Say it ain't so, Joe

[BBTV]

43 minutes ago, McCarthy said:

 

I read somewhere that multiple generations of children in rust belt areas were never taught critical thinking skills because they were being prepared for lives as factory workers where thinking is actually detrimental. Those people are adults of a certain age now and for those that went through that type of schooling in Western PA where they would grow up as Penn State fans it makes a lot of sense that they are incapable of intellectualizing this situation and handling it in the proper way. They literally don't possess the faculties to think harder. 

 

There's probably some truth to that, but there's plenty of people in Western PA that go to schools like Carnegie Mellon and train for white-collar careers where critical thinking is... well, critical, so that's an unfair generalization in 2018.  Also, there's plenty of Joebots in Eastern PA too, where there's certainly not a "train to work in the mill, not to argue orders with your boss" mentality.

[Sport]

6 minutes ago, BringBackTheVet said:

 

There's probably some truth to that, but there's plenty of people in Western PA that go to schools like Carnegie Mellon and train for white-collar careers where critical thinking is... well, critical, so that's an unfair generalization in 2018.  Also, there's plenty of Joebots in Eastern PA too, where there's certainly not a "train to work in the mill, not to argue orders with your boss" mentality.

maybe it's little unfair, but I wanted to participate in the Penn State bashing. 

[BBTV]

1 minute ago, McCarthy said:

maybe it's little unfair, but I wanted to participate in the Penn State bashing. 

 

And that's part of what this thread has been about, IMO - people trying to out-outrage each other, and again - IMO - baiting the Viola's of the world to expose themselves. 

 

Nothing anyone's saying is wrong, and I agree with 99.999875% of it, but it just seems to me like there's at least a little bit of people needing to post just to be "in the club".  That's just my impression, I certainly can't provide evidence of people's motives or thought processes.  I think I posted something similar years ago too, when there were more Violas floating around.

[Luigi74]

52 minutes ago, McCarthy said:

 

I read somewhere that multiple generations of children in rust belt areas were never taught critical thinking skills because they were being prepared for lives as factory workers where thinking is actually detrimental. Those people are adults of a certain age now and for those that went through that type of schooling in Western PA where they would grow up as Penn State fans it makes a lot of sense that they are incapable of intellectualizing this situation and handling it in the proper way. They literally don't possess the faculties to think harder. 

Please don't lump people from Western Pennsylvania in with the cult followers in the middle and eastern parts of the Commonwealth. The Penn State fans in Western PA are normally alumni or went to a Penn State branch campus for a few semesters, most Yinzers don't follow college football and the ones that do jump on and off Pitt and Notre Dame bandwagons.

 

 

[BBTV]

7 minutes ago, ltp74 said:

Please don't lump people from Western Pennsylvania in with the cult followers in the middle and eastern parts of the Commonwealth. The Penn State fans in Western PA are normally alumni or went to a Penn State branch campus for a few semesters, most Yinzers don't follow college football and the ones that do jump on and off Pitt and Notre Dame bandwagons.

 

 

 

I disagree with that totally.  It's true about Pitt and Notre Dame, but college football is huge in the Nascar portion of the state - way more so than the Phila region, where there's certainly fans of the sport, but it's definitely not as big, other than alumni of whatever school is playing.

[Lights Out]

On 12/31/2017 at 5:10 AM, Viola73 said:

He was not trained to look for child abuse like Child Welfare

You shouldn't need "training" to know that pedophilia is wrong.

[Luigi74]

4 hours ago, BringBackTheVet said:

 

I disagree with that totally.  It's true about Pitt and Notre Dame, but college football is huge in the Nascar portion of the state - way more so than the Phila region, where there's certainly fans of the sport, but it's definitely not as big, other than alumni of whatever school is playing.

Western PA isn't the NASCAR portion of the state, that starts east of Johnstown and north of I80, basically where the Rust Belt starts.

[OnWis97]

On 12/31/2017 at 2:06 PM, Gothamite said:

 

It is not only about Paterno. But he had an outsized authority at the school, so he deserves an outsized share of the blame.  He knew about the abuse, and failed to do anything.  He was uniquely positioned to stop it, but chose the football program instead.  

 

And so long as there are Paternos trying to defend him or rehabilitate his reputation, we must push back with those facts.  His name must remain an epithet for those who are willing to sacrifice others to protect their own selfish interests. 

