This post is amazing to me. So you really feel that USC shouldn't have been punished after Reggie Bush and Pete Carroll left? Do you really not understand the consequences of that and the incentives that are created? I suppose you feel the same way about economic sanctions against countries led by dictators?
Edit: I misread the original post. I don't mean to equate USC's recruiting violations with what's happening at PSU. But canceling games feels like inordinately punishing people that had nothing to do with the scandal. If PSU needs to make a statement this severe, it could be done just as easily next year. I have no problem shutting down the program for a couple of years if needed, but i don't think finishing out their schedule condones child rape to the general public.
Games being cancelled doesn't just happen, in fact the only sudden cancellation of a college game I can think of is when Marshall's entire team died in a plane crash. Also your cavelier attitude toward the amount it costs the community is sad. But regardless....
Seriously dude, we all get it. You are really, really, really, really, really, REALLY pissed off about this because you know moreso than anybody else in this thread that raping children is bad.
They aren't in any way related is the problem. Cancelling the games is a ridiculous and fake way of making people feel better about themselves. The way to say that this was terrible and that it should never happen again is for people to be prosecuted and sued civilly. Cancelling the game does nothing positive in any way, if anything they should play the game and PSU should donate their cut of the gate to a charity like the Heath Evans foundation or another similar foundation, that would have a positive effect. Cancelling the game just makes people feel self-satisfied.
I don't see why the football players should be prevented from playing the game they've been training for, regardless of the corruption of their trainers. Sandusky, Curley, Schultz, Spanier, Paterno, McQueary and possibly a few other Penn State administrators and staff are culpable (in descending order, as far as we know). The rioters last night are loathsome little pukes with as much moral sensibility as God gave an eggplant, but guilt is individual. I don't buy the notions of the collective guilt of an entire football program that are implicit in the calls for cancellation.
Considering that you think it would be pretty funny if another poster got raped, we might do better to move it to the sandbox.
If you think the MacKenzies are humorous, you're in a sad, desperate state and the prognosis is grim. Cut the lurker-bashing, which is a snide and unearned assertion of class privilege. If you don't like what they're saying, address their arguments directly, instead of pleading for them to be excluded from the discussion.
You're right. They're not comprable. They really are totally unrelated. It isn't easy to be rational after reading that Grand Jury report, but a rational response will ultimately be far more effective than a raw, immediate emotional one.
Why don't you stop equating the two hmm?
But the very point was that they were not addressing my arguments, directly or indirectly. Instead, each made the completely beside-the-point observation that USC had canceled no games. While I have my own opinion about the proper response of the university, and the wisdom of finishing the season schedule, I harbor no illusions that mine is the definitively correct solution. Arguments about whether retributive justice or deterrence should be the goal, and about the merits of group vs. Individual punishment, and/or whether effectiveness should be valued above "fairness" are legitimate ones, and ones that have occupied great minds for hundreds of years. If you think all Palestinians should not be punished by Israel for the actions of a few, or that The Gods shouldn't have punished everyone in Thebes, that's a legitimate point of view. My gripe is with the silly idea that game-day workers in Madison or Columbus are really being punished in any significant way by a potential decision by PSU (which, would not necessarily be a "punishment," anyway) to cancel the remainder of their games. It reeks to me of ex post justifications by those who want to see football games.
I think my point which you avoid completely by focusing on the minutiae of the example used (people who are effected by canceled games) is this:
Wait, so donating gate revenue avoids hardship on innocent people? Where do you think that money goes? How do you think it will be made up? If PSU donates the gate, the Athletic Department will lose millions of dollars that supports innocent members of, eg, the women's field hockey team. On the other hand, if the game goes forward, the university and/or the town will be forced to employ unprecedented additional security measures that will benefit the police officers getting paid overtime, but harm the taxpayers/tuition payers. None of these people were raping little boys at the athletic facilities. And the clubhouse workers at Fenway didn't lose every game in September. There is going to be fallout, and innocent people will be affected, no matter what happens. This kind of collateral damage just cannot be the driving force behind the university's actions right now.
My point is that the magnitude of a big time college football game is enormous. The economic impact spreads wide and deep. You don't just cancel three of them without causing giant economic waves, and affecting thousands of people. That isn't a silly idea, it's a reality.
Lurker-bashing is a long-standing and ignoble tradition around SoSH, and usually reflects the knee-jerk reaction of a member who gets pissed off because a lurker gets the better of him in an argument. It sucks. Drop it, now and forever.
I suggest you go back and read the thread with an eye toward sensitive issues rather than searching for opportunities to shove your version of PC-ness down my throat. I like you a lot IRL, but I'm not impressed by the height of your horse or the purple under your name. I've been around here at least as long as you have, and so if you have some other instances of the long-standing tradition of lurker bashing you'd like to attribute to me, please share. Otherwise, my comments mean what I say they mean.
You have once again tried to sidestep the main issue. What is the positive effect of cancelling the games?
I repeat: what privacy issues are present here that merit moving this discussion behind a firewall? You dodge questions with irritating regularity.
