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Penn State football pedophilia thread (UPDATE: NCAA sanctions handed down)
- Thread starter BertramCooper
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Kermit The Dog
Banned
Boards of Canada said:
Yes, but Paterno didn't see the act. He heard about it.
Let's at least get the story straight.
Apologies to all for the derail. Respond in PMs if you feel the need, Kermit.
I didn't swagger in here. I posted like everybody else. I mean that my area of scholarship is the nature and history of academic institutions. My jobs are in university teaching and in scholarly publishing. My perspective isn't tremendously enlightened, but it is not "audacious" for me to talk about academic culture.
I speak with confidence because I'm confident in my observation.
Distasteful isn't the word I would use. I think it is dysfunctional for a large proportion of an academic institution's reputation, administrative concerns, budget, interests, and ethos to be tied up in the operation of a sports franchise. I think the intensity of this dysfunction rises with the inexorable increase in scale of college sports. I think, as I stated earlier, that college sport has outgrown a legitimately controlled place in American academic institutions. Penn State is an extreme example of this dysfunction at work.
Kermit The Dog said:
I didn't swagger in here. I posted like everybody else. I mean that my area of scholarship is the nature and history of academic institutions. My jobs are in university teaching and in scholarly publishing. My perspective isn't tremendously enlightened, but it is not "audacious" for me to talk about academic culture.
Kermit said:
I speak with confidence because I'm confident in my observation.
Kermit said:
Distasteful isn't the word I would use. I think it is dysfunctional for a large proportion of an academic institution's reputation, administrative concerns, budget, interests, and ethos to be tied up in the operation of a sports franchise. I think the intensity of this dysfunction rises with the inexorable increase in scale of college sports. I think, as I stated earlier, that college sport has outgrown a legitimately controlled place in American academic institutions. Penn State is an extreme example of this dysfunction at work.
Wife woke up this morning and turned on the news in the bedroom. I slept in a little bit, only to awake to the tape of the Sandusky interview. It was surreal, in a very, very disturbing way.
No bullshit...just hearing that while waking up fucked up my morning something awful. Typically, I consider myself "above" the masses when it comes to the court of public opinion, but here...I'm finding it really fucking difficult. Not sure if that's because I have two kids of my own, or if this fucking creepy dude disgusts me so much, or both...but what I've seen and heard is enough for me to hand him the rope to go hang himself.
Though he seems to be doing a great job of that on his own at the moment.
No bullshit...just hearing that while waking up fucked up my morning something awful. Typically, I consider myself "above" the masses when it comes to the court of public opinion, but here...I'm finding it really fucking difficult. Not sure if that's because I have two kids of my own, or if this fucking creepy dude disgusts me so much, or both...but what I've seen and heard is enough for me to hand him the rope to go hang himself.
Though he seems to be doing a great job of that on his own at the moment.
Vicetrailia
Member
Boards of Canada said:
Wasn't that something that he was told?
Boards of Canada
Member
My bad. I thought he was referring to the guy that saw the act.Kermit The Dog said:
Officerrob
Banned
Yes, he did do something about it, he passed the buck and washed his hands of it. He was a coward. When accusations of child molestation/rape come up (let alone involving someone you have known for decades and currently employ), passing the buck is a chickenshit thing to do. Besides, I'm of the opinion that when all is said and done we will find out that Paterno knew more then he's claimingssolitare said:
Kermit The Dog
Banned
Salazar said:
I do believe it to be audacious, because your post was quite scathing of college football culture and you used such an extreme example to underline your analysis, which I personally found clumsy.
Your perspective is based on that which you've read, not experienced, which I believe is significant in this case.
I don't know enough about the subject to retort, but I would be very interested in reading the opinions of Gaffers who have experienced this culture.
