After reading the Grand Jury report I think this was necessary. I wish I wouldn’t have read it to be honest because there is some stuff you can’t unread. It’s disturbing.

I can’t believe how many had a chance to turn the guy in and didn’t.

I would just read this instead. It gives you the basics of the Grand Jury report without going into the detail.

http://m.npr.org/news/front/1059?singlePage=true

No one is really sure what he actually knew and he got it second hand, not that he shouldn’t be fired and ridden out of town on the back of an oxcart.

McQueary is the one who should be getting killed in the media. Really you see an on an old man fucking a 10 year old in the shower and you don’t put the first heavy object you can find into his fucking skull? And every time you see him after that you don’t try and put your thumbs into his eye sockets?

Fuck the administrators too they bear more responsibility than Paterno as well, hope they get some quality time in a PMITA time.

    From Penn State to the State Pen, and rightfully so.
From the Second Mile to the Green Mile, from Happy Valley to giving his inmate Brethren happy endings.

How noone did shit in this matter. Its outright sickening.

It’s called " Touched : The Jerry Sandusky Story " what a dick bag.

They weren’t covering up a local store giving athletes free shoes. They weren’t covering up donors paying the rent for the star QB. They weren’t covering up an assistant coach’s DWI; hell, they weren’t even covering up Jerramy Stevens date-raping a sorority chick. This is fucking CHILD RAPE, occurring multiple times over the course of 15 or more years, with multiple people we are almost positive are in the know, and who knows how many others could have known without being identified (yet).

How can an organization let sins of this magnitude sit in the ether for so long, and not be completely corrupt to its very core? When is a cover-up so vile and far-reaching that its taint even covers those who had no idea what was going on, but supported a system that allowed the crimes to happen in the first place? Maybe after something like this, the entire foundation that is Penn State University needs to be broken down and rebuilt, to ensure BEYOND ANY DOUBT something even remotely like this will never happen again.

Firing Paterno, Schultz and Curley might be just like putting a band-aid on a malignant tumor.

McQueary who was the one who witnessed the shower incident happens to be the WR coach AND. . ..recruiting coordinator. So this McQueary guy is one of the guys calling and visiting all the recruits parents and letting them know that “your boy is going to be in a good upstanding group of mentors” and “he will learn how to be a good ball player and a better man”. . . you know all that bullshit. He’s saying that crap all the while knowing there is a damn child molester sodomizing boys on occasion in the locker room. I find it odd how McQueary could just kind of block that out while advising kids they should play for PSU.

I thought he was going to escape untainted from this.

Of course the media is going to make Paterno look like the enemy. The only reason I would completely be against Paterno is if he was the child rapist. Look at ALL the good he has done this program. Besides this name 1 other thing said bad about Paterno?

Did the prelim uncover enough evidence that he really truly did not know enough? I don’t understand how he is not accessory to the fact

Oh yeah, this makes complete sense.

So thanks for posting. I thought this was a “AD sends creepy emails to interns” scandal, not…whatever you call what this monster was doing. There’s no punishment too harsh.

His position is nested within the “coaching umbrella”, AKA the umbrella Paterno once had control over. So nobody really had the power or the time to fire him yet. Apparently he’s not being allowed on the field Saturday, but none of that is relevant to my second point.

He’s the star witness in the upcoming trial. He witnessed the ’02 rape, and his actions afterwards started the chain reaction of incompetence and kicking the problem upstairs. His testimony is the biggest key towards getting Sandusky a conviction—remember, the janitor who witnessed the ’00 assault is now demented and unfit to testify. So the prosecution needs McQueary. You could argue that keeping him employed is immoral or whatever (they could always hide him in a basement until they need his testimony).

McQueary made some serious mistakes, but we still need him on our side if we want to see Sandusky and Co. brought to justice.

This has been a good thread so far, and I want to keep the discussion going. I know this is a dark, emotionally charged topic, but we’ve been pretty civil so far, and I want to keep that up. Good job.

I don’t have a problem with Joe Paterno being fired at some point per se, but I do have a problem with him being fired at this time.

I’ll start with the most unpopular point of view I possess. I know that we’ve become a culture of over-reactive Uruk-hai, driven by the whips of our media masters, but legally, Jerry Sandusky is innocent until proven guilty by a jury of his peers, has the right to confront his accusers, and as a citizen of the United States is owed due process.

