<p>
</p>
<p>Save the sarcasm and rhetorical questions. Many pages ago I wrote that I feel responsible in my own small way for having watched (and supported) Penn State on TV for years. If Penn State football made $1 million per year instead of $50 million, the scandal would have been stopped earlier. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>That is precisely why the NCAA may come down hard on Penn State. It is a matter of deterrence and setting an example.</p>
<p>Really? You feel some small amount of responsibility? Well, then what I said isn’t sarcastic at all. How would you have known that this was going on? You couldn’t have. So how can you know what kind of abuse of power is going on behind closed doors at other large and powerful athletic programs? You can’t. So what games can you watch, confident that you aren’t “contributing” to another horrific abuse of power?</p>
<p>My point is that the community didn’t help “create this monster”. They didn’t worship football. It seems many here want it all to be black and white. The whole university is bad. The community is bad. Whatever the punishment ends up being, innocent people WHO DID NOTHING WRONG will end up getting hurt. And maybe that’s just the way it has to be, but trying to blame the whole PSU community is ridiculous.</p>
<p>Itnis a worship cult. Not by all, but by enough. It doesn’t take 100percent to create a huge problem. And it was the culture of Penn state that allowed this. </p>
<p>And no it’s not just Penn state, we have seen this in various religious organizations, we are seeing it in the air force, we are seeing systematic coverups of rape in the military and so on.</p>
<p>It doesn’t have to be the whole community, it doesn’t even have to be half, but it does have to be where the people in power foster and allow for this kind of cover up. When you hear the board getting threats to back off, when student riot over a coach, a coach getting fired, when there is such a vehement defense of the indefensible and and denial that it could possibly be true, a down playing of the sexual assaults, calling it annoying that Penn state is having to deal with this, to the to this day defending paterno shows the cult like behaviors of Penn state football fanatics. </p>
<p>This was not just grade fixing or buying players a suit. This was the decade long cover up and the facilitating of a child rapist. By the highest levels of leadership.</p>
<p>If you as mini pointed out throw a dad in jail and the family suffers, well, maybe it’s time the Penn state family suffered for the failings of the people they paid, created alters to, named buildings after and rioted for.</p>
<p>Given the kids and their loved ones who have been hurt, I am not concerned about those harmed by shutting down the football program at Penn State if that is something that will truly make a difference in terms of what happened here. I also think a purge of the administration, staff, board of directors is in order, along with additional criminal charges. I’m just not convinced this is the way to go.</p>
<p>A football player not being able to play is just that. He can’t play. Life happens. You put your faith into a program and they fail well you will have to deal with the aftermath.</p>
<p>That is real life, not the bubble world of college sports. My husbands job goes bankrupt he is outnof a job. That what happens.</p>
<p>To worry about a few football players who are getting a great college education because they can’t run around in a uniform is just something imdont worry about. They will be fine.</p>
<p>As for the very few who had a chance at going pro, theywill be fine as well.</p>
<p>Anytime the NCAA acts, it is the current students who are punished. Anyone who plays sports at this level knows that is how the punishment is delivered.</p>
<p>Considering the cover up was done to protect the football program, and the general lack of institutional control over the athletics department, clearly the NCAA needs to act.</p>
<p>Schools voluntarily cut athletic programs. I know of 2 kids from local NJ swim clubs that were at Maryland, one a star freshman who had qualified for Olympic trials, when Maryland announced last fall they were cutting the program. All these swimmers had to look for new colleges if they wanted to continue NCAA swimming. How is this different to the athletes from what will happen if Penn State football get the “death penalty”? </p>
<p>My father played college football at a major competitor to PSU and continued to be a booster until the day he died, so I grew up living football since I can remember. I wish he was alive today so I could ask him what he thinks should be done.</p>
<p>If y’all think the Penn State football culture was out of control, you should check out some of the SEC schools! Seems like a good portion of Tennessee football players are in jail at some point. And Alabama- Penn State simply pales…</p>
<p>
And having had that happen to me several times in my life, I am more than a little reluctant to think that this event, so catastrophic to so many people, is an acceptable course of action during a major recession with the likelihood of a deeper recession coming down the pike.</p>
<p>
I disagree wholeheartedly. Just as I disagree that the PSU community supported anything these people did, I do not think that they were so fanatical that they were doing this for the school - they were doing it for themselves. Curley, Schultz, Spanier, Paterno - whatever they did, they did it to preserve their jobs, their reputations, and their privileges, NOT out of some misplaced loyalty to the school. These were selfish men screwing over anybody they had to remain in power.</p>
<p>One additional note here - Penn State football funds the majority of the althletics program, which is neither funded by nor contributes to (to the best of my knowledge) the general university funds. Killing PSU football also kills PSU gymnastics, and fencing, and every other sport we have. Nice thing, during an olympic year, to tell a bunch of current PSU students and faculty that when they come back from representing their nation that they had better find another school and another job, because we can’t pay for them any more.</p>
<p>“Really? So Harvard created the unibomber, Virginia Poly created Seung-Hui Cho, presumably they should also be castigated and economically ruined?”</p>
<p>Bad analogies, unibomber was a professor at Harvard, but Harvard did not create him. He committed the crimes several years after leaving Harvard outside of Harvard purview. Cho was a mentally disturbed person that went bonkers and killed a lot of people and by all accounts to the abhorrence of the university and the administrators of the school. Penn State Football is an athletic program inside the university, arguably an institution within the university overseen by the university and the very people that created the problem.</p>
<p>“These were selfish men screwing over anybody they had to remain in power.”</p>
