying to yourself if you want to. I suppose the fact that those two statement don’t say what you think they do will ever occur to you on their own, so let me explain: the paper towel tube is a good way to explain why I feel McQueary’s description does not justify a conclusion of rape; the jury also felt McQueary’s description does not justify a conclusion of rape. This is not the same thing as saying the jury agrees with me that the paper towel tube/various heights/physics/etc. does not justify a conclusion of rape. Got it? Nah, I didn’t think so! Lemme try again…McQueary’s description falls short of a persuasive description of rape. The jury agrees with that conclusion. See? Not so hard after all when someone spells it out for you, huh? ---
**Author:** ![Starving\_Artist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Starving\_Artist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Starving_Artist)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2012, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-time-to-officially-pit-joe-paterno-and-the-penn-state-football-program/602167/4696 "2012-10-02T17:49:15Z")
> [@El\_Kabong](#): > > I’d be for a new rule making overuse of the word “cromulent” a bannable offense. It’s a perfectly cromulent word. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2012, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-time-to-officially-pit-joe-paterno-and-the-penn-state-football-program/602167/4697 "2012-10-02T17:59:26Z")
There was enough evidence to charge Sandusky with rape. Enough to bring it to trial. Obviously the prosecutor and judge believed that it was physically possible- and even likely to have occurred. It’s true that the jury did not find enough evidence to convict for this particular instance. They had reasonable doubt. Of course there’s no evidence that anyone on the jury thought it was physically impossible. And yet you are _absolutely certain_, **Starving Artist** , that no rape took place. You know it. You have no doubt whatsoever. To you, it was impossible. It doesn’t matter that people have tried your paper towel test and passed it while “standing on two feet” and in the position that McQueary describes (I’ve noticed that whenever someone says this, you dismiss it as “impossible”… perhaps they’re more flexible than you). It doesn’t matter that some individuals in this thread have unfortunate personal experience with something pretty damn close to this. This doesn’t shake your absolute certainty. In your mind aspects of McQueary’s memory and testimony _must_ be suspect and inaccurate if they point towards rape, but the parts of his memory and testimony that might be able to be interpreted as casting doubt on this possible rape _must_ be perfectly accurate. It’s not that you think there probably wasn’t a rape in that particular instance. It’s that you _know_ this wasn’t a rape. I’m running out of synonyms for how utterly amazing your thoughts are, and how incredible it is that you stick to your ridiculous conclusions with the desperate strength of a drowning man clutching a tree branch. ---
**Author:** ![Jack\_Batty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jack_batty/32/3201_2.png) [@Jack\_Batty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jack_Batty)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2012, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-time-to-officially-pit-joe-paterno-and-the-penn-state-football-program/602167/4698 "2012-10-02T18:01:04Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > \As far as [Paterno]knew, this was just another case where an investigation determined that Sandusky hugged a kid in the shower and someone misconstrued it into something sexual when it wasn’t. . This is the world you live in? Just another “innocent” case of a man hugging a boy in a shower? Don’t ever come anywhere near my son. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2012, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-time-to-officially-pit-joe-paterno-and-the-penn-state-football-program/602167/4699 "2012-10-02T18:01:15Z")
The certainty… it’s hilariously amazing. Or perhaps amazingly hilarious. ---
**Author:** ![Starving\_Artist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Starving\_Artist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Starving_Artist)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2012, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-time-to-officially-pit-joe-paterno-and-the-penn-state-football-program/602167/4700 "2012-10-02T18:06:52Z")
> [@Jack\_Batty](#): > > This is the world you live in? Just another “innocent” case of a man hugging a boy in a shower? The world in which the authorities found no actionable wrongdoing is a world we all pretty clearly live in. I’m at a loss as to your point. > [@Jack\_Batty](#): > > Don’t ever come anywhere near my son. Oooh, internet tough guy. I’ll go wherever I want! ---
**Author:** ![Lobohan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobohan/32/79_2.png) [@Lobohan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobohan)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2012, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-time-to-officially-pit-joe-paterno-and-the-penn-state-football-program/602167/4701 "2012-10-02T18:10:05Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > The world in which the authorities found no actionable wrongdoing is a world we all pretty clearly live in. I’m at a loss as to your point. > > Oooh, internet tough guy. I’ll go wherever I want! What type of art do you do, SA? I’m an artist too, and I’m just wondering what you could possibly do being as vapidly stupid as you are. ---
**Author:** ![Enderw24](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ba9def/32.png) [@Enderw24](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enderw24)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2012, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-time-to-officially-pit-joe-paterno-and-the-penn-state-football-program/602167/4702 "2012-10-02T18:15:29Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > The world in which the authorities found no actionable wrongdoing is a world we all pretty clearly live in. I’m at a loss as to your point. Which “authorities” are you refering to? The cops and prosecutors? Yeah, they both thought the “hugging” in the shower were wrong, and nailed him on it. Or were you refering to Paterno and Penn State as the “authorities” who found no actionable wrongdoing. Yeah, I’ve got 60 million dollars that says they really should have. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-time-to-officially-pit-joe-paterno-and-the-penn-state-football-program/602167.md?page=234) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-time-to-officially-pit-joe-paterno-and-the-penn-state-football-program/602167.md?page=236)