Posted on 07/24/2012 2:38:22 AM PDT by ransomnote
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."
Jealous egghead, I figured.
What an idiot I was.
Twenty-five years later, when former Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky was accused of a 15-year reign of pedophilia on young boys, I thought Paterno was too old and too addled to understand, too grandfatherly and Catholic to get that Sandusky was committing grisly crimes using Paterno's own football program as bait.
But I was wrong. Paterno knew. He knew all about it. He'd known for years. He knew and he followed it vigilantly.
(Excerpt) Read more at espn.go.com ...
I always thought so! (And still do.) Thanks. :)
You’re a wise man Hoodat. The $60 million stopped the investigation into the boosters. It’s over. It also stopped connecting the boosters with other teams, organizations and politicians. A whole lot of important people wanted this stopped before they got connected.
This isn’t just about Penn State. It’s about a huge pedophilia industry, nationwide and worldwide. Jerry Sandusky is a small time player. The world would vomit if it knew the real truth.
Paterno never discouraged the worshiping. He seemed to wallow in it like a pig...
...I never had a visceral dislike for Paterno, I just always thought he was a lucky guy who landed a plum job with an already sound foundation, and then molded the program to fit and prosper as college football emerged as a wildly popular sport...my problem, here in PA, was always with the fans, who took the term obnoxious to unheard of heights...especially some in my extended family, and who strutted, like clamorous peacocks, in the reflected glory of a guy who, at any other college, would have to win, and not have the luxury to be able to burnish a mythology of ‘grand experiments’ and ‘winning with honor’...too bad he didn’t take the Patriots offer in the ‘70’s, he’d find out how the other 99% of coaches have to live...
...I don’t want my antipathy to PSU football to weight my final thoughts on the man...he was clearly smart, adaptable, and resilient, but also lucky...give me instead Bobby Bowden, who came into FSU with a team that had gone 0-11 the year prior and received no support from the administration at all, and built that into a powerhouse that equalled, even eclipsed, Paterno’s.
...so what are my final thoughts of Paterno? I think we should invoke the spirit of the ancient Greek tragedians, Sophocles, or more to the point, Aeschylus, and well note the tragedy that emerges from the unwarranted exercise of hubris, and the belief that we are ‘holier’ and more suited to divinity than others...it never ends well...
Very sad article. Reilly is a pretty conservative guy, so you have to listen when he speaks.
For my part, I want to see what is done with the radical leftwing homophile Spanier. As pres of Penn State, he made it a capital offense to say anything negative whatsoever about a homosexual — no matter what the homosexual did. Spanier created an oppressive, tyrannical society in which students and faculty alike were scared to death to even hint at disapproval of what a homosexual did — up to and including child molestation.
Spanier in his own sick, perverse, dictatorial way is as guilty as Sandusky and far guiltier than JoePa.
“... drop any further investigation of these boosters in exchange for a $60 million windfall”.
I have also wondered if there would be any further investigation into the “charity?” (Mile High?) Did any of those big contributors receive children? I think many of the contributors simply donated money because they thought it was a stand up organization but all of them? Very perceptive opinion, Hoodat.
“... drop any further investigation of these boosters in exchange for a $60 million windfall”.
I have also wondered if there would be any further investigation into the “charity?” (Mile High?) Did any of those big contributors receive children? I think many of the contributors simply donated money because they thought it was a stand up organization but all of them? Very perceptive opinion, Hoodat.
Spanier in his own sick, perverse, dictatorial way is as guilty as Sandusky and far guiltier than JoePa.
...along with Schultz, I agree...but then again, as lucky as Paterno was to bask in the glory of the good times, equally unlucky that his legacy wallows in the muck of the bad times...
...to paraphrase ‘uneasy lies the crown upon the head of him who would be king’,or something along those lines...
For those who want to keep it honest:
http://www.johnziegler.com/editorials_details.asp?editorial=219
http://tominpaine.blogspot.com/2012/07/demolishing-freeh-report-and-people-who.html
In 1998, the mother of a young boy designated by the grand jury as “Victim 6” became suspicious when her son and Sandusky showed up at her home with wet hair. The boy, according to the grand jury report, acknowledged that he had showered with Sandusky, prompting the mother to call Penn State University police.
In a later conversation with Sandusky — with two university detectives listening in — the coach allegedly admitted hugging the boy while both were naked in the shower, the grand jury reported. “I was wrong,” Sandusky allegedly told the mother. “I wish I could get forgiveness. I know I won’t get it from you. I wish I were dead.”
The case was referred to then-Centre County District Attorney Ray Gricar, who declined to prosecute the case in 1998, the grand jury found.
Gricar’s decision has not been explained. He has been missing since 2005 and has since been declared dead after authorities recovered his abandoned car and the prosecutor’s computer, absent its hard drive.
State police spokesman Sgt. Anthony Manetta said there is no apparent link between the prosecutor’s disappearance and the Sandusky case.
So did District Attorney Ray Gricar in 1998 who failed to prosecute. Where is Al Sharpton when he is really needed.
Upon first learning of the abuses, he should`ve immediately fired Sandusky and reported him to the LOCAL, not university police.
He didn't work for him at the time in 2001. And the 1998 incident went to the District Attorney and he declined to prosecute. Even in the Freeh report Curley, Spanier, Schultz, and Chief Harmon's hands are all over it, but no mention of Paterno. What were they??? potted plants???
He should`ve then pressed for a news conference announcing the action, along with the pledge of full cooperation with all investigations.
Like when he announced his press conference in 2010 where he was going to answer questions but the Board of Trustees told him to shut up and shut it down.
No APPARENT Link...... Right.
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