the Penn State scandal

[Earl]

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/723 ... penn-state

The Brutal Truth About Penn State

The problem can't be solved by prayer or piety â?? and it's far more widespread than we think

By Charles P. Pierce POSTED NOVEMBER 14, 2011





"But you, when you pray, go into your inner chamber and, locking the door, pray there in hiding to your Father â?¦"

â?? Matthew, Chapter 6

It was midway through the pregame prayer session that the gorge hit high tide. There is always something a little nauseating in large spectacles of conspicuous public piety, but watching everyone on the field take a knee before the Penn State-Nebraska game, and listening to the commentary about how devoutly everybody was praying for the victims at Penn State, was enough to get me reaching for a bucket and a Bible all at once. It was as though the players and coaches had devised some sort of new training regimen to get past the awful reality of what had happened. Prayer as a new form of two-a-days. Jesus is my strength coach. Contrition in the context of a football game seemed almost obscene in its obvious vanity.

So, when the feeling had subsided somewhat, I dropped by the sixth chapter of Matthew, and then I went on to the Teacher in Ecclesiastes, who warned his people:

For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil.

And I felt better, but not much. There is solace in Scripture, but there are also too many places where the guilty and the morally obtuse can hide.

The crimes at Penn State are about the raping of children. That is all they are about. The crimes at Penn State are about the raping of children by Jerry Sandusky, and the possibility that people lied to a grand jury about the raping of children by Jerry Sandusky, and the likelihood that most of the people who had the authority at Penn State to stop the raping of children by Jerry Sandusky proved themselves to have the moral backbone of ribbon worms.

It no longer matters if there continues to be a football program at Penn State. It no longer even matters if there continues to be a university there at all. All of these considerations are trivial by comparison to what went on in and around the Penn State football program.

(Those people who will pass this off as an overreaction would do well to remember that the Roman Catholic Church is reckoned to be a far more durable institution than even Penn State University is, and the Church has spent the past decade or so selling off its various franchise properties all over the world to pay off the tsunami of civil judgments resulting from the raping of children, a cascade that shows no signs of abating anytime soon.)

There will now be a decade or more of criminal trials, and perhaps a quarter-century or more of civil actions, as a result of what went on at Penn State. These things cannot be prayed away. Let us hear nothing about "closure" or about "moving on." And God help us, let us not hear a single mumbling word about how football can help the university "heal." (Lord, let the Alamo Bowl be an instrument of your peace.) This wound should be left open and gaping and raw until the very last of the children that Jerry Sandusky is accused of raping somehow gets whatever modicum of peace and retribution can possibly be granted to him. This wound should be left open and gaping and raw in the bright sunlight where everybody can see it, for years and years and years, until the raped children themselves decide that justice has been done. When they're done healing â?? if they're ever done healing â?? then they and their families can give Penn State permission to start.

If that blights Joe Paterno's declining years, that's too bad. If that takes a chunk out of the endowment, hold a damn bake sale. If that means that Penn State spends some time being known as the university where a child got raped, that's what happens when you're a university where a child got raped. Any sympathy for this institution went down the drain in the shower room in the Lasch Building. There's nothing that can happen to the university, or to the people sunk up to their eyeballs in this incredible moral quagmire, that's worse than what happened to the children who got raped at Penn State. Good Lord, people, get up off your knees and get over yourselves.

There is something to be said, however, for looking at how it happened. Which is not the same thing as trying to figure out how it "could" have happened. The wonder is that it doesn't happen more often.

(How many football coaches out there work with "at-risk" kids? How many shoes are there still to drop? Unfair? Ask one Bernard Law, once cardinal archbishop of Boston, if you can pry him out of his current position at the Basilica of Our Lady of the Clean Getaway in Rome.)

It happens because institutions lie. And today, our major institutions lie because of a culture in which loyalty to "the company," and protection of "the brand" â?? that noxious business-school shibboleth that turns employees into brainlocked elements of sales and marketing campaigns â?? trumps conventional morality, traditional ethics, civil liberties, and even adherence to the rule of law. It is better to protect "the brand" than it is to protect free speech, the right to privacy, or even to protect children.

