<p>Of course not. I think that most people aren’t sure but probably suspect that buried under all that football frenzy and Paterno worship is actually a pretty good university. Time to dig it out and let it shine through. </p>
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<p>I agree. This “football first and foremost” thinking is by no means confined to Penn State. Pretty much all the big football and basketball factory schools are in danger of making the same mistakes that Penn State did. Perhaps they already have. Hopefully they are learning from the disaster at Penn State and are putting their own houses in order immediately.</p>
<p>But what I am reading is that it goes much beyond football. The University itself is being investigated by the federal Department of Education for not reporting various violent crimes. Not just the Sandusky fiasco, but other crimes of student-on-student. It seems the university may be trying to protect Penn State and not just Penn State Football.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, many of these Penn State kids and adults-alike have been brainwashed imho… Frankly, it’s shocking and I can’t stand hearing these kids shout out “JOE PA-TER-NO” unceasingly at top of their lungs in all the major media channels anymore. Idolatry at “Paternoville” has gone overboard, it’s really a cult in football disguise for this secluded college town of Pennsylvania.</p>
<p>Penn State decides to keep Joe Paterno’s statue while the rest of the world collectively shakes its head</p>
<p>The kids, the alumni and the employees are looking for leadership and a way forward. This is an epic crisis and how the administration handles this will be studied for years to come. I think the BOT is correct to move alittle slowly for a few days and gather information from the community but ultimately they need a bold plan to restore faith in the administration, they need the administration to stand up and take a leadership role and if there are administrative sacrifices to get there, they need to weather the sacrifices. </p>
<p>Clearly from my posts, I think it’s an error to “cancel” football…that is about as knee-jerk as you can get and doesn’t solve the problem…the statue is just the symbol of what is wrong whether it disappears today or in two weeks is really minor. The NCAA is way out of it’s league here and really shouldn’t weigh in on anything in the near term this was criminal conduct. Letting the NCAA determine what happens on Penn State’s campus is akin to saying that “football runs universities” which may or may not be the case here, but oh the irony if the NCAA inserts itself into this. There are several issues - the legal aspects, what should the college do for the victims and how does the college community and the greater college community heal. Canceling football doesn’t “fix” two of the three and may not “fix” the third but rather fester the wound for years to come. It also then adds another 'nother set of potential legal issues by the athletes and their families, by the coaches not involved in criminal behavior and who knows what will come out of the woodwork. But then I’m not Penn State’s PR director or legal counsel. Hopefully they’ve retained outside counsel to wend their way down this precarious path while they clean house in administration.</p>
<p>It has been two business days for Pete’s sake.</p>
<p>Cross post momof3 you made many good points that have not been brought up before .I do think there are many football contracts that have to be looked at before anything happens. Tv contracts, radio etc.</p>
<p>^^Penn State should have had several communications and action plans in place by now since this has been brewing for many months… clearly they didn’t. That was their first mistake. But I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt SAX and say yes, I agree, it’s been two business days since the last bombshell. I would hope they release something this week.</p>
<p>The trustees and alumni are presumably worried about the permanent devaluation of the Penn State degree. Instead of being associated just with football, Penn State will be associated with willful disregard of child rape. That’s the picture that will form in potential employers’ minds, as well as in the minds of your next blind date at the bar when you tell him/her where you went to school. You will get that pitiable moment of silence and a polite nod (imply, “you idiot, don’t you read the newspapers!”). To try and avoid this outcome, the strategy for the trustees would be not to roll over (that is, take down the statue and cancel football for a year) but rather to follow the Stalin/Alinsky precept of shouting a lie long and hard enough so that it drowns out the truth and, over time, people just forget what the truth was and, lo, Joe Paterno’s hagiography is retained and the school’s reputation is only somewhat and not wholly diminished. I expect the trustees, in short, to continue to love on Paterno and just to ride it out until the media move on. PS – riding it out may be hard to do, in light of the delicious continuing coverage of the civil trials no doubt on their way.</p>
<p>Haven’t the faintest and don’t care one tiny bit. These are educational institutions. Not minor league teams. The place of athletics, and of all extracurricular activities, is secondary to that of academics. In support of the mission of education. There is in fact far more reason to have music ensembles and theater productions, since students can and do actually MAJOR in those areas. Last I checked, there was no such thing as a football major. (The closest thing appeared to be Communications, last time I watched a college football game. )</p>
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<p>I don’t think anyone thinks that it should be off limits to athletics that are kept in proper proportion. No one thinks that tuition/taxpayer money should be off limits to theater, orchestra, or the the debate team. If football and basketball were treated as they are, there would be no problem at all.</p>
