Say it ain't so, Joe

[The_Admiral]

1 hour ago, Viola73 said:

The only thing spinning is your head over the fact that there is someone, me, who doesn't bye into the groupthink pact mentality who wants to inflict as much pain on entire community because a sick, perverted, twisted, individual molested a bunch of kids. Something that we all know he did in the Commons of Penn State, at pep rallies, and as halftime entertainment at basketball games. Because they ALL knew, right? 

 

Newsflash: you care enough to post your little rant. 

 

1 hour ago, Viola73 said:

You just prove my point that you actually believe that Paterno took an ACTIVE roll in covering up Sanduskys trysts when there has been ZERO evidence that Paterno covered up anything. 

 

32 minutes ago, Viola73 said:

You say you not out to get Joe Paterno and Penn State, then turn around and say that Paterno and the football program (PSU) need to be punished? It takes a special, sick mind to try and place blame on those responsible before the facts, and claim they're interested in "justice."

 

 

25 minutes ago, Viola73 said:

I will make this statement. If it comes out that '76 incident (all of it. What Joe did or didn't do) shows that Joe did nothing (tell the kid to be quiet, brushed him off, gave no advice of who to turn to and report it) then I would accept the death penalty for the program and make a public declaration of submission on this board.

 

[pcgd]

I can't believe Paterno allegedly didn't go to authorities or higher ups of course or pursue this further. But even if you say he did what he should have, do you keep someone on you're staff that's been allegedly abiding kids on MULTIPLE occasions?

 

He alone has the power to make sure Sandusky wasn't around the school without evidence. He could and should have fired him the second there was a second allegation.  im not giving him a pass on one, just I can reasonably see a situation where there is an allegation and no evidence so one could think that it could be made up.  But 2, 3?  Come on its simple, get rid of the guy.

 

That's on Paterno.  He had the power to hire and fire staff. And it sounds like there could have been multiple allegations long before Sandusky had any kind of tenure. Disgusting.

[Lucas718]

What I'm having trouble with is understanding why, if Paterno knew about what Sandusky was doing as far back as the 1970's, why did he keep him on the coaching staff for 20+ more years?  Is it possible he just didn't believe the accusations or was he so focused on football that nothing else mattered.  I'm really having a hard time understanding this. 

 

 

[Gothamite]

Same reason that people are still defending Paterno today; their football is more important than these kids. 

[Lucas718]

19 minutes ago, Gothamite said:

Same reason that people are still defending Paterno today; their football is more important than these kids. 

I think you're right.

 

http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/06/us/jerry-sandusky-victims-paterno-penn-state/index.html

[HedleyLamarr]

7 hours ago, Ice_Cap said:

"But the people there now didn't do anything..." doesn't cut it. The hockey team, THE G-DDAMN HOCKEY TEAM, sported "409 Win" stickers. That's not even the sport Paterno coached, but that doesn't mean they're not part of the cult.

So should PSU shut down all of its athletic programs? Well no...probably. Cutting out the cancer that caused all of this though? That's the football program. This isn't a school offering recruits money under the table or players trading helmets for tattoos. This is a school putting the image of the football program ahead of the well being of children. The football program, and the cult Joe Paterno fostered around it, is directly responsible for those kids getting hurt.

 

And spare me the "if it were me Penn State losing its football team wouldn't make me feel better" bit. I don't know you Hedley, so I do apologize from the bottom of my heart if I'm wrong about this. I'm just going to play the odds though, and guess you haven't been the target of this sort of abuse. If not? You're not in any sort of position to make an informed guess as to how the victims of Jerry Sandusky might feel.

 

The sad fact is that nothing is going to undo what was done to those victims. The best that can be done for them directly is to help them try and cope and understand what it is that's happened, and for the university to continue to support charities that help victims of similar crimes.

All that does is help the victims. It doesn't address why they were made victims in the first place. And that gets us back to a university prizing the image of its football program over that of the well being of children. This is the absolute worst case scenario of America's obsession with football. Is it an indictment against the totality of college football? No, but it is an indictment of Penn State's ability to view football with a proper perspective. That everyone known to be involved in this cover-up is gone is immaterial. The Cult of Paterno lives in.