If Mike McQueary had seen a child being raped in a boardroom or a storeroom, he wouldn't have been any more likely to have stopped it, or to have called the cops, than he was as a graduate assistant football coach at Penn State. With unemployment edging toward double digits, and only about 10 percent of the workforce unionized, every American who works for a major company knows the penalty for exercising his personal freedom, or his personal morality, at the expense of "the company." Independent thought is discouraged. Independent action is usually crushed. Nobody wants to damage the brand. Your supervisor might find out, and his primary loyalty is to the company. Which is why he got promoted to be your supervisor in the first place.

Further, the institutions of college athletics exist primarily as unreality fueled by deceit. The unreality is that universities should be in the business of providing large spectacles of mass entertainment. The fundamental absurdity of that notion requires the promulgation of the various deceits necessary to carry it out. The "student-athlete," just to name one. "Amateurism," just to name another. Of course, people involved in Penn State football allegedly deceived people when it became plain that children had been raped within the program's facilities by one of the program's employees. It was simply one more lie to maintain the preposterously lucrative unreality of college athletics. And to think, the players at Ohio State became pariahs because of tattoos and memorabilia sales.

By an order of magnitude, the Penn State child-raping scandal is miles beyond anything that ever happened with the Ohio State football team over the past five years, miles beyond anything that happened with the SMU football team in the 1980s, and miles beyond anything that happened with the point-shaving scandals in college basketball. It is not a failure of our institutions so much as it is a window into what they have become â?? soulless, profit-driven monsters, Darwinian predators with precious little humanity left in them. Penn State is only the most recent example. Too much of this country is too big to fail.

On July 20, Enda Kenny, Taoiseach of the Republic of Ireland, rose before the Dail Eireann and excoriated the Vatican and the institutional Roman Catholic Church for the horrors inflicted on generations of Irish children, horrors that they both committed and condoned. This was an act of considerable political courage for Kenny. The influence of the Church had been a deadweight on Irish politics and the secular government since the country first gained its freedom in the 1920s.

Nevertheless, Kenny said:

"Thankfully â?¦ this is not Rome. Nor is it industrial school or Magdalene Ireland, where the swish of a soutane smothered conscience and humanity and the swing of a thurible ruled the Irish-Catholic world. This is the Republic of Ireland, 2011. A Republic of laws â?¦ of rights and responsibilities â?¦ of proper civic order â?¦ where the delinquency and arrogance of a particular kind of 'morality' will no longer be tolerated or ignored â?¦ as taoiseach, I am making it absolutely clear that, when it comes to the protection of the children of this state, the standards of conduct which the Church deems appropriate to itself cannot, and will not, be applied to the workings of democracy and civil society in this Republic."

He did not drop to his knees. He did not ask for a moment of silence. He did not seek "closure" but, rather, he demanded the hard and bitter truth of it, and he demanded it from men steeped in deceit from their purple carpet slippers to their red beanies. Enda Kenny did not look to bind up wounds before they could be cleansed. And that is the only way to talk about what happens after the raping of children.

Charles P. Pierce is a staff writer for Grantland and the author of Idiot America. He writes regularly for Esquire , is the lead writer for Esquire.com's Politics blog, and is a frequent guest on NPR.

[Fat Man]

OH WOW!

Hey Earl!

I just posted the identical article on the topic of Tim Tebow, because, it was in a way, related to that topic, since it also involves prayer in sports.

So, one of us is a copy cat.

I guess it must be me, because you posted at 11:58 PM according to my local time, and I posted mine at 12:59 AM my local time, about 1 hour and 1 minute after your post.

Of course, while I was posting mine, I didn't know you were posting yours at the same time.

Oh well.

Strange coincidence! Eh?

[Earl]

http://espn.go.com/college-football/sto ... -treatment

Updated: November 23, 2011, 10:26 AM ET

Report: Treatment of players questioned






CHARLESTON, S.C. -- A former Penn State official charged with enforcing discipline at the school said Tuesday that Joe Paterno's players got in trouble more often than other students, and got special treatment compared to non-athletes.

Vicky Triponey, who resigned her post as the university's standards and conduct officer in 2007, confirmed that she sent a 2005 email to then-president Graham Spanier and others in which she expressed her concerns about how Penn State handled discipline cases involving football players. The Wall Street Journal published excerpts from the email on Tuesday.

Paterno "is insistent he knows best how to discipline his players ... and their status as a student when they commit violations of our standards should NOT be our concern ... and I think he was saying we should treat football players different from other students in this regard," Triponey wrote in the Aug. 12, 2005, email.