The reasons for canceling the games have been discussed in this thread, and you refuse to acknowledge them. I'm not sidestepping the main issue; you are unable to comprehend what that issue is. You seem unwilling to acknowledge any possible justification for the cancellation of games other than punishing the wicked. But nobody in this thread who has supported cancellation has asserted that the reason to do so would be to punish Sandusky, Paterno, or anyone else responsible for the heinous acts. Cancellation need not represent more than simply the acknowledgment that there are things that are much bigger than college football, and that the school recognizes this is one of those things. If a game is canceled because of a terrorist attack or because the President is murdered, the players and vendors are not being punished. Sometimes it is simply in bad taste to play a game. In my opinion this is one of those times. As I have already stated, it is reasonable to disagree about the right course of action here. The reason why I am focusing on the spurious excuse of the harm done to groundskeepers and hot dog vendors as OSU, is because I believe this is not something about which reasonable minds can legitimately disagree. If you don't think a statement needs to be made, if you don't think it's in poor taste to try to win a conference title when conference titles have been put above the safety and well-being of children, fine. But I seriously can't hear about the well-being of the bar wieners in Columbus.
Yeah, well, not for the first time, you're wrong. The lurker argued that action against the program was unwarranted when the offenders had already left the program. I pointed out that the consequences of such a policy would be predictable in their awfulness and that incentives would be for programs to be as dirty as they wanna be, and just fire away when the shit hits the fan. I then asked whether the lurker really believed that USC should not have been subjected to punishment because Reggie Bush and Pete Carroll were gone. His response was that USC never canceled any games. (and by the way, about an hour after the fact totally changed his response).
I think that making a statement for the sake of making a statement, and in so doing causing real damage to a great number of people is not reasonable. I didn't argue that cancellation had to be a punishment, but rather it had to serve a constructive purpose.
A note, you are combining at least 2 different people into one. You asked me about USC, and I didn't reply since my point was broader than simply punishment, and that if punishment was the goal cancelling games was a poor way to go about it. Manny ActaFool replied that USC hadn't cancelled games the statement that so infuriated you. I also responded to your statement that games get cancelled all the time since it was clearly false, and you threw a tantrum.
Yeah, I never said games get cancelled all the time. I said games get cancelled, and shit happens. The games getting cancelled and the shit happening were not referring to college football specifically, as I would think was pretty obvious from the reference to fried chicken and beer in the clubhouse. Just as obvious should have been that the two examples were of shit happening, not games getting cancelled. You see, if I had meant games get cancelled because of gifts from boosters or because of fried chicken eating, I would have used the plural pronoun "they," instead of the singular "it." Shit happens. It happens. Games get cancelled. They get cancelled. Get it now?
The whole idea that 'collateral damage' in order to protect/rehabilitate the football team's image is OK is what caused the problem in the first place. Costing a player the chance to impress NFL scouts isn't within a million miles of child rape, but it's the same principle. "Screw the young people, we have to take action to make ourselves look/feel better!"
If I'm not mistaken this would be PSU's last home game, right? So why not just play the game and get over with as soon as possible? That way the personnel gets paid, the players get to play, and the NCAA gets its money. There's plenty of time to punish the perpetrators after the game, and canceling it will not make one iota of a difference in that process
I believe he is a great writer and a very smart, thoughtful man.
Joe brought the "instant fury" on himself by declining to step down voluntarily when that would have been a selfless, healing act. In his mind, this was all about him, and in the minds of some of his defenders, "due process".
He brought instant fury on himself because he covered up child rape for a decade to protect his program, his job, and his friend. If he had stepped down, the fury wouldn't have gone away.
I agree. And furthermore, Paterno has done nothing to "earn" a stay of fury. The moment even the possibility of a child being harmed is being discussed (even if it was just rumor, even if he was highly skeptical or thought it was an exaggeration), anything less than doing everything possible to get to the bottom of it and see it end is negligence. Plain and simple. Especially for the top man. In any institution, but especially in a public institution devoted to any level of education. If he were the head of an academic department and he knew the same exact information, no one for a second would be saying he should be allowed to stay through the end of the year -- no matter how good a professor he was.
You're not giving Joe Pa every hypothetical benefit of the doubt that the author argues was fair in the circumstances. I am. And Joe Pa still falls short.
The hypothetical connection between Luna and Gricar is this: both busted heroin rings from NYC; both left suddenly and unexpectedly on a car ride; and in both cases, there is a pretty good reason to believe that they met up with someone. For instance, in Gricar's case, someone thought they saw him waiting for someone, and there were traces of cigarette smoke in his car. In Luna's case, he left suddently late at night, drove a good distance, used his EZ Pass on tolls, and took out cash.
Except common sense, of course.
I wonder if you would be saying this if someone found Mack Brown's kiddie dungeon in his basement...
This.
This story reminds me (on a grander scale of course) of the Duke lacrosse scandal of a few years ago in the sense that everyone seems to be in a rush to be judge, jury, and executioner without the full story. Keep in mind that no one has been convicted of any crime at this point but people want to abolish the entire football program or even the school. It certainly looks like there will be but all of the evidence isn't out there yet so I think its premature for everyone to pretend they know all of the facts in the case.
The grand jury testimony clearly states that Paterno admitted being told of an act "of a sexual nature." Anything less than getting to the absolute bottom of that is inexcusable for anyone even remotely connected with education. Taking it one up the chain may have been the end of his legal responsibility (I'm not really sure, in many public secondary schools at least the teachers are required to report it to an outside agency), but its not the end of his moral responsibility.
In terms of national coverage though the Duke lax case was a huge story and everyone convicted them before the evidence was made public. I know there were racial components of that case which made it even more divisive locally. In that case though the coach was fired and the season cancelled with what ended up being bogus charges. The team may have been a bunch of shitheads but they didn't deserve to have the entire program get dismantled. My only point was to say that it may be prudent to not rush to judgement. There will be plenty of time to determine guilt when more details of the case come out. I also don't think it would be fair to the players, who had nothing to do with the abuses, to cancel their season.