 

Nothing short of purging that in its entirety should be acceptable. If that means no football for five years? So be it. Ten years? So be it. Twenty years? So be it. In perpetuity? So be it. Let the smoking crater that should be Penn State Football serve as a monument to the arrogance and extreme lack of perspective that allowed a sexual predator to harm children in the name of an amateur football program.

The only thing I can equate to being molested by a pedophile is sitting in a synagogue during Saturday morning services and having bricks thrown into the windows of both the building and our cars with "We hate you Jews!" notes wrapped around them.  I was 10-11...I didn't understand why it was happening.  I didn't blame Jew-hating culture, though...I blamed whomever was responsible.

 

If PSU's football program had gotten whatever-length of a death penalty, I wouldn't have been against that.  (And I'm pretty sure I've never wavered on that.)  I was simply pointing out some logic behind why that decision wasn't made.  Which was also why I posed that question at the beginning of my post....what exactly is that threshold between "too lenient" and "just right" (or "excessive")?  OK, so PSU has no football team for 5 years....Paterno still loses his job, Sandusky still goes to prison, PSU still makes wholesale changes to their administrative staff, PSU is still subjected to the NCAA's 100+ new guidelines that they have to meet (I'm not going to worry about erasing wins....the NCAA is so dumb with revisionist history).  Lone difference is "loss of scholarships" changed to "no games".  For the victims, the NCAA and the legal authorities took out those responsible for allowing the cover-up and the administering of crimes, as well as putting in new parameters and hiring non-"PSU family" to PSU's administrative staff so that whatever in-house culture change wasn't just window-dressing.  Those are way more meaningful steps than whatever happens or doesn't happen with outside competition on the football field.  I'm just not seeing how one of these molestation victims has their plight be lessened because a school didn't play a football game for 5-10 years.  You said it yourself...nothing is going to undo what these victims went through.  What you can do is get rid of all the folks directly or indirectly responsible (which they did) as well as do your damndest to try and prevent this from ever happening again (which they are doing).

 

I'm not going to hold misguided school pride by the hockey team against the school.  Those were kids that were hurting from fresh wounds trying to show love for their school.  School pride is nothing more than being a fan, which is short for "fanatic".....and fanatics are never the reasonable sort.  You're never going to change the minds and thoughts of the lunatic fringe.

[IceCap]

57 minutes ago, HedleyLamarr said:

I blamed whomever was responsible.

Well that, in my opinion, is a flawed outlook. Anti-Semitism doesn't spring from nothingness. It has to be taught and nurtured. Someone needed to tell those people at a young age that it was ok to do that to Jews. Someone needed to then reinforce what they had been told. 

Not that this is an easy analogy. Being an apologist for someone who aided a pedophile and someone being an anti-Semite are two very distinct forms of disgusting behaviour, but there is crossover. In both cases it's behaviour fostered by culture. 

 

57 minutes ago, HedleyLamarr said:

The only thing I can equate to being molested by a pedophile is sitting in a synagogue during Saturday morning services and having bricks thrown into the windows of both the building and our cars with "We hate you Jews!"

 So to my assertion that you cannot possibly know what a victim of Sandusky, of Paterno's active negligence, felt is accurate. 

I think you ought to know I'm the last person who would trivialize what you went through here, but it's not something that gives you insight into how victims of child sexual abuse feel. 

 

We do have the insights of at least one victim though. He seems to have pretty strong feelings towards Penn State, the football team, and the fans and culture around it.

I can't say I blame him.

 

http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/06/us/jerry-sandusky-victims-paterno-penn-state/index.html

 

56 minutes ago, HedleyLamarr said:

You said it yourself...nothing is going to undo what these victims went through...

 

...I'm not going to hold misguided school pride by the hockey team against the school.  Those were kids that were hurting from fresh wounds trying to show love for their school.  School pride is nothing more than being a fan, which is short for "fanatic".....and fanatics are never the reasonable sort.  You're never going to change the minds and thoughts of the lunatic fringe.

All of this is intertwined.

 

No, you can't undo what was done to those kids. You can, however, root out why they were allowed to be made victims in the first place. It's because Paterno and the culture he instilled valued school pride over the well being of children. 

Look, most people have a degree of pride in their school. It's part of the experience, and normally it's innocent. The fact that it's gotten to the point where Penn State supporters are trying to prop up the legacy of a man who enabled a pedophile? That's the point where harmless fun and harmless pride cross over to "extremely  up sense of priorities."

And it all keeps coming back to Paterno. That's why the football team needs to go. In perpetuity if necessary. It's always going to be Paterno's team, which means it's always going to be at the centre of this engrained culture that excuses and rationalizes this abhorrent behaviour.

That's the problem. It was Paterno, it was football, that allowed "the lunatic fringe" to allow all of this to happen in the name of protecting the football team's prestige. 

 

And stuff your "those hockey players were kids who were hurting and just wanted to show school pride" rationalization. 

The only people who have the right to feel hurt in all of this are the children Sanduskh preyed on. The children Paterno and Penn State allowed and enabled him to prey on. 

[BBTV]

3 hours ago, pcgd said:

I can't believe Paterno allegedly didn't go to authorities or higher ups of course or pursue this further. But even if you say he did what he should have, do you keep someone on you're staff that's been allegedly abiding kids on MULTIPLE occasions?

 

He alone has the power to make sure Sandusky wasn't around the school without evidence. He could and should have fired him the second there was a second allegation.  im not giving him a pass on one, just I can reasonably see a situation where there is an allegation and no evidence so one could think that it could be made up.  But 2, 3?  Come on its simple, get rid of the guy.

 

That's on Paterno.  He had the power to hire and fire staff. And it sounds like there could have been multiple allegations long before Sandusky had any kind of tenure. Disgusting.

 

Exactly right - and for one (or both) of two reasons:  1), he needed to protect the program at any cost, or 2) despite numerous reports, he simply refused in his old-school brain to comprehend that it was real, he chose not to, and dozens of children had their lives ruined because of it.  I mean right there is enough to outweigh all the good things he did.  He should absolutely not be celebrated, because no matter what, when he needed to do the right thing, he turtled up and took the coward's way out.

 

 

2 hours ago, Lucas718 said:

What I'm having trouble with is understanding why, if Paterno knew about what Sandusky was doing as far back as the 1970's, why did he keep him on the coaching staff for 20+ more years?  Is it possible he just didn't believe the accusations or was he so focused on football that nothing else mattered.  I'm really having a hard time understanding this. 

 

 

 

Right, those are basically the 1 and 2 I'm referring to above.  At the end of the day it doesn't matter - in either case, he didn't do the right thing when dozens of kids needed him to step up.  Now the other witnesses are also guilty of this, however as "the boss", and the ultimate figure in that program, it ultimately falls on his feet.  That's how hierarchies work.

 

 

1 hour ago, Gothamite said:

Same reason that people are still defending Paterno today; their football is more important than these kids. 

 

That's not fair one bit.  There are plenty of idiots defending Paterno that have kids of their own and completely get the gravity of the situation.  In fact, I don't think that there's a single Paterno defender that doesn't get it.  It's just that many of the attackers - you included - don't separate the acts of the school administration from the academic aspect of the institution, and when a music major who only cares about becoming a music teacher is essentially being accused of being part of a child rape coverup, I think it's reasonable for them to be defensive.  Now I'll concede that they started this by their over defense of Paterno, and the whole statue deal, but outside of the "townie" pocket of central PA, it's really died down since then.

 

As for "nuke it now", what exactly has changed in the past 4 years that would warrant disbanding it now?  If it wasn't nuked 4 years ago, then this new info wouldn't have changed that had it been known back then.  Nothing at all has changed in a negative way since the wrist slap, so it really seems quite frankly stupid to death penalty the school now.  That's punishment for nothing.

[IceCap]

9 minutes ago, BringBackTheVet said:

That's punishment for nothing.

It's not about punishing "nothing." It's about weeding out the source of this ingrained culture that valued the prestige of college football over the lives and well being of children.

That you have Penn State supporters with kids of their own that fully grasp the severity and horror of Sandusky's crimes only makes their defence of the program and Paterno all the more sad and despicable.

 

Penn State football just needs to go away. At least long enough so that it no longer becomes a central aspect of the university's identity. Letting it become too central is what's led to this mess.

[HedleyLamarr]

4 minutes ago, Ice_Cap said:

Well that, in my opinion, is a flawed outlook. Anti-Semitism doesn't spring from nothingness. It has to be taught and nurtured. Someone needed to tell those people at a young age that it was ok to do that to Jews. Someone needed to then reinforce what they had been told. 

Not that this is an easy analogy. Being an apologist for someone who aided a pedophile and someone being an anti-Semite are two very distinct forms of disgusting behaviour, but there is crossover. In both cases it's behaviour fostered by culture. 

 

 So to my assertion that you cannot possibly know what a victim of Sandusky, of Paterno's active negligence, felt is accurate. 

I think you ought to know I'm the last person who would trivialize what you went through here, but it's not something that gives you insight into how victims of child sexual abuse feel. 

In honesty, no one knows what it's like to be a victim of child sexual abuse.....except those that are victims of child sexual abuse.

 

However, I don't think it's "the culture of football and the football team" so much as it was "the perfect confluence of being a school out in the middle of nowhere, with a football coach and administrative staff with unfortunate priorities, and no social media to distort this pretty State College picture".  Things can be hidden when you're 2.5 hours from Pittsburgh and 3 hours from Philadelphia with uncooperative staffs in the athletic and administrative departments.  There was no cell phone video or Twitter or any other instant form of media for evidence to get out.  It essentially boils down to "my word vs. your word", a la many alleged rape cases.  And it didn't hurt Paterno that he had this "Aww shucks!" fatherly image, both locally and nationally, for a long time.

 

All that has changed.  ANY person with some amount of celebrity or stature can't go anywhere without someone whipping out their phones to record it.  Wholesale changes have been made to these staffs, and those directly responsible are now out of a job, in prison, or dead.  Penn State is no longer in this hidden bubble of Utopia.  Those involved were punished, the gateways that allowed it to take place have been destroyed, and on PSU's dime, steps are being taken to get all these abuse victims the attention and help they need to get themselves as close to normal as possible.  Seems that the bigger reason the football team shouldn't be fielded, at least now, seems to be closer to "Well there's this statue and there's fans that still love Paterno" than "It'll help the recovery process for the victims".  You can't reason with fanatics.  There are Canucks fans that still side with Bertuzzi (my girlfriend being one of them) and claim the riots were due to a few folks that were just looking for a reason to cause trouble....that's a hockey team culture.  Should Vancouver lose their team because of some crazy fanatics?  (Only comparing PSU to the Canucks because of crazy fanatics....that's all.)

 

Perhaps the state of PSU's football team should have been given some discussion by those victimized instead of all of us on a message board?

[Lights Out]

7 hours ago, Viola73 said:

The only thing spinning is your head over the fact that there is someone, me, who doesn't bye into the groupthink pact mentality who wants to inflict as much pain on entire community because a sick, perverted, twisted, individual molested a bunch of kids.

Shutting a football program down does not "inflict as much pain" as a child rapist does to their victims. That's an absurd comparison!

 

Not to mention, Penn State football isn't a "community." It's a cult. And it badly needs an intervention.

[Gothamite]

Wait, who says we can't have both?  Help the victims and punish the culture which allowed the crimes to continue for years?  

 

And I'm sorry, but I don't know enough about the Canucks situation.  Were team officials involved in the rioting?  Did they spur it on, or help cover it up after the fact?  Because if not, there's not much of a comparison there. 

[Viola73]

3 hours ago, pcgd said:

I can't believe Paterno allegedly didn't go to authorities or higher ups of course or pursue this further. But even if you say he did what he should have, do you keep someone on you're staff that's been allegedly abiding kids on MULTIPLE occasions?

 

He alone has the power to make sure Sandusky wasn't around the school without evidence. He could and should have fired him the second there was a second allegation.  im not giving him a pass on one, just I can reasonably see a situation where there is an allegation and no evidence so one could think that it could be made up.  But 2, 3?  Come on its simple, get rid of the guy.

 

That's on Paterno.  He had the power to hire and fire staff. And it sounds like there could have been multiple allegations long before Sandusky had any kind of tenure. Disgusting.

I hear what your saying and in a perfect world this would have been the outcome, but we live in this world we we cannot fire people from occupations due to accusations. People and companies get sued over things like that. You must have evidence and a conviction by jury of your peers. At least an arrest of Sandusky early on could have been interpreted as breech of contract due to misconduct, but he was only investigated by a number of agencies and they found nothing.

