Commonwealth of Pennsylvania vs. NCAA

Ed Hillel

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Dec 12, 2007
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So does Penn State get the death penalty?
I hope not. The athletes have basically nothing to do with it. Unfortunately, much of this is so long ago that justice will never be meted out. Had it been, Sandusky, Paterno, and at least a handful of others would have been in jail decades ago.
 

Drocca

darrell foster wallace
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Jul 21, 2005
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Imposing the death penalty is a deterrent, not a punishment for past behaviors. Since the only thing that matters to these coaches and universities is wins, you hit them there. The next time some pervert rapes a kid and the head coach knows about it? He won't alert the authorities because it's the right thing to do, because obviously if you can coach linebackers proper technique then that's more important, he will alert the authorities because he will be scared they will hurt the program resulting in less wins.
 

luckysox

Indiana Jones
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Apr 21, 2009
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Imposing the death penalty is a deterrent, not a punishment for past behaviors. Since the only thing that matters to these coaches and universities is wins, you hit them there. The next time some pervert rapes a kid and the head coach knows about it? He won't alert the authorities because it's the right thing to do, because obviously if you can coach linebackers proper technique then that's more important, he will alert the authorities because he will be scared they will hurt the program resulting in less wins.
Yep. Sorry, current players, you are the sacrifice for the sins of the fathers. This is so egregious, so disgusting. Paterno was as big, maybe a bigger, piece of shit than Sandusky.
 

terrynever

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This story is hitting close to home for me now. I was the Penn State student newspaper sports editor in 1971 and then the morning paper sports editor in town for five years. I remember taking a coaching course for easy credits in 1971 with Sandusky and Booker Brooks, a future assistant grid coach. Booker denied this latest news vehemently. It is unsettling to think Sandusky was already in predator mode and Joe knew about it then. Maybe that explains why Paterno and Sandusky didn't get along, even in those days. Joe had leverage on him. Jerry would openly trash Paterno to the defense. But Joe needed Sandusky because his senior defensive coaches (Jim O'Hora and JT White) retired in the mid-1970s. Sandusky was the only logical replacement. Joe needed him.

The toughest part of my job was dealing with Joe. He had total control and if I wrote something he didn't like, Joe would find out from one of his p.r. guys (he never read the local papers himself, he often noted). The thing is, Joe knew everything that was going on with the program in those days because he was in his prime and the program hadn't become a mega corporation at that point. I blamed his malfeasance from 1998 on to his creeping old age and the size of the program, which had become too large for one man to control. But there is no way to pass off this 1970s stuff on anything but Joe wanting to protect a coach he needed to take care of the defense.
 

BigMike

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Honestly I think anywhere Joe Pa is honored they need to add

Paterno is responsible for allowing the systematic rape and abuse of young boys for almost 30 years.

College football HOF, anyplace on Campus they honor him etc.
 

canderson

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Jul 16, 2005
39,447
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PSU's president blames the media.

"I want you to know I am appalled by the rumor, innuendo and rush to judgment that have accompanied the media stories surrounding these allegations," Barron, in a letter posted Sunday on Penn State's website, said. "All too often in our society, people are convicted in the court of public opinion, only to find a different outcome when all the facts are presented."

http://www.pennlive.com/news/2016/05/jerry_sandusky_eric_barron_let.html#incart_river_home_pop
 

wade boggs chicken dinner

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mauf

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Every college and university in America has been complicit in covering up rape much more recently than the 1970s. What's so unusual here isn't what happened; it's the complete refusal of a large segment of the PSU community to accept the moral reckoning that needs to take place.
 

berniecarbo1

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Oct 1, 2008
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Every college and university in America has been complicit in covering up rape much more recently than the 1970s. What's so unusual here isn't what happened; it's the complete refusal of a large segment of the PSU community to accept the moral reckoning that needs to take place.
In 2014 I went with a group of friends to the Pinstripe Bowl at Yankee Stadium. I was following BC but as you all know Penn State was the opponent. Great game and if BC had a kicker, they would have won that thing. Be that as it may, the game was a sell out ar close to it. 50,000 or so were at the game. 40,000 were PSU fans. The biggest cheer of the game was when Penn State won the game in OT. The second biggest cheer, and losing out only by a nose to the winning kick? The flash on the jumbo tron of Joe Pa when they were doing a montage of great moments in both teams' history. They showed Flutie's pass. David Gordon's kick at ND, A Luke blow up tackle etc. for BC as well as the PSU win over Miami in the Fiesta Bowl and a number of other great plays on the Penn State side as well. They then showed a picture of Joe, on the sidelines, in his typical garb we all remember.....and the place exploded, as if he had come back and was leading the Lions onto the field. To this day, Joe Paterno is a god in Happy Valley. Not even something like this can change that.
 