Is Sandusky guilty? I don’t know; I wasn’t there. Do I think he’s guilty? Yes, I do, but my opinion – and your opinion – is not due process. To convict yet another person in the court of public opinion before they’ve had their day in court, before the prosecution has to publicly present a single shred of evidence is fucking bullshit, I don’t care how often we do it. Furthermore, was the Duke Lacrosse scandal so long ago that we’ve all forgotten the reason for these laws?

Whenever there’s a scandal of this nature people are quick to distance themselves from such activities as loudly and profusely as possible. Rhetoric such as the assistant coach who saw the act in 2002 should have killed Sandusky right then and there gets spewed. What would I have done were I the assistant coach who witnessed it? If I were Joe Paterno? I don’t know; I’ve never been in their shoes.

I do know that I would want as little to do with it as possible, and given Sandusky’s reputation and status with Penn State, I think it’s fair to assume that the assistant coach – a graduate student at the time – was probably worried about losing his job even for reporting it and the potential impact of his career. That doesn’t mean that he shouldn’t have reported it to the authorities, but I’ve lost jobs standing up for what’s right, and let me tell you something, you can’t pay rent or feed your kids with ethics.

At the very least his coaching career would probably have been over if only for the above reason – a desire to forget, to distance oneself. It ain’t fair, but if you deny that’s what would likely have happened, you’re smoking some good shit.

Furthermore – and I only ask this as a question – I wonder if the outrage at Sandusky and the associated parties would’ve been as great, the desire to distance themselves from it as great, if he’d been buggering girls. Sure, people would’ve still been outraged, but I’m wondering if the hushed tones and cover-up would’ve been as prominent if the sex in this case was not homosexual in nature. Just something to think about.

Now the assistant coach says he saw Sandusky and the boy in the shower. He told Paterno. Sandusky was not on Paterno’s staff at that time, thus Paterno had no direct authority over him. Also, what the assistant coach saw and what he told Paterno is still being sifted through by the justice department and ultimately only those two will ever know. Paterno witnessed nothing, and claims that the assistant coach said something happened using the words ‘inappropriate’ and ‘horseplay’. This is a point of contention for many people. Regardless, Paterno reported the event to Penn State’s athetic director.

Now, Paterno’s been coaching Penn State football for 61 years. I’m 37 years old, and he’s been coaching there for 61 years, during which time he’s run a clean and successful program. Graduation rates vary based on the sources I was checking, but they’ve always been very high for college sports or otherwise. This means that Paterno ran his program the way it’s supposed to run, for the benefit of the student-athletes first, and his own ego and the boosters second and a distant third. This means that he coached at a deficit for the majority of those 61 years. This means that he lost games because he wouldn’t cheat – he put the needs of his players as young men, his program’s integrity, and his ethics above winning and his own selfish desires for 61 years.

I do not believe that Paterno should get a pass because he won two national championships or won 400+ games. I don’t believe he should get a pass at all. If it was determined that he knowingly tucked this business with Sandusky under the rug, then he should be fired. But if it’s a question of his character – a question of whether or not he deserves the benefit of the doubt – he’s earned that benefit with 61 years of service, don’t you think?

To not take him at his word when his 61 years of service stand as a testament to his character to put the interests of the young men under his aegis above his own is pure hogshit. Just because the rest of the world is corrupt and jaded doesn’t mean that he is. He spent 61 years proving it.

And you know something? I don’t think anyone cares. His termination, coming now, isn’t about punishment. He’s not being fired for something he did wrong, because no one could possibly know what that is yet, and more to the point, it hasn’t been proven in a court of law that Sandusky’s even guilty yet. He’s being punished so that the University can make it go away. They desire to travel the shortest distanct between two points, and if they fire every single person associated with this mess, they can distance themselves from kiddy-rapers and those who might have know that a guy once claimed he saw something inappropriate.

Now if that bold faced portion sounds familiar, it’s because it’s the exact same fucking thing that got Penn State into this pickle in the first place. These events weren’t investigated properly over the last ten years because Penn State wanted it to go away, and Paterno is being fired now because they want it to go away. That’s not justice, it’s our bullshit culture flexing its bullshit muscles to nail someone to a cross to prove we care about something after the fact – and the best looking accessory to our crucifix is the most famous name in the pile – Joe Paterno.

Holy shit and hallelujah; gimme some Tylenol.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/17/sports/ncaafootball/internet-posting-helped-sandusky-investigators.html

Found this to be a good writeup by the NY Times.