-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
Penn State football pedophilia thread (UPDATE: NCAA sanctions handed down)
- Thread starter BertramCooper
- Start date
- Status
indigo-cyclops
Member
I just wonder how much money is involved with these trustees. Paternos "legacy" has no right to exist after this disgraceful state of affairs. I'm just glad I'm not a part of an alumni community that sees this as no big deal and something that they are pushing for people to forget.
I hope the statue is defaced ans vandalized. Sorry but I do.
I hope the statue is defaced ans vandalized. Sorry but I do.
Dreams-Visions
Member
Only if
BertramCooper
Banned
In retrospect, it really sucks that Delany didn't snatch up Mizzou when he had the chance. They would have been a ready and willing replacement for Penn State.
GoldenEye 007
Member
No worries. Rutgers would be beating down the door at this point, I'm sure.
Goddamn.
Hell, I'm a Rutgers alum and would kill to be in the big 12, but if you're taking out Penn State, Pitt's probably the best replacement. Part of Rutger's appeal was being Penn State's butt buddy and carrying a new state, while with Pitt you keep Penn.
Bingo. It's still all about doing as little as possible in order to protect the money.
Shut the football program down for a few years. It's the least that can be done to force some change of priorities at the school.
perfectchaos007
Member
And it won't unless there is punishment.
BertramCooper
Banned
If we could get Pitt to renege on their commitment to the ACC, I'd be all for letting them in.
It would be the ultimate "Fuck you!" to Penn State.
Lost Fragment
Obsessed with 4chan
Oh man this joke is even funnier the 100th time you hear it.
Pitt would do it in a heartbeat. ACC's not the big east, but it's also not one of the big four either, it's in this weird purgatory.
BertramCooper
Banned
I'm sure it has probably crossed Delany's mind. The conference has to do something because I don't trust the NCAA to do anything.
perfectchaos007
Member
Hey I made that same joke here back in June, but no one seemed to notice. Guess I don't have the proper timing to be a comedian
NCAA's more likely to do it then the Ten. College sports is all about the money, and PSU's program is ... stupid valuable. My personal belief is that the NCAA will put the hammer down on PSU just to fuck Delaney (who we all know is the most powerful man in college football right now).
EatinOlives
Member
Which is exactly why the NCAA needs to come in with the banhammer. Doesn't matter at all the current staff had nothing to do with it. They may have had nothing to do with it directly, but they have absolutely no problem in covering it up and trying to downplay it. Now they're keeping the statue intact, effectively ignoring this entire scandal in the long run. They're absolutely going to want to erase history of this and sweep it under the rug ASAP to preserve their precious football program.
They need to be hit hard. Penn State as an institution has learned NOTHING from this whole debacle.
SouthernDragon
Member
Were I a competent student at PennState, I'd find a way to melt a bronze blindfold onto the statue.
Plinko
Wildcard berths that can't beat teams without a winning record should have homefield advantage
Well said. It's a slap in the face to the victims.
Plinko
Wildcard berths that can't beat teams without a winning record should have homefield advantage
Note how they do this on Saturday night so most people don't hear about it.
Neuromancer
Member
So fucking shitty.
I hate this shit. Power seems to enable child sex rings. Whether it's religious bureaucracy, sports, music.
I'm not a fan of mass media spectator sports. Drives up cost of college, TV, and now enables child rapists.
I'm not a fan of mass media spectator sports. Drives up cost of college, TV, and now enables child rapists.
perfectchaos007
Member
Penn State is good at keeping important information un-heard by the public. They have had 14 years experience
Is Penn State just consistently and overwhelmingly run by shitty, horrible people? I mean, what the fuck.
Plinko
Wildcard berths that can't beat teams without a winning record should have homefield advantage
I have no doubt the same thing (leaving the statue up) would have happened almost anywhere else. The university system in the United States is an amalgam of money, school pride, and power that won't stop protecting the school at any cost. It's sad.
perfectchaos007
Member
Let's not generalize here. Mack Brown is a great coach, but if he were to fuck up like this, Texas would get rid of everything Mack Brown related and do everything in their power to dissociate themselves from his name. Something that Penn State is clearly not attempting to do.
