Posted on 01/31/2015 8:46:53 AM PST by FlJoePa
Yes: Let’s hope the legendary coach hears the good news
I hope there’s a wire service in the afterlife. I hope there’s some celestial Internet cafe where the departed (regardless of their ultimate destinations) can access news about those of us they’ve left behind.
For instance, I’d love it if the monsters who murdered the journalists at Charlie Hebdo could take a moment from baking in eternal hellfire to see how their acts only strengthened our resolve to speak out against intolerance. Similarly, I hope Martin Luther King Jr. can recognize, from his lofty perch in heaven atop his beloved mountain, how his awesome presence still resonates in the world.
And I’d love it if Joe Paterno could see that his reputation has been reclaimed from the trash heap of rhetoric, hyperbole and vitriol created by those with ulterior motives.
On Friday, the NCAA agreed to restore 112 Penn State football victories it had deducted amid the Jerry Sandusky child-molestation scandal. The agreement lifted the last of the sanctions imposed in 2012, reinstating Paterno — who died as the scandal was unfolding — as the winningest coach in major-college football.
Some of those sanctions, while arguably excessive, at least bore some relation to Sandusky’s crimes. The fines, for example, were earmarked for organizations and services that helped victims of child sexual abuse.
But others were punitive in nature, especially the erasure of all those wins, the ones registered after 1998, when he presumably found out about the Sandusky allegations. There was absolutely no nexus between those wins and the abuse, unless you twist the rational thread of analysis into an unrecognizable, indefensible mess of half-truths and innuendo.
Joe Paterno was the Vince Lombardi of college athletics. He spent more than a half-century, well before many of us were born, molding young men into scholar-athletes taught to respect Shakespeare as much as scrimmages, Virgil as much as victories, Einstein as much as end zones.
Yes, he wielded an inordinate amount of power for a college coach. There is no question that he made enemies among the tweedy academics who hated the fact that JoePa, and not some liberal twist of ivy around the tower, was the beloved face of Penn State.
Overall, the man was a giant, and the people yapping at his heels were moral dwarves. They didn’t just dislike him, they resented falling into his shadow.
So when the opportunity came, they seized upon it with a vengeance. The Sandusky affair was tailor-made, allowing them to cloak themselves in moral superiority and take down that annoying legend in Happy Valley.
With virtually no evidence that Paterno knew the extent of Sandusky’s crimes, the coach was turned into the whipping boy for the anti-JoePa contingent through the alchemy of illogical thinking. The theory went that because JoePa was so powerful on campus and in the commonwealth, he could have stopped his predatory colleague before he preyed on other boys. That, of course, presumes that Paterno knew the extent of Sandusky’s crimes and did nothing.
This is not the place to rehash the “what-did-he-know-and-when-did-he-know- it” meme, but suffice it to say that Paterno did do something. It might not have been enough, and it might disappoint his supporters who expected more, but it wasn’t callous and malicious disregard.
Paterno is gone, yet his presence is still weighty on the campus and in alumni hearts. Paterno still marks the Valley, with a mixture of pride, affection and sadness.
So the restoration of his wins does some justice to his memory, and to our own sense of what is fair and equitable. It also reminds us that penalties should have a reasonable relation to the crime in their scope and nature. Vindictiveness has no place in our justice system, on our campuses or in our hearts.
Now, about that statue ...
Not at all. You were never armed in the first place.
Keep throwing feces and it comes backatcha. My mailbox is full of ataboys. Go pound sand, loser.
When an employee reports what is hearsay evidence to you about a former employee who has a huge, positive reputation in the community -- and who, by the way, you don't socialize with or work with anymore -- your alarm over the seriousness of the allegation has to be tempered by the fact that nobody is guilty of anything until found to be so, especially of a very ambiguously reported situation.
Like all the other morons in the lynch mob, you've put everything together with the perfect hindsight that neither Paterno nor anyone else on the ground at the time actually had. What Paterno "knew" was hearsay. Nothing more. He urged the witness to report the crime, and put him directly in touch with the authorities necessary to do so. PSU police are not rent-a-cops. They are trained LEO's with firearms operating under the jurisdiction of a home-rule Commonwealth municipality (Penn State UP campus.)
I don't know what your personal issues are, and I couldn't care less; but we all can plainly see that you and humbleshootyourmouthoff have them, because you're both spouting nonsense without any regard for logic or the facts.
[And you need to understand why the phrase "could care less" is one only an ignoramus would use.]
Have they found the DA that went missing and was declared dead? You know, the one who investigated this in 1998 and never pursued charges? The guy whose hard drive was missing from his laptop in his abandoned car? Any body yet?
I agree. I haven’t been guilty of idolizing sports figures since Joe Namath and Jean-Claude Killy.
And probably lots of pictures of Sandusky shagging kids, since you think that's so cool and all.
I feel sorry for the women in your life....a man who is still an ESPN backwards baseball cap “failure to launch” disaster.
And again, you don’t understand the freedom I have...the freedom NOT TO GIVE A DAMN, which I don’t. Only your side of kool aid lickers are invested in this. The rest of us are laughing at you.
No that would be you. Projection is such a liberal trait. Fecking loser.
The great Ed Hillary is a joke. Projection is such a liberal trait.
You repeat yourself a lot, did you know?
Personally, I think Gricar committed suicide like his brother before him. I guess it’s possible he was rubbed out - given his profession - but if that were the case it would be far more likely related to drug convictions than anything to do with js or the second mile.
Now you make no sense. Dude, give it up, you’re snark is not effective or funny or even makes sense. Go continue your Joe Pa obsessed life. How pathetic.
Oh, shaddup. Never liked Paterno and thought he stayed too long. You blaming the dead guy is another liberal trait. So which team did PA state beat that caused you to lose $$$? Pathetic loser.
This thread should have a vomit alert.
It did have one.
The topic.
My only rooting interest here is logic. -— and you’re the projection queen now. I could care less about Penn State either way. I respect their program, but it’s no longer relevant nationally, and with Harbaugh and Meyer in the Big Ten, probably will stay that way.
My rooting interests are in the south.
The idea that this is still about who wins and loses football games proves who the child man is. You. The “lost a bet” accusation is embarrassing. Did your life inspire “Failure to Launch?”
It’s just logic: Paterno is either guilty of covering it up, or being willfully ignorant of what was going on under his nose. A or B. There is no other choice. I could believe either. I do not claim to know which it is.
Damn right he knew it. His little toadie groupies are peddy enablers....at best. He knew, if not right from the start, damn near close to it.
You lost a bet. Get over it.
Look failure to launch....I realize you cannot comprehend an adult not giving a FLYING FK about Penn State - but trust me, we’re out there. Some of us actually grow up and put childish things aside.
I’m not saying no one should support their team or watch the games, but I am saying that investing so heavily in a coach or a team is infantile. And to assume everyone with a different point of view somehow gives a shit about your team and coach is paranoid and absurd, not to mention psychotic and a good dose of projection thrown in.
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