To be clear, I'm not defending him or suggesting anything in the realm of the notion that he should be honored, a statute should remain, or that there ought to be any ambiguity in what we think of him.  But I think the "god of the school" stuff goes a bit into my point.  It seems like we frequently discuss how "so and so told his superiors," etc., as if that's the appropriate course of action.  It's not a workplace issue.  It's a police matter and in that sense, JoPa should not be more important than anyone else like he would be Sandusky was stealing office supplies or shirking work-related responsibilities.  And the concern I have related to corrupt cultures is not dependent on there being a "God" as much as it's dependent upon the unwillingness of a group of people to do the basics of what is right.  This can happen with or without a Paterno-like figure.  So one could argue that everyone in the know is equally responsible for enabling what went on...and I do believe that Paterno, as the only truly famous person involved, takes more than his share of the press.  But again, given he did what he did (or, rather, did not do), honoring him is downright crazy.  That said, I acknowledge two things: 1) JoPa was in a unique position of leadership in that by him nipping it in the bud, there'd likely be more direct buy-in from others at PSU and 2) the actual authorities may listen to him more than they would, say, McQueery.  That said, there are several people who are culpable.

 

While the biggest "big picture" tragedy (i.e., setting aside the victims themselves) is the notion that an organization can can turn its collective head away from something like this (which really means that many, many people do so), a close second is that people after the fact want to brush it aside in order to honor one of the villains for winning games.  I get it; hard core Penn State fans knew his success and believed in his greatness as a coach and a person.  When this news comes out, you have to adjust your entire viewpoint of him, the program, the University, and the community.  But it's sad to see the inability to do so; to see so many people cling to the image that is (or should be) no longer there.  And the longer they wrestle with this (particularly if JoPa's memory continues to be honored) the more embarrassed they should be.  I wanted the program to get the death penalty.  I wanted it to get ten years (admittedly, an arbitrary time frame) off to sort of cleanse the culture.  But I understand why fans/alums want to cheer for the program now.  What I can't relate to is clinging to a history that's so tainted.

[OnWis97]

On 12/31/2017 at 6:20 PM, BringBackTheVet said:

The ironic part is that he and the program could have come out of it looking even better, for putting the program at risk by taking a stand and outing Sandusky.  He would have looked like a selfless hero (as long as it was accepted that he didn't know until he exposed it) and if there was no cover up, they could have received positive press for coming out with it before it was discovered other ways.  Sure, there would have been a finding of lack of controls in place that allowed for it to happen, but those controls likely wouldn't have existed in most places at that time anyway.

I've thought about this too.  If one looks at this from the point of indifference to past and future victims, thinking only of the reputation of the team, athletic department, and school, enabling Sandusky is a huge gamble.  Had Sandusky been outed right when he was discovered, is there some organizational embarrassment?  Sure.  But I think history would show that others in the organization did what was right and ultimately weeded out one bad apple and prevented him from continuing his crimes.  I think the organization would be viewed positively by this point.  Instead they just tried to keep it under wraps to avoid that potential embarrassment, which ultimately made things worse for themselves, as a vocal minority still brings this up when they can.

 

It would be awesome if anything was learned from all of this...if we understood that covering things like this up just leads to problems in the long run.  But given the rush to bring Penn State back to football prominence I don't get a sense that this will lead to someone in a big group saying "hey, let's avoid being like Penn State by nipping this in the bud."  Why would they when Penn State was forgiven in such quick order?

[BBTV]

Yeah it set a bad precedent for lenient on-field punishments. If it were to happen to someone else, it would be hard to throw the proverbial book at them due to how penn State was handled. If for no other reason, something bigger needed to happen. I hate seeing innocent kids forced to transfer, since the majority of them have no NFL prospect and could have a tough time catching on, and might actually have chosen the school for an academic reason, but I’m struggling to come up with another option. 

[Gothamite]

10 hours ago, OnWis97 said:

I understand why fans/alums want to cheer for the program now.  What I can't relate to is clinging to a history that's so tainted.

 

And that's the problem with the too-lenient punishment.  Penn State has been allowed to escape having to make a full reckoning of its history.  Without that honest atonement for past wrongs, we can't declare the slate clean and can't start fresh.  So the school is still tainted where it might have been allowed to move beyond.

[LMU]

Plus, let’s look at NCAA logic here - you can have a title vacated for one player borrowing a car but not for a team employing a child rapist.

[OnWis97]

1 hour ago, Gothamite said:

 

And that's the problem with the too-lenient punishment.  Penn State has been allowed to escape having to make a full reckoning of its history.  Without that honest atonement for past wrongs, we can't declare the slate clean and can't start fresh.  So the school is still tainted where it might have been allowed to move beyond.

Agreed.  As upset as I am with the situation, for me, hitting Penn State hard was probably more about precedent-setting than being punitive.  Plenty of bad stuff is probably covered up (i.e, garden-variety sexual assault) and no message was sent that would be a deterrent.  It's kinda depressing that we (the greater "we," of course) seem satisfied with clearing out the "bad people" and then trying to pretend everything's OK.  