Humphrey

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Aug 3, 2010
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40 + years ago seems like it would have been real easy for Penn State to rid itself of the guy, why the heck didn't they? Both the options to just pass him along to some other unsuspecting school/community (like many of the priests were, sadly) or blackball him were much more in play than they are now.
 

terrynever

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40 + years ago seems like it would have been real easy for Penn State to rid itself of the guy, why the heck didn't they? Both the options to just pass him along to some other unsuspecting school/community (like many of the priests were, sadly) or blackball him were much more in play than they are now.
They were all in awe of the guy, from the President and BOT on down. And if something happened inside the program, it was handled inside the program. Those two unbeaten seasons in 1968-69 gave Paterno a lot of leverage. When Ernie McCoy left as AD and took the Miami job in 1970, Joe instantly became the most powerful man in the athletic department. McCoy was the last guy who could stand in the way of the young prince. Every AD after that was a figurehead, except for his friend Jim Tarman, whose job ostensibly was to protect Joe from himself. I suspect he was the "Jim" mentioned on the phone line with Joe by the 1971 accuser.
 

OCST

Sunny von Bulow
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They were all in awe of the guy, from the President and BOT on down. And if something happened inside the program, it was handled inside the program. Those two unbeaten seasons in 1968-69 gave Paterno a lot of leverage. When Ernie McCoy left as AD and took the Miami job in 1970, Joe instantly became the most powerful man in the athletic department. state of Pennsylvania. McCoy was the last guy who could stand in the way of the young prince. Every AD after that was a figurehead, except for his friend Jim Tarman, whose job ostensibly was to protect Joe from himself. I suspect he was the "Jim" mentioned on the phone line with Joe by the 1971 accuser.
FTFY
 

Humphrey

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If I wasn't clear, I meant Sandusky getting canned, not Paterno....Paterno ran everything, why did he think it was worth keeping Sandusky around when it could at any time blow up in his face? I guess the more time went by the more imperative it became to keep it all a secret.
 

berniecarbo1

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If I wasn't clear, I meant Sandusky getting canned, not Paterno....Paterno ran everything, why did he think it was worth keeping Sandusky around when it could at any time blow up in his face? I guess the more time went by the more imperative it became to keep it all a secret.
I think you may have answered your own question.
 

OCST

Sunny von Bulow
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Any idea that Paterno needed Sandusky around as a defensive coaching genius is lolz.

Peak Paterno was, obviously, as powerful a college coach as we've seen in our lifetimes. If he wanted a new defensive guru, he could have had his pick of any assistant college coach in the country, all of the college head coaches except for the top tier of DI programs (is the HC at, say, Marshall, going to turn down an offer to be Paterno's defensive right hand? No), and probably a bunch of NFL guys.

The hardcore Paterno apologists should be sent over a cliff in a bus.* I do know some people who have defended Paterno who I consider to be good people. I would have to think that they're reconsidering their defense of him.

*Bias alert: It's just reason #425356y5 why I hate PA and think it should be bombed flat. Bias entirely mine, YMMV.
 

The Napkin

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Court records were unsealed. State Penners still think we just don't know enough to put any blame on JoePa and hey, he won a lot of games so yay!

A man testified in court in 2014 that Penn State football coach Joe Paterno ignored his complaints of a sexual assault committed by assistant coach Jerry Sandusky in 1976 when the man was a 14-year-old boy, according to new court documents unsealed Tuesday in a Philadelphia court.