 

After he "retired" it was the administration that gave Sandusky status to be on campus. Paterno actually objected to Sandusky being on campus, but he had no say in the final decision.

 

I anxiously await the trial of the big 3 in hopes of hearing what they knew and their thought patterns.

 

[IceCap]

2 minutes ago, HedleyLamarr said:

Perhaps the state of PSU's football team should have been given some discussion by those victimized instead of all of us on a message board?

"We shouldn't even be having this discussion" is usually the line of discussion invoked by someone who lacks confidence in their argument. I mean we might as well just pack this whole thing up if you're suggesting that schmucks on a message board ought to only comment on things they have direct, personal experience with.

 

7 minutes ago, HedleyLamarr said:

In honesty, no one knows what it's like to be a victim of child sexual abuse.....except those that are victims of child sexual abuse.

That's true. Which is why I find your attempt at a comparison to be so lacklustre. It was an attempt to draw a false equivalency to score internet argument points.

I can't speak to how a victim of child sexual abuse feels either (though I have worked with them). What I do know is that the claim that nuking Penn State's football program wouldn't make the victims feel any better is a fundamentally flawed statement.

Best guess? Sandusky's victims are probably like any other group of people. There are probably some who want to move on and forget everything. There are probably some who probably hold ill will towards the school and program. There are probably some who probably only blame Sandusky.

All you can do for the victims themselves is help them cope, and help them heal.

 

The point is that doing this only helps the victims heal. It doesn't punish the cult of Paterno that allowed all of this to happen. The coaches responsible are gone. The administration responsible is gone. Good first steps. The culture though, that can outlive any coach or AD. Especially when the coach had PR sensibilities like Paterno and PSU did. It's the culture that needs to be radically changed, and you're probably not going to be able to do that without killing the football program for a prolonged period of time.

Basically? The team is still a monument to Paterno's legacy, and it needs to go away until it stops being that.

 

 

[Viola73]

16 minutes ago, Lights Out said:

Shutting a football program down does not "inflict as much pain" as a child rapist does to their victims. That's an absurd comparison!

 

Not to mention, Penn State football isn't a "community." It's a cult. And it badly needs an intervention.

I wasn't making a comparison between the two. I just stated that you want to inflict pain on the community (State College) for what happened. You made the comparison.

[IceCap]

You used the term "as much pain" to link the supposed pain people want to cause State College and the pain suffered by Sandusky's victims. The comparison is yours.

[Lights Out]

1 minute ago, Viola73 said:

I wasn't making a comparison between the two. I just stated that you want to inflict pain on the community (State College) for what happened. You made the comparison.

Get it through your head: Penn State is not the victim here. The children who the school allowed Sandusky to rape are. 

 

If shutting down a program that was built on systematically enabling a child rapist actually inflicts pain on the Penn State community, then maybe they need to feel that pain in order to start reassessing their priorities.

[IceCap]

12 hours ago, pcgd said:

I just discovered that there are Jerry Sandusky truthers.  Not JoePa truthers... People who believe Sandusky is innocent.  And it's not just one crazy.  I read this article:

 

http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/06/us/jerry-sandusky-victims-paterno-penn-state/

 

Which is horrible and I decided to see what Twitter thought.  (I know....). That lead me me to this guy on Twitter who is a nationally syndicated radio host and was bashing that article:

 

https://mobile.twitter.com/Zigmanfreud

 

Which he tweeted this website over and over:

 

http://framingpaterno.com

 

That says Jerry. Sandusky. Is. Innocent. What. The. :censored:.

I'm bumping this because I feel like all of this proves just how detached some of the Happy Valley faithful are. It's truly a remarkable disconnect from reality. This is the sort of madness that's culturally ingrained. 

 

And the term "truther" is fitting, considering that this happened.

 

39 minutes ago, HedleyLamarr said:

Perhaps the state of PSU's football team should have been given some discussion by those victimized instead of all of us on a message board?

One more thing about this bit...

 

One of Sandusky's victims has some pretty strong feelings regarding Penn State, Joe Paterno, and its football program.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/06/us/jerry-sandusky-victims-paterno-penn-state/index.html

 

It's a long article that covers a lot of ground. So here are the relevant parts...

