All things Joe Paterno

[Cappuccino]

I just don't think he saw it as all that important. Look at the language he uses - "sex between a man and a boy", as if they'd caught Sandusky cheating on his wife with a consenting adult. They downplayed it in their own minds and rationalised it, all to avoid rocking the boat for their precious football programme.

 

[LRinCA]

I'm not sure if this has already been posted. It's dated the 13th so it may have been posted and I missed it...

The sins of the father

What a fool I was.

In 1986, I spent a week in State College, Pa., researching a 10-page Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year piece on Joe Paterno.

It was supposed to be a secret, but one night the phone in my hotel room rang. It was a Penn State professor, calling out of the blue.

"Are you here to take part in hagiography?" he said.

"What's hagiography?" I asked.

"The study of saints," he said. "You're going to be just like the rest, aren't you? You're going to make Paterno out to be a saint. You don't know him. He'll do anything to win. What you media are doing is dangerous."


Full article: http://espn.go.com/espn/story/_/id/8162972/joe-paterno-true-legacy

 

[CatMama3]

"The study of saints," he said. "You're going to be just like the rest, aren't you? You're going to make Paterno out to be a saint. You don't know him. He'll do anything to win. What you media are doing is dangerous."


RSBM

Excellent find!

And it confirms what this whole stomach-wrenching stench of a scandal proves--power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

 

[costalpilot]

listening to paul finebaum xm national sports talk radio show yesterday from the SEC media days....its the biggest cocnetration of press and college football types in the pre season..over 1100 press types...everybody who is anybody in sec football is there.

a caller called up and expressed the idea that the Paterno family is not doing themselves any favors by recent comments.

Finebaum said: "There is a lot of talk around here that a lot more bad stuff is going to surface soon." He was specifically talking about Paterno.

Look for New bad news about Joe Paterno coming out soon.

 

[BigCat]

Reading old article about JoePa can be cringe-inducing at times. The linked article is from Sports Illustrated in August, 1999:

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1016609/index.htm

As he took a visitor on an early-summer tour of the new $13.8 million Louis E. Lasch Football Building, Penn State's venerable 72-year-old coach, Joe Paterno, played the dual roles of proud papa and disdainful curmudgeon. He beamed as he passed through the palatial entrance hall and stuck his head in the doorway of the amphitheater that will serve as the team's meeting room. He cringed when he passed the bathroom and shower in his sprawling new office.

SI ranked Penn State the pre-season number one team going into the 99 season, which was Sandusky's last as a coach.

 

[costalpilot]

Reading old article about JoePa can be cringe-inducing at times. The linked article is from Sports Illustrated in August, 1999:

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1016609/index.htm



SI ranked Penn State the pre-season number one team going into the 99 season, which was Sandusky's last as a coach.

seriously, why would he cringe going by a shower?

why would the interviewer use that word if he did not CRINGE?

1999

 

[Reader]

Spencer: Lessons to be learned in PSU scandal

http://www.delcotimes.com/articles/...5008b58a51120316299101.txt?viewmode=fullstory

.............. But 20 years ago, he was a Penn State graduate assistant football coach, just like Mike McQueary. And he too saw some things — things involving Jerry Sandusky and young boys..............

“He always had a kid around.”

It was presented to the rest of the camp as a “mentoring relationship,” but it seemed closer than that. At video sessions, in the players lounge, Sandusky would sit with the kid on a big blue sofa “hip to hip, like you’d be sitting next to your wife watching your favorite TV show.”............

“I was shocked,” he said, but Sandusky got up laughing, and introduced the kid. The second time it happened, he said, Sandusky gave him a “pissed off” look like he was interrupting something and he was the one who shouldn’t have been there.

Then there were showers with the kids. Everybody saw it and knew about it. But, John said, a lot of the coaches brought their own sons into the locker rooms and showered with them. He just figured it was part of the family culture of the place...........

As for the idea that Joe Paterno and others never suspected a thing, John can’t buy it.

“When it came to that program, Joe knew everything. Nothing got by Joe.”.................

“He had eyes and ears everywhere,” said the GA. And so, it is his belief, there is no way he wouldn’t have had at least an inkling about Sandusky before the 1998 investigation and certainly after 2001 when McQueary went to him that Saturday morning.

Paterno’s reporting of the matter to athletic director Tim Curley was not Paterno “sending it up the ladder, but down the ladder,” said John...........

And so, he concludes, it was Paterno who decided how this would be handled. And what he decided was not to go to any outside investigative agency...........

He hasn’t read the Freeh Report or much else about the case. But he believes that at some point, years (maybe decades) ago, Joe Paterno figured out what Jerry Sandusky was and he made the conscious decision to look the other way because he knew that Sandusky’s disgrace would be his own...........

 

[J. J. in Phila]

seriously, why would he cringe going by a shower?

why would the interviewer use that word if he did not CRINGE?

1999

The shower was a private one, in his office. He thought it was too ostentatious.

 

[OilPainter]

The shower was a private one, in his office. He thought it was too ostentatious.

