Good decision by the Board of Trustees.
Wow.
Well, well. Wasn’t expecting that. I thought they’d let him go through the season.
Sonofabitch. They shot Old Yeller.
They canned the president too. The lesson is so easy. Do the right fucking thing.
I can’t understand what Paterno was going for in trying to hang around until the end of the season in the first place. For a couple of months more as the coach, in the face of a child rape scandal, you’re going to ask the administration of the university to tell the public “Joe Pa will leave on his own terms”?
It’s almost definitely a blip on the radar considering what Paterno’s probably guilty of, but sweet jesus, what a clueless gesture. Even this one tiny little step he could have taken toward acknowledging the enormity of his fuckups, and he fucked it up.
One of the FoxSports.com columnists got it right, in the face of the adversity, JoePa’s response was to tell the Board of Trustee’s what they should focus on. I have lost any respect I ever had for the guy.
We need to start another thread on this subject. 100 threads on the Penn State clusterfuck can’t possibly cover it.
Amen. It’s very sad that it had to come to this, but it absolutely DID have to come to this. The Trustees did the right thing.
There’s one long one in the Pit and 2 others. For a piece of news people are interested in, that doesn’t seem extraordinary.
I was neutral on the subject of Paterno going until I read his quote that the Trustees shouldn’t be talking about him. Arrogance disguised as humility, in my mind, and a real window into the culture that would make them sweep this guy’s crimes under the rug in the first place.
At least he didn’t disappear like Ray Gricor. Being from the area this was teased on the local news. And many people want an investigation to see if there is any connection.
Admittedly I haven’t seen much of the media coverage of this story. (I know, hard to believe). Obviously, what I have seen, disgusts me.
That said, the coals must have been festering on this story for year and years.
JoePa must have known that this was a nuclear bomb, waiting to detonate. I can’t believe he didn;t say 8 years ago (or whenever) that he didn’t get out and let someone else deal with this mess.
I hope eventually things settle down and look back favorably on Paterno’s years. He did run a very clean program. He insisted his players attended classes and passed tests. For 46 years the guy had one of the best reputations in football. The guys that played for Joe went on to very successful lives outside football.
I’m as puzzled as anyone else why Paterno didn’t call the cops 8 years ago. I personally think he didn’t see it as a football issue. This was a retired coach doing something completely removed from the football program. Joe reported the locker room showers incident to his superiors. The ex coach was banned from bringing kids onto the university campus.
Joe should have insisted that the cops were called. A lot of other people should have demanded the cops too. I have no idea why a guy with Joe’s principles & integrity didn’t. He did the right thing for 46 years and made one very bad judgement call.
I imagine Joe won’t last long in retirement. He lived and breathed coaching. Andy Rooney died one month after leaving his job at 60 Minutes.
It’s a damn shame for Joe to go out like this.
Kids paid a hell of a price on Paterno’s concentration on the football program.
I ran across this article about Joe’s legacy.
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2011/writers/stewart_mandel/11/09/penn-state-joe-paterno-retires/index.html?xid=cnnbin
Let’s estimate 30 student athletes a year were influenced by Joe and his staff. Times 46 is 1380 men that came through that program. He shaped a lot of lives in those years. Most coaches are there for the players long after they leave football. Giving advice, friendship. You’re part of that program as long as you breath. I still call my old coaches at least a couple times every year.
Why Joe didn’t call the cops on that pedo is something we’ll never know. It’s a shame.
I’m still not certain as to why, and nobody seems to be coming forward with an explanation. The grand jury report does not even include Spanier’s name, not once. Nobody has argued that Spanier knew any of the details of the case–in fact the athletic director and the VP who were indicted were specifically charged with not reporting to the proper authorities, one of whom would have been Spanier. So what exactly did he do to get canned?
No, it’s a damn shame that he didn’t have the moral fiber to put an end to a grown man that he personally knew from raping young boys (even just one should be enough) on Penn State’s campus.
Here’s the lesson that apparently needs to be articulated here: If you know of an adult raping a child, do something and then keep doing something until that adult is no longer raping children and is behind bars. Don’t do the minimum as required by your employer. Do what’s right for the kid being abused.
Every adult that knew about this but didn’t do everything in their power to protect these boys is scumbag. Paterno, the president, the graduate assistant, the AD, and whomever else…and now for a sizeable section of the student body to riot and hold vigils and make Paterno the victim here is fucking vile.
Paterno’s got one hell of a legacy (apart from anything else, he’s donated his salary to the university for~30 years), but the only one responsible for tarnishing it is him.
That’s kinda like Herman Cain talking about all the women he didn’t harass.
Letting Sandusky rape and sexually abuse kids - probably a good deal more than the number we know about - in Penn State athletic facilities, is not counterbalanced by the positive role Paterno played in other young men’s lives.
No, it isn’t. This was the defining event of his career. It’s a shame he can’t live another 20 years, with every kid that Sandusky raped or otherwise sexually abused on Penn State property getting to spit in Paterno’s face three times a day.
The biggest shame, of course, is what happened to those kids.
There are so many threads about the Penn bizness now, it’s hard to tell which one to post what comments to. Here’s a thought.
There have been suggestions that Penn ought to cancel the entire athletics program for one year. (e.g., by Gail Collins in NYT).
And in another nearby thread, it is argued that college athletics should be banned altogether everywhere. And I saw a post (above in this thread, I think) suggesting that those protesting students are morally complicit too, in addition to all those officials who turned the other buttcheek.
And now this: In today’s news, we see that those student protests have evolved into a full riot. “Occupy Philadelphia” this ain’t. Penn State Students Riot in Protest
So, my suggestions: Penn State should now consider shutting down the entire college for a year. Just send everybody back home to think about it for a while, and maybe everybody should write a 4800-word essay. Come back and try again next year.
Another thought would be to cancel athletics, or some portion, for three or four years, until everybody now a student there is no longer. There’s a precedent for this idea: Cal Poly (San Luis Obispo, CA) has a big three-day student festival every year. (Sorry, no cite. It’s been many years since I lived around there.) One weekend some years ago (mid-1990’s?), it got out of hand. Resolution: They cancelled it for several years, until the entire student body had moved on, then re-instated it.