<p>No, they would not have been touched or fired for reporting Sandusky. But the football program and the school reputation would have taken a huge hit. Your logic is not quite right.</p>
<p>“No, they would not have been touched or fired for reporting Sandusky.”</p>
<p>My speculation (admittedly that, though I seem to have a good track record thus far) is that this is not likely true - that once JoePa started to conceal (likely in 1970s). he would have had a massive hit - really massive, and not just his job - had he, in 1998 or thereafter, reported Professor Emeritus Sandusky.</p>
<p>A school - any school - that confers assistant football coaches with the august title of Professor Emeritus - has got problems, academic integrity problems, much less conferring the title on a known pedophile. This is NOT a problem with the football program, except as the football program was able to exercise control over the entire institution.</p>
<p>I have no idea what PSU will do regarding this falls FB season. If the BOT are wise and truly want the public to believe PSU is contrite and repentant they will voluntarily cancel the season. If they dont . The school will face an irate public. The football team will face sports announcers constantly rehashing ALL of PSUs immoral behavior - reminding the public that the program which set themselves up as the model for blending academics w/ collegiate athletics was instead the home of a serial pedophile who used his association w/ PSU and its football program to lure the young boys. The public will be reminded during the game, at half-time, end of game wrap-up, Saturday night collegiate FB analysis, Sunday morning sports editorials and on and on and on. The team will face opponents fans w/ signs stating (PSU = Pedophile State U, Pedophile Sandusky U, or worse). </p>
<p>PSU supporters seem to not understand that the public is not going to forget about Sandusky and his cabal of enablers, until the public perceives PSU has paid a hefty price for his/their sins. And anything short of severely hurting PSU football will be viewed as a lack of sufficient payment.</p>
<p>
You think PSU created Sandusky? How, exactly, did we create a child molestor?</p>
<p>
Let me restate this one:</p>
<p>
Make more sense now?</p>
<p>
You don’t think that Curley or Paterno would have been shown the door, discretely within a year or two if not immediately? And the same for Schultz and Spanier? For the first two, they worked with the man day in and day out, and authorized some very questionable privileges that he used to abuse children. For the second two, a large part of their job laid in making sure that this precise sort of thing didn’t happen.</p>
<p>Revelation that there was a major sexual predator in the senior staff of the athletics department could have reasonably ended the careers of any of those four men - the President of the university, the two more senior athletics staff, and the head of campus security. That they took a bigger hit as a result of the cover up is just part of the calculation they made - if the cover up was successful, they would be preserved in their positions, if it was not, well, they were already screwed, this would just be getting screwed more.</p>
<p>The death penalty is an absolutely terrible idea*. At most schools football pays for all other sports, and in some cases, it also contributes significantly to academic scholarships and alumni giving.</p>
<p>The NCAA does not have any credibility to punish any school. Universities
should band together to get rid of this corrupt organization. </p>
<p>*What Sandusky and the administration did was horrible, but the current players should not be punished for events that they had no control over.</p>
<p>
Oh, c’mon, you know no one thinks that.</p>
<p>I think we all should say goodnight for now and let this rest a bit. It’s getting a little hot in here. :)</p>
<p>“You think PSU created Sandusky? How, exactly, did we create a child molestor?”</p>
<p>I think PSU enabled Professor Emeritus Sandusky - with position, money, opportunity, location, status, reputation, and coverup. I would like to believe most universities wouldn’t do so, which is what makes Penn State “s-p-e-c-i-a-l”.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>but not for child rape/abuse. And many of those events are AFTER they are no longer on the teams. I am not saying that their actions are acceptable, just saying that going to jail for possession is not the same as a 12 year cover up of child rape…and they are kids, not the adults running the programs that are going to jail.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I can’t believe I am sticking up for mini, doesn’t happen often, but he is right on in this instance!</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>You and others are competely missing the point. The point is not that any of us knew what was happening; rather, it was that we made the coach and the football program so powerful that abuses could persist. Again, cut the rhetoricalo questions. They are the sign of desperation.</p>
<p>“You think PSU created Sandusky? How, exactly, did we create a child molestor?”</p>
<p>You again went off on a tangent. I am at a lost at how you can just say things that totally misses the point. Penn State is not responsible for Sandusky behavior, but several high ranking administrators have been responsible for letting him keep on doing what he did. That is what we are talking about, right? How could that be the same as unabomber or Cho, the schools had no part in enabling any of their behavior.</p>
<p>“Revelation that there was a major sexual predator in the senior staff of the athletics department could have reasonably ended the careers of any of those four men - the President of the university, the two more senior athletics staff, and the head of campus security. That they took a bigger hit as a result of the cover up is just part of the calculation they made - if the cover up was successful, they would be preserved in their positions, if it was not, well, they were already screwed, this would just be getting screwed more.”</p>
<p>Pure speculation on your part. From Freeh report, they were not discussing whether it had impact on their position at the schools if they reported. They actually said they thought there could have been terrible consequences to them by not reporting. Basically, they were worrying about what would happen to them if this came to light later, and they were right.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Then I’m curious: These men were educated, intelligent, powerful, and savvy. Everyone now agrees, I assume, that they made a stupid decision in 2001. But at the time, they had a reason for making it. They knew exactly what Sandusky was, and they knew the legal risks. Why do you suppose they thought – at the time they made the decision – that keeping Sandusky was their best option?</p>