It's time to officially Pit Joe Paterno and the Penn State football program.

The BBQ Pit
861

I am so disturbed by this I don’t know what to do with my anger. As many of you know, I am a Joe Paterno basher, but until this story broke, most of my anger stemmed from his part in ending a long-time rivalry game with my alma mater, Pitt. A healthy hatred, I thought. As I had nothing personal against the university itself, Joe Paterno provided me a singular focus for my hatred of the PSU football program… As time marched on, “JoePa” still remained a self-centered jerk, but he ***did ***coach the college football team that played my second-favorite college team every Saturday. A good, healthy hatred that came with every college football season. My brother and a good number of friends went to PSU, so the Pitt Penn State games in late November meant something and we loved to hate each other. The game was important. I hated JoePa for taking that from us.

How small that seems now.

My first thoughts go to the victims, of course. There is no apology that can make this right. Jerry Sandusky was a part of PSU football… part of a program which apparently hushed up sexually abusive behavior for quite a while, and the man at the top, JoePa, seemed to know about it and did nothing. Neither did the university.

But this will get worse, not better. Penn State, before anyone forgets, is a STATE university, THE state university for Pennsylvania. There is nowhere to hide now. Lawsuits will be coming out of the woodwork, and the football program, for the good of the school, the state, and the scandal, should be shut down immediately.

Sandusky’s alleged act of anal sex with a 10 year old didn’t happen in a gas station down the street, or in a hotel in University Park. No, it happened where Sandusky felt safe. The PSU football shower.

Makes me sick, really. And JoePA, being the ever-so-thoughtful-one, announced that he’d retire at the end of the year. Guess what Joe? You don’t get to make decisions at our State University anymore. You are out… immediately. And in an instant, that legendary aura you built around yourself and the program are gone forever. Forget the wins. Forget the national championships. This is what you will be remembered for, for as long as your name is remembered. As a resident of Pennsylvania, I’m saddened that our state university has been tarnished nationally with such a scandal. I’m sickened by the thought of how long this went on, and how long people knew.

I’m curious as to what the BIG 10 will do… I’ll bet there is a clause in that athletic conference’s agreement somewhere that discusses the possibility of a member school being banished for a public scandal such as this. Do you think the Big 10 wants to be known as the conference that has Penn State? Nebraska gets to play them in not-so-happy valley this week. Lucky them. The game will be background noise while the announcers, fans, players from both teams and anyone in country who has a tie to PSU discuss the continued fallout. It won’t be pretty. And it’s not going to be for a long time.

The first of what will be many recruits already stated he’s no longer going to PSU. He was a verbal commitment, so it was easy for him. This is going to become an avalanche if kids who have signed their name to the paper figure out how to get out of their scholarships and go to other schools.

There is no gloating here. This is a sad thing for me. I hope other schools see the danger in allowing someone to have absolute power at the school… whether it be in an athletic program or something else, when the person becomes bigger than the school, something like this can happen and get swept under the rug fairly easily.

Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Indeed it does. So long, JoePa. You will never get your name or reputation back. And you deserve everything that happens to you if it’s proven you did indeed know and did nothing as has been reported. I hope those poor kids haunt your sleep forever.

862

Really needed another thread? Seriously?

863

Truth is, I didn’t see any other thread except for the poll. And I didn’t go to the pit initially, where there seems to be a very lengthy thread in progress.

Here’s the thing, though:

  1. I posted it in Games, because I wanted to get the feedback from other sports fans. If there are 20 other threads out here, I haven’t seen them all yet.

  2. WTF do you care how many threads are out here on this topic? Don’t read it if you don’t want to. Just skip it. Just like most people do when they see a thread that doesn’t appeal to them. What the board ***really ***doesn’t need is someone going into threads they don’t think the board needs or should have and enter a useless comment asking the rest of the board if another thread is warranted.

Man, I wish people would get a life.

To answer your question… Yes. Yes.

864

The Game Room thread on the Penn State scandal was the most recently replied to thread in the forum when you created your OP. Exactly how not hard did you not look?

865

I really didn’t look at all. I haven’t been active on the dope very much this week, so I didn’t do a lot of searching. I came to Games earlier in the week and voted on the poll. Then, I moved away from the dope. Apparently, I have missed quite a few (I just replied to one).

As you can tell, I had a lot of outrage built up over this thing, and getting it out was important, even if I only typed it out on a message board.

So I know of 5 threads. this one, the poll, the McQuery name thread, the pit thread and the GD thread (which I didn’t see directly, I saw a thread name when I was at the home page of all the forums… it happened to be the last one responded to in GD.

How many are there? I don’t know.
ETA: 6! I just clicked your link and realized that went to another thread in Games. I didn’t see that one either.

In any event, if the thread dies, it dies. If a mod wants to take my post and attach it to the most appropriate thread and close this one, that’s fine. I just don’t see the problem with all these threads.

866

What the board really doesn’t need is someone telling me which threads not to read.

867

I have to admit, while I make mistakes, I do at least see if major issues have an ongoing discussion…right at the top of the forum I’m posting in.

868

Great line on Bill Mahar tonight, “A lot of people are asking how something like this could happen outside the Catholic church.”

869

What puzzles me in all of this is Mr. McQ. Sr.

His son comes to him, totally distraught, with a fantastic tale of sodomy with a 10 yr. old in the shower room late evening when all have gone home - he witnesses this and is so shocked, he makes eye contact with that poor kiddie and then fades back into the shadows with never a sound and then calls his daddy.