The victim, who was identified in court records as John Doe 150, said that while he was attending a football camp at Penn State, Sandusky touched him as he showered. Sandusky’s finger penetrated the boy’s rectum, Doe testified in court in 2014, and the victim asked to speak with Paterno about it. Doe testified that he specifically told Paterno that Sandusky had sexually assaulted him, and Paterno ignored it.

“Is it accurate that Coach Paterno quickly said to you, ‘I don’t want to hear about any of that kind of stuff, I have a football season to worry about?'” the man’s lawyer asked him in 2014.

“Specifically. Yes … I was shocked, disappointed, offended. I was insulted… I said, is that all you’re going to do? You’re not going to do anything else?”
Paterno, the man testified, just walked away.
 

fairlee76

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Oct 9, 2005
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People still defending him/PSU are flat-earthers.
As Wendell Pierce said of the insurance companies post-Katrina, "there is a special, special circle in hell for them."

This case continues to get more depressing. Hard to fathom given how awful it was to begin with.
 

terrynever

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"I have a football season to worry about."

That was Joe's standard response to any kind of distraction so it really rings true. He pictured himself as a walk-rounded man but he had tunnel vision when it came to his football program.
 

TheYaz67

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Yeah, they need to take that damn statue out of storage and melt it down now, so that it can never be restored to its former location outside the stadium....
 

mauf

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Our entire society swept child sex abuse under the rug for a long, long time. Sad to say, most men in Paterno's shoes in 1976 would have handled that allegation similarly.

I suppose this earlier allegation could make you view Paterno's later actions differently, but I already assumed he knew Sandusky was a pederast by the time the first police investigation took place in 1998.
 

wade boggs chicken dinner

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I am amazed that of all of the coaches who worked with Penn State - Tom Bradley, Schiano, Joe Sarra, Kevin O'Day are specifically mentioned but I'm sure there are dozens more - all of them just sit to the side saying that they didn't see anything. They don't defend Sandusky but none of them have the guts to come out and say what they knew.

For example, here is what Schiano said in 2011:

You worked for six years under Jerry Sandusky. Did you have any inkling of what was going on?

Schiano: Because of the situation being what it is, I'm not even going to get into it. I'm so far removed. Again, you don't need people making commentaries on things like this. It's just a sad thing.
 

JayMags71

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But, wait: it gets (unbelievably) worse!
Following the assault, Doe informed a female student working at the Nittany House that he had been sexually assaulted by Sandusky, only to be told he would likely be in trouble for sneaking out of the house if he went straight to the house director, Clifford Gordon. The student advised him to instead go to a female assistant working at the house, whose name was redacted in the document.

When Doe sought out the unnamed assistant, according to the deposition, Gordon was called in anyways. When Doe told the Gordon about the incident, the coordinator yelled at Doe for sneaking out and attempted to “poke holes” in his story.

Several hours later, with Doe still sitting in the chair facing the wall, Doe saw Sandusky and a man presumed to be athletic director Jim Tarman exit the premises. (Doe said he could not testify under oath that it was Tarman for sure, saying that he remembered the names “Harman” or “Carman” after the incident.) The pair likely entered the house through the back door, as Doe testified the men would have had to walk past him to get to the office had they entered through the main entrance.

While Sandusky and the other man left, Doe was informed by Gordon he would have to pen an apology letter to the pair for “telling lies,” and that his time at the Nittany House was likely coming to an end.
I'm sick to my stomach.
 

Rick Burlesons Yam Bag

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Yeah, they need to take that damn statue out of storage and melt it down now, so that it can never be restored to its former location outside the stadium....
Melt the statue down and recast it as a block with the Penn State logo and the words "integrity must always prevail."
 

wade boggs chicken dinner

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It's interesting that he started his letter with the Duke lacrosse case. There is one huge difference between the Duke case and Sandusky - in the Duke case, the only crime committed was the fabrication. In this case, Sandusky was charged with 52 instances of sexual abuse and found guilty of 45 of them from 1994 to 2009.

One can only imagine how many instances there were before 1994.

I'm with Jenkins on this. The coaching staff - never mind Paterno or the PSU administration - either had to know something or willfully shielded themselves from it. Sandusky himself admitted to showering with young boys and according to testimony, these acts occurred on multiple occasions at the football locker rooms.

I get where Jay is coming from but it's sad.