Penn state is a peculiar case. They really did worship Joe Pa as a cult would a shrine. The insular groupthink mentality that could only occur out in the confines of pennsyltucky over a hundred miles away from the nearest large city is now on full display for the country to see. Could this happen at another campus that has their priorities out of whack? sure. But I don't think it would have happened "almost anywhere else". And yes, I know you're only referring to leaving the statue up.
When Charles Robinson (investigative sports journalist) tried to get the former head of the PSU PD to share some insight into what happened during the '98 investigation his answers was "I don't know why you're doing this":
https://twitter.com/Rand_Getlin/status/224328366701035520/photo/1/large
SbB providing some more info:
http://media.sportsbybrooks.com/2012/07/thomasharmonpage3.pdf
i.e. the child psychologist who was crucial in convincing the DA to not press charges against Sandusky in '98 was later an independent contractor for PSU for over 6 years.
And a good article (may have previously been posted?) on how PSU may face not only over $100 million in civil suit pay outs to victims, but be slapped with civil rights violations in conjunction to Title IX violations:
Penn State could pay $100 million in civil damages to Sandusky's victims and lose public funding
Some more great stuff found here on:
Analysis: FBI Director Louis Freeh, state's results differ greatly. Why? i.e. state investigator was a big Paterno fan, did she purposely go easy on him in her investigation?
https://twitter.com/Rand_Getlin/status/224328366701035520/photo/1/large
SbB providing some more info:
http://media.sportsbybrooks.com/2012/07/thomasharmonpage3.pdf
i.e. the child psychologist who was crucial in convincing the DA to not press charges against Sandusky in '98 was later an independent contractor for PSU for over 6 years.
And a good article (may have previously been posted?) on how PSU may face not only over $100 million in civil suit pay outs to victims, but be slapped with civil rights violations in conjunction to Title IX violations:
Penn State could pay $100 million in civil damages to Sandusky's victims and lose public funding
Some more great stuff found here on:
Analysis: FBI Director Louis Freeh, state's results differ greatly. Why? i.e. state investigator was a big Paterno fan, did she purposely go easy on him in her investigation?
I'm just being vaguely practical/realistic. If I were calling the shots, yeah, I'd shut the football program down for a generation, if not permanently.
Plinko
Wildcard berths that can't beat teams without a winning record should have homefield advantage
This right here is why I would have no problem with the school losing public funding. People from top to bottom and everywhere in between were covering this up.
crowphoenix
Banned
I'm pretty certain that this whole ordeal has answered that question.
Roland Garros
Banned
There's a good system in place to ensure people with outlooks like yours are never allowed to make key decisions affecting large amounts of people.
Plinko
Wildcard berths that can't beat teams without a winning record should have homefield advantage
Sorry--as that lawyer states, this entire thing was covered up to protect the "integrity" of the football program. Not sure how you can defend that.
By the way--several great universities exist without a decent football program. The school could survive.
Losing the football program would be much better than losing public funding because of Title Ix/Clery Act violations. THAT is what people and Penn State should be worried about.
Roland Garros
Banned
If Penn State can realistically ensure they have eliminated any catalysts potentially leading to a similar situation occurring again, they should be allowed to continue as a football institution.
But demanding a school in 50 years time still be punished for crime committed decades previous is ultimate lunacy. It's called progress. We learn from our errors, we build on these lessons learnt and we gradually evolve to a time where situations like this could never arise.
People suggesting 'BAN THEM FOREVER' are naive to the fact a punishment like that is a new problem created, while the main issue remains broken.
Escape Goat
Member
How long before someone goes Jebediah Springfield on the statue?
This logic doesn't really work when you consider that one person has actually been convicted despite the evidence of a large-scale cover-up, or that the entire purpose of the cover-up was to protect the football program; not shutting down the football program at least temporarily sends the message that even though they got caught, they still got away with their goal.
Plinko
Wildcard berths that can't beat teams without a winning record should have homefield advantage
More like crime committed for a decade. Again, there is clear evidence that the leaders of the college knew about the crimes and ignored them. They didn't "learn" anything, and wouldn't have even made any changes had the crimes not been revealed. This would have been buried forever.
elrechazado
Banned
I think people should be fired, go to jail, and be held to public ridicule. But kill the football program? Makes no sense to me.
Except there's this part. If you allowed child molestation to happen, all for the good of a football program, you need to lose that football program. Minimum 5 years.
Plinko
Wildcard berths that can't beat teams without a winning record should have homefield advantage
They let child rape go unpunished and unreported for years so the football program could maintain it's reputation, financial gain, and recruiting powers.
If that's not an argument for getting rid of the football program, I don't know what is.
elrechazado
Banned
It's not. The people who did those things should be held responsible to the full extent of criminal and civil liability, and public shame. By your logic, because they did those things for the general reputation as well of penn state, then the school should no longer accept students and should be shut down.
If a public company has a CEO who violates sarbanes oxley and defrauds shareholders, you don't shut down the corporation, you fire the responsible parties, pay out the liabilities, and continue on, as the justice and civil systems hold the guilty parties personally responsible.
And when the guilty party is the entire school ecosystem and delusional reverence of their football program? Yeah. you kill the program.
All of the statements the board of trustees have made including about leaving the statue up make it PATENTLY obviously that nothing has changed, and nothing will change unless they are punished.
Does it hurt other people? Sure. But how is that any different from throwing a murderer in jail just because he has a family or something? Other people always get hurt, it's still the school's fault for putting everyone in the situation where this shit has to happen. The fact that so many people are involved and it's so widespread should be your first clue that simply punishing those people is not enough, it's systematic failure in the school and it needs to stop.
Think of it like if you had any other operation or agency that had this kind of corrupt attitude top to bottom, you don't reform it just by removing a few people, you reform it by gutting it. This is a schoolwide problem directly stemming from the football program, period.
Roland Garros
Banned
But as I've said before, the people responsible for the reprehensible conduct are now gone. They will pay for their crimes.
Penn State has been cleared out and already many new measures and structures have been implemented to ensure nothing similar could ever happen again. I can understand the argument of having the Penn State football program restructured so as to strip away the power it wielded over the college culture and its finances, but euthanising the program permanently? That solves nothing.
It's just not as simple as that. The consequences for the school are too large, too detrimental for too many people. Too many innocent people. And I fail to see how what it achieves in the long run, besides being a symbolic gesture. Will the victims seek any solace from the footy program being eradicated? What is the long-term reasoning?
In regards to the statue, I agree with the many of you. As much as I do understand the complex nature of serving the needs of the Penn State family and us outsiders looking in, there's only one right answer to this quandary. Must be torn down.
Sirpopopop
Member
elrechazao - Would you then agree that Superfund legislation was a bad thing?
After all, many of the companies who got tied up in Superfund sites went bust due to the obligations as a result.
A lot of the people who lost their jobs weren't the responsible parties. "They were just following orders."
Kind of like the Cult of Paterno at Penn State which still doesn't realize that what Joe did was wrong.
Sirpopopop
Member
Very few people are asking for the program to be removed permanently.
However, it's ludicrous to think that the problem is solved, especially when folks like this are elected by PENN STATE ALUMNI TO THEIR BOARD OF TRUSTEES:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2qI-lH6SIU&feature=player_embedded
http://blogs.phillymag.com/the_phil...-joe-paterno-penn-state-leaks-jerry-sandusky/ (Yes, I know he had an inspirational story. However, he did support Joe and felt the BOT did him wrong by dismissing him in November.)
Found this little nugget since we are on the topic about NCAA punishments.
Caltech is on NCAA probation. No, really
Caltech is on NCAA probation. No, really
Apparently their basketball team might have to vacate their only win in 26 years.
- Status