If the Never-Ending Penn State – Jerry Sandusky Disaster Has Been Hard On Us We Can Only Imagine What the Penn State Alumni and Fans Are Going Through Right Now – Still….”WHY” Cover-Up For A Child Rapist? – The Second Mile Charity Needs A Thorough Examination To Find Out EVERYTHING That Happened With The Charity That Jerry Sandusky Founded and Raised A Lot of Money For – We Only Wish We Could Ask Joe Paterno Just What In the Hell….
If the never-ending Penn State – Jerry Sandusky Disaster is hard on the people here at Coaches Hot Seat as we try to digest and understand the enormity of the EVIL that was allowed to go on at Penn State University for over a decade we can only imagine what Penn State alumni and fans of the school are now going through right now.
On the night that Joe Paterno was fired last November many of us here at Coaches Hot Seat were gathered together in San Francisco for the Oregon – Stanford game on The Farm and at dinner that night we sat in stunned silence as the images of the Penn State board of trustees firing Joe Paterno and the Administration at the school were announced and then filtered through the restaurant:
At dinner on Sunday night in the High Rockies far from State College, Pennsylvania and Indianapolis, Indiana where it seems NCAA president Mark Emmert is poised to announce major sanctions against the Penn State University and its athletic department several of the same people that were gathered in San Francisco last Fall were again together and the conversation around Joe Paterno’s firing and the conviction of Jerry Sandusky were almost surreal as if this was all just a bad dream that couldn’t have possibly happened.
Sadly, IT did happen with IT being what looks like a stunning and still unexplainable, by what has made it into the news media, cover-up of the EVIL activities of a long-time member of the Penn State football coaching staff and very high-profile individual on the Penn State campus and athletic facilities with that person being shielded by Penn State Administration according to the evidence presented in Freeh report being the Monster Jerry Sandusky.
After many times going around the table the question that was impossible for any of us to answer about what has happened at Penn State was….
WHY?
Why would anyone that was not mentally ill or EVIL cover-up the RAPING OF CHILDREN when there is very good evidence in our opinion that some of the RAPES OF THE CHILDREN happened right on the Damn Penn State campus?
Please, is there anyone that can answer that question with a logical answer AND sorry the “they wanted to protect their reputations and the reputation of Penn State University” is just not good enough because the trade-off between those two things…
Reputations of Few People and a University
AND
THE RAPING OF CHILDREN ON A COLLEGE CAMPUS AND ELSEWHERE IN THE COMMUNITY
…just does NOT make any Freaking Sense when you are talking about people with advanced degrees and very high IQs that for Damn sure knew that NOT immediately reporting a potential RAPING OF A CHILD ON THE PENN STATE CAMPUS was not only wrong but EVIL as well.
Kevin Gorman of the Pittsburg Tribune-Review writes in his brilliant column about Penn State that…
Penn State’s real punishment? Shame, Kevin Gorman, Tribune-Review
“Penn State failed on so many levels. Paterno, president Graham Spanier, senior vice president Gary Schultz and athletic director Tim Curley turned a blind eye to allegations of on-campus assaults by Sandusky in 1998 and, again, in 2001. Then, the school provided only measured movements in response to the state Attorney General’s 23-page report in November and former FBI director Louis Freeh’s 267-page report this month.
Never before had the university been placed on so much as probation by the NCAA. Now its criminal behavior is so egregious that Emmert was granted approval by the 22 chancellors and presidents that comprise the NCAA Board of Directors to punish Penn State without first conducting its own investigation.
If the NCAA is relying strictly upon the Freeh Report, then it’s not doing its due diligence. