Commonwealth of Pennsylvania vs. NCAA

soxfan121

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If Penn Staters had 1/100,000th the concern for Sandusky's living, breathing victims that they do for cold, dead JoePa....they'd be better human beings. But since it seems that the Penn State community is more interested in clearing the name of a dead man and celebrating his questionable legacy than they do about the victims of sexual abuse, the Penn State community can hit the showers AFAIC. 
 
Disgusting. I'd have burned my degree and stopped listing it on my resume out shame. These assholes are putting "409" on the hockey team's helmets. What a bunch of clueless, self-absorbed degenerates. 
 

Fred in Lynn

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I'd like to see the Joe-bot extremists who find absolutely nothing wrong with what happened put together on a rocket with the self-righteous simpleton asshats who effectively believe Paterno cheered Sandusky on as he raped kids, and have it launched into the Sun. Then the rest of us can have an intelligent conversation about what, why, and how it happened, and what anyone can do to help avoid similar situations in the future.
 

twibnotes

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soxfan121 said:
Disgusting. I'd have burned my degree and stopped listing it on my resume out shame.
This is a ridiculous statement. Penn St has a massive alumni base, including a huge number of people who do NOT support JoePa's legacy and whose experience at the school was not defined by football.
 

Brohamer of the Gods

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From today's paper: "We're going to still keep looking for the truth to get everything right for everybody, because we still have Tim, Gary, and Graham that have to be exonerated in all this." - Sue Paterno
 

sfip

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As much as I respect SuePa and as much as I agree that there's a lot more truth that needs to be revealed (unlike the tl;dr but have learned summarized parts about Freeh report, which looks more and more to be predetermined B.S. that the BoT who hired him wanted it to say), the part about exonerating those 3 made me cringe.
 

Geo44

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Jan 8, 2013
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sfip said:
As much as I respect SuePa and as much as I agree that there's a lot more truth that needs to be revealed (unlike the tl;dr but have learned summarized parts about Freeh report, which looks more and more to be predetermined B.S. that the BoT who hired him wanted it to say), the part about exonerating those 3 made me cringe.
Do you still cringe?
 
Is it becoming clearer now?  Obviously the NCAA is scrambling to take action as the impending case (two weeks) approaches and it seems to be that many "data points" are pointing a loosing finger at the NCAA.
 

Geo44

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Jan 8, 2013
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BigSoxFan said:
I went to the BC/Penn State bowl game and asked some PSU fans what they thought of the whole situation. Of my small sample size of about 10, about 8 said that it was completely unfair to Paterno and that he did all he could. I didn't push back very hard but it was helpful to get a sense of the mentality of this fan base who were quite pleasant otherwise. The blinders will never be removed for the majority of them.
You refer to blinders. Said the mule pulling the cart full of BS.
 
BSF you so funny and ignorant.
 

Geo44

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Jan 8, 2013
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soxfan121 said:
If Penn Staters had 1/100,000th the concern for Sandusky's living, breathing victims that they do for cold, dead JoePa....they'd be better human beings. But since it seems that the Penn State community is more interested in clearing the name of a dead man and celebrating his questionable legacy than they do about the victims of sexual abuse, the Penn State community can hit the showers AFAIC. 
 
Disgusting. I'd have burned my degree and stopped listing it on my resume out shame. These assholes are putting "409" on the hockey team's helmets. What a bunch of clueless, self-absorbed degenerates. 
So if your child (creating a hypothetical here), was arrested for intentially driving a car into a building and injuring/killing people AND your wife was wrongfully arrested for being a hooker, are you telling me you should not address the issue of your wife being wrongfully arrested for hooking?
 
Wow, talk about being one dimensional.
 

Average Reds

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Geo44 said:
So if your child (creating a hypothetical here), was arrested for intentially driving a car into a building and injuring/killing people AND your wife was wrongfully arrested for being a hooker, are you telling me you should not address the issue of your wife being wrongfully arrested for hooking?
 
Wow, talk about being one dimensional.
 
Instead of hurling invective at others, why don't you come out and say what it is that you want to say?
 

soxfan121

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Average Reds said:
 
Instead of hurling invective at others, why don't you come out and say what it is that you want to say?
 
Oh, you're no fun. I want more crazypants analogies and typos.
 

soxfan121

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Can I have a mulligan? I'm taking a mulligan.
 
Geo44 said:
So if your child (creating a hypothetical here), was arrested for intentially driving a car into a building and injuring/killing people AND your wife was wrongfully arrested for being a hooker, are you telling me you should not address the issue of your wife being wrongfully arrested for hooking?
 
Wow, talk about being one dimensional.
 
The psychology here is wonderful. Tell us more about the "child" who drove into the "building" and the "hooker" who didn't report the crime. 
 

SoxJox

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An open letter to Keith Olbermann
 
I'm pasting the whole thing because I don't want to be accused of se[SIZE=14.3999996185303px]lective quotes.  To me, many points why the whole affair is not so black and white as many (most?) think.  I'm still waiting for the trial outcomes for Spanier, Curley, and Schultz.[/SIZE]
 
Dear Keith,
 
Let me just begin by saying that I’m actually a bigger fan of yours than most of the world (which is, admittedly, a low bar). Like yourself, I enjoy buying and selling sports memorabilia — one time, in high school, I actually sold a baseball card to you on eBay (I was tickled when you gave me positive feedback and made note of my quick shipping time). We are both dues-paying members of the Society for American Baseball Research, and I have enjoyed many of your columns on the sabermetrics movement and appreciate your affinity for baseball history. Your take on Derek Jeter earlier this year made my stats-nerd heart swoon. Hell, I even enjoy some of your political takes from time to time. What I’m trying to say, Keith, is that every three or four years when you are inevitably fired or forced to resign from whatever network employs you at the time, I don’t celebrate your misfortune as much as the rest of the country.
 
One might assume, given our similar interests, that you and I could be friends one day. But that prospect seems inauspicious right now, because, well, I go to Penn State. In fact, as part of your “World’s Worst in Sports” segment last night, you read excerpts from my story about the hockey team’s 409 tribute and why people shouldn’t conflate support of Joe Paterno or Penn State with insensitivity to child abuse. You said that “at Penn State, football was more important than saving kids, and now we know football is still more important than saving kids and healing their wounds.” If you need a refresher — I don’t think you actually read the story because you conveniently ignored the part that actually synced with your argument — you can watch it again below (skip to 2:30). [SoxJox note: this points to the video already posted by WBV at post 167.]
 
Believe it or not, Keith, I understand your argument. Truly, I do. The only thing you know about what happened at Penn State can be written on the back of an index card. Mike McQueary saw Jerry Sandusky raping a boy in the shower, he told Joe Paterno what he saw, Paterno went and told the athletic director, university president, and another administrator about the incident, and the four of them maliciously conspired to cover up the incident out of fear of bad publicity for more than a decade. A report by a former FBI director confirmed all of this with a comprehensive investigation — clear as day, black and white — and even took it a step farther by implicating the football-crazed Penn State culture as the reason for the cover up. That is all your brain will allow you to know. Nothing else matters. Close the book, end of story. This is what you know to be true, and everyone who says otherwise is delusional or part of a football-crazed cult. After you ripped me last night on your show, you admitted that there was “no larger context” to any of this.
 
You know what, Keith? I’ll make a concession. If the few details that you think you know about the Sandusky scandal are all true, then everything you’ve said about Penn Staters who still support Joe Paterno is correct. If Paterno was involved in an intentional and calculated coverup to protect and enable a child predator, there are no words for that kind of evil. No man like that should ever be celebrated, despite the rest of the good he’s done in his life. I understand why, given the immalleable conclusions you’ve reached, you would accuse Penn Staters of being the most controverted bastards alive.
 
But here’s the thing, Keith. As much as black and white situations make for convenient two-minute television bits, this thing isn’t so black and white. Surely a Cornell graduate like yourself strives to have the intellect to understand an issue completely before taking such a rigid viewpoint on national television. Surely you know that Mike McQueary’s eyewitness testimony, which is the key element in determining what Paterno knew and when he knew it, has been all over the place each time he’s given it, and that the victim from this incident never came forward or testified at Sandusky’s trial. Surely you know that McQueary claims he was never sexually graphic with Paterno when he initially reported the incident, and that he actually played in golf tournaments for Sandusky’s charity multiple times after the shower incident. Of course, you know that the three administrators who handled the 2001 report actually informed the president of Sandusky’s charity about the incident, and that one of the administrators told attorney Wendell Courtney about McQueary’s report the day after it was received in a three-hour phone call (seems like a pretty lousy coverup). Given your diligent reporting, you know that Sandusky was investigated in 1998 by the campus police but the district attorney decided not to pursue charges due to lack of evidence. And yet, you know the 1998 incident was reported to both the Department of Public Welfare and Children and Youth Services (this is starting to seem like the worst executed coverup of all time). You know that the three Penn State administrators implicated in this case have yet to face trial and are being charged based on a handful of emails, neither of which states any degree of ill-intent or decision to cover up the incident.
 
You’ve been doing this sports reporting thing for 35 years, Keith, so of course you read the Freeh report. You read it, and as a rational human being, you realized that the Freeh report — save for a handful of ambiguous emails — included not one shred of new information about the case. You realized — again, I’m assuming you’re rational — that much of the information it used to condemn Penn State could be interpreted many different ways, and that it made significant factual leaps to reach its conclusion. You know, of course, that the Freeh investigative group didn’t interview a single person who was implicated except for Graham Spanier after the report had already been written; that several parts of the report have been proven to be objectively inaccurate; that the Freeh investigators actually colluded with the NCAA throughout the entire “independent” investigation; and that the report has come under so much criticism that the university president, who does not have a Penn State degree and was not at Penn State when this case blew up, is conducting a review of the entire report. You’ve surely been following the news — Louis Freeh, the man who Penn State paid $8 million to do this report, has been accused of corruption after his wife bought a $3 million beachfront penthouse from a business just nine days after Freeh exonerated that same businessman of wrongdoing. You know that virtually every report Freeh has produced in his post-FBI career has been criticized, if not totally refuted. Oh, speaking of the FBI, surely you know that Freeh is universally considered one of the worst directors in the history of the Bureau after botching the Richard Jewell casecovering up and burying documents for government officials after the Branch Davidian mess in Waco; misleading a federal judge in the Wan Ho Lee case; and failing to act on a memo sent to him by his assistant director that cited “significant and urgent” intelligence of “serious operational planning” for terrorism attacks by Islamic radicals linked to Osama bin Laden [source: The Intercept] months before the Sept. 11 attacks. Freeh was eventually forced to resign from the FBI. This is the man whose word you treat as sacrosanct.
 
Keith, I’m sure I’ve lost you by now. Again, I understand. I have two degrees from Penn State with a third on the way. You’ve said yourself that anybody who attended Penn State cannot possibly have a valid opinion about this matter. You made your name at MSNBC — clearly you know a thing or two about unbiased journalism. I am inherently biased, and there’s no escaping that. The unfortunate reality is that the people who know the most about the case — Penn State fans that follow new developments every day (not only when it’s convenient for moralizing) and know more than the abridged version of the facts written on the back of your index card — are almost entirely Penn Staters and easy for you to pigeonhole as part of a cult. I get that. But you’ve also said that “everybody not connected to Penn State” agrees with the coverup theory. There’s no denying that many people do — mostly thanks to incurious folks like you. You said in the clip that “all of your critics were personally or geographically connected to Penn State.” But please just humor me for a second, Keith. Let’s put our noggins together and see if your thesis holds up.
 
You know Bob Costas, of course. Just six days ago you had him on your show and introduced him as “one of the greatest sportscasters in human history.” He’s won more journalism awards than jobs you’ve been fired from. Here’s what he had to say about the Sandusky scandal just last year (source 1source 2source 3):
  • “What much of America and what much of the media decided was the truth a couple of years ago is largely in doubt right now. There are so many areas of gray. There are so many areas of nuance that were passed over. There are so many questions as yet unanswered.”
  • “I don’t buy the idea that [Paterno] was actively involved in the cover up.”
  • “What Freeh did, it seems to me, was not only gather facts but he reached a conclusion which is at least debatable from those facts and then he assigned a motivation, not only to Curley and Schultz and Spanier, but he specifically assigned a very dark motivation to Joe Paterno, which seems like it might be quite a leap.”
  • “[Some people say that Paterno] knew that kids were being abused, and not only did he do nothing about it, but knowingly and actively was part of a coverup whose motivation it was to place the image of Joe Paterno and Penn State football above the welfare of these harmless kids. That is a charge, which if true, is beyond horrific. And I believe there is insufficient evidence to put that charge on Joe Paterno.”
You knew this already, I’m sure. If “one of the greatest sportscasters in human history” said it, it must have some weight with you.
 
Or what about Frank Fina? I’m sure, as someone who has so diligently followed this case, you know Fina was one of the two main prosecutors who put Sandusky behind bars. He interviewed all those children who testified that they were abused by Sandusky. He was in court every day at trial — he sat in my row a couple days — and listened to the terrible stories of abuse. He was the one in the interrogation room who looked into their eyes and heard their tragic stories the first time they were told to anyone. Who could possibly have more sympathy for victims of child sexual abuse than a lifetime prosecutor who got 45 guilty convictions against Jerry Sandusky? You of course remember his answer when he was asked on CBS last year if he thought Joe Paterno was involved in a coverup.
  • “I do not…And I’m viewing this strictly on the evidence, not any kind of fealty to anybody. I did not find that evidence.”
You remember Dick Thornburgh, of course. He’s Yale-educated — an Ivy League man, just like yourself. He was the United States Attorney General from 1988 to 1991 and the Governor of Pennsylvania from 1979 to 1987. As you know, he wrote a report last year that blasted the conclusions made in the Freeh report. Granted, he was hired by the Paterno family to write the report, so he’s easy for you to write off, but he strikes me as no less credible than Louis Freeh, who was hired by the organization that voted to fire Paterno and needed justification. Here’s what Thornburgh has to say about Freeh’s (and your) conclusions:
  • “There was just a rush to injustice. In the case of Mr. Paterno, that injustice was palpable.”
  • “The Freeh report’s conclusion that Mr. Paterno lacked empathy for the victims of Mr. Sandusky’s abuse is unfounded and offensive.”
  • “[The] lack of factual support for the Freeh report’s unfounded, collective conclusions and its numerous process-oriented deficiencies call into question the credibility of the entire report.”
  • “In the end, the evidence against Paterno falls far short of sustaining allegations that he attempted in any way to conceal or cover-up Sandusky’s sexual abuse of children. In fact, the contrary is true.”
  • “Indeed, none of the evidence cited by Freeh supports a claim that Paterno acted to conceal information about Sandusky. In fact, the evidence is contrary to a cover-up.”
Also — and I have no doubt you know this already since you’re up on everything — Sandy Barbour, our athletic director who you canonized in your video, has already walked back her apology for the 409 helmet stickers.
  • “First of all, I want to apologize for the tweet.”
  • “This is far too important a subject to vet on a casual; or in social media. I’ll use my own words. It was inappropriate and insensitive of me to do that from a tweet standpoint.”
  • “I knew before I came to Penn State [from California]that 409 meant success with honor, that 409 means far more to this community and this university than wins. But, having come from the outside, I know that’s not necessarily what everyone else knows and thinks, and frankly, in my five months here, I have learned so much more about Penn State and what an incredible place it is.”
Surely, since you read my column, you know all of the positive things she’s said about Joe Paterno in the past.
  • “Joe’s a big part of who we are.”
  • “If you spend any time at Penn State, you can’t help but understand the importance, his importance, in our history. I’ve also had the opportunity to get to know the family a little bit. And he and his family are a big part of who we are.”
  • “The impact that he’s had on that institution, and who we are as an institution, is important. It’s not just as a football program but who Penn State University is. He and Sue [Paterno] have been a huge part of that.”
Then there’s Michael Sokolove, who wrote in a comprehensive New York Times magazine piece last year that the case against Penn State’s former president as it implies a coverup is “at best problematic, at worst fatally flawed.” There’s Malcolm Gladwell, a five-time New York Times best seller, who has written extensively about pedophilia, who says he is a “good deal more forgiving of Paterno than most” and lambasted the NCAA for sanctioning Penn State. TV legend Jay Leno doesn’t buy the coverup theory, nor does your former colleague Chris Matthews, who said “I think JoePa’s coming back at some point. I don’t know how long it’s going to take — you don’t have to say it, I’m saying it, I’m not running for anything. I don’t know what kind of words were passed about Sandusky’s conduct, but horsing around doesn’t tell me anything.”  There’s universally respected sportswriter Joe Posnanski, who you’ve had on your show before, who said, “That the Freeh Report has been accepted as the last word is a travesty… It’s like saying you wrote an exhaustive book on The Beatles without talking to any of The Beatles.” There’s your old SportsCenter partner Dan Patrick, who said last week, “Joe Paterno was still a great man to a great program, made it a great program… To take away the victories, I was embarrassed for the NCAA with that… Give the victories back to his family.” There’s legendary Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski, who said, “As we judge, remember that there’s just a lot there. There’s a lot, lot there. I think [Paterno]’s a great man.”
 
And the list goes on and on.
 
Perhaps most disturbing is your claim that Barbour’s apology was the “first intelligent, self-effacing thing anybody at Penn State has done about the indelible stain that is Jerry Sandusky — the first thing that’s been done in 17 years.” As someone who seems so interested in the Penn State situation, surely you’ve heard of the Blue Out, the student-run, student-created organization that has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for child abuse charities since November 2011. Of course you know about the Penn State Center for the Protection of Children, which the university founded and operates with its own money to help children in need. Since you seem to know a lot about the NCAA sanctions, you understand that even though the NCAA consent decree was totally repealed, Penn State is still giving the $60 million fine to child sexual abuse charities in Pennsylvania. Heck, even this “fan site” raised thousands of dollars last year forBands4RAINN, a great charity that helps sexual abuse victims. Of course, every institution can always be doing more to help these important causes, but to say that Barbour’s apology to a Twitter troll is the “first thing that’s been done in 17 years” about Jerry Sandusky is preposterous. This part of your argument is actually black and white — you are plainly wrong.
 
Maybe, just maybe, there’s more to this than you allow yourself to believe. I know you’re capable of admitting you’re wrong — 200,000 Google hits for “Keith Olbermann apologizes” must mean something.
 
Here’s another concession for you, Keith. I admit that Penn State fans and administrators have done a poor job advocating for themselves to folks like you. The Twitter mob can be a tactless, hateful bunch, especially when it’s responding to equally tactless people (you). In general, I think Penn Staters could do a better job understanding that there are many genuine, well-intentioned people out there (not you) who think differently than them about the Sandusky scandal, and that will likely never change. You will notice in my column you blasted that I spent half of it telling Penn Staters to not be jerks and lay off our athletic director — a fact that you conveniently ignored in your rant. Everyone ought to take a deep breath, realize that people can interpret facts in many different ways (although, in your case, one must actually have facts to interpret them), and calm down sometimes when talking about this extremely emotional issue. The people calling for Barbour’s termination are lunatics, degree be damned. A former football coach was convicted of molesting kids on our campus — this fact should not be lost on any Penn Stater. Even if there wasn’t a malicious coverup, mistakes were made at Penn State, and this community recognizes that. Joe Paterno said himself that, “With the benefit of hindsight, he wished he would have done more” — and knowing what we know now, who among us wouldn’t say that? I know you think we all walk around State College in our 409 t-shirts winking to each other about how clever we were for covering up child abuse for a decade, but if you ever came here, I really don’t think you’d find it much different than Ithaca.
 