"Coach Paterno would rather we NOT inform the public when a football player is found responsible for committing a serious violation of the law and/or our student code," she wrote, "despite any moral or legal obligation to do so."

The email surfaced as Penn State is reeling in the aftermath of criminal charges filed this month against Jerry Sandusky, a former assistant football coach accused of molesting eight boys, some on campus, over a 15-year period.

The scandal has resulted in the ousting of Spanier and Paterno, whom trustees felt did not do enough about one accusation involving a 10-year-old boy. Athletic director Tim Curley has been placed on administrative leave, and vice president Gary Schultz, who was in charge of the university's police department, has stepped down.

Schultz and Curley are charged with lying to a grand jury and failing to report to police, and Sandusky is charged with 40 counts of child sex abuse. All maintain their innocence.

Interviewed by The Associated Press at her Charleston home, Triponey said that throughout her tenure at Penn State there was "an ongoing debate" over who should deal with misconduct by football players.

Her 2005 email was sent the day after a heated meeting in which Paterno complained about the discipline process.

"He knew better than anyone how to discipline them. We wanted to show him the (disciplinary) data and suggest that 'Well, whatever it is we're doing, it's not working.' They're getting into trouble at a greater rate than they should. We wanted to find a way to address that," she said. "The meeting ended up being a one-sided conversation with the coach talking about his frustrations, his anger, his not being happy with the way we were running the system."

Penn State assistant vice president Joe Puzycki, who is responsible for overseeing student discipline, said Paterno did not have the authority to change his office's decisions when football players were sanctioned.

"We adjudicated athlete cases the same as we did any other student," though Paterno was vocal in sharing his opinions, Puzycki said Tuesday night in an email to The Associated Press.

The interactions outlined by Puzycki offer a contrasting view to comments made by Triponey, to whom Puzycki once reported.

"In some cases where Mr. Paterno disagreed with our handling of a situation he would openly articulate that position to me. This position in itself, though, never changed my or my staff's decisions," Puzycki told the AP. "Mr. Paterno in his position as a coach simply did not have the authority to change any of our decisions. That could only be done through formal student appeal or administrative review."

Paterno's lawyer, Wick Sollers, defended his client in a written statement.

"The allegations that have been described are out of context, misleading and filled with inaccuracies," he said. "In the current atmosphere, it is not surprising that every aspect of Penn State University's academics and athletics will be reviewed."

Penn State football has long been regarded as an example of a well-run program that graduates an above-average percentage of its players while operating within the rules and winning on the field. But the Sandusky case has forced a re-examination of the Nittany Lions and Paterno's 46-year tenure as coach, highlighted by two national championships.

A review of Associated Press stories over the last decade shows at least 35 Penn State players faced internal discipline or criminal charges between 2003-09 for a variety of offenses ranging from assault to drunk driving to marijuana possession. One player was acquitted of sexual assault.

Penn State has hired former FBI director Louis Freeh to lead an internal investigation of the Sandusky case, while the NCAA announced last Friday it was launching its own inquiry focused on Sandusky and whether Penn State exercised "institutional control" in handling accusations against him. Asked Tuesday whether other disciplinary cases at Penn State would be reviewed, an NCAA spokeswoman said she had nothing else to say at this time.

Triponey, who arrived at Penn State in 2003 -- four years after Sandusky retired and a year following an alleged assault by him in the football showers -- told ESPN's "Outside the Lines" she was not involved in any conversations with or about the former assistant coach.

She told the AP that pressure to go easier on football players increased as her tenure went on.

"Many times, (because of) the pressure placed on us by the president or the football coach, eventually, we would end up doing sanctions that were not what another student would've got," she said. "It was much less. It was adapted to try to accommodate the concerns of the coach."

Triponey said she's a longtime football fan and worked at universities for most of her career. She said the relationship with coaches was different at other places, citing Randy Edsall, whom she worked with at Connecticut, as an example of someone who ran an open program and helped his players learn from mistakes. Edsall is now head coach at Maryland.

"He would invite us to go on road trips to the away games so we could see inside the program," Triponey said. "But there was a wall at Penn State where we never had that kind of relationship."

Curley and Spanier did not reply to messages for comment. A representative for Curley told the Journal that "he tried to make sure all student athletes were treated equally with regard to the code of conduct."


