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 ...
Ouch...
Bull.
He knew and did nothing.
Pervert enabler, at a minimum.
You keep trying here at FR but no dice. He KNEW. He did NOT want to make waves and young boys were RAPED to protect the perverted alums
The lead js prosecutor went on national television and said there was no evidence that JVP was part of any sort of cover up. What more do you want to hear?
Paterno holds many NCAA records, many of which we will never know, and give others nightmares for the rest of their lives.
But Penn State can be proud of Joe for having the most wins for a coach who is blind and mute.
Paterno can rot in hell. No excuse can undo the evil he knew about and allowed.
It was too bad that Barry Switzer and Jackie Sherrill left college football to the Joe Paterno’s and Jerry Sandusky’s of the world.
What did the lead prosecutor say about staying in a job so long that you become a blind out of touch dottering fool - capable of not noticing serial pedophilia in your own locker room?????
He has no “good name” to restore, and frankly, I couldn’t care less if he was erased from history altogether. He’s just a stupid football coach, for cripes’ sake! And a pretty chickensh_t one at that.
Yawn. Come back with facts, not hyperbole mixed with jealousy (as the author so correctly points out).
I would have gone to the police “outside” the university. But that’s me.
Paterno instead became a pedophile’s enabler.
FlJoePa, I’d seriously consider changing my screen name.
What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul?
he didn’t know... he was informed of an incident that happened the day before. at best, third hand knowledge. he reported it to the dept head, as he’s supposed to, which was then reported to the campus police (which are actual police in state college) and sandusky was evicted from the facilities. from there, it’s up to the cops.
as i’ve asked all the haters since this began... what more would YOU have done?
would you call the police and demand to know what’s happening? they’d stonewall you, as they never comment on investigations.
would you storm over to sandusky’s house? then what? burn it down? attack him? no, YOU would not.
so again, i ask... what more would YOU have done that Joe did not?
His legacy is what Jimmy Cefalo says it is. None of you - nor anyone in the media - can change that even with your wild imaginations and vindictiveness.
I suspect he stayed quiet because he liked to knock off a piece himself once in a while.
I would call every legal authority in the jurisdiction from campus to county to state or federal until the child molester was arrested.
Not jealousy. What an idiotic moronic statement. You are still the child man, obsessed with worship of a college football coach - so much so you named yourself AFTER HIM as your screen name. That’s infantile.
I could care less about Penn State football or Joe Pa either way as a coach. It’s just not that important to me one way or the other. But logic is what logic is: and Joe Pa EITHER:
A: Knew about it and covered it up
B: Was so out of touch and out of control that he didn’t know.
C: Knew a little something, but stayed conveniently ignorant of the rest.
There are NO OTHER ALTERNATIVES. PERIOD. Even if it were B, it’s NOT excusable. Grow up.
Before he changes his screen name, he would have to grow up and out of his infantile fascination and worship.....
Yeah, except for all that child rape stuff.
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