<p>I am sorry if he (Spanier) was indeed abused as a child. However, a lot of people abused as children go on to become abusers, so I don’t really follow his logic of “it would be impossible to think that someone abused as a child wouldn’t report it.”</p>
<p>Also not buying that he didn’t understand it was something sexual. Give me a break. “This grad student saw something really upsetting involving a grown man and a young boy in the showers.” Even as vague as that, “sexual abuse” immediately springs to mind.</p>
<p>my thoughts as well Naturally, and furthermore, if Spanier did not know it was sexual, then why would he have been even discussing reporting Sandusky, and when they agreed not to report, why did he acknowledge they would be “vulnerable” for not reporting.</p>
<p>Imagine the following: Spanier claims that all he was ever told was that Sandusky was seen showering with a child in 2001. Imagine that Schultz and Curley testify that this is in fact all they told Spanier. The lawyer comes on and testifies that Spanier called him, told him that somebody saw Sandusky showering with a kid, and do they have to report? Maybe somebody else corroborates this testimony.</p>
<p>If this were to happen, it would be extremely difficult to convict Spanier of any crime at all. I’m not saying that this is true at all. But what I’m suggesting is that Spanier may have a version of the story that would suggest he has no criminal liability, and there may not be any strong evidence to refute it. “He must have known,” while persuasive in the court of public opinion, won’t cut it in a criminal trial.</p>
<p>When it comes to the NCAA, what punishments can they level against Schultz, Curley and Spanier? They punished the people and institutions that they could reach–the PSU football program and its coach. Taking away all wins after 1997 from Paterno–that had to hurt.</p>
<p>Actually, I think it is just the opposite. Most folks without kids in athletics (at least football) DO understand that “these kids hope it is their career”; heck, it is all most of them dream about. </p>
<p>And that is why the death penalty is justified – to get some balance back into PSU and the BiG.</p>
<p>As an aside, does Bobby Bowden go back to the top of the ‘win’ column?</p>
<p>“he [Spanier] said he did not understand the 2001 shower incident observed by then-graduate assistant Mike McQueary was sexual.”</p>
<p>This is total bs. A shower incident is reported to the President of the University and it is not sexual? What was it then? Anything else would never have risen to that level. He even stated they may be vulnerable for not reporting. Does he think we are all idiots?</p>
<p>“Imagine the following: Spanier claims that all he was ever told was that Sandusky was seen showering with a child in 2001. Imagine that Schultz and Curley testify that this is in fact all they told Spanier. The lawyer comes on and testifies that Spanier called him, told him that somebody saw Sandusky showering with a kid, and do they have to report? Maybe somebody else corroborates this testimony.”</p>
<p>I don’t buy it. Simply showering with a child, although inappropriate, is not going to reach the President of the University. And there is no responsibility to report that (nothing happened in that scenario). He knew what they may be “vulnerable” for not reporting and it was not simply showering!</p>
<p>spanier’s excuse that he did not realize it was a sexual abuse thing absolutely fails a smell test. Even if he only heard that Sandusky is showering with little kids (naked) witht any sexual connotation taken out, he is allegedly a trained family therapy experts and family sociologist, and as such, an alarm bell should have been immediately ringing in his head.</p>
<p>If he in insisting that he had NO clue that there is anything sexual going on, his ENTIRE professional accomplishment and expertise should go straight down the toilet and he should be exposed as a fraud.</p>
<p>So, either he is the most incompetent professional in his own field or he is lying through his teeth.</p>
<p>I’m sure it will come as a surprise to these men that they are getting a “pass”. If you would like to look for passes, take a look at the janitors.</p>
<p>With Paterno deceased, vacating his wins hurts his family the most. Paterno’s not around to realize that forevermore the list of winningest coaches will have someone else’s name at the top with an asterisk next to it, an asterisk that points to a note saying ‘Joe Paterno was the winningest coach until he disgraced himself and lost all his wins.’ And if that list is being read on the Internet, disgraced himself will be a hyperlink pointing to all the sordid details.</p>
<p>“I’m sure it will come as a surprise to these men that they are getting a “pass”. If you would like to look for passes, take a look at the janitors.”</p>
