Say it ain't so, Joe

[BBTV]

How the hell does that "honor" the victims? If anything, using the money generated from athletics to fund programs or scholarships or something for victims of sex abuse would do more than not having a football team.

[The_Admiral]

Yeah, the calls to nuke the entire athletic department are misguided and unfair. Football needs a break, though.

[DG_ThenNowForever]

Yeah, the calls to nuke the entire athletic department are misguided and unfair. Football needs a break, though.

Unfair in the sense that no athletes or coaches should be punished for the football team's misdeeds, yes, but I don't think misguided. Major football programs subsidize most athletic departments, and I'm sure Penn State's no different. Without Penn State football, there is no Penn State field hockey.

Football's an island to itself, but only kind of.

[infrared41]

From SI:

At Penn State, Paterno had all the power. President Graham Spanier and athletic director Tim Curley were technically his bosses, but they held as much sway over him as the guys selling hot dogs at Beaver Stadium on Saturdays. We know this most vividly because in 2004, Spanier and Curley tried to push out the struggling 77-year-old coach, and Paterno told them ... no. That distorted dynamic is why Sandusky was allowed free reign of the Penn State football complex years after the first account of sexual molestation surfaced. Who was going to stop him if not Paterno?

Many think Mike McQueary should have. According to his grand jury testimony, McQueary, then a 28-year-old graduate assistant, witnessed Sandusky raping a boy estimated to be 10 years old in the locker room showers. How, people ask, could a grown man like McQueary fail to step in and stop this atrocity when he saw it? Why did he not call the authorities?

In McQueary's world, Paterno was The Authority. McQueary, a State College native, former Penn State quarterback and son of a huge Nittany Lions fan, has spent nearly his entire life in a warped world few of us understand. What some view as cowardice probably seemed courageous to McQueary at the time: He went to The Authority's house and relayed bad things about the coach's long-time trusted confidant. He didn't know The Authority would merely pass the information along to his two in-name-only superiors, who then failed to take substantive action.

What's far more puzzling is how McQueary went to work for the next nine years and accepted seeing Sandusky at practice or in the weight room. But the Penn State football complex wasn't a normal workplace; the lone Authority was out to lunch in his last years on the job, but he held such clout that few dared to question his actions. That's not an excuse for McQueary's decisions, but it's reality -- a sick reality in which inaction was the norm.

Paterno and his so-called bosses deserve all the blame we can muster for allowing this atrocity to occur, but the rest of us deserve blame for lionizing coaches like Paterno in the first place. We turn these mortal men into irreproachable icons. We do it with articles portraying them as something more mystical than people who happen to be good at their jobs. We do it by camping out for tickets in tent villages named in their honor. We do it by building statues of them while they're still on the job.

[rams80]

Kind of hard to be rational when countless lives have been ruined and Paterno was indirectly a part of letting that happen. If Paterno was just some guy, a nobody assistant coach, there'd be no argument about it at all. Don't let your eyes get clouded over by the legend, the guy's no martyr.

Yeah yeah rage is easy. So's letting the cover up continue. If the goal is to be different, then let's be different.

Or do we also like maxims that don't encourage behavior modification.

[tp49]

dfwabel, I heard an interview with the former Governor of PA who's also a former attorney (maybe Rendell? can't remember his name) who said that PSU can fire anyone it wants for any reason they want and that the whistleblower law was pretty flexible in this situation.

I'll try to find that interview.

There's also federal whistleblower statutes to consider. And I guarantee Fast Eddie doesn't know jack about those.

But the big question to be asked in relation to either the state or federal whistleblower laws is that since McQueary blew the whistle eight years ago would he still be protected now? Especially if they presented a reason for termination outside of his whistleblowing.

[Viper]

Yeah, the calls to nuke the entire athletic department are misguided and unfair. Football needs a break, though.

Unfair in the sense that no athletes or coaches should be punished for the football team's misdeeds, yes, but I don't think misguided. Major football programs subsidize most athletic departments, and I'm sure Penn State's no different. Without Penn State football, there is no Penn State field hockey.

Football's an island to itself, but only kind of.

I suspect Penn State will have those kind of decisions made for them, as students, parents, alums and donors vote with their feet, and their checkbooks. It's not just the athletic department that's in jeopardy because of this mess, it's the whole damn school.

You mentioned field hockey... well, another side effect to all this is how it will affect D-I men's ice hockey. Remember, the whole realignment frenzy in hockey was triggered by Penn State's planned move to D-I in 2013, which in turn led to the Big Ten getting into ice hockey and the complete reshuffling of all the other D-I hockey conferences. Does this scandal throw a great big wrench into all those plans? If Penn State has to cancel their move to D-I, will the other Big Ten hockey programs have to go crawling back to their old conferences? If so, will all that realignment have to be undone, or will there be a re-realignment instead? And what about Alabama-Huntsville, who was forced to drop hockey as a varsity program because none of the realigned conferences would take them in? Will they be able to come back now, or was their hockey program sacrificed in vain?

Amazing how one perv football coach could trigger so much chaos.

[njmeadowlanders]

Its simple what Penn State must do in the face of these crimes:

De-emphasize sports. CCNY - one of the biggest basketball powers of its era, did so after a point-shaving scandal rocked the university; NYU did the same. NYU has a top-tier MBA program, a top-tier law school and a top-tier media program. CCNY and NYU have done fine without major sports, thank you.

Yes, I know. Why make the athletes pay? Is Penn State about athletics or education.

The only way to honor the vicitms, to shop support for them is to get rid of athletics. It is the only way.

But let me play Devil's Advocate:

If Sandusky was an accounting professor should the university de-emphasize accounting? If he taught engineering should PSU scrap that all together?

This had nothing to do with the athletes themselves or the games in which they played, just like it would have had nothing to do with the students he hypothetically taught.

