I think we will find that he actively used his "power" to keep others from acting in a way that would hurt the football program. I find that just as galling and worthy of propping Paterno up with the numb nuts he petitioned to do nothing.

My argument is that Paterno could not have stopped this from being reported because he had no power to do so. That is why others are just as culpable.

Let me ask you this. Let's say someone went against JoePa's order and reported this to the police. What could Joe Paterno have done to this person? This isn't someone going to the police that a player had been smoking marijuana. This was a child molestation ring. Is Joe Paterno going to get this person fired?

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Which this? In relation to the players involved in a fight, I believe we will find he actively went after one of the legal team who did want to carry a different course of action against his football players. He did look to get her fired.

Let me ask you this. Are you comfortable that Paterno actively used his influence to insulate his football program from prosecution outside of his personal control?

Also, let me add I was hating on Joe Paterno well before this scandal happened. His lack of discipline and what players got away with was well known and not fitting with the narrative of what the media said of him.

If it makes me a bad guy to think that Joe Paterno isn't the 2nd most culpable figure in this scandal so be it. He played a big part but ultimately administrators are administrators for a reason. They are trusted to do what is right and also legally required to do what is right. The fact is that the administrators wanted to cover this up too because it would destroy their careers.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Of course not. Joe Paterno did abuse his power to protect the program. I've never doubted that. There are probably posts from me on here talking about Paterno and the lack of control of his program with regards to that fight(though, we did seem to lose about 2 years worth of college sports posts in that forum).

He didn't have the power to cover up a child molestation ring.

Go back and read what I have written in this thread. I'm not defending Joe Paterno. I'm more trying to keep realistic with who had the true power to let this happen. Joe Paterno making a fight with his players go away is on him because he had the power.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Oh, and I got banned from a Penn State message board for trying to explain to them what Joe Paterno did was wrong, so take that!

I win another thread!

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

See, the thing is if the administrators had actually done the right thing from the beginning they would have been fine. I started to type Paterno would have too, but then maybe not. The program was losing a fair amount of games. It may have been the end for him as head coach. That is hard to believe too because wasn't the AG Paterno's hand picked guy?

Uniting a subject with a predicate is enough to get people banned from some college sports boards. You win nothing.

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Yes, Joe Paterno probably would have been fired or at least a retirement date was set. Regardless of what some people say, Joe Paterno's job has not been secure since the 90s.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Can you acknowledge that you misquoted me?

Sometimes, I think you read my threads with your "I hate college sports" glasses and think that I'm just attempting to defend it blindly.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

You have melee typed your way through trying to say he really had no culpability in any of this, but he still is a bad guy...just not as bad as the administrators. From where I sit, that is in effect defending the guy.

You can still claim thread victory. It was a good week.

Please show me where I ever said he had no culpability.

If my name was "Bears Rick" or "Blackhawks Rick" people would view my posts a lot differently in regards to this.

Let me state, for the record, Joe Paterno deserved to be fired, deserves to have his legacy destroyed, deserves civil suits against him, and should not be viewed as anything but a great college football coach who made a series of terrible decisions in his old age. I hope that clears it up.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

For most, this statement is factually inaccurate. Your typed word is enough to let the world know your views on college athletics.

I believe that this is what initially caught my eye. You are stating that Paterno was not legally as culpable as Spanier/Curley. Paterno's role and the "chain of command" do not remove Paterno from being as culpable. That is my opinion. I cannot verify if a court of law would agree. Morally I feel I am on safe ground.

I might use this as a signature just to clear things up.

Has there been anything other than yellow journalism to suggest there was more than one rapist here?

I am bothered by it being called a child rape ring if there has only been one person actually doing it. A ring implies more than 1 person doing the raping. People being involved in the cover up is one thing.

But the yellow journalists call it a child rape ring covered up. That says the cover up was of a ring of child rapists.

Most politicians are child rapists so of course they are blaming it all on the Ticklemonster while they hide, and make sure everything it under wraps.

That's exactly the point though. It's not like I read your posts and make judgements on your views of pro sports. I chose to use a college mascot and all of a sudden you feel the need to do so.

This thread is an example of it. Curious Hair is basically saying that I'm defending Joe Paterno so I can defend the honor of college sports. I don't care about defending that honor. I'll point out things I find inaccurate like anyone else would about any subject.

Go read how Curious Hair characterized my posts in this thread. They were incredibly off because he reads my stuff like I'm some college townie who says "As long as they catch touchdowns I don't care what they do". This isn't the first time Curious Hair has done this either and sadly, you seem to believe he was actually making good posts by twisting and flat out falsifying my words in order to fit his agenda because he heard Dan Bernstein on the radio say he didn't like college sports so he's going to repeat and nod in agreement whenever he can.

I'll finish it like this. Joe Paterno could have stopped this. Others, who were his bosses, were required to stop this. I just don't see what the case is that Paterno is more to blame than those others. Equally to blame, as Don Tiny accurately pointed out, is more than fair. More to blame just doesn't work to me.