Copyright 2011 by The Associated Press

[Fat Man]

Yeah!

Penn State, the gift that keeps on giving!

Uh huh! Real sweet!!!

[Earl]

[Earl]

[Fat Man]

Yeah! Their football team should be renamed The Penn State Pedos!



And the Pedo Bear should be their new mascot!

Uh huh! Way to go Penn State!

Worthless pieces of shit!

Yeah! They all are a disgrace to humanity!

Just like Fit Shit!!!

Yeah! Right back at ya!!!

[Earl]

Yeah! Their football team should be renamed The Penn State Pedos!

And the Pedo Bear should be their new mascot!

Worthless pieces of shit!

Yeah! They all are a disgrace to humanity!

Seriously, I don't believe in painting all of the Penn State students with the same broad brush. None of the football players had anything to do with this scandal. Who knows, perhaps one or more of them suffered abuse of some kind when they were kids. I'm sure some, if not many, of the students (including football players) are more appalled at what (allegedly) happened to those young boys than they are over having a losing season, although other students undoubtedly have a distorted ordering of priorities. No one in this forum speaks for everyone else, and all the members are free to express themselves (within reason).

Just like Fit Shit!!!

Yeah! Right back at ya!!!

But Fit Man isn't here, Fat Man. He agreed to leave you alone; and according to his younger brother, he's not coming to this website anymore, anyway. So, let's just let sleeping dogs lie. Peace.

[Earl]

On the other hand, sometimes I do feel cynical about many of the Penn State football fans. When the identity of "victim 1" was divulged in his hometown where he was attending high school (until bullying classmates blaming him for Paterno's firing forced him to drop out), a grandmother of one of the Penn State players walked up to the victim's mother and told her, "Now our football team is going to lose, and it's all your son's fault." By the grandmother's "thinking," no, it wasn't Sandusky's fault; it was the fault of the victim. As usual, blame the victim.

[Earl]

The editorial cartoons are great ...

[HugeFanOfBadReligion]

Legendary Penn State coach Paterno dies
Reputation tarnished by child sex abuse scandal

Joe Paterno, the longtime Penn State coach who won more games than anyone in major college football but was fired amid a child sex abuse scandal that scarred his reputation for winning with integrity, died Sunday.

He was 85.

His family released a statement Sunday morning to announce his death: "His loss leaves a void in our lives that will never be filled."

"He died as he lived," the statement said. "He fought hard until the end, stayed positive, thought only of others and constantly reminded everyone of how blessed his life had been. His ambitions were far reaching, but he never believed he had to leave this Happy Valley to achieve them. He was a man devoted to his family, his university, his players and his community."

Paterno built his program on the credo "Success with Honor," and he found both. The man known as "JoePa" won 409 games and took the Nittany Lions to 37 bowl games and two national championships.

More than 250 of the players he coached went on to the NFL.

"He will go down as the greatest football coach in the history of the game," Ohio State coach Urban Meyer said after his former team, the Florida Gators, beat Penn State 37-24 in the 2011 Outback Bowl.

Paterno's son Scott said on Nov. 18 that his father was being treated for lung cancer. The cancer was diagnosed during a follow-up visit for a bronchial illness. A few weeks after that revelation, Paterno also broke his pelvis after a fall but did not need surgery.

Paterno had been in the hospital since Jan. 13 for observation for what his family had called minor complications from his cancer treatments. Not long before that, he conducted his only interview since losing his job, with The Washington Post. Paterno was described as frail then, speaking mostly in a whisper and wearing a wig. The second half of the two-day interview was conducted at his bedside.

"As the last 61 years have shown, Joe made an incredible impact," said the statement from the family. "That impact has been felt and appreciated by our family in the form of thousands of letters and well wishes along with countless acts of kindness from people whose lives he touched. It is evident also in the thousands of successful student athletes who have gone on to multiply that impact as they spread out across the country."

The final days of Paterno's Penn State career were easily the toughest in his 61 years with the university and 46 seasons as head football coach.

It was because Paterno was a such a sainted figure â?? more memorable than any of his players and one of the best-known coaches in all of sports â?? that his downfall was so startling. During one breathtaking week in early November, Paterno was engulfed by a scandal and forced from his job, because he failed to go to the police in 2002 when told a young boy was molested inside the football complex.

"I didn't know which way to go ... and rather than get in there and make a mistake," he said in the Post interview.

