209 replies to this topic

[Harry]

If we make such a big deal about a college football program playing dumb when a recruit takes free shoes or tattoos, or his family lives in a house rent free, how can we ignore it when evidence screams that one of the nation’s most powerful universities enabled a pedophile?

How can we sit through something so sick and vile as the testimony in the Jerry Sandusky trial and conclude that this was a one-source scandal?

Penn State should not be allowed to play another football game. SMU, one of the nation’s top private universities, saw its football program given the death penalty in 1987 because it put athletic success and the fame and fortune that comes with it above what so obviously is morally acceptable.

Isn’t it now clear that Penn State did the exact same thing?

http://blogs.ajc.com...th-penalty-for-

[Harry]

Interesting article on how the NCAA could respond:

http://www.suntimes....penn-state.html

[The Fake Lonnie Finch]

http://www.scribd.co...1212-1#download

Full report - 267 pages - on scribd. Don't have time to read it, but just skimming it I don't see how Penn State escape without major sanctions. Full sections of Penn State continuing to give Sandusky access to the footbal facilities and allowing to hold camps there even after the 1998 and 2001 investigations.

This was a cover up aided by the athletic department and by the many in the administration. It's shameful that so many grown men could allow it.

How could any of them even stand to be in the same room with a guy accused of child molestion, much less continue to alow him to have access to kids with their full blessing on their campus using their athletic facilities? It's gross. Joe Paterno is a fraud. Give me the payment-under-the-table scandals of the 80s over this stuff. This is just horrible.

I hope Penn State is given a Death Penalty equal to or greater than that given to SMU in the 80s. Raping kids is worse than giving cash and cars to Eric Dickerson and his pals.

[SilverEagle]

I think this guy would agree with that assessment.

http://www.reuters.c...E86B05D20120712

To me, one of the most damning statements from this article.

The report said Paterno and others also knew about a 1998 criminal investigation of Sandusky in which he was suspected of misconduct with a boy in a locker room shower.
"In short, nothing was done and Sandusky was allowed to continue with impunity," Freeh said.
Failure to alert authorities allowed Sandusky to continue preying on young boys for years, prosecutors said. At least half of Sandusky's 10 known victims were abused after 1998.



And, the really scary part of this is that experts in the field of sexual predators will tell you that Jerry Sandusky has probably been doing this since he was an adolescent.

Edited by SilverEagle, 12 July 2012 - 08:49 AM.

[SilverEagle]

...and then there's this.....

http://sports.yahoo....556--ncaaf.html

[THOR]

the donations could be mainly to the school and not the athletic department....eff the athletic department with razor blades as much as possible and those four people that did nothing, but the school staff and students as a whole knew nothing and shouldn't be punished. people are showing their support for the school with the donations and not the athletic department*


*didn't read your whole link, so i don't know for a fact that the donations were mainly to the school and not the athletic department...

Edited by THOR, 13 July 2012 - 11:11 AM.

[UNT90]

...and then there's this.....

http://sports.yahoo....556--ncaaf.html

Great. It's nice of them to donate to the eventual court ordered payment to the victims.

[The Fake Lonnie Finch]

Here's the KA-POW moment in the report, Batman:

"For the past several decades, the University's Athletic Department was permitted to become a closed community. There was little personnel turnover or hiring from outside the University and strong internal loyalty. The football program, in particular, opted out of most of the University's Clery Act [my emphasis, the Clery Act is a federal law that requires certain University offical - in this case it was Curley, Paterno, and McQueary - to report sexual misconduct against minors to University Police officials so that they would be included in federal statistics. Curley, Paterno, and McQueary, according to the report, all failed to do so], sexual abuse awareness and summer camp training. The Athletic Department was perceived by many in the Penn State community as "an island," where staff members lived by their own rules." - p.139 of the report

[Harry]

I thought this comment was so spot on in terms of not just Penn State but our entire society:

Success is now what you can get away with and how much money you can stash out of reach of the authorities before you get caught.

[The Fake Lonnie Finch]

Yeah, agree. I was thinking that many athletic directors are crapping their shorts this morning.

Look, there are many laws that Univerisities must follow. My guess is that the Clery Act is one that few take seriously because, "No one here would molest a kid, so training for it is a waste of time."

There is a ton of pressure on athletic departments, to be sure, in many different areas. But, in this case, Penn State officials and the athletic department were well aware of the problems with Sandusky.

And, instead of ridding themselves of Sandusky, these guy - as the documentation shows - bent over backwards to keep him happy. At one point, it is even mentioned that they feared being sued by him if they asked to take his keys from him that gave him access to damn near every athletic facility on the campus!

I'm simply amazed still, that no one, not one of these grown men would do anything to rid themselves of Sandusky. You have federal whistleblower laws to protect you. And, when the thing in 2001 was being investigated, you had Enron blow up. Then in 2002, WorldCom, which was, I believe right there in Pennsylvania!

Any of the people involved, had they been more interest in kids' well being instead of Penn State football's, could have reported the alleged abuses and gotten whistleblower protection. The truth is, Joe Paterno - like many other coaches in similar situations professionally - was treated as king of the hill, not to be questioned, and you did as he said and wished.