Ninja Scooter
Member
And then Sandusky kept coming around on campus and around his players and he didn't think twice about it? He deserved to fired. College coaches get fired for much less all the time.ssolitare said:
Kermit The Dog said:
I think you'll find a whole bunch of folks writing and saying scathing things about college football culture. Not all of them went to football colleges. Not all of them are even American. You'll note I characterise Penn as an extreme example, which isn't using it to underline my analysis.
Vicetrailia
Member
Ninja Scooter said:
The rapist was already tired, what could he really do? Also what if it wasn't true? Or maybe it was, I heard that Sandusky was forced to retire related related reasons.
Regardless it was a bad decision not to tell the police but, I dunno if he should have been fired. I guess we will see what the real details are.
bigtroyjon
Member
You don't know what you are talking about. Athletics are not a large portion of any schools budget, interests or administrative concerns.Salazar said:
Penn St. is not an extreme example, it is an extreme exception.
Kermit The Dog
Banned
Cyan said:
Yes, college's intensely tied in with the football program.
Ew.ssolitare said:
Yeah, you and the other PSU fans. I dunno.
Pretty much this. Sorry Salazar, but I can't think of a single other example of a college where athletics are even a blip on the radar. Ask who the football coach is at any other school, they won't say "JoePa! For life!", they'll give you a funny look and ask what a football is.bigtroyjon said:
bigtroyjon said:
By which you possibly mean that the athletics program "runs itself". But it is part of the university body. It would be fatuous to argue that it is not. Or you argue that it is not large. But it is. The coaches' salaries alone are preposterous.
Penn has been exposed to civil lawsuits, international disgrace, needlessly prolonged criminal activity by the operation of a football program that was accustomed to think that it was a law unto itself. Happens with other schools, diverting money from general funds to protect football programs in legal skirmishes about recruiting violations. More than 40% of Rutgers' sports program revenue came from general funds and student fees in 2009-10. In 2010, $800 million of student fees went to subsidise sports programs.
You think that's irrelevant.
SerArthurDayne
Member
Too many damn teams. I hear they are going to contract the SEC because there just isn't sufficient quality there to justify it. Efforts are going into ensuring that the Big East continues as the dominant tour de force for college athletics across the entire nation.
Cyan said:
I disagree with you 100%.
First sport culture. You think people are not attach to football or have no idea who the coach is in the crazy SEC conferences, do you think the 100,000 plus fans in stadiums that are packed through out USA have no idea about football. Same with basket ball in ACC.
Athletics is a huge budget, including scholarships for every starter and many bench players. Head coaches get paid more than any professor in big /medium Football schools, add travel expense for all your football players, work out facility etc etc.
you are extremely naive to think PSU is an exception
http://m.sportsbusinessdaily.com/Journal/Issues/2011/08/22/In-Depth/Budgets.aspx
Every DIV school is effected by athletic department
http://www.annarbor.com/sports/budg...sure-on-eastern-michigan-athletic-department/
There's not much to read. College sport is big in certain universities, but the vast, vast majority of college institutions don't focus on sports at all, much less football. I'm going to hazard a guess to say Salazar has cherrypicked some stories, is applying a broad brush to the college experience in America, and chalking it up to weird Americanism.Kermit The Dog said:
basically if all you know about college in america is watching collegiate sports, then well surprise it seems like a far bigger deal than it really is. You don't see the hundreds, if not thousands of smaller schools and universities that don't focus on it.
Ninja Scooter
Member
ssolitare said:
So not following up on whether or not a child rapist was being exposed to his players is not worthy of being fired, but having a player take money from an agent , or going 3-9, those are where the line is drawn? Gotcha.
Paterno dropped the ball. He doesn't deserve to go to jail. But losing his job is perfectly fair to me. He has a LOT of responsibility and failed massively.