[BBTV]

Yeah, the calls to nuke the entire athletic department are misguided and unfair. Football needs a break, though.

Unfair in the sense that no athletes or coaches should be punished for the football team's misdeeds, yes, but I don't think misguided. Major football programs subsidize most athletic departments, and I'm sure Penn State's no different. Without Penn State football, there is no Penn State field hockey.

Football's an island to itself, but only kind of.

I suspect Penn State will have those kind of decisions made for them, as students, parents, alums and donors vote with their feet, and their checkbooks. It's not just the athletic department that's in jeopardy because of this mess, it's the whole damn school.

You mentioned field hockey... well, another side effect to all this is how it will affect D-I men's ice hockey. Remember, the whole realignment frenzy in hockey was triggered by Penn State's planned move to D-I in 2013, which in turn led to the Big Ten getting into ice hockey and the complete reshuffling of all the other D-I hockey conferences. Does this scandal throw a great big wrench into all those plans? If Penn State has to cancel their move to D-I, will the other Big Ten hockey programs have to go crawling back to their old conferences? If so, will all that realignment have to be undone, or will there be a re-realignment instead? And what about Alabama-Huntsville, who was forced to drop hockey as a varsity program because none of the realigned conferences would take them in? Will they be able to come back now, or was their hockey program sacrificed in vain?

Amazing how one perv football coach could trigger so much chaos.

One perv coach didn't trigger this chaos. It was the cover up that brought us to where we are today. If they turned in the perv coach when they knew about it, it wouldve been isolated and the turner-in regarded as a hero. There would've certainly been a lot of questions and it would have left a bruise, but bruises heal quickly. Broken femurs don't.

[Viper]

One perv coach didn't trigger this chaos. It was the cover up that brought us to where we are today. If they turned in the perv coach when they knew about it, it wouldve been isolated and the turner-in regarded as a hero. There would've certainly been a lot of questions and it would have left a bruise, but bruises heal quickly. Broken femurs don't.

If it wasn't for the perv coach, there'd be nothing to cover up and no one to turn in to begin with. Ergo, the perv coach triggered it.

And as mentioned before, the turner-in wouldn't necessarily be regarded as a hero. Quite the opposite, perhaps - which is likely exactly why McQueary declined to do so.

[The_Admiral]

But let me play Devil's Advocate:

If Sandusky was an accounting professor should the university de-emphasize accounting? If he taught engineering should PSU scrap that all together?

It's not just about eliminating The Thing That He Did. Remember that a motivating factor in perpetuating the silence was the greed of college football. Keep the program looking clean so you can keep being good and keep making money. That wouldn't be present in the accounting department. That's why you can make a very good argument for Penn State football getting the death penalty. You want to hide unspeakable crimes to preserve the cash cow? Now the cash cow is dead, and let that be a lesson to the rest of you schools.

[Viper]

If there is to be a "death penalty" on Penn State football it's more likely to come from the school itself than from the NCAA. If they're serious about completely purging their athletic department and rebuilding it from scratch, they'd almost have to shut everything down for a full year just to get through the screening, interviewing and hiring process for every position.

[Gothamite]

Exactly, Admiral.

If anyone can say with a straight face that an accounting professor would be allowed to get away with child rape, or that the Accounting Department would engage in a decade-long coverup to protect a child rapist of its own, then it might be a legitimate comparison.

[The_Admiral]

I don't know about that last part. I'm sure entire staffs are purged and replaced every offseason. It's more, as you said, a matter of doing an internal investigation of just how deep the rabbit hole went here. There might even be a federal investigation, too.

It broke today that McQueary may have been sending Sandusky on recruiting assignments as recently as April. That might be your "Al Capone for tax evasion" of the whole thing.

[rams80]

Well, since big time college athletics exists to keep their undergraduate piggy bank (mostly) docile and unenraged, the university proper (and any big time school for that matter) has a vested interest in keeping things humming along. In other words, while they may not get money FROM the football program, every single department on campus gets money BECAUSE of the football program. And that won't change without major systemic changes throughout the American college landscape.

This is far from as simple as even shutting the entire athletic department down as punishment.

[tp49]

It broke today that McQueary may have been sending Sandusky on recruiting assignments as recently as April. That might be your "Al Capone for tax evasion" of the whole thing.

If this is true then McQueary is done as well. I wouldn't see any way he could hide behind whistleblower statutes at that point.

[DG_ThenNowForever]

Well, since big time college athletics exists to keep their undergraduate piggy bank (mostly) docile and unenraged, the university proper (and any big time school for that matter) has a vested interest in keeping things humming along. In other words, while they may not get money FROM the football program, every single department on campus gets money BECAUSE of the football program. And that won't change without major systemic changes throughout the American college landscape.

This is far from as simple as even shutting the entire athletic department down as punishment.

You're completely right, of course, but I wouldn't hold your breath. We do the bare minimum in this country and count down to the next season of American Idol or iPhone release. Anything more than that ain't gonna happen.

[Viper]

It broke today that McQueary may have been sending Sandusky on recruiting assignments as recently as April. That might be your "Al Capone for tax evasion" of the whole thing.

If this is true then McQueary is done as well. I wouldn't see any way he could hide behind whistleblower statutes at that point.

Even if he is considered a whistleblower, I don't see why Penn State doesn't just offer him a big cash settlement to resign, and be done with it.

[Gothamite]

Well, maybe it's time to reform the whole system, then.

I'm starting to come to the conclusion that Fordham had the right idea. They used to be the premier football school in the country, after all.

[DG_ThenNowForever]

Well, maybe it's time to reform the whole system, then.

I'm starting to come to the conclusion that Fordham had the right idea. They used to be the premier football school in the country, after all.

I'm in! Let's talk realignment