If Paterno cringed walking by his "ostentatious" shower - I wonder what he did everytime he visited his 3.5 MILLION mansion on the Cape?

 

[Twindad]

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/city-grambling-wants-paterno-record-192015931--ncaaf.html

 

[BennyProfane]

The shower was a private one, in his office. He thought it was too ostentatious.

Humility was an image with this guy. Great PR.

 

[IzzyBlanche]

Um, okay. A shower was too ostentatious, but a statue of him, that was fine.

You're right Benny. All an image.

 

[costalpilot]

here is a contemporary of Paterno saying "this wasnt the Paterno I knew.". well NO IT WASNT. Its time for Paternos erstwhile supporters to begin to deak witrh the fact that Sandusky wasnt the only master manipulator in this sordid mess. Paterno manipulated his image as well. The family makes a big point of stressing the point that Sandusky fooled everyone. But the family will not admit that the dead patriarch was as good a manipulator of image as sandusky, if not better.:

http://www.statecollege.com/news/lo...-that-was-not-the-joe-paterno-i-knew-1094769/

 

[faw720]

First, I want to make it very clear that in no way am I defending Joe Paterno. I do think there is a factor that I have not previously seen discussed.

Being of the same generation as Joe Paterno, I would like to remind everyone that the world in which we grew up was a very very different place than the one which we live in today. Most people (with the exception of the likes of Bonnie & Clyde & Al Capone) had very firm moral principles. Children were taught to respect their elders, there were no drugs, very few teens got pregnant, spankings were the preferred form of discipline & getting drunk was the worst thing a kid could do. I can remember whispered talks of incest, but the people involved were definitly from the "wrong side of the tracks" & not people that decent folks would associate with. Boys would giggle about things they did in showers, but it was considered "horseplay". Back in that time, child abuse was something that wasn't even defined. I think probably most of us from that generation certainly tend to be more naive than subsequent generations especially when people of supposedly good reputations like Jerry Sandusky are involved.

I'm not trying to make excuses for anyone because what happened is inexcusable. It's just that some of us from the older generation have a hard time believing & accepting things that happen in todays society.
Thankfully, our society is slowly moving toward becoming more civilized & it's about time.

 

[IzzyBlanche]

I'm not buying that JP was too naive to figure out what was going on because of his generation.

He was a student of the classics, including Shakespeare. Familiarity with Shakespeare alone would have provided him with a vast education in all types of human behavior, including sexual behavior. Also, I recall a sportswriter referring to JP as one of the most well-read people he'd ever met.

He couldn't have been that well read and that naive at the same time. IMO of course.

 

[Twindad]

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/20...ling.paterno.3rd.ld.writethru.0436/index.html

He may even lose his total wins record.

 

[StellarsJay]

The day the statue came down this story describes Paterno's last, winningest game:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...at-penn-state/2012/07/22/gJQAZcKP2W_blog.html

 

[wfgodot]

Joe Posnanski Won’t Be Doing Very Many Interviews Or Readings For Paterno (Deadspin)

---
So, Simon & Schuster is scaling back Posnanski's book tour for two reasons, we'll speculate: 1.) They finally realized that when Posnanski shows up at a book reading—or on Charlie Rose, say—he will get absolutely slaughtered. 2.) They realized the biography is not going to sell the way they imagined it would when they gave Posnanski $750,000 a couple years ago to write a Father's Day book.
---

the rest at the link

 

[J. J. in Phila]

Paterno's Gerald R. Ford Award has been taken back.

http://www.centredaily.com/2012/07/...ld-r-ford.html#storylink=omni_popular#wgt=pop

 

[LNL]

First, I want to make it very clear that in no way am I defending Joe Paterno. I do think there is a factor that I have not previously seen discussed.

Being of the same generation as Joe Paterno, I would like to remind everyone that the world in which we grew up was a very very different place than the one which we live in today. Most people (with the exception of the likes of Bonnie & Clyde & Al Capone) had very firm moral principles. Children were taught to respect their elders, there were no drugs, very few teens got pregnant, spankings were the preferred form of discipline & getting drunk was the worst thing a kid could do. I can remember whispered talks of incest, but the people involved were definitly from the "wrong side of the tracks" & not people that decent folks would associate with. Boys would giggle about things they did in showers, but it was considered "horseplay". Back in that time, child abuse was something that wasn't even defined. I think probably most of us from that generation certainly tend to be more naive than subsequent generations especially when people of supposedly good reputations like Jerry Sandusky are involved.

I'm not trying to make excuses for anyone because what happened is inexcusable. It's just that some of us from the older generation have a hard time believing & accepting things that happen in todays society.
Thankfully, our society is slowly moving toward becoming more civilized & it's about time.

Not buying it.

JoePa was in his what, mid-50's working at an "educational" institution when the McMartin case exploded. Anyone who read a newspaper or watched TV news was aware of the sexual abuse allegations in the preschool. I just do not buy that people of that generation are surprised by what goes on "today". It has been going on forever and because of instantaneous communication, it may all seem "new" or something of today's generation.

He can't play dumb. No way. This type of behavior just didn't come to light publicly in the 90's or 00's.