Unconquered

I'm trying to wrap my head around the fact that he's not facing any criminal charges(yet.....or maybe ever) but yet the Police commissioner said what he said. Doesn't he have more than a moral obligation to report that? With these charges involving minor(and pretty young ones at that), shouldn't there be a legal obligation to report this to the police and the president of the university? At the very least, let the UPD know what's going on. The failure to do so, IMO, led to more incidents like this and that is a f@ckin failure in my book. People can say what they want about Bowden toward the final years(which included an embarrassing academic scandal for an online class), but at least crap like this never happened. I have a couple of PSU buddies on facebook defending Joe Pa, saying he did everything by the book. I can't bye that as it would seem to me that Law Enforcement should have been notified when Joe Pa found out. Maybe the lawyers on the board can explain if he had any LEGAL(not moral) obligation to notify police.

Joe Pa's (in)actions were demonstrably worse than any of Bowden's actions, so I don't want this statement to be viewed as created a false equivalency between the two.

But...

There needs to be a term limit on coaches.

These two old men were so determined to hold onto their legacies, that when faced with different problems that could have impacted them, their only concern was for themselves. Bobby was willing to tear down the program he built in order to plod toward 400 wins. Worse, 1,000 times worse, Paterno was willing to let the rape of a ten year old boy slip quietly into the night (without even finding that boy) in order to not answer uncomfortable questions.

I guess it's human nature. But it's so disappointing.

(without all the facts known, and just speculating) G5 gets arrested for pronouncing his friends name wrong, but failure to report this crap, with under aged kids, is just a difference of moral opinions? I'm missing something here. I think it goes beyond the university to do something. This needs to be handled by law enforcement

I was overseas running around like a chicken with it's head cut off, fill me in..

My understanding it is the law in Penn that if you become aware of a sex crime involving a minor you must report it to the police. How they are saying he is OK because he reported it to a superior is beyond me. Did he cut a deal for his testimony? Let's see what he says today. If he has an ounce of integrity left he will resign effective immediately.

JoePa is a punk. Plain and simple. If Mcreary and Mcreary's father really came to JoePa and told them what he saw then Paterno should be canned immediately and never allowed on that campus again. He is just as guilty for allowing it to continue. If I was a witness to an act like this, 1st of all Sandusky would have gotten a can opened up on him on the spot but I would have made damn sure the police were the 1st to know about it. This is the problem with collegiate sports today. Those inside the university always think university first and people second. It is sickening that those inside the PSU Admin and coaching staff chose the University over a 10 yr old child. I cant believe this stuff did not come out sooner. The way rumors run rampant these days I cant believe it took over a decade for all this info to leak out of Happy Valley. <-----Doesnt that become ironic "Happy Valley" is not so Happy these days.

The allegations about Sandusky started back in 1999. JoePa and PSU's solution then was to "not allow Sandusky to shower" at that facility. Just the fact that they made this edict, then did nothing when McQueary went to JoePa's HOUSE after the March 1, 2002 incident shows serious flaws in how PSU & JoePa handled this situation. JoePa has not way of saying he did NOT know what was going on. He had reason to suspect something based on the 1999 incident, yet, somehow he turned his head in 2002. This does not pass the BS test.

JoePa will very easily get overlooked by authorities as he is a legend there, but his moral obligation and the fact he turned a blind eye to such egregious acts will forever tarnish his legacy as a coach. It's quite sad that a coach who was known to run a very strict/clean program now will be remembered for one of the sickest acts to ever take place in college football.

Times like these give me gratitude for Coach Bowden's body of work. Yes, there was the cheating issue and lackluster performance, but compared to this PSU incident, FSU was extremely blessed to just have these two issues on Coach Bowden's departure.

If I were a PSU fan/alum, I would be sickened to the point of never wanting to wear blue and white again. This incident is just putrid and will only get worse. Public perception will crucify that program....even if they did everything within reason to control this situation.

Im pretty sure this is the defense... reporting everything you hear to the police is not going to be a legal matter, certainly a moral matter and he should've done more

Term limits on coaches? LOL I'm assuming thats a joke... the university can fire them whenever they'd like, maybe they don't have the sack to do so, but they are employed by free will

I was one of the few who initially said "Let's give Joe the benefit of the doubt"...

...well that was before I read the grand jury report. Then Joe's statement read almost word for word like Curley and Schultz's. I'm assuming that the only reason Joe wasn't charged with perjury is because he wasn't at the meeting when McQuery told them what he witnessed. (And by the way, did any of you notice that the meeting with Schultz and Curley was a week and a half after the incident? "You saw what? Okay, let's set something up for next Wednesday to discuss it".) From a legal perspective, I guess it doesn't matter what McQuery told Joe first (maybe? I'm not a lawyer?), that's the only reason I can think that he wasn't charged.

Regardless of whether or not Joe is legally liable for anything, the undisputed fact is that he had multiple incident reports of Sandusky doing inappropriate things with kids and he didn't do a damn thing to prevent it from happening again. The second incident (that we know he knew about) was almost 10 years ago. That means this guy had extra decade to prey on kids that could have been prevented if Joe had used his considerable influence and made one phone call.

OK, I'll mount a defense of Paterno. I suppose someone will transmogrify this into a defense of child sexual abuse, but please don't go there. Quite obviously, that's not what I'm saying.

It's possible that Joe and Sandusky are, or were, very close friends.

That being the case, Joe is in a tough position to take action that will virtually guarantee jail for his close friend. I'm not saying he was RIGHT not to call the police--but note that Joe DID take at least some action against his friend, by reporting what he'd heard to the proper people. He took MINIMAL action, but he did what was minimally proper.

Considering that they might have been very close friends, I can kind of understand Joe walking a tightrope like that.

It's especially understandable (not necessarily the best or optimal course of action, but understandable) if Joe had a conversation with Sandusky along the lines of, "Look, I'm not going to sell you out here, but you have to promise me you'll stop doing this and never, ever do it again. PROMISE." And if Sandusky promised, Joe may have felt that he'd walked the tightrope as best he could without ruining the life of a close friend.

Again, I'm not saying this is the best course of action. I'm just saying that when someone is a close friend of yours, like family, you might look for a course of action that allows you to feel you've taken some kind of proper action (tell who you're minimally required to tell, then speak to the friend and get an assurance that it won't happen again), while not having to feel like you've turned against your friend/family.

I guess what I'm saying is that, from Joe's position, this might not have been as easy a decision as some have made it out to be by pointing out the obvious, that the children must be protected. For Paterno, this might have been quite agonizing. Of course the children must be protected, but Joe might have convinced himself he was doing what he could to protect them without necessarily ruining his friend's life.

Call me a horrible person, but if I found out that a close friend of mine was doing something like this, it would not be an easy thing for me to do to just sell him down the river. What's "morally right" would not be so obvious to me. Friendship can be a very strong thing, and what's morally right is not always so crystal-clear, especially when you truly love the perpetrator.

OK, that's all.

He needs to go to jail.

Yeah, probably I am. This may not have been a thread to speculate deeply about what Paterno was thinking--it was probably just a thread for flogging him.

Again, I am not saying Joe's negligence was the correct course of action. I'm saying that good people can talk themselves into taking suboptimal actions when emotions and personal relationships get involved. Joe Paterno is not necessarily a bad guy given what I've heard. He could be a good guy who, under heavy emotional distress, was confused and talked himself into believing he was doing the right thing while leaving the children vulnerable.

And, if my hypothetical conversation between Paterno and Sandusky ever did take place, Paterno might not have known what I suspect is true of pedophilia--that no promise to stop, however sincere in the moment, can be trusted to last.