Tonight, I’m setting my feelings of anger, shock, disbelief, and betrayal aside in regards to the fiasco that most of the world knows as Penn State University.
I was in State College for the game on Saturday, and I quietly observed the well-behaved but shell-shocked crowd…the feelings in Happy Valley just aren’t going to be swept under the rug anytime soon until a few things happen. Call them wishful thinking, but sometimes the answer is simple:
#1: Penn State University has GOT to somehow come to grips with Joe Paterno’s legacy.
You can’t erase 62 years of service by a guy who lived and breathed Penn State University, raised millions and millions of dollars for them, and basically challenged the board in 1986 to have an academic program that the football team could be proud of. Plus, I heard he was a pretty good football coach and won two National Championships.
Joe Paterno never covered up any instance of “child rape,” and if you still think that’s true you either cannot read or choose not to.
#2: The Board of Trustees – at least all of them that were there during the Sandusky fiasco last year – needs to do the right thing and resign. Now.
Sounds cliche, I know. But I have never in my lifetime seen a group of people that are supposedly educated behave with more ignorance. When your University is attacked you can either man-up or bend-over. They are a complete disgrace, and in case you missed it Lous Freeh made it a point to mention them in his goofy report that they accepted without review:
“Once the board was made aware of the investigations of Sandusky and the fact that senior University officials had testified before the Grand Jury in the investigations, it should have recognized the potential risk to the University community and to the University’s reputation. Instead, the Board, as a governing body, failed to inquire reasonably and to demand detailed information from Spanier. The Board’s overconfidence in Spanier’s abilities to deal with the crisis, and its complacent attitude left them unprepared to respond to the November 2011 criminal charges filed against two Penn State leaders and a former prominent coach. Finally, the Board’s subsequent removal of Paterno as head football coach was poorly handled, as were the Board’s communications with the public.”
Over the last several decades, Penn State has won 75% of its football games while at the same time graduating 85% of their players. And the NCAA has a problem with….? Fill in the blank. Every university with a football program would be lucky to have what Penn State had and the NCAA ripped apart. End of story.
The pig that is Jerry Sandusky fooled a lot of people over the years, that’s why people kept giving to his charity, the Governor gave him a few million even after he knew he was a pervert, and he was allowed to keep getting foster kids assigned to his home.
Ripping down Joe Paterno’s statue and then refusing to recognize his legacy before Saturday’s home opener was a disgrace to Penn Staters around the world. If there was ever a crowd that would have been receptive to it, it was Saturday, September 5th at Beaver Stadium. 100,000 fans waiting to hear this damn university do the right thing just one time in 10 months.
I’ve said it once, and I’ll keep saying it: there is something really strange going on here.
Way too many people seem to be more than willing to look the other way when it comes to Joe…including our slimy Governor. There is a power-struggle going on here that defies logic and needs to be revealed. Are there any real investigative journalists left out there?
I used to chuckle when friends told me, “Watch, they’re going to blame the dead guy.” Right. Like that would ever happen.
Never forget: the young woman who was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for breaking the Sandusky story wide open wrote this story just a day after the Grand Jury handed down its presentment:
PATERNO PRAISED FOR ACTING APPROPRIATELY
Joe Paterno was fired a week later.
About Phil KernerPhil Kerner is an Erie native who enjoys writing about his hometown and Penn State football. Phil is married to Heidi Parr Kerner aka "The Queen" and is the proud father of four sons: Matthew, Robert, Nicholas and Jordan.
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Thank-you for your powerful and succinct post. It clearly summarizes this tramatic event and what so many are feeling. It’s just too hard to believe that so many smart people (BOT) could make so many bad decisions.
That blog sums it up, Phil. Thanks for stating the truth, not some half baked crap like I constantly read in the newspaper or hear on the WorldWide Leader.
Peetz, Surma, Broadhurst and Frazier should have already done the honorable thing and joined Garban as former Board of Trustees members. They have not one ounce of integrity in themselves.
Keep posting your common sense. It is really appreciated.
One correction and one point to be made. First, It was in 1983, not 1986, that Paterno made his famous challenge to the board to raise PSU academics and research to a world-class standard that would be worthy of the excellence of the football program he had built.
Second; When Freeh was commissioned to produce his report, the BoT had intended to review the report not once, but twice, before it was to be released to the public. This led to such public outrage among the Penn State community, which feard the BoT review would bias the report and tarnish any fairness or independence in the report, that the BoT backed off the idea of reviewing the report entirely shortly before it’s release. This is a measure of the depth and breadth of the Penn State community’s distrust of the board already established even before the Freeh Report and it’s ridiculous conclusions were ever released.
Here’s the catch; the BoT would have been perfectly comfortable not reviewing the report, having already known the conclusions it was going to make. The BoT had already determined the conclusions it desired when it commissioned the Freeh Report and Freeh’s job was to somehow find a narrative that would fit those pre-determined conclusions to justify their firings of Paterno and Spanier in the least. In fact, per a news report published in the days following the report’s release, the only point in the report that privately outraged the BoT was how it negatively portrayed their own role in the scandal. Freeh was supposed to exonerate them entirely as innocent victims of a rogue administration that had gone out of their control. Otherwise, they received exacty the report they paid for and it appears to have pleased them well. Such is the true nature of Louis Freeh’s work, a paid hack-for hire.
Thank you for writing those powerful words. You do not need a degree in Psychology to see that The Freeh Report was slanted to hurt JOPA, The University and protect the BoT. Sad day when your BoT will take a man like Paterno and entire institution down to protect themselves. Talk about a failure of leadership. Reading” Paterno” has only added to my rage and another thing…ESPN… expected more from you guys, really!
Thank you for this post. It seems very likely that anyone who blindly accepts the paid-for narrative in the Freeh report and the mainstream-media’s non-critical echoing of that narrative is actually continuing and supporting the real cover-up, which has yet to be revealed. I hope that people like yourself do not stop asking questions in this matter, so that the truth ultimately can be set free.