 

Quote

Victim A becomes outraged and visibly upset when he talks to people who can't seem to get past the impact the scandal had on their idol, Paterno.

"State College is a disgusting place, the way they treat crimes against kids," he said. "We are living in a very sick atmosphere."

On the advice of his attorney, Victim A has stayed quiet publicly since the scandal broke four years ago. Last year when he talked to CNN, he said he now feels that speaking out is his only form of justice -- even though he knows things will only get worse for him.

Back in November, he said, "I am looking for a wave of s*** to come down on me like I've never seen before. I know that's going to happen. It's going to be a very bad outcome for me. That's just the way Penn State fans are."

Seems to jive with what I've been saying about culture.

[HedleyLamarr]

59 minutes ago, Gothamite said:

And I'm sorry, but I don't know enough about the Canucks situation.  Were team officials involved in the rioting?  Did they spur it on, or help cover it up after the fact?  Because if not, there's not much of a comparison there. 

It's comforting to know you still can't read.  Of course, you're the guy that still firmly believes the Thrashers moved because of attendance after I, a former employee of the team, told you over and over and over and over and over why the team left.

 

I had this sentence in my post from the beginning: (Only comparing PSU to the Canucks because of crazy fanatics....that's all.)   My comparisons began and ended, and only concerned, about their crazy fans and their steadfast reluctance to change their stance on the home team.  Nothing more.

[HedleyLamarr]

58 minutes ago, Ice_Cap said:

"We shouldn't even be having this discussion" is usually the line of discussion invoked by someone who lacks confidence in their argument. I mean we might as well just pack this whole thing up if you're suggesting that schmucks on a message board ought to only comment on things they have direct, personal experience with.

It's also a line used when Side A says "I'm right, you're wrong and flawed", Side B says "I'm right, you're wrong and flawed", and neither side has all the correct answers.  You and I are doing nothing more than speculating how these victims feel toward football games being contested or not.  You feel the football program should have gotten the death penalty.  I feel that I could support the death penalty had it been administered, but I could also see why that option wasn't used and the logic behind that.  There's no established set of consequences for this before the scandal broke.  That's why we saw such a wide spectrum of punishments being discussed on here.  There's no one right solution.

Quote

 

That's true. Which is why I find your attempt at a comparison to be so lacklustre. It was an attempt to draw a false equivalency to score internet argument points.

I can't speak to how a victim of child sexual abuse feels either (though I have worked with them). What I do know is that the claim that nuking Penn State's football program wouldn't make the victims feel any better is a fundamentally flawed statement.

Best guess? Sandusky's victims are probably like any other group of people. There are probably some who want to move on and forget everything. There are probably some who probably hold ill will towards the school and program. There are probably some who probably only blame Sandusky.

All you can do for the victims themselves is help them cope, and help them heal.

 

The point is that doing this only helps the victims heal. It doesn't punish the cult of Paterno that allowed all of this to happen. The coaches responsible are gone. The administration responsible is gone. Good first steps. The culture though, that can outlive any coach or AD. Especially when the coach had PR sensibilities like Paterno and PSU did. It's the culture that needs to be radically changed, and you're probably not going to be able to do that without killing the football program for a prolonged period of time.

Basically? The team is still a monument to Paterno's legacy, and it needs to go away until it stops being that.

 

...hence why I said "about the only thing I can equate this to is...".  Never said they were equal.  You assumed I was making them equal-footing situations.  What I can equate is that my focus was more on those tossing the bricks than those cultivating mindsets.  Blaming cultures is a slippery slope.  Blaming those directly involved seems, to me, much more worthwhile and where the focus should be going.

 

One thing neither you or I can really comment on is what exactly the current culture of Penn State really is about.  What exactly is Penn State's culture, right now?  We know what it was between the 70's and 2011, but today?  Pretty sure a vast majority in Pennsylvania see Paterno in a negative light than a positive one, but the vocal minority of Paterno supporters will not only drown out the majority, but will also never change their thoughts on him...much like your craziest fans of any team will do for their team.  The culture of allowing child molestation by the Penn State football program and administration staff is gone, and has been for 5 years now.  And with these new 100+ guidelines the NCAA requires out of Penn State now, it's a pretty solid bet that the "football program is god on campus" culture has dwindled, too.