First-time visitor/poster here.
Straightdope.com quickly struck me as an intelligent, balanced community that’s open to a variety of different considerations from all points of view.
So, I present to you the following question:
Do you see Joe Paterno as:
Have you read the 70 pages here in The Pit?
It’s time to officially Pit Joe Paterno and the Penn State football program.
all the opinions you will ever need I promise, some you’d rather not though.
Wow. You weren’t kidding, martu. Might take me a good month to catch up on all those opinions.
BTW, interesting twist released by Ganim today.
Patriot-News exclusive: Psychologist’s report might be reason Ray Gricar declined to bring charges against Jerry Sandusky in 1998
Anyway, thanks for the resourceful link.
Learning is hard! :mad:
I don’t think the “scapegoat” is a valid option. It’s not like the school was using that as a way to put an end to the criticism. Paterno was fired because his actions were incompatible with the position he held. Others bore more responsibility for the crimes, and they are also being fired and prosecuted.
I think scapegoat fits–I think they both fit. He did something wrong, but he’s also received a disproportionate amount of the blame. If you weren’t actually looking at the news stories, and just the reactions, you wouldn’t even have known Sandusky’s name for a few weeks.
And I do think that now everyone is so spent that those other people involved are not getting the public ire they deserve. If they’d have let Paterno retire at the end of the season like he wanted to, I think these other people would have been in the news faster and caught up when people hadn’t yet hit the outrage fatigue.
This is why New Mexico should have passed that law requiring psychologists to dress up like wizards when they appear in court.
Nonsense. If my memory of that thread is not mistaken all you need are a dozen naked boys and a cardboard tube. 
I’d vote for “none of the above.” My take on JoPa was that towards the end he was a senile old man who had been allowed to stick around for too long, and that he simply lacked the mental capacity to fully comprehend or appreciate the significance of what was occuring.
I think it requires a hundred naked boys, a paper towel tube, and a bar of soap. Just sayin’.
Can we please get into the debate about how many slapping sounds make up a rhythm? THAT was obviously the most poignant part of the previous discussion on this issue. If you can answer that, then you’ve got whether he was a scapegoat or not.