Jerry Sandusky, the former defensive co-ordinator expected to succeed Paterno before retiring in 1999, was charged with sexually assaulting 10 boys over 15 years. Two university officials stepped down after they were charged with perjury following a grand jury investigation of Sandusky. But attention quickly focused on an alleged rape that took place in a shower in the football building, witnessed by Mike McQueary, a graduate assistant at the time.

McQueary testified that he had seen Sandusky attacking the child and that he had told Paterno, who waited a day before alerting school authorities. Police were never called and the state's top cop later said Paterno failed to execute his moral responsibility by not contacting police.

"You know, [McQueary] didn't want to get specific," Paterno said in the Post interview. "And to be frank with you I don't know that it would have done any good, because I never heard of, of, rape and a man. So I just did what I thought was best. I talked to people that I thought would be, if there was a problem, that would be following up on it."

On the morning of Nov. 9, Paterno said he would retire following the 2011 season. He also said he was "absolutely devastated" by the abuse case.

"This is a tragedy," the coach said. "It is one of the great sorrows of my life. With the benefit of hindsight, I wish I had done more."

But the university trustees faced a crisis, and in an emergency meeting that night, they fired Paterno, effective immediately. Graham Spanier, one of the longest-serving university presidents in the nation, also was dismissed.

According to Lanny Davis, an attorney retained by the trustees as an adviser, board vice chairman John Surma regretted having to tell Paterno the decision over the phone.

The university handed the football team to one of Paterno's assistants, Tom Bradley, who said Paterno "will go down in history as one of the greatest men, who maybe most of you know as a great football coach."

Thick, smoky-lens glasses, rolled up khakis, jet-black sneakers, blue windbreaker â?? Paterno was easy to spot on the sidelines. His teams were just as easy to spot on the field; their white helmets and classic blue and white uniforms had the same old-school look as the coach.

Paterno believed success was not measured entirely on the field. From his idealistic early days, he had implemented what he called a "grand experiment" -- to graduate more players while maintaining success on the field.

He was a frequent speaker on ethics in sports, a conscience for a world often infiltrated by scandal and shady characters.

His teams consistently ranked among the best in the Big Ten for graduating players. As of 2011, it had 49 academic All-Americans, the third-highest among schools in the Football Bowl Subdivision. All but two played under Paterno.

"He teaches us about really just growing up and being a man," former linebacker Paul Posluszny, now with the NFL's Jacksonville Jaguars, once said. "Besides the football, he's preparing us to be good men in life."

Paterno certainly had detractors, as well. One former Penn State professor called his high-minded words on academics a farce. He was criticized for making broad critiques about the wrongs in college football without providing specifics. A former administrator said his players often got special treatment compared to non-athletes.

His coaching style often was considered too conservative. Some thought he held on to his job too long. There was a push to move him out in 2004 but it failed.

But the critics were in the minority, and his program was never cited for major NCAA violations. However, the child sexual abuse scandal prompted separate investigations by the U.S. Department of Education and the NCAA into the school's handling.

Paterno played quarterback and cornerback for Brown University and set a defensive record with 14 career interceptions, a distinction he boasted about to his teams all the way into his 80s. He graduated in 1950 with plans to go to law school. He said his father hoped he would someday be president.

When he was 23, a former coach at Brown was moving to Penn State to become the head coach and persuaded Paterno to come with him as an assistant.

"I had no intention to coach when I got out of Brown," Paterno said in 2007 at Beaver Stadium in an interview before being inducted into the Hall of Fame. "Come to this hick town? From Brooklyn?"

In 1963, he was offered a job by the late Al Davis â?? $18,000 US, triple his salary at Penn State, plus a car to become general manager and coach of the AFL's Oakland Raiders. He said no. Rip Engle retired as Penn State head coach three years later, and Paterno took over.

At the time, the Lions were considered "Eastern football" â?? inferior â?? and Paterno courted newspaper coverage to raise the team's profile. In 1967, PSU began a 30-0-1 streak.

But Penn State couldn't get to the top of the polls. The Lions finished second in 1968 and 1969 despite perfect records. They went 12-0 in 1973 and finished fifth. Texas edged them in 1969 after President Richard Nixon, impressed with the Longhorns' bowl performance, declared them No. 1.

"I'd like to know," Paterno said later, "how could the president know so little about Watergate in 1973, and so much about college football in 1969?"