...or, you could be like Curious Hair, and think that I care more about defending college football than I do about a child molestation ring because that's not offensive at all.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

The "case" is a) that people believe the idea to cover up for Sandusky came from Paterno and b) that Paterno relied upon his exalted status within the Penn State hierarchy to "persuade" his "superiors" to become co-conspirators in the cover up.

You don't see the "case" because you have adopted a formalistic understanding of the way power and influence worked at Penn State. It remains to be seen whether or not this view is accurate.

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I don't believe you answered this question before. How could Joe Paterno do anything? How could he have stopped someone facing long jail terms for not reporting this? I would understand if this was a bar fight going away with his contacts, or a grade going from an F to a C, or a positive drug test. If his superior goes against his wishes, he can work on getting him fired. This was a child molestation ring. He had no power.

So, let's play this out.

1) Joe Paterno says "We should just cover this child molestation ring up".
2) His superiors say "No, we are going to police like we are legally required to do".
3)

What does Joe Paterno do as #3?

I just can't come up with a scenario where Paterno had the ability to stop this without willing compliance by the other people. If one other person decides this is wrong and goes against Joe Paterno they are free from any repercussions from him. They would have to deal with other repercussions, and likely everyone was getting fired for this regardless, but Joe Paterno could do nothing to them. That's been my point from the start. You can't be the driving force behind a cover up when you don't have the power to do so.

Hopefully you understood that post Curious Hair.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

I don't have much time to answer your post, so I will just briefly state that I reject the validity of your question. To me the issue isn't whether or not Paterno had the formal power to "order" a cover up. Rather, the issue is whether or not he could use his privileged stature within the university to persuade his bosses that the cover up wasn't a cover up at all, but an altruistic act they would commit to treat a valued member of the university community humanely.

I think you are correct to say that Paterno couldn't have "forced" a cover up in the narrowest sense of the term. But that doesn't mean he couldn't have been the architect of such a cover up.

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Regardless of what Curious Hair thinks, I agree with your post.

My biggest issue here is that people seem to put Paterno as the second most guilty in this(behind Sandusky). I understand that Paterno doesn't really deserve the benefit of the doubt, but I just don't think it's fair to put him above the many others who failed here too, especially since the system was designed for them to know better and certainly designed to know better than a geriatric football coach.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

BRick,

If you wish to continue in your own dream world of JoPa then I suggest you not read the Freeh Report, if the excerpts are any indication he is going to come down like a ton of BRicks on JoPa's legacy.

What is my "dream world of JoePa"? Please explain. Otherwise, I'll assume you are just another person that doesn't understand the content here.

I haven't been a Paterno fan for a long time. I just don't think he's the second most culpable person in this situation. You seem to disagree.

I could argue that the "dream world" scenario is that a football coach had so much power that he could cover up a child molestation ring without the help of an AD, President, and many others. Oh wait a minute, Curious Hair said that I am trying to say that Penn State isn't to blame for this! Could I really be saying that this scandal was bigger than Paterno and a problem of the whole university! What a dream world I live in. Let's all just make Joe Paterno the scapegoat here! Let's minimize the contributions of others! Dream world!

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Excuse me, am I the Elmhurst Steve to your Frank Costanza? Get off my ass already.

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If you admit you grossly mischaracterized my thoughts in this thread I will.
That just struck a never with me.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Well, I'm sorry if I struck a nerve, but I've always seen you as a status quo guy when it comes to the NCAA, as many are, and I don't think I'm wrong in that respect, and right now the the vibe I'm getting around the internet is that "don't go nuclear on Penn State" is for one reason or another the opinion of people who don't like radical changes or actions in the NCAA (football playoffs, for instance).

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I think Penn State should get a five year bowl ban, loss of scholarships, and if legally allowed, forfeiture of Big Ten Network money for a year(donated to charity, not redistributed). You can't cancel the season though, because you punish a bunch of other schools too. Also, a 5 year ban like this does more damage than a missed season where everyone just works out and looks towards 2013.

In general though, I don't want massive changes on all of college sports, because I like college sports. I doubt you want hockey completely revamped either. You like it. I wouldn't call you a "status quo" guy of hockey. You just like the product and think it could be improved but not by drastic changes.

I would like to think that I'm normal enough to not look at this scandal and say "Must defend college sports so let's minimize child molestation".

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Define "drastic." Do I want nets that are thirty feet wide? No, but proper obstruction enforcement and stricter show-fighting penalties would drastically change gameplay, and the league would be much more financially successful if it ceded its "full national footprint" for a heavy emphasis on the midwest and northeast, where we know hockey works. I'd say loading up on Quebec/Hamilton/Milwaukee/Hartford/Halifax and throwing John Scott and George Parros into a bottomless pit would change the character of the league quite a bit.

You mustn't forget that hockey fans as a rule are perpetually aggrieved about everything and never unhappy to suggest how the NHL can fucking suck a little less.

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That's fair.

There are things I'd change about college sports too. The discussions I have here are more about the drastic things like "pay the players 200,000 a year", "get rid of all bowl games", "make it so the kids don't have to attend classes and instead just create an affiliated team" kind of stuff.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!