If you are actually interested in the Penn State situation — and, considering you’ve done two bits on it in four days, that seems likely — I have a proposal for you. Rather than sit in your studio and rant without anyone there to challenge anything you say, let’s actually add something productive to the dialogue. Here’s my email. Have your people contact me and we can set up a 60 minute public podcast to debate and discuss the Penn State situation. I know how difficult it is talking about a complex situation for longer than two minute sound bytes, but I know you’re capable of doing it.
 
Plus, at least with a podcast, no one will have to look at your suit.
 
Sincerely,
 
Kevin Horne
Penn State ’14
 

Fred in Lynn

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This will be disjointed...

BigSoxFan said:
The bottom line is that nobody can change what happened but there are plenty of people who can impact what will happen in the future. That's the kind of response most impartial observers wanted to hear, not the "poor Joe Paterno" sob fest. Football sanctions were literally the least important part of this story.
The idea that Sandusky as a pedophile, the decisions of Paterno et. al, and the sanctions are a single issue that must be discussed collectively is lazy and counterproductive. The world is complex, and those offering simple answers to overarching problems strikes a particular, off-pitch chord with me.

Paterno is a red herring if the goal is to understand why this occurred. He's just one of countless people who have been fooled, confused, or acted negligently in response to the actions of a groomer-style pedophile. Sandusky wasn't able to get away with molesting and raping kids because he was bad at creating an alternate perception of himself. He was skilled at fooling adults, adults who didn't think such a thing could happen, and had access to countless troubled children from which he could screen out the most vulnerable. The culture problem wasn't unique to Penn State (this is the typical moral shortcut in this conversation). It was unique to any place which isn't designed to have children present that has children present, and unbeknownst to those present, has a pedophile present. This is a common theme, be it Boy Scouts, the Catholic Church, or a charity for troubled youth (it was a Second Mile problem that became a Penn State problem when children started coming onto their campus). Interestingly - and this has been the main practical takeaway for me as a parent - imprisoned groomer pedophiles that were interviewed by a researcher named Carla van Dam universally stated that the first and primary trait that eliminated a child from future consideration as a target was an inquisitive parent or guardian. Second Mile was for children with dysfunctional or non-existent parental situations, which explains it more and makes it more insidious and disturbing at the same time.

Sanctions: Playing football is so utterly less important than concern over raped children that it defies description. Alas, it's also utterly beside the point. Just stop doing it. The NCAA didn't acquiesce in the sanctions because they promised a dying friend. They backed off nearly in total because they were in foreign territory from the start. Despite a common belief, those who feel this way don't like to see children raped. Everything for a purpose. The NCAA to oversee competition of collegiate athletics, the legal system to enforce criminal acts. And please no more of the IC bullshit. Administrative controls like ICs are supplemental enforcement tools; no efficiently run enforcement body would ever use administrative controls alone to administer penalties, and I should know because I work for one and do this as part of my job. You need substantive evidence of violations of rules. The admin control violations become icing on the cake. Nobody eats icing alone. The NCAA never had a case, and they let the horror of the rape and molestation cloud their judgment. (I'll more or less skip the logic in most any sanctions the NCAA has issued over the years, as the primary recipients of their justice have been innocent parties.)

As a footnote on Paterno, I could really care less primarily because I don't know him. Taking away or restoring wins are both equal folly (I tried this with my kids when they got into trouble, I forming them that the beach trip we took in July didn't really happen). Paterno aside, I do think there's quite a bit of ambiguity in disseminating information that molestation may have occurred in any particular and the path of simply reporting it to be on the safe side is only safe if your suspicions are right. What if you were mistaken? You can't un-ring that bell, and someone's life is irreparably harmed in the process. If ever there were an issue that requires, pardoning the oxymoron, rapid deliberation and that ever-popular "awareness" as first-line tools, this is it.
 

Fred in Lynn

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To add yet another thing on Paterno, I have no idea what went through his mind. I would like to think that regardless of what I was involved with in my life at the time, the news he received from McQueary would have caused a wise-old-man response, where he told his underling that some things take precedent over others, and this is one of them. Then again, to repeat, he wasn't the only one who saw, heard, or suspected things yet didn't follow it all the way. I end up going back to the idea that not enough credit was given to Sandusky's skill at pedophilia, as gross as that sounds. It's certainly a combination of a sinister skill coupled with moral negligence/laziness, and I'm done. Ask questions about your kids.
 

soxfan121

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Fred in Lynn said:
This will be disjointed...

The idea that Sandusky as a pedophile, the decisions of Paterno et. al, and the sanctions are a single issue that must be discussed collectively is lazy and counterproductive. The world is complex, and those offering simple answers to overarching problems strikes a particular, off-pitch chord with me.
 
It's not an idea. It's a fact, proven in a court of law. 
 
This is why people have an issue with the defenders of Penn State and Paterno - because you and Kevin Horne and Geo44 all want to minimize, gloss over, stipulate, or otherwise dismiss the crime and "get on to what really matters", i.e. the legacy of a dead guy.
 
There is a simple answer here: child abuse is heinous and should never happen. Constantly minimizing this to defend the legacy of a dead guy strikes a GONG for me. As in, get off the stage until you can open your "disjointed thoughts" with a plain-English acknowledgment that children were raped - using your football program as bait.
 
It may get more complex from there, but you've yet to prove you're fit to participate in such an adult conversation. 
 

SoxinPA

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You're misreading his statement. He's not saying there's just this idea that Sandusky is a pedophile, he's saying the idea of combining those separate issues into one is a mistake.
 

Average Reds

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Told myself I wasn't going to, but I'm going to anyway.
 
Fred in Lynn said:
This will be disjointed...

The idea that Sandusky as a pedophile, the decisions of Paterno et. al, and the sanctions are a single issue that must be discussed collectively is lazy and counterproductive. The world is complex, and those offering simple answers to overarching problems strikes a particular, off-pitch chord with me.
 