A national title finally came in 1982, in a 27-23 win over Georgia at the Sugar Bowl. Penn State won another in 1986 after the Lions picked off Vinny Testaverde five times and beat Miami 14-10 in the Fiesta Bowl.

They have made several title runs since then, including a 2005 run to the Orange Bowl and an 11-1 campaign in 2008 that earned them a berth in the Rose Bowl, where they lost 37-23 to Southern California.

In his later years, physical ailments wore the old coach down. Paterno was run over on the sideline during a game at Wisconsin in November 2006 and underwent knee surgery. He hurt his hip in 2008 demonstrating an onside kick.

An intestinal illness and a bad reaction to antibiotics prescribed for dental work slowed him for most of the 2010 season. Paterno began scaling back his speaking engagements that year, ending his summer caravan of speeches to alumni across the state.

Then a receiver bowled over Paterno at practice in August, sending him to the hospital with shoulder and pelvis injuries and consigning him to coach much of the season from the press box.

"The fact that we've won a lot of games is that the good Lord kept me healthy, not because I'm better than anybody else," Paterno said two days before he won his 409th game and passed Eddie Robinson of Grambling State for the most in Division I. "It's because I've been around a lot longer than anybody else."

Paterno could be conservative on the field, especially in big games, relying on the tried-and-true formula of defence, the running game and field position.

"They've been playing great defence for 45 years," Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz said in November.

Paterno and his wife, Sue, raised five children in State College. Anybody could telephone him at his modest ranch home -- the same one he appeared in front of on the night he was fired -- by looking up "Paterno, Joseph V." in the phone book.

He walked to home games and was greeted and wished good luck by fans on the street. Former players paraded through his living room for the chance to say hello. But for the most part, he stayed out of the spotlight.

Paterno did have a knack for joke. He referred to Twitter, the social media, as "Twittle-do, Twittle-dee."

He also could be abrasive and stubborn, and had his share of run-ins with his bosses or administrators. And as his legend grew, so did the attention to his on-field decisions, and the questions about when he would retire.

Calls for his retirement reached a crescendo in 2004. The next year, Penn State went 11-1 and won the Big Ten. In the Orange Bowl, PSU beat Florida State, whose coach, Bobby Bowden, left the Seminoles after the 2009 season after 34 years and 389 wins.

Like many others, he was outlasted by "JoePa."

http://www.cbc.ca/sports/football/nfl/s ... -obit.html

[Earl]

Yes, I know it's been three months since the first news reports about the Penn State scandal. I'm sorry if you're tired hearing about it; but this scandal involves moral principles, which don't change from month to month. Besides, John Matko deserves mention in this forum for his moral courage. I should have posted this column or a news article about him when I first read about him. For that, I apologize. I repeat, moral principles of this sort don't change with the passage of time.

http://www.thenation.com/blog/164587/wo ... terno-made

The World Joe Paterno Made
Dave Zirin on November 14, 2011 - 1:03pm ET




Meet John Matko. John Matko is a 34-year-old Penn State class of 2000 alumnus, distraught by the recent revelations that Coach Joe Paterno and those in charge at his alma mater allegedly shielded a serial child rapist, assistant Jerry Sandusky. He was livid that students chose to riot on campus this week in defense of their legendary coach. He was disgusted that the Board of Trustees decided to go ahead as planned with Saturdayâ??s Nebraska game just days after the revelations became public. John Matko felt angry and was compelled to act. He stood outside Saturdayâ??s Penn Stateâ??Nebraska game in Happy Valley and held up two signs. One read, â??Put abused kids first.â? The other said, â??Donâ??t be fooled, they all knew. Tom Bradley, everyone must go.â? (Tom Bradley is the interim head coach.)

The response to Matko gives lie to the media portrayal of last Saturdayâ??s game. We were told the atmosphere was â??somberâ?, â??sadâ? and â??heart-rendingâ?, as â??the focus returned to the children.â? The crowd was swathed in blue, because, we were told, that is the color of child abuse awareness (also the Penn State colors). The team linked arms emerging from the tunnel. They dropped to a knee with their Nebraska opponents at midfield before the game. Once again, broadcasters told us, â??the players were paying tribute to the victims of child abuse.â? We were told all of this, and I wish to God it was true.