[OnWis97]

5 hours ago, BringBackTheVet said:

Yeah it set a bad precedent for lenient on-field punishments. If it were to happen to someone else, it would be hard to throw the proverbial book at them due to how penn State was handled. If for no other reason, something bigger needed to happen. I hate seeing innocent kids forced to transfer, since the majority of them have no NFL prospect and could have a tough time catching on, and might actually have chosen the school for an academic reason, but I’m struggling to come up with another option. 

This was one of the things that frustrated me most..."it's not the players fault."  I know that.  But this should never have been about those players.  This should have been about the victims, but more importantly, about addressing a broken culture and (as you allude to) setting a precedent.

 

My thought on the players was always to do as much can be done for them; give them options to continue at PSU with the same full scholarship privileges or to transfer without sitting out (which was an option).  I don't think there could have been an option that was fair to the players, but I think this was about so much more than them.  I HATE, HATE, HATE when some basketball team self-imposes a postseason ban and hangs their players (particularly their seniors) out to dry.  That's unfair to players and there has to be a better way (I've come up with a couple).  But this is bigger and more important.  Do what you can for the players, but make sure to address what really matters.

[kroywen]

3 minutes ago, OnWis97 said:

This was one of the things that frustrated me most..."it's not the players fault."  I know that.  But this should never have been about those players.  This should have been about the victims, but more importantly, about addressing a broken culture and (as you allude to) setting a precedent.

 

My thought on the players was always to do as much can be done for them; give them options to continue at PSU with the same full scholarship privileges or to transfer without sitting out (which was an option).  I don't think there could have been an option that was fair to the players, but I think this was about so much more than them.  I HATE, HATE, HATE when some basketball team self-imposes a postseason ban and hamgs their players (particularly their seniors) out to dry.  That's unfair to players and there has to be a better way (I've come up with a couple).  But this is bigger and more important.  Do what you can for the players, but make sure to address what really matters.

 

In the hypothetical scenario of a death penalty, I think giving players the option of a free transfer to another D-I FBS school (and requiring the player's new school to honor the player's Penn State scholarship), or to continue their studies at Penn State with the scholarship fully intact would've been fair. Basically gives players the option of continuing to play football elsewhere or continuing to study at Penn State, with no financial ramifications on the players themselves either way. 

 

Obviously not a scenario any player wants to be in, but that would've mitigated the damage done to players while allowing for a proper, meaningful, precedent-setting punishment for Penn State.

[Gothamite]

That would have made far too much sense. 

[OnWis97]

http://www.espn.com/espn/otl/story/_/id/22046031/michigan-state-university-doctor-larry-nassar-surrounded-enablers-abused-athletes-espn

 

Big ESPN piece on the Michigan State gymnastics scandal.  

 

The comments section is depressing; mostly people whining about how mean everyone was to Penn State.

 

There is parallel here to PSU and I do agree with those that say PSU gets way more attention because football. This story is not getting much attention at all.  I think the MSU athletic department ought to be hit hard.  But I'd argue that the NCAA neutered itself by putting PSU on double-secret probation and eventually apologizing for it.

[LMU]

You wonder what can be done to MSU.  Are there athletic department-wide NCAA punishments? Nasser was a multi-sport trainer there and not just with the football team like at Penn State.

[DG_ThenNowForever]

3 hours ago, OnWis97 said:

http://www.espn.com/espn/otl/story/_/id/22046031/michigan-state-university-doctor-larry-nassar-surrounded-enablers-abused-athletes-espn

 

Big ESPN piece on the Michigan State gymnastics scandal.  

 

The comments section is depressing; mostly people whining about how mean everyone was to Penn State.

 

There is parallel here to PSU and I do agree with those that say PSU gets way more attention because football. This story is not getting much attention at all.  I think the MSU athletic department ought to be hit hard.  But I'd argue that the NCAA neutered itself by putting PSU on double-secret probation and eventually apologizing for it.

 

I'm reading this now. People are so terrible.

 

And you're right that this is exactly why the NCAA's whiff on Penn State was so damaging. Their precedent for punishing child abuse is to basically do nothing.

[dfwabel]

34 minutes ago, LMU said:

You wonder what can be done to MSU.  Are there athletic department-wide NCAA punishments? Nasser was a multi-sport trainer there and not just with the football team like at Penn State.

The Unethical Conduct bylaw wasn't strengthen by the membership following Penn State, so it is unlikely MSU will face sanctions.  Plus, Last May, Baylor received notice that the NCAA won't penalize then for their football issues, so don't expect a change of policy this time.