<p>And if the level of play would not be sufficiently high for people who are, in reality, playing on major league farm teams, then the right thing to do would be to halt the ridiculous sham of university-based football and basketball factories and just create farm teams, as baseball has done.</p>
<p>momofthreeboys: Okay, you don’t like the death penalty, what do you like? What can Penn State do to clearly show that the football program does not run the university? Admittedly, there are no perfect answers. No matter what, innocent people have been and will continue to be hurt by the actions of these men. But, just as leaving the statue of Paterno stand seems to glorify a man who covered up despicable criminal behavior in order to continue racking up wins, allowing the football team to play this fall seems to say, loud and clear, that football is still the most important part of Penn State University. What do you propose that would effectively communicate that that is no longer the case?</p>
<p>sax: Yes, it is early, but there is only about a month to make a decision (if that long). For the sake of all of the innocent people around the Penn State football program, the sooner a decision is made, the better.</p>
<p>You obviously don’t really know much about college athletics and are using this horrific situation at PSU to fuel your distaste for the major sports programs. Vanderbilt just had 3 outstanding young men drafted into the NBA. Two got degrees and 1 left for the NBA after junior year but will finish his degree. They are articulate, intelligent and great ambassadors for their sport and their university.</p>
<p>Placido, that’s alittle over the top…people unless they are illogical “get” that it’s the individuals that are evil and employers aren’t going to devalue the degree, and girls aren’t going to “not date” guys with penn State degrees or vice versa. The teachers will still teach and the TAs will still TA and the RAs will still RA. People ‘get’ that kids are in college for an education. They might look cross-eyed at football players, but let’s not forget there are plenty of extremely smart football players playing football at really good Div. I schools. I love watching a couple guys I know who played for UofM chew up and spit out people who make comments about dumb jocks. Sure there are athletes who are in college only to play so they can make “big money” but how many smart kids apply to HYP because they want to make "big money’ and catch a brass ring on wall street? They aren’t there to improve their brains, they are there because of what they perceive is at the end of the line. I have no problem with “why” people chose the colleges they choose or what they do with their time there.</p>
<p>As far as dismantling college sports…we as a country can’t figure out how to fix Wall Street or the banking industry so how the heck to you think we untangle college sports? Nobody really believed how deep the tentacles the Big 3, (the majority of people thought it was just 3 companies) had into the economy until someone went to Washington and spelled it out for the politicians and I don’t for one second think that there isn’t deep tentacles of Tier 2, Tier 3 and so on suppliers and locale businesses whose livelihoods and the livelihoods of their employees are entrenched and tied to college sports. That’s another reason why i believe stopping penn state football is wrong, it could potentially hurt more innocent people than it will help. Perhaps noble but not a well thought out argument. I have not heard a good argument yet why having no Penn State football program for one year or more fixes the problem without hurting more people.</p>
<p>Death penalty or not, the trustees have to eradicate the special place of football at Penn State. Change the culture. Treating Paterno and his legacy with kid gloves is hardly the right way to start. I can’t believe the statement of one trustee that they just think they can just wait things out. </p>
<p>I just saw a report that the artist who painted the mural painted out the halo over Paterno’s head that he had painted on there when he passed away.</p>
<p>I have made no attempt to hide the fact that I find the football and baseball factories distasteful. </p>
<p>Regarding your Vanderbilt students: that’s nice. Are you going to pretend that they are not a distinct minority among basketball players recruited to top college programs? (I have no idea whether Vanderbilt is considered a “top” program, although I assume it must be if they have that many NBA recruits on their roster.) Some schools do a better job than others of actually graduating their semi-pro players, and some do a better job than others of actually graduating their semi-pros with a meaningful degree.</p>
<p>Here are some interesting snippets from Smart Money:</p>
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<p>And so forth. This article also points out that the bball players at the winner schools are basically acting as pro athletes but making very little money for the time they put in, although the college get a big payoff.</p>
<p>“More people?” By “hurting more people” do you mean more innocents raped, or are referring to the “hurt” suffered by Penn State players and fans who won’t be able to enjoy the football games and associated activities they thought they signed up for? There is simply no way you can legitimately talk about those two magnitudes of “hurt” in the same thought or sentence.</p>
<p>If the players have to transfer to other other schools to play, the cheerleaders have to cheer for the cross country runners, and the Penn State football fans have to find some other way to entertain themselves on Saturday afternoons, well that’s just too darn bad. </p>
<p>That’s what happens when institutions get out of control: innocent people get hurt. When the federal regulators move in and close down a reckless, out of control bank, innocent employees lose their jobs. When a football program gets out of control and it leads to the horrifying hurt of innocents, then it just might be necessary to deprive other people of their football fun in order to erase the conditions and mentality that led to such crimes in the first place and prevent their return.</p>
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