I donâ??t doubt the emotions in Happy Valley are genuine. I donâ??t doubt the searing shock and pain that must be coursing through campus. But this is the pain of self-pity not reflection. Itâ??s the pain of the exposed not the penitent. Letâ??s go back to John Matko. Matko stood with his signs behind a pair of sunglasses. He wasnâ??t soapboxing, or preaching: just bearing silent witness. It was an admirable act, but no one bought him a beer. Instead, beer was poured on his head. His midsection was slapped with an open hand. Expletives were rained upon him. His signs were also kicked to the ground and stomped.

As the Washington Times wrote, â??Abuse flew at Matko from young and old, students and alumni, men and women. No one intervened. No one spoke out against the abuse.â?

One disapproving student said, â??Not now, man. This is about the football players.â?

And with those nine words, we see the truth about Saturdayâ??s enterprise. It was about the football program, not the children. It was morbid theater where people were mourning the death of a jock culture that somewhere along the line, mutated into malignancy. Itâ??s a malignancy that deprioritized rape victims in the name of big-time football.

The signs of this malignancy did not emerge overnight. Looking backward, there are moments that speak of the scandals to come. In 2003, less than one year after Paterno was told that Sandusky was raping children, he allowed a player accused of rape to suit up and play in a bowl game. Widespread criticism of this move was ignored. In 2006, Penn Stateâ??s Orange Bowl opponent Florida State, sent home linebacker A.J. Nicholson, after accusations of sexual assault. Paternoâ??s response, in light of recent events, is jaw-dropping. He said, â??Thereâ??s so many people gravitating to these kids. He may not have even known what he was getting into, Nicholson. They knock on the door; somebody may knock on the door; a cute girl knocks on the door. What do you do? Geez. I hopeâ??thank God they donâ??t knock on my door because Iâ??d refer them to a couple of other rooms.â? Joanne Tosti-Vasey, president of Pennsylvaniaâ??s National Organization for Women in Pennsylvania, was not amused. With chilling unintentional prescience, Tosti-Vasey responded, â??Allegations of sexual assault should never be taken lightly. Making light of sexual assault sends the message that rape is something to be expected and accepted.â? They called for Paternoâ??s resignation and short of that, asked to dialogue with Paterno and the team. Neither Paterno nor anyone in the power at Penn State accepted the invitation.

This is the world Joe Pa made. Itâ??s a world where libraries, buildings and statues bear his name. Itâ??s a world where the school endowment now stands at over $1 billion dollars. Itâ??s a company town where moral posturing acted as a substitute for actual morality. In such an atmosphere, seeing the players and fans gather to bow their heads and mourn Saturday wasnâ??t â??touchingâ? or â??somberâ? or anything of the sort. It was just sad. It was sad because they still donâ??t get it.

One PSU student, named Emily wrote the following to si.comâ??s Peter King,

Truth is, if not for Paternoâ??s philanthropy and moral code (until his fatal lapse of judgment), I and thousands of others wouldnâ??t be here right now. If not for Paternoâ?¦Pennsylvania State might still be an agriculture school and State College might be lucky if there were a Wal-Mart within a 30-mile radius. Paterno made a huge mistake, but that doesnâ??t mean heâ??s not a good man.

Bullshit. Emilyâ??s words ring as false as the apologists for the Vatican, Wall Street, the military command at Abu Ghraib and any industry deemed â??too big to fail.â? The same moral code that Emily praises absolutely cannot be the same moral code that covers up child rape. To do so is to make the very notion of morality meaningless. Emilyâ??s gratitiude that her school isnâ??t â??30 miles from the nearest Wal-Martâ? canâ??t justify defending Paterno. To do so, makes you complicit in the crimes and the cover-up. It also ensures that such a thing could happen again.

On Saturday, while Matko endured the physical and verbal rage of the PSU faithful, hundreds gathered around the Paterno statue outside the stadium, laying down flowers and gifts. The pain might run deeply in Happy Valley, but the cancer runs deeper. To really move forward, the malignancy must be removed. Fire everyone. Shut down Happy Valley football for a year. Rebuild a healthier culture. Do whatever you have to do to make sure that the world Joe Paterno made has seen its last day.

[Fat Man]

Good evening Earl:

Ah yes! It just keeps on getting better all the time!