Oh hey, I didn't realize this stuff was considered significant enough to rate a wikipedia article!mre said:
And my goodness, it looks like my old university has cobbled together a team as well! I'm surprised those boys have enough time to play in matches, between going to class and studying for examinations.
remnant said:
I wasn't alleging that there is a dysfunction at large in American colleges. I concur that a majority of institutions don't have this problem. And I can understand if people in or around big football colleges don't necessarily see it as a problem. But I think it is one, and one that will probably worsen in accordance with the auto-pilot determination to "grow brands" and pull in more tv revenue and expand stadia. Because while some (noted economists say not many) of these programs really do pay for themselves, and more than that - a whole bunch of them don't, and what these other schools do is come for the general funds. And when you are drawing large sums of money from a university's state and student fee coffers to pay for its sports teams to try and compete with bigger schools, you're not actually interested in the university as an institution or a concept.
Officerrob
Banned
This might be the most naive statement about collegiate athletics that I have ever seen.Cyan said:
This is a bit curious. In July Paterno transferred ownership of his home to his wife for 1 dollar?
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/16/s...ownership-of-home-to-his-wife-for-1.html?_r=1
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/16/s...ownership-of-home-to-his-wife-for-1.html?_r=1
Dude Abides
Banned
An IU prof wrote a book about what Salazar is saying. He makes some good points but isn't all that persuasive.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0805038647/?tag=neogaf0e-20
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0805038647/?tag=neogaf0e-20
Officerrob
Banned
Holy crap. That is really shadyMrbob said:
These seems like reasonable amounts of money to allot to an athletic club.beast786 said:
Code:
School FY2010 FY2011 FY2012 Change (2010-12)
California $69.4 $64.2 $71.2 +2.6%Hrm. I know a little about estate planning, but from the finance/tax side rather than the law side. From the finance side, this looks like a pointless transaction.Mrbob said:
Look at what he's saying, though. Look at the $7 increase from last year to this year. You Californians have always liked to spend above your means.Cyan said:
Same from the legal side. In fact, if it was done in attempt to limit his personal liability in the event of a lawsuit, it would most likely be deemed a fraudulent conveyance and ignored by the courts.
From the tax law aspect of it, if he simply transferred it to his wife then it's really a null event. If he actually transferred it into a trust for, say, his children then there could be some benefit from an estate depletion point of view.
Officerrob
Banned
Unless your trying to shield that asset from potential litigationCyan said:
aorange999
Member
Cyan seriously now...I'm not on Salazars side but any Big 10 or Big 12 major D1 school the majority of the students know who the coach is and are fully influenced by the sport teams. I went to a D3 college and was an international student and even I knew the name of the football team coach.
Cyan said:
DMczaf said:
for all i know that piss could have been digital.
first, at the places where football is big, the football program (if not the athletics department as a whole, especially women's sports) often makes a profit. i do agree that small colleges trying to gain status by throwing money at a football program is stupid.
second, and more importantly, the idea of athletics dominating academics is a groundless one that is propagated by people who like to moralize. even at schools where football is huge (a very small minority), it's not like students are spending all their free hours watching the team practice and play and not doing any work because of it.
gutter_trash
Banned
there is a big difference between stealing and child molestationssolitare said:
Maybe, but it's disingenuous to compare the salaries of professors and head football coaches at major universities. The vast bulk of the coach's salary is paid out of donations by athletic boosters, compensation for participating in programs like a coach's call in show, and from guaranteed endorsement contracts secured by the university but paid by the sponsoring corporation. The actual "salary" of most coaches (at least at public universities) is probably not that far from the salary of a tenured professor.Salazar said:
It's late and I'm feeling too lazy and tired to look up actual numbers, but, if I remember correctly, Nick Saban's total compensation is something like $5.5m, but is only paid less than $200k out of public funds by the University of Alabama.
dschalter said:
Only 22 of 120 Division I-A university athletics programs ran surpluses in 2009-2010. Probably the big ones.
dschalter said:
I grant that I am, at least in part, making a moral argument. I'm not arguing for a caricature of nobody studying, or of everybody studying less, because there is a big football game on or a large football program on campus.
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