Joe Pa wanted to protect his old, child molesting buddy. It cost him his job. It cost him his long-built reputation. And, it should cost Penn State it's football program for a couple of seasons, of not longer.

Somewhere, Bobby Bowden, retired from "Free Shoes University," is chuckling to himself.

Edited by The Fake Lonnie Finch, 12 July 2012 - 11:06 AM.

[TIgreen01]

Interesting article on how the NCAA could respond:

http://www.suntimes....penn-state.html

The crux of the issue on whether or not the NCAA can and will respond:

"Milstein believes the NCAA can and should punish Penn State University because he considers Sandusky’s actions and the alleged cover-up directly related to the prestige and profitability of Penn State football. Jackson refutes that possibility because — no matter the involvement of athletic department employees — an NCAA punishment is possible only if an NCAA violation occurs."

This will certainly be interesting to follow. Personally, I think the NCAA desperately needs to find a way to respond. The last year has produced one black-eye after another. The perception is exactly as Harry stated above (QFT), "Success is now what you can get away with and how much money you can stash out of reach of the authorities before you get caught."

[UNT90]

Yeah, agree. I was thinking that many athletic directors are crapping their shorts this morning.

Look, there are many laws that Univerisities must follow. My guess is that the Clery Act is one that few take seriously because, "No one here would molest a kid, so training for it is a waste of time."

There is a ton of pressure on athletic departments, to be sure, in many different areas. But, in this case, Penn State officials and the athletic department were well aware of the problems with Sandusky.

And, instead of ridding themselves of them, these guy - as the documentation shows - bent over backwards to keep him happy. At one point, it is even mentioned that they feared being sued by him if they asked to take his keys from him that gave him access to damn near every athletic facility on the campus!

I'm simply amazed still, that no one, not one of these grown men would do anything to rid themselves of Sandusky. You have federal whistleblower laws to protect you. And, when the thing in 2001 was being investigated, you had Enron blow up. Then in 2002, WorldCom, which was, I believe right there in Pennsylvania!

Any of the people involved, had they been more interest in kids' well being instead of Penn State football's could have reported the alleged abuses and gotten whistleblower protection. The truth is, Joe Paterno - like many other coaches in similar situations professionally - was treated as king of the hill, not to be questioned, and you did as he said and wished.

Joe Pa wanted to protect his old, child molesting buddy. It cost him his job. It cost him his long-built reputation. And, it should cost Penn State it's football program for a couple of seasons, of not longer.

Somewhere, Bobby Bowden, retired from "Free Shoes University," is chuckling to himself.

Too bad Joe Pa didn't live long enough to see the inside of a prison cell.

Investigate 2nd mile. Follow the money.

[UNT90]

The crux of the issue on whether or not the NCAA can and will respond:

"Milstein believes the NCAA can and should punish Penn State University because he considers Sandusky’s actions and the alleged cover-up directly related to the prestige and profitability of Penn State football. Jackson refutes that possibility because — no matter the involvement of athletic department employees — an NCAA punishment is possible only if an NCAA violation occurs."

This will certainly be interesting to follow. Personally, I think the NCAA desperately needs to find a way to respond. The last year has produced one black-eye after another. The perception is exactly as Harry stated above (QFT), "Success is now what you can get away with and how much money you can stash out of reach of the authorities before you get caught."

This is crap. Penn St. gained a competitive advantage by not reporting the sexual abuse of young males. Isn't it logical to assume young males would not come and play football at Penn St. if the then defensive coordinator was arrested for sexually assaulting young males?

Edited by UNT90, 12 July 2012 - 10:12 AM.

[Harry]

Should this go unpunished?


The 267-page report released Thursday on the Jerry Sandusky scandal at Penn State reveals some disturbing details, and shows how a university can be taken over by its football program.

In one part of the report, a janitor says he witnessed Sandusky performing oral sex on a young boy in the showers at Penn State, but eventually decided not to report it because "they'll get rid of all of us."

A second janitor also said he witnessed Sandusky and a young boy in the showers, but didn't say anything because reporting the incident "would have been like going against the president of the United States in my opinion. I know Paterno has so much power, if he wanted to get rid of someone, I would have been gone." He also said that "football runs the university," and that the school would have closed ranks to protect the football program at all costs.

Read more: http://www.latimes.c...0,7928778.story

[Harry]

I thought this article addressed the fact that this horrific story was ENTIRELY about the football program very well:

Think of all the moral differences between our world and the world of Penn State:

In the world of Penn State, the "humane" thing to do after receiving allegations that Sandusky raped a child was to go to Sandusky himself rather than calling the cops.

In the world of Penn State, it was more important to "avoid the consequences of bad publicity," (as the Freeh report puts it) than to report a potential felony.

In the world of Penn State, buying $400 worth of clothes for a player was a greater offense than molesting kids.

The primary aim was protecting the sanctity of the lucrative, successful football program JoePa built. The conventional morality and authority of the outside world was inconsequential within the program.

So the idea that this scandal has nothing to do with the program is a lie. It had absolutely everything to do with football, because the world that grew out of the football team turned out to be so horrific that it continued to host a sexual predator despite a litany of instances where the mechanisms of the real world would have brought him to justice.

Read more: http://www.businessi...7#ixzz20QZCBmEb