John Matko felt angry and was compelled to act. He stood outside Saturdayâ??s Penn Stateâ??Nebraska game in Happy Valley and held up two signs. One read, â??Put abused kids first.â? The other said, â??Donâ??t be fooled, they all knew. Tom Bradley, everyone must go.â? (Tom Bradley is the interim head coach.)

Yeah! John Matko was the only one at the game who stood outside protesting, quietly, and minding his own business.

Letâ??s go back to John Matko. Matko stood with his signs behind a pair of sunglasses. He wasnâ??t soapboxing, or preaching: just bearing silent witness. It was an admirable act, but no one bought him a beer. Instead, beer was poured on his head. His midsection was slapped with an open hand. Expletives were rained upon him. His signs were also kicked to the ground and stomped.

If I had been there, I would have brought him a beer, and a sack lunch with some sandwiches. I wouldn't be attending the game. In fact, I would have gone to the nearest store, bought some poster-board, some colored markers, and made a couple of protest signs of my own, and then came back and asked him, "Hey man! May I join ya?" and I would have stood beside him in his protest.

Actually, I would have sat beside him in my big red JAZZY power-chair, because I can't stand for extended periods of time due to the arthritis in my knees and ankles.

And I would have dared anyone to strike a guy who's physically handicapped.

Yeah! Those butt-banging, baby-fucking, low-life douche-bag, fuck-tard sports fans, are just coward enough to do it! Attack someone who's physically handicapped.

These drooling moronic, imbicilic, Sports-tards probably beat their own wives, and butt-bang their own kids on Sunday afternoons after coming home from church to watch the football games on TV.

Yeah! Uh huh! Typical scum-bag sports fans! When their favorite team loses the big game, they beat their wives, rape their daughters, butt-bang their babies, kick the cat, screw the pooch, and give the parakeet and goldfish cause for alarm!

Hell, that's how sports fans also celebrate with their favorite team wins!

Have we, as a society, have we actually sunk that low, that we care more about winning some stupid football game, while we not care about children who have been sexually molested and raped?

Have we really sunk down that low?

When I was a kid going to school, being the typical science nerd or geek, I was often called a queer, or a sissy, a fag, a wimp because I preferred art and science over sports, and I was even called unpatriotic, a pinko, a Commie, and a subversive because I didn't like football.

That was bad enough.

But now, over the yeas and decades, it has gotten even worse!!!

We embrace violent sports, and we don't even give a tinker's damn about children who have been sexually molested and raped by our favorite athletic coaches.

Excuse me, but, what is the WE crap?

I'm not any part of that crowd!

No, I'm actually proud the be an un-American, or rather, being called an un-American for not liking sports!

This country is going down the crapper, due to the declining quality of education in our schools and the country's obsession and love for violent sports!

We're going to fall, just like the ancient Greek civilization, and the Roman Empire, because of their obsession with sports during their declining years.

Bread and circuses, anyone?

[DanTran]

I really don't care much for any of this.

(sorry to bring up an old topic, but I do have an opinion on this)

However, I believe that Paterno may truly be an innocent party, and in fact he went through the proper channels as set forth by his job function.

In the business world, employees are barred from contacting the authorities on most occasions, Even at the lowest level, such as when I worked at Circuit City as a college student. If a customer did anything wrong, no matter what it was, we were forbidden to contact the police. Managers had to be the ones to do such a thing. Someone was assaulted in my store, I wasn't there, but the people who were had to be authorized by the customer service manager before anything could be done.

This continues up the corporate ladder. If a women is being sexually harassed in the workplace, an investigation is usually done by the higher ups (human resources usually), and employees are not going to contact the police. It doesn't work in such a manner.

Paterno was not a witness to the abuse. He was merely told of it, and he did the right thing and told his superiors. I don't know how anyone (no matter their opinion about sports or football) can say that he is responsible. Has anyone here ever worked in an office? Line and staff? It's incredibly difficult when things such as this happen. Remember, there's also the human element. Working with someone for many years, it can to believe that they could have done such a thing. I think many people are too quick to judge. It's usually better to let those who have the means to investigate, do the investigating, and the police enforce the laws.

I don't know why this irks me. I don't know much about Paterno, him being a football coach should give me enough reason to dislike him. However, I've worked in various offices under various job titles, and have seen many problems and crises. I know how difficult it is to deal with problems in the workplace. Somehow, I feel sorry for him, even more so now that he's deceased.