[BiffTFinancial]

I haven't read this thread, but I'll just post this for my thoughts on how Paterno is being viewed/treated in this scandal. It sucks he has to go out this way. Ever since I started following Penn State, and ultimately when I enrolled here, I've wanted him to leave. He is too old to make an impact and it's been long overdue for someone to take over as head coach. But I did not want him to go out this way. He did not witness anything in the shower, he was told by a grad assistant that Sandusky and a kid were 'horsing around' in the bathroom. If you are friends with a guy for 30 years, co-workers... Do you automatically call the police in this situation? He did not witness anything himself. Sandusky has been in Paterno's house countless times, and vice-versa. They were like family. Don't you think that he'd give him the benefit of the doubt especially since he had not seen anything himself? He told his superior exactly what he was told happened, because that was his obligation. And ESPN, tmz, and every other ******* media source is asking for his head? He did not do anything wrong. In hindsight, should he have called the police? Perhaps. Of course everyone is going to go apeshit because you have to protect the kids in the community and I cannot agree more. There is no crime more heinous than what Sandusky is accused of doing in my book... But Paterno has had no affiliation with this beyond being told that Sandusky was horsing around with a kid. Are you really going to throw this great man's reputation away because of this? Paterno has done so much for the community, for the school, for the football program, and for every single student and student athlete who has come through Penn State... And that is all being thrown away over an awful crime... that he had no direct connection to. It is a damn ******* shame that Paterno has to be associated with this for the rest of his life, and that his career is going to be tainted for something this stupid. And I'm going to go out and say what everyone is thinking about but doesn't want to say; I want to see how everyone approaches this subject when he inevitably dies.

i think that it's a far bigger shame that Paterno was told that Sandusky was molesting a 10 year-old kid in the football facility and did nothing other than pass the buck up the chain of command then bury his head in the sand. in doing so, he not only allowed a pedophile to continue to prey upon children at the charity where he worked on a regular basis from six more years, but empowered him with continued access to the football facilities. i wonder how many more children were molested as the direct result of Paterno's failure to act, how many lives were ruined or dramatically and sadly altered, how many attempted suicide and how many were successful. forgive me for not seeing Paterno as a victim; rather, he is collateral damage and bears culpability for his inaction (not legally, but i'm sure that in his heart, he now knows). lives were ruined as the result of the inactions of those in charge at Penn State (including but not limited to Paterno), and i think that it's pretty cavalier to trivialize it as "something as stupid as this."

you certainly are entitled to your opinion, and if you want to continue to believe that Paterno is a great man, fine by me, but to blame the media or anyone else for "throwing this great man's reputation away" is pretty naive. Paterno threw his own reputation and legacy away when he allowed this type of conduct to continue for nearly a decade after having been put on notice of it. this isn't media speculation; it's sworn grand jury testimony, the product of a three-year investigation (not to mention the investigation in the 1990s). there is plenty of blame to go around, but i keep returning to one thing: after hearing the allegations from 2002, how did Paterno walk past Sandusky in the halls of PSU, shake his hand, talk to him, share space with him? how did he see Sandusky bringing other kids to watch Penn State practices and do nothing? how did he allow him to go on working at a charity for disadvantaged kids? to be clear, these are rhetorical questions, i don't much give a shit what his answers are or what his side of the story is. he gave all the answers he needed by doing nothing for almost ten years. as for what i'd do, if my brother, my father, my best friend did something like what Sandusky did, you're goddamn right i'd turn him in to the cops.

i don't want him to lose his job, i don't want any action taken against him. that is for the Penn State community to decide, and since i'm not part of it, i'll leave them to their own right to self-determination and i don't really have much of an opinion on it. the much larger sentence is the damage to his legacy, punishment that he ironically meted upon himself. i respected Paterno a great deal for the three and a half decades i've been alive and loved college football, and i thought he was a great man. i no longer do, and that has nothing to do with the media's coverage of these events, nauseating though it might be. it's a good example as to why public figures should not be considered role models, as everyone is human and has skeletons in his closet (though most not as bad as Paterno's in this instance).