It's now official. Email evidence. Curley and Shultz were going to report it to proper authorities and Paterno talked them out of it.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2166780/Penn-State-officials-covered-Jerry-Sandusky-child-abuse-talk-Joe-Paterno.html

It's a very short article for such a revelation but the e-mail does not say what you report it to say.

I think I said from the beginning that this is how it went down. Paterno thought they could handle it internally with counseling and the punishment of not being his heir. That was an error in his judgement that should have been voiced by his nominal superiors.

"Made them" implies they had no free will to report, which is entirely not true. This is on adminstrators equally or more than it is on Paterno.

It's a very short article for such a revelation but the e-mail does not say what you report it to say.

It really is A Few Good Men if you think about it. A subordinate compromises his morality to a superior out of fear, allegiance and self-preservation.

Curley = Markinson



Paterno = Jessup



Danny = Danny

I'm not making any leaps. Here is Curley's email to the Penn State President:

[b]Curley writes: "After giving it more thought and talking it over with Joe yesterday, I am uncomfortable with what we agreed were the next steps."

So, to sum it up, Joe Paterno is to blame, but he's not to blame more than anyone else who covered it up. His legacy deserves to be destroyed but it deserves to be done fairly. Joe Paterno was not running the university by 2001. His job was in jeopardy.

Is that why when the administrators came to his front door to fire him Joe went out the back door and continued coaching.

Naive thinking there, but your basic premise is correct, they were all equally cuplable and should all pay a hefty price, be that financially or by going to prison.

This is bad for Paterno but the whole "Paterno was in charge of the whole university" thing is WAY overblown here. This isn't the 80s and early 90s where he was a God there. There was pressure for him to retire for a long time. It was at least since 2000. In all honesty, Penn State has been a disappointment since joining the Big Ten and Joe Paterno could logically have been forcibly retired at least since 2001. He was in no position to withstand this scandal and go after those who told. The thing is that the other administrators were just as culpable and in big trouble, likely never working ever again at a major institution, if the Sandusky stuff was uncovered in 2001 with what happened in 1998.

Joe Paterno didn't stop his "bosses" from doing anything. He obviously had input, and was complicit in the coverup, and he obviously should have went to police himself, but this should not be portrayed as the administrators wanted to go to authorities but Joe Paterno said no and that was it. That's illogical. Joe Paterno would be powerless to stop that or do anything about it if they defied him. This isn't some minor issue. It's multiple felonies happening on campus.

So, to sum it up, Joe Paterno is to blame, but he's not to blame more than anyone else who covered it up. His legacy deserves to be destroyed but it deserves to be done fairly. Joe Paterno was not running the university by 2001. His job was in jeopardy.

At the time of the scandal, was Paterno still the leading fundraiser-donor at the school? If so, then he most definitely was "in charge of the whole university."

Is Phil Knight in charge of the university of Oregon? Is T Boone Pickens in charge of Oklahoma State?

Is Phil Knight in charge of the university of Oregon? Is T Boone Pickens in charge of Oklahoma State?

How many multimillion dollar decisions are made at those two universities without consulting those two guys first?

Are either of those people on the board of trustees for the institutions you mention? If so, then it's likely they do run them. That's what donors do.

I'm not suggesting that Spanier and Curley shouldn't be held accountable for their actions. I was just making a point about the power wielded by people like Paterno. His influence at the school had to have been immense given that he was one of its top donors, one of its top fundraisers, and the head coach of its football program, which plays a key role in shaping the PSU's institutional identity and its ability to raise additional funds.

Beardown seems to think that Paterno was the mastermind in the Sandusky cover up. Maybe he's right. As dolphin said, however, the article he cites provides no evidence to support this view.

How many multimillion dollar decisions are made at those two universities without consulting those two guys first?

The key word is "influence". Paterno may have had the most "influence". He didn't have the power to cover up a child molestation ring. Pretty much everyone was involved, including those who were legally required to do something.

It just seems to me that people use Joe Paterno's popularity to make a case he was as culpable here as people who were legally required to do something and will be going to jail for not doing so. Joe Paterno deserves a lot of blame in this but that isn't fair. An official chain of command existed that did not have Joe Paterno anywhere near the top. Any of them do the right thing and all of a sudden things happen and this is stopped in 2001.