<p>It is astonishing that so many people compared the worth of the victims to the worth of the football program and the university and chose the organizations. Inherent in those choices were the conclusions that the victims were so inconsequential that the chances were great that no on would find out and if some did, they too would choose the organizations.</p>
<p>Let’s say there was someone you knew. And at least twice at a minimum you heard reports he was having inappropriate sexual like contact with a minor child. And this is the minimum they claim to know. The minimum. It was undoubtedly more, but for arguments sake, say you had to may certain decisions about this person…</p>
<p>Do you</p>
<p>Keep him around
Do you give him access to your facilities with little children
Do you for years give money to him and his charity that involves little kids
Do you publicly physically and symbolically embrace him</p>
<p>Or do you do whatever you can to make sure he isn’t around children…reporting him, shunning him, taking away financial support etc</p>
<p>They had at least two, and I know there were more that aren’t even being discussed here that took place off campus that they would have heard about, but even with those two shocking events they still held him close.</p>
<p>Why? Hrd to know what people who would do that think…</p>
<p>If I had heard my daughters coach had been twice accused of sexual assualt I would run as fast as I could the other direction, at the minimum.</p>
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Actually, that is exactly what Seahorsesrock said on page 416:</p>
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And that is the problem. The world is willing to machinegun everyone standing in the general area of Sandusky - I understand that, but forgive us if we are unwilling to stand still for you and get shot.</p>
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We would all love to know. Selfishness is the best answer I can give. I have seen lots and lots of selfishness in my time, but despite living in that town for 24 years I never once met someone who loved Penn State enough to try and shelter a pedophile just to save the Penn State name.</p>
<p>Shame , shame , shame on PSU…,how will they justify the the inevitable tuition hike , particularly on OOS students without their glorious football team to back it up ? </p>
<p>The COA is pretty steep and not likely to improve. I do get that there are a lot of people who will feel the pain ( though still don’t get the pity for football players over true academic students ) I think the local economy will be hugely impacted…hotels, vendors , restaurants will be crushed like an oil spill in the Gulf…</p>
<p>I think the PSU students and alum who still willingly deny the guilt of the parties involved , the culture that supported the environment that allowed the rape of who know HOW many innocent boys need to give up the fantasy of " HAPPY VALLEY " and join the real world…thank goodness more people than not undertand who the true victims are</p>
<p>I find people who defend Paterno and PSU football to be brainwashed and not able to rationalize the impact of child rape over football , plain and simple
It’t truly repugnant</p>
<p>momofthreeboys - </p>
<p>Your focus is way off base. What you’re saying is that NCAA shouldn’t address What happened at PSU because they need the football revenue to pay for future lawsuits? Yikes. That’s probably why Curley or Spanier kept quiet when they said when they didn’t want the Pandora’s box to open.</p>
<p>And remember what the Catholic church has had to go through to pay its bills. Yes, some of those churches had to close.</p>
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<p>I’m not interested in retribution. I’m interested in prevention. I want them to prevent future similar decisions to put the welfare of football above the welfare of children. And it’s hard to see how that can happen as long as the Church of Penn State Football still has so many worshipers.</p>
<p>If achieving that means an economic blow to innocent people, well so be it. Serious problems usually require strong medicine to cure them. And strong medicine always has harsh side effects. Unfortunate, but if that’s the way it has to be if the place in going to heal itself and prevent any relapses.</p>
<p>“As for the community that will suffer if the season is cancelled, well, they helped create the monster, they can deal with the consequences.”</p>
<p>They DID help create the monster - they provided so much to him, including access to children, knowing full well, in advance, what he was likely to do. (They may even have paid for his hotel rooms as part of a criminal conspiracy to engage in sex trafficking across state lines. Paid for with tuition money, or taxpayer funds or football program funds - doesn’t matter, as it is all part of the university budget.)</p>
<p>I think having the university lose the football team (for five, 14, or 30 years) and the revenue that goes with will be a fantastic educational opportunity. I really mean that. </p>
<p>To date, let’s remember: as far as I am aware, not a single tenured faculty member, not a single athletic coach, not a single member of the Board of the Trustees, not a single public or elected official, has called for Professor Emeritus Sandusky to lose his academic status. (In my angrier moments, I think the entire faculty should be sent to a re-education camp, to learn to act like ADULTS.)</p>
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What was the probability that the Penn State administration would attract such a high concentration of “evil and callous” individuals? Was there some characteristic of these positions that made them attractive to the “evil and callous” segment of the overall population? Or was that a part of the selection process?</p>
<p>I think it is far more likely that these were ambitious, well-meaning people not so different from ourselves who were corrupted by the power and prestige of their position in an organization they loved. Let’s be frank: the cover-up was not just horribly wrong. It was also a failure, and that failure will cost both PSU and its leaders far more than prompt disclosure would have. This is not about a rational or well-conceived plan, but rather one driven by emotion and hubris.</p>
<p>I’m not trying to pick on you here, but I think this is exactly the lesson that needs to be learned from these events. It is not enough to draw black-and-white lines, with “evil” on the other side and ourselves implicitly aligned with the good. If we want to stop this kind of thing from happening again, the only way to do that is to implement and enforce sound control procedures across the entire organization.
If you really believe that there were “evil and callous” individuals at the highest levels of the Penn State administration who acted solely in pursuit of their own interests, not the university’s, surely you must be concerned about the other crimes they might have committed during their tenure. Or is self-interest limited to football?</p>
<p>cosmicfish, one person. Now please answer the question which was the point of my post:</p>
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</p>
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Exactly. There is no organization that’s immune from having bad people and that in itself is not something that it should be criticized for. It’s all about what the reaction is when they find out; in Penn State’s case, it’s all about damage control. Even now, resisting taking down Paterno’s statue shows they’re still in denial about the damage done.</p>
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Aren’t we all? The difference is that you apparently think that people like Curley and Spanier will consider the penalties against PSU in planning their future actions - I don’t. That would imply both that they consider penalties to people other than themselves (which I doubt) or that they thought they would get caught (which I cannot imagine). I think that this particular attempt at prevention will fall flat if enacted, and only serve the purpose of retribution even if such is not the intent.</p>
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In order: Greater than you think - if you start off with the assumption that person X is a ■■■■■■■, aren’t they going to want to surround themselves with bastards, at least in key positions? Yes, they are positions of power - it the same reason pedophiles are attracted to youth organizations and robbers go after banks - it’s where the money is! Probably not, but that is part of the reason many of us want to eliminate all the trustees (responsible for getting Spanier) and anyone else involved in the cover up.</p>
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I know ambitious, well-meaning people who love Penn State, and most of them are foaming at the mouth just trying to decide which of the bastards to kill first. It seems that you implying that we are all of us not far from being such bastards ourselves, and I disagree. I think that the probability of such people is more strongly correlated with personal ambition than institutional affiliation.</p>
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But killing the program would punish black, white, and grey, ALL OF THEM, as if they were at a minimum dark grey.</p>
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I could also spend my time worrying about whether they performed human sacrifice, or beat up old women, or ate babies - that I do not reflects not on my abhorrence for such acts, but simply on a limitation of resources and a concern for the charges already noted. If there was embezzlement, that is important - less so than covering up child abuse, but important. But I will have to wait for someone else to investigate and report on that, because being a thousand miles away and occupied with other matters that are actually my responsibility, I simply lack the time to launch an investigation. So again, if there is evidence, please let me know so that I can be concerned. Otherwise, why bring it up?</p>
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In response to “Why would they have done that” I have already given you my answer: Not being them, nor having heard it from them, I cannot know, and can only state that selfishness is my best guess given what I have experienced of the darker side of human nature.</p>
<p>In response to the “PSU community” part, I can only note that if they WERE that afraid, it was in error. I cannot say that there are not some nuts out there who would hold it against them - I can only say that in the thousands of Penn Staters I have known I cannot think of one such individual. If they feared such a response, they were afraid of shadows, and that is not the fault of anyone else.</p>
<p>We are ourselves parents and siblings and children, and however much you think we love football, the idea that we love it more than children is the big insult that has all of us on the defensive.</p>
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Then you are leading the witness - why not tell us this reason, and the methods by which you obtained it, so that we can stop acting like my responses have any meaning to you?</p>
<p>Dad, the refusal to take down the statute says that PSU still thinks that the rules of civilized society do not apply to them. Take down the statute, ship it to Mrs. Paterno, rename anything with Paterno on it.</p>
<p>Nice sidestep, cosmicfish, but I think you know the answer: They did what they did because JoePa was the boss (“after talking to Joe, I think we won’t turn Sandusky in”). And JoePa didn’t want a scandal anywhere near his holy football program. What made him unique was that he was supposedly the good guy, the guy who won without the taint of wrongdoing. He didn’t want to have to explain a predator on his staff. He couldn’t have cared less about those little boys.</p>
<p>But that raises the question, how did JoePa GET so much power? There’s only one answer to that: the adoration of the Penn State community. They loved, adored, worshipped him. That’s plain to see, even today. It is that worship of football, now so deeply embedded, which must be removed. And it can’t be removed without removing football.</p>
<p>According to Rivals, Penn State’s 2012 recruiting class slumped to #51 due to the loss of five highly ranked recruits, so don’t say that the scandal hasn’t had any impact. It has and it will. I don’t think there is any question that JoePa knew the effect it would have on recruiting.</p>
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</p>
<p>ditto 8 9 10</p>
<p>The NCAA is waiting for a response from Penn State as was stated in their press release. No one knows (or can predict) what the NCAA will do or not do. Doesn’t matter who does what, financial implications for the university are huge simply from the existing lawsuits and potential civil litigation that will come from the operating budget. I have no knowledge of how the revenue stream is disbursed from the Big 10 TV Channel or the league.</p>
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No, I do not know such an answer, and that you have the ability to read minds and commune with the dead will no doubt be an asset at the trial where you will of course offer this as conclusive proof.</p>
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Ah, of course - that he appeared to run a straight program AND win clearly meant we should have feared and hated him instead of liking him! I am certain that you have never voted for a Congressman who then did something you disliked, or had a friend betray you, much less someone you knew only impersonally and thought from a distance seemed like a good guy. You are a paragon with only perfect associations, and I am sorry that I failed to live up to your example.</p>
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Fair enough - I had seen different numbers, but I think was looking at 2013, where we are currently ranked #15 already including a pretty good QB prospect.</p>
<p>Still, I am not sure that a calculating Paterno would have considered the negative impact of Sandusky on his own to be worse than the much greater impact of Sandusky + cover up, especially considering that he was never planning on retiring and the difficulty in concealing an active pedophile.</p>