 
This is really the portion of the post that instigated my reply, because the reality is that most of us here are big boys and girls and can handle nuance.  To place yourself majestically above the fray as if you are the only one capable of such insight would merely be insulting if you had not already provided evidence of your inability to have a serious adult conversation in this very thread. 
 
I mean, this sort of thing is rich when I think of the dialogue between the two of us just one page ago in this very thread.
 
 
Paterno is a red herring if the goal is to understand why this occurred. He's just one of countless people who have been fooled, confused, or acted negligently in response to the actions of a groomer-style pedophile. Sandusky wasn't able to get away with molesting and raping kids because he was bad at creating an alternate perception of himself. He was skilled at fooling adults, adults who didn't think such a thing could happen, and had access to countless troubled children from which he could screen out the most vulnerable. The culture problem wasn't unique to Penn State (this is the typical moral shortcut in this conversation). It was unique to any place which isn't designed to have children present that has children present, and unbeknownst to those present, has a pedophile present. This is a common theme, be it Boy Scouts, the Catholic Church, or a charity for troubled youth (it was a Second Mile problem that became a Penn State problem when children started coming onto their campus). Interestingly - and this has been the main practical takeaway for me as a parent - imprisoned groomer pedophiles that were interviewed by a researcher named Carla van Dam universally stated that the first and primary trait that eliminated a child from future consideration as a target was an inquisitive parent or guardian. Second Mile was for children with dysfunctional or non-existent parental situations, which explains it more and makes it more insidious and disturbing at the same time.
 
This is simplistic claptrap.
 
There are many reasons that Paterno acted as he did.  (Or did not act, as the case may be.)  And there's no question that history's initial (and very harsh) judgment of Paterno will be modified.  But to pretend that Paterno was merely one of many who were duped by the canny pedophile is simply laughable.
 
This doesn't mean that there isn't more than a small grain of truth to it.  We know that Sandusky was an exceptionally cagey operator who understood how to manipulate not only his prey, but those around him who enabled his behavior.  But that should have come to a screaming halt after the 1998 investigation, which was known to the three amigos (Schultz, Curley and Spanier) and almost certainly to Paterno himself. 
 
We know this because the case was investigated not by the State College police but by the PSU police.  And Paterno was legendary for having the PSU police department wired - he was informed about anything that concerned his team immediately and all information flowed through him. 
 
Do I have the hard documentation to prove this?  No.  But you really have to suspend disbelief to think that Paterno was unaware of the 1998 investigation.  And if Paterno has knowledge of the 1998 investigation, his actions in 2001 - doing the bare minimum required by law and then washing his hands of it - are simply indefensible. 
 
I suspect we will learn if he did or did not have this knowledge when Spanier, Curley and Schultz go to trial.  Because as I mentioned, those three can't claim ignorance - the PSU police department reported in through Gary Schultz.  This makes their failure to report the second incident to the proper authorities an unforgivable offense.  But instead of reporting it, they set up a legalistic fallback plan to portray Sanudsky as a former employee over whom they had little control. 
 
This plan sat on the shelf for more than a decade and was rolled out when the scandal broke in 2011.  It fooled no one and they are getting precisely what they deserve for their shameful inaction.
 
 
Sanctions: Playing football is so utterly less important than concern over raped children that it defies description. Alas, it's also utterly beside the point. Just stop doing it. The NCAA didn't acquiesce in the sanctions because they promised a dying friend. They backed off nearly in total because they were in foreign territory from the start. Despite a common belief, those who feel this way don't like to see children raped. Everything for a purpose. The NCAA to oversee competition of collegiate athletics, the legal system to enforce criminal acts. And please no more of the IC bullshit. Administrative controls like ICs are supplemental enforcement tools; no efficiently run enforcement body would ever use administrative controls alone to administer penalties, and I should know because I work for one and do this as part of my job. You need substantive evidence of violations of rules. The admin control violations become icing on the cake. Nobody eats icing alone. The NCAA never had a case, and they let the horror of the rape and molestation cloud their judgment. (I'll more or less skip the logic in most any sanctions the NCAA has issued over the years, as the primary recipients of their justice have been innocent parties.)
 
The NCAA's role in this stinks to high heaven.  It's clear from their actions that they were less concerned with protecting anyone and more concerned with creating the appearance of taking strong action to prove their moral outrage.  So we're more or less in agreement.
 
Where I disagree is with your assertion that the NCAA had no jurisdiction to do anything and that the "IC" clause is merely an administrative tool and therefore "bullshit."  I mean, that's your assertion.  Nothing more, nothing less.  And for someone who claims to hate analysis that is "lazy and counterproductive," this sure is lazy and counterproductive.
 
 
As a footnote on Paterno, I could really care less primarily because I don't know him. Taking away or restoring wins are both equal folly (I tried this with my kids when they got into trouble, I forming them that the beach trip we took in July didn't really happen). Paterno aside, I do think there's quite a bit of ambiguity in disseminating information that molestation may have occurred in any particular and the path of simply reporting it to be on the safe side is only safe if your suspicions are right. What if you were mistaken? You can't un-ring that bell, and someone's life is irreparably harmed in the process. If ever there were an issue that requires, pardoning the oxymoron, rapid deliberation and that ever-popular "awareness" as first-line tools, this is it.
 
I have two reactions to this.
 
The first is to point out that this rationalization only comes into play if you believe that 2001 was the first time that Paterno had ever heard of an allegation of molestation against Sandusky.  You clearly believe this.  (Or that we do not have enough evidence to conclude otherwise.)  I do not, for the reasons I've already outlined.
 
But the bigger issue is that the laws on the books in 2001 don't allow for this sort of equivocation.  Administrators like Spanier, Curley, Schultz and Paterno aren't allowed to worry about what will happen to Sandusky.  Their job is to follow the law and file a report.  By not doing so, they enabled a predator to continue to roam free for the better part of a decade.  So forgive me if I find your concerns about how "you can't un-ring that bell" to be hollow. 
 

Fred in Lynn

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Average Reds said:
This is really the portion of the post that instigated my reply, because the reality is that most of us here are big boys and girls and can handle nuance.  To place yourself majestically above the fray as if you are the only one capable of such insight would merely be insulting if you had not already provided evidence of your inability to have a serious adult conversation in this very thread.
What's the serious adult conversation I'm unable to have? If you have a problem with what I write, then I'm okay with that. I'm not sure why you're making it personal.

I was replying to BSF, particularly the statement that the sanctions were the least important part of the conversation. Perhaps, but I took that to mean that complaints about the sanctions were unwarranted. I didn't read the posting about which he was commenting so I could have taken it out of context. I don't disagree with the other things he wrote (or even that it's the least important of the three; that doesn't make it unimportant or unworthy of discussion).
 
 
There are many reasons that Paterno acted as he did.  (Or did not act, as the case may be.)  And there's no question that history's initial (and very harsh) judgment of Paterno will be modified.  But to pretend that Paterno was merely one of many who were duped by the canny pedophile is simply laughable.
Or one of many who acted negligently in response to the canny pedophile. That's what I wrote - acted negligently. I would have written that he acted criminally, but he wasn't charged with a crime.
 
That doesn't mean that there isn't more than a small grain of truth to the possibility [that he was duped, in part].  We know that Sandusky was an exceptionally cagey operator who understood how to manipulate not only his prey, but those around him who enabled his behavior.  But that should have come to a screaming halt after the 1998 investigation, which was known to the three amigos (Schultz, Curley and Spanier) and almost certainly to Paterno himself. 
 
We know this because the case was investigated not by the State College police but by the PSU police.  And Paterno was legendary for having the PSU police department wired - he was informed about anything that concerned his team immediately and all information flowed through him. 
 
Do I have the hard documentation to prove this?  No.  But you really have to suspend disbelief to think that Paterno was unaware of the 1998 investigation.  And if Paterno has knowledge of the 1998 investigation, his actions in 2001 - doing the bare minimum required by law and then washing his hands of it - are simply indefensible.
They all knew about the 1998 investigation in 2001. Paterno testified of knowing this. Everyone knew. Gricar declined to file charges citing lack of evidence that a crime had been committed. It's in the AG fact-finding report. I don't think your view is the only possibility. The 2001 report by McQueary could have served to confuse matters. Rather than no previous information, they knew the police investigated the 1998 report (the one where he made the "I wish I were dead" statement) and had cleared Sandusky. The child himself in 1998 stated to police that nothing inappropriate happened. Sandusky was a known goof-ball, always screwing around. At the end of the day, such a scenario would be a moral dilemma that has a person either potentially ruining an adult's life or allowing a child to continue to be molested. It's an unpalatable situation, but we all know which one a person has to choose. They'll have to live with their choices.
 
I suspect we will learn if he did or did not have this knowledge when Spanier, Curley and Schultz go to trial.  Because as I mentioned, those three can't claim ignorance - the PSU police department reported in through Gary Schultz.  This makes their failure to report the second incident to the proper authorities an unforgivable offense.  But instead of reporting it, they set up a legalistic fallback plan to portray Sanudsky as a former employee over whom they had little control. This plan sat on the shelf for more than a decade and was rolled out when the scandal broke in 2011.  It fooled no one and they are getting precisely what they deserve for their shameful inaction.
The legal system is the proper forum to settle criminal matters, so let it fly.
 
...I disagree...with your assertion that the NCAA had no jurisdiction to do anything and that the "IC" clause is merely an administrative tool and therefore "bullshit."  I mean, that's your assertion.  Nothing more, nothing less.  And for someone who claims to hate analysis that is "lazy and counterproductive," this sure is lazy and counterproductive.
Administrative tools as a stand-alone enforcement mechanism make for a weak case. The NCAA didn't back off entirely from one of the harshest sets of sanctions ever because they had a preponderance of evidence.
 
I have two reactions to this.
 
The first is to point out that this rationalization only comes into play if you believe that 2001 was the first time that Paterno had ever heard of an allegation of molestation against Sandusky.  You clearly believe this.  (Or that we do not have enough evidence to conclude otherwise.)  I do not, for the reasons I've already outlined.
 
But the bigger issue is that the laws on the books in 2001 don't allow for this sort of equivocation.  Administrators like Spanier, Curley, Schultz and Paterno aren't allowed to worry about what will happen to Sandusky.  Their job is to follow the law and file a report.  By not doing so, they enabled a predator to continue to roam free for the better part of a decade.  So forgive me if I find your concerns about how "you can't un-ring that bell" to be hollow.
What you bolded I meant in terms of what a person might have to consider if they suspected someone of molesting a child, not what the people involved in this case may have encountered (note the "Paterno aside" beginning just before the text you bolded). The degree to which we would rush forward would depend a great deal on the circumstances of what we saw, how much we trusted the person, etc.

Anywho, I think only Spanier and maybe Curley were required by Commonwealth law to report allegations of child abuse, due to their respective degrees. The law has been broadened somewhat, but I don't think Schultz and I know Paterno wasn't required by law to do so. Just telling you what I know, not making an argument.
 

WayBackVazquez

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Fred in Lynn said:
 Administrative tools as a stand-alone enforcement mechanism make for a weak case. The NCAA didn't back off entirely from one of the harshest sets of sanctions ever because they had a preponderance of evidence.
 
I'm not exactly sure what you're trying to say here, but it sounds like you're suggesting that because the NCAA lifted the sanctions as part of the settlement it means they couldn't prove they had the right to impose them. First, the NCAA didn't have to prove that; the burden was on the state. But more importantly, you seem to be under the impression that a settlement implies an admission of wrongdoing. I'm pretty certain the settlement included no such admission. Defendants settle cases all the time after conducting a thorough cost-benefit analysis, and those costs include not only just a pure financial cost of litigation (which in this case would be very significant), but also the softer costs of putting witnesses through the hassle of depositions, trial prep, etc, as well as the media distraction and public relations hassles. I have been instructed to settle numerous cases where we have felt that we had a better than 50% chance of winning. That's litigation.
 

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WayBackVazquez said:
 
I'm not exactly sure what you're trying to say here, but it sounds like you're suggesting that because the NCAA lifted the sanctions as part of the settlement it means they couldn't prove they had the right to impose them. First, the NCAA didn't have to prove that; the burden was on the state. But more importantly, you seem to be under the impression that a settlement implies an admission of wrongdoing. I'm pretty certain the settlement included no such admission. Defendants settle cases all the time after conducting a thorough cost-benefit analysis, and those costs include not only just a pure financial cost of litigation (which in this case would be very significant), but also the softer costs of putting witnesses through the hassle of depositions, trial prep, etc, as well as the media distraction and public relations hassles. I have been instructed to settle numerous cases where we have felt that we had a better than 50% chance of winning. That's litigation.
I'm trying to say that administrative tools as a stand-alone enforcement mechanism make for a weak case. Do you disagree?
 

WayBackVazquez

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Fred in Lynn said:
I'm trying to say that administrative tools as a stand-alone enforcement mechanism make for a weak case. Do you disagree?
That's barely even English. A weak "what" case? Do you even know what the claims at issue were?
 

LeftyTG

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for what it is worth, I'm an attorney who handles administrative cases involving child abuse and neglect.  I've read the exchange about "administrative tools" about ten times and I have no idea what you are saying. 
 

Fred in Lynn

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Why do you think the NCAA backed off and settled the Corman case? Do you think the judge's determination that the case would not only go forward to determine the fate of the $60M, but also the legality of the sanctions had anything to do with it? Why would the NCAA back off its historic sanctions? Because a de facto defense of victims of child abuse was tired and old? Because they were concerned about legal fees and court costs that might go over 50%?
 

Fred in Lynn

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LeftyTG said:
for what it is worth, I'm an attorney who handles administrative cases involving child abuse and neglect.  I've read the exchange about "administrative tools" about ten times and I have no idea what you are saying. 
What evidence do you find is used to establish that abuse has occurred? Do you just go into court and say "these are bad people who have abused children?"
 

WayBackVazquez

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Fred in Lynn said:
Why do you think the NCAA backed off and settled the Corman case? Do you think the judge's determination that the case would not only go forward to determine the fate of the $60M, but also the legality of the sanctions had anything to do with it? Why would the NCAA back off its historic sanctions? Because a de facto defense of victims of child abuse was tired and old? Because they were concerned about legal fees and court costs that might go over 50%?
 
Okay, so my impression was correct. You're interpreting a settlement as an admission of wrongdoing or an acknowledgement that the NCAA would have lost in court. You should just take that kind of idiocy over to Onward State or Sons of Sandusky where I'm sure it will find an appreciative audience. But there are objective people here, including those who do this for a living that know better.
 

WayBackVazquez

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You are a moron.
 
WayBackVazquez said:
 
I'm not exactly sure what you're trying to say here, but it sounds like you're suggesting that because the NCAA lifted the sanctions as part of the settlement it means they couldn't prove they had the right to impose them. First, the NCAA didn't have to prove that; the burden was on the state. But more importantly, you seem to be under the impression that a settlement implies an admission of wrongdoing. I'm pretty certain the settlement included no such admission. Defendants settle cases all the time after conducting a thorough cost-benefit analysis, and those costs include not only just a pure financial cost of litigation (which in this case would be very significant), but also the softer costs of putting witnesses through the hassle of depositions, trial prep, etc, as well as the media distraction and public relations hassles. I have been instructed to settle numerous cases where we have felt that we had a better than 50% chance of winning. That's litigation.
 

Fred in Lynn

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Why don't you just use your professional or personal experience to answer these questions, discount them on a technical basis, etc.? Nothing is stopping you from qualifying your responses with the fact that the case has been settled.
 

LeftyTG

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Fred in Lynn said:
What evidence do you find is used to establish that abuse has occurred? Do you just go into court and say "these are bad people who have abused children?"
Of course not.  I use exactly the evidence one would expect - interviews, physical evidence, etc.
 
l'm not looking to get drawn into something here.  You said, "administrative tools as a stand-alone enforcement mechanism make for a weak case". WBV indicated that was barely english and you both seemed stuck on the point.  I just chimed in to say that I work admin cases, and I don't understand what that means either.  Maybe I'm just slow, that's certainly a possibility.  But it would be helpful if you could explain what you mean by that phrase, instead of just repeating it. 
 

Fred in Lynn

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I was trying to establish that the strength of a legal case is supported by evidence presented in the findings of fact. Building a case around only a broadly worded bylaw such as lack of institutional control as the NCAA did seemed weak (rendered moot at the time when PSU signed the CD), as opposed to applied in addition to violation of competitive rules, e.g., payments to players, etc. What has happened since - backing off of the sanctions, challenge to the destination of the financial penalties in court, and the judge's unilateral decision to revisit the merits of the sanctions just before the recent settlement - support the notion that the NCAA overreached, and would have been better off setting a lower bar (such as merely seeking penalties in line with the evidence they had).
 

WayBackVazquez

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Fred in Lynn said:
Why don't you just use your professional or personal experience to answer these questions, discount them on a technical basis, etc.? Nothing is stopping you from qualifying your responses with the fact that the case has been settled.
 
I don't know how repeatedly, explicitly, or monosyllabically I need to answer them to satisfy you. I believe, based on my personal and professional experience, that the NCAA and its attorneys engaged in a thorough settlement analysis when approached with an offer by the plaintiffs in December. This analysis would have included a settlement analysis memo or three from the NCAA's law firm, and would have included an estimate of costs of litigation going forward, which, based on my personal and professional experience and knowledge of the NCAA's principal law firm (Latham & Watkins), would have pushed deep into seven figures, and quite possibly eight figures, and would have subjected its witnesses to substantial prep and examination time. Ultimately, the NCAA decided the offer presented by plaintiffs was preferable to continuing to fight the battle on this front while at the same time litigating in other fora. What my personal and professional experience does not lead me to believe is that the NCAA settled because "administrative tools as a stand-alone enforcement mechanism make for a weak case."
 
What the NCAA gave up was some wins in a record book. Do you not get that they--like everybody else in the world not associated with PSU--do not really care about that?* PSU still has to kick in $60 million for child abuse education and prevention; PSU publicly acknowledges the NCAA acted in good faith; PSU was required to enter into a double-secret-probation agreement with babysitting from George Mitchell; and the NCAA retains the right to defend the Consent Decree in the Paterno case. It's a settlement. A pretty good one for the NCAA from where I stand.
 
*Seriously, nobody fucking cares. Give JoePa 100 more wins for good measure. It really doesn't matter. And nobody likes the NCAA, either. That doesn't mean Corman won this lawsuit.
 

sfip

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Another open letter to Olbermann. I did not post this for the questions to him about, "What have you done for abused children", but it has more points on what has been done for the community including abused children.
 

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sfip said:
Barron works for the Board of Trustees. The BoT hired Freeh to write the report, and they're the same people who fired Paterno. I have serious doubts they'll let him report an honest and genuine review, as much as I'd love to believe he will, but I'll wait and hear what he says.
 
Here's a clip of an interview with Bob Costas, who did a 180 after he reviewed the report. I don't know when this interview aired, but it was posted to YouTube in March 2013. I wish more people would listen to it and keep an open mind.
 
<Costas clip>
 
I can happily say I was wrong. (AP article)
 
 
Penn State President: Freeh Acted Like Prosecutor
.
.
.
 
"I have to say, I'm not a fan of the report," Barron said during a half-hour interview in his office in Old Main, the school's administrative headquarters. "There's no doubt in my mind, Freeh steered everything as if he were a prosecutor trying to convince a court to take the case."
 

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PA State Rep. Corman makes NCAA documents available to the public.
 
"The documents released include depositions from 16 people, ranging from NCAA Executive Director Mark Emmert to Corman to former Penn State President Rodney Erickson.  There are also numerous exhibits - dozens for each of the 16 people - that include emails and communications between NCAA and Penn State officials.
 
"Corman said he released the documents so the public could reach their own conclusions about how the NCAA went about imposing the unprecedented sanctions."
 
The documents can be found here.
 

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And that was a much better response than Kevin Horne's, who couldn't resist the urge to get down on Keith Olbermann's level, which distracted me from some of the more valid points that he was making. The bottom line is that nobody can change what happened but there are plenty of people who can impact what will happen in the future. That's the kind of response most impartial observers wanted to hear, not the "poor Joe Paterno" sob fest. Football sanctions were literally the least important part of this story.
 
From today's Philly Inquirer.
 

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Judge Orders Freeh's Law Firm to Turn Over Documents to Paterno Estate
 
A judge has ruled that Louis Freeh's law firm must turn confidential documents to the estate of former Penn State head football coach Joe Paterno.
 
Attorneys for the Paterno estate have been fighting tooth-and-nail for months to subpoena the Pepper Hamilton law firm for an undisclosed number of documents gathered during Freeh's investigation into the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal.
 
Pepper Hamilton (which acquired Freeh’s law firm through a merger in 2012) fought just as hard to keep those documents out of Centre County court, appealing several of Judge John Leete's decisions that overturned the firm's objections. But Leete refused to put the case on hold for those appeals, and now he's issued an order directing Pepper Hamiltion to turn over the documents within the next 30 days.
Leete's order is the latest twist in the legal fight between the Paterno estate and the National Collegiate Athletic Association.
 
The plaintiffs in the suit -- which includes the Paterno estate, former Penn State assistant football coaches Jay Paterno and William Kenney and former university trustee Al Clemens -- first filed their suit against the NCAA in May 2013. They argue that the NCAA overstepped its authority in the aftermath of the Sandusky child sex abuse scandal, ultimately decreasing the value of the Paterno estate and making it more difficult for Jay Paterno and Kenney to find work.
 
Pepper Hamilton is entangled in the case because it acquired the law firm of Freeh, Sporkin and Sullivan in 2012. Freeh and his team of investigators were hired by Penn State in 2011 to determine what actions or inactions allowed the Sandusky scandal to unfold. The Freeh Report was released in 2012, and ultimately formed the basis for the NCAA's punitive sanctions against Penn State.
 
 
As much as a part of me wants to move on, I really want to see how this turns out. Even though I don't hold Paterno blameless, I've explained before why I don't believe the Freeh Report.
 

soxhop411

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Child allegedly told Paterno of sex abuse in 1976, decades before official action


A new bombshell dropped in the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal Thursday.

It came in the form of a single line in a court order on a related insurance coverage case involving Penn State, and its full ramifications can't immediately be gauged.

But that line was eye-popping in itself.

The line in question states that one of Penn State's insurers has claimed "in 1976, a child allegedly reported to PSU's Head Coach Joseph Paterno that he (the child) was sexually molested by Sandusky."

The order also cites separate references in 1987 and 1988 in which unnamed assistant coaches witnessed inappropriate contact between Sandusky and unidentified children, and a 1988 case that was supposedly referred to Penn State's athletic director at the time.

All, the opinion states, are described in victims' depositions taken as part of the still-pending insurance case, but that, according a PennLive review of the case file, are apparently under seal.
http://www.pennlive.com/news/2016/05/court_filing_says_joe_paterno.html
 

soxhop411

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Oh… It gets worse…. Much worse..

Sandusky Case Bombshell: Did 6 Penn State Coaches Witness Abuse?
As many as six assistant coaches at Penn State witnessed "inappropriate behavior" between Jerry Sandusky and boys, stretching as far back as the 1970s, NBC News has learned.

It is unclear if any of the men reported what they saw to higher-ups at Penn State before the sex-abuse scandal erupted in 2011.

The information, which comes from court documents and multiple sources with direct knowledge of legal proceedings, raises new questions about how long the abuse went on, why no one stopped it and whether there could be even more victims than previously known.

Sandusky — who worked in the football program at Penn State under legendary head coach Joe Paterno for three decades — is serving 30 to 60 years in prison after being convicted of molesting 10 boys he met through a charity starting in 1994.

But sources told NBC News that one former Penn State assistant coach witnessed an incident in the late 1970s. Three other coaches — who have gone on to work in the NFL and at Division I colleges — allegedly saw inappropriate conduct between Sandusky and boys in the early and mid-1990s.

"You won't believe what I just saw," one of those three coaches blurted out after bursting into a room filled with Penn State football staff, according to sources who spoke to a person who was in that room.

A lawyer for one of the three '90s coaches denied his client had seen anything. A second coach declined to comment. A third could not be reached, and the name of the fourth was not disclosed to NBC News.

Bolstering the sources' account, Sandusky's adopted son, Matt, who says he also was molested, told NBC News that investigators informed him a football program employee witnessed what he believed to be a sex act between Matt and Sandusky in a locker room in the early 1990s.
In addition to the four assistants detailed by sources, court papers made public this week point to two more coaches who allegedly witnessed what was described as "inappropriate" or "sexual" contact between Sandusky and children in 1987 and 1988.

Those same documents also revealed that a child allegedly told Joe Paterno he was molested by Sandusky in 1976 — 25 years earlier than Paterno acknowledged hearing about Sandusky in a shower with a child.

Those papers are tied to a legal dispute between Penn State and an insurance company over who should pay the university's share of $60 million in settlements to 26 victims, and the court was not required to verify the allegations.

Asked about the four coaches detailed by NBC's sources, Penn State released a written statement.

"The university is facing and has faced a number of litigation matters and claims related to the Sandusky events. Allegations of various kinds have been made, and will likely continue to be made," it said.

"The university does not speculate publicly or hypothesize about individual allegations. These are sensitive matters, and we want to be respectful of the rights of all individuals involved. It would be inappropriate to do otherwise."

Sandusky, 72, recently petitioned for a new trial.