<p>Wow! Let’s blame the janitors. They should have done the right thing! Please! Put the blame on the powerful men who harbored a pedophile, planned the cover up and schemed to keep it quiet, where it rightly belongs.</p>
<p>A quote from Bob Ford, of the Philadelphia Inquirer. The previous portion of the piece accepts the majority of the sanctions as appropriate, but he questions the sincerity of the NCAA presidents’ (plural intended, I mean the other schools) lofty statements about the unsullied purity of academics at their schools and their awesomely balanced priorities:</p>
<p>"To cluck his tongue at Penn State about letting a program get too powerful while college football negotiates fabulous television-rights packages and creates a playoff system to put more money in its coffers is ridiculously hypocritical.</p>
<p>Here’s what you do. Put a football revenue cap on every school. Make it a sliding scale depending on the size of the school if you want, but limit how much a school can make from football. Any revenue that exceeds that amount has to go to one of several charitable foundations set up and administered by the NCAA. The organization could do more for this country in one year than most corporations do in a lifetime.</p>
<p>That’s not going to happen, of course. The school presidents who preside over the NCAA would much rather make an example of some other school and then go have lunch. Real change isn’t what this was about."</p>
<p>If it makes onlookers feel better, by all means, sanction away. In the fall, I expect people to criticize PSU fans for coming to games (which makes them all, obviously, approve of child molestors) or for NOT coming to games (which makes them all, obviously, cultists only interested in a winning program or a famous coach). But as the years go by, other schools’ programs will continue to be monstrously over large, defiantly entrenched, and the NCAA will have accomplished so much less than it pretended to yesterday. That’s not leadership, or advocacy. It’s just PR.</p>
<p>No matter what the students and fans do - there will be people complaining, criticizing, and questioning their motivation. It’s a no-win situation for them. Quite sad.</p>
<p>It certainly makes sense that if any person witnesses child sexual abuse first hand it would be expected of them to report this crime to the police.</p>
<p>Anything beyond actually witnessing the crime your self is second hand hearsay knowledge. This immediately opens up the question of what one person believes they said and what the other person believes they heard. </p>
<p>The lack of action by McQueary and the janitor is unexcuseable.</p>
<p>Oh they were afraid of losing their jobs?</p>
<p>Well, isn’t that what Spanier and company are being accused of. Not telling to protect their jobs? </p>
<p>It is inconsistent to allow the excuse for one group and not the other.</p>
Yes, and with all that goes on in the world, I just can’t imagine how loosing this distinction they can go on. Isn’t this what the kids call “first world problems”? I am finding less and less empathy for the Paterno family and more and more annoyance. They need a new PR firm that doesn’t release a statement at every single turn. He is the subject of detractors attention because he continues to be so ‘idolized’ thus playing into the detractors very point of the culture that made PSU at risk. This will continue as long as the Paterno family keeps him in the forefront of this, for his many followers to see him as the one that is being wronged. The rest of the nation sees this as taking the focus off the real victims of Jerry Sandusky. The Paterno family needs to step back. They can’t avoid what is already out there, and how it will play out, but they can avoid the public perception…and it’s not good.</p>
<p>Why not, if they saw it and didn’t report then they are equally complicit. The students who were what maybe one or two years old when this occurred are being “punished” now so really no one deserves a pass. I thought all of this, the NCAA fines, the Big 10 fines, the court cases, the civil litigation…really I thought all of this was to make sure that everyone who ever stepped foot on the Penn State campus in the past and for years in the future knows that what happened was wrong…so why do the janitors get a pass?</p>
<p>If the above isn’t the point…then the NCAA should have butted out and the courts should have prosecuted those that they had evidence to prosecute which is somewhat what you are saying.</p>
<p>The cover of the new Sports Illustrated sums it up. It is mostly black and the headline reads “We Were Penn State”.</p>
<p>All those who attended or planned to attend Penn State because of its football team will have to look elsewhere now. Penn State will have to survive on its academics which for the most part are excellent and underappreciated. </p>
<p>The Paterno family is further disgracing itself by its whining press releases. Wheezing on the coals of a disgraced legacy that should never have existed in the first place.</p>