He made eye contact with the kid!!!

How can he sleep at night.

Further, he told his father this and McQ Sr. did nothing?

Wow, some seriously sick f*cks roaming around this world.

870

They went to Paterno. He happens to be one of the most powerful and respected people in the state. Word is Paterno told the AD who decided he did not have enough to act on. If it continued up the ladder ,perhaps something would have been done. The only one who did anything was McQ. It was not enough , but he did something. The people with power killed it.

871

While I’m not a Game Room Moderator, I’ve closed this thread. I could have merged it with a similar thread, but it would probably have not scanned very well.

samclem, Moderator

872

The post by Stink Fish Pot above was from a thread he started recently in the Game Room. It was ruled redundant and moved here. Sorry for the confusion.

Please continue your Pit.

samclem

873

He can sleep at night because they had the PSU paycheck guaranteed.

He could then go around and claim his son was a PSU assistant coach. How proud was he?

Both McQs, the father and the son, let a child be abused for their own benefit.

874

Thanks, samclem. Everyone who hasn’t should pause to read my post… it contains a lot of anger from a Pitt alum. (perhaps surprising to some, there is no gloating here. I’m sick about what happened to the kids)

This is exactly right. I asked the question of why McQuery was being looked at as a good guy in all of this. Clearly, he acted out of self interests, as did his father. His father, who may have had access to Paterno once or twice a year at team/family functions, certainly enjoyed the connection to Paterno… so much so that he told his kid (who, at 28 at the time didn’t know what to do himself, so he called his daddy??? WTF???) to tell Paterno and let the University handle it. After it was clear that the University handled it by burying it, they should have gone forward.

I think Coach McQuery should have stopped it when he saw what was going on… but he couldn’t for whatever reason, and told his dad. His dad didn’t tell him to go to the Police, but rather go to Paterno. Clearly, the McQuery’s don’t have a very accurate moral compass.

However, Coach McQuery, protected himself and his job, didn’t he? He also showed Paterno that he was someone who could be trusted. He has since been promoted by Paterno, currently holding down the receivers coaching duties as well as coordinating recruiting. Good luck with that.

PSU will fire him as soon as it figures out if it can do so without getting sued by McQuery in any way over firing a whistleblower. But his career in football at PSU is over.

875

I have seen little that thinks McQueary is a good guy. He should have done more. I don’t know what he saw, but he did not stop it. But he did do something. Paterno should have done the right thing. He probably knew what find of guy Sandusky was. Jo Pa had the power to end it.

876

Very few people are looking at McQueary as a good guy, and those that are are also arguing random ridiculous justifications for McQueary, Paterno, Curley, and Schultz.

The reason why Joe Paterno is the subject of this thread is that Paterno unofficially runs (or ran) Penn State, in addition to being the titular coach and head of the football program, and has cultivated for years a reputation of being an upstanding, moral guy. This revelation is at odds to that, and his and his defenders’ claims of “I did what was required by law” undermine that carefully-cultivated reputation AND the expectations of human decency.

877

Dear Hysterical, Irrational Maroons:

People like you are why we have courts, rules of evidence and jury deliberations.

Just because a crime is particularly horrendous, it does not mean that it’s okay for you to jump to conclusions; misinterpret statements; ignore, distort or dismiss evidence; mind-read and assign motives and intent out of pure speculation; and otherwise engage in the emotional, unthinking, irrational manner and mob mentality that you and most of the other posters on this subject are wallowing in.

That is all.

Thank you,
**SA **

878

Dear piece of shit-eating child-rape-apologist filth:

Learn to read.

That is all.

879

The more that comes out, the less McQueary is being viewed as sympathetic. When the Pres and Paterno were fired, PSU said they weren’t looking at McQueary, but then they suspended him **with **pay, because of the threats to him. These were thought to be threats from the idiots rioting about Paterno being fired, but it might be because people are finally reading the testimony and understanding his role in all this. I had read at one time he was being looked at as the whistleblower in this case, however, tonight he supposedly told his players over a phone call that he is no longer their coach, that “that’s over”. He’s also supposedly in protective custody, so the rope and pitchfork crowd must be out for him.

Kolga, there is no justification. They can look all they want, they will never find one.

It seems that at each step along the way, the wrong decision was made.

Mark Madden, a sportscaster from Pittsburgh who wrote a column in April of this year outlining all of this (I don’t remember anything hitting the news from that, but maybe people in Pittsburgh do), is now reporting a rumor that Sandusky used to “pimp” out some of the kids to wealthy men in the State College area that have the same sexual leanings as Sandusky.

If THAT turns out to be true, good God… people might burn Beaver Stadium down.

Madden (I think), also puts together a pretty good timeline that implies strongly that Sandusky’s “retirement” was the schools way of ending his coaching career at PSU. I do remember his name being mentioned as a successor to Paterno at one time, as he was a highly regarded defensive coord. And Madden also implies that this was an open secret in the football world, not only at PSU but nationally. He was only 55 when he retired, and he didn’t get one sniff from another college to coach their team. So apparently, it was an open secret.

If I find the article I read, I will post a link, but I’ve lost it. Sorry about that.

eta: foundit!

880

So what you are saying is that when someone witnesses rape, they should just tell their boss, not call the cops. Right?

If I witness rape, today, I should drive to my bosses house tomorrow and report it to him, right? Because my boss is better prepared to deal with a rape than the cops? I should not call the cops?

Is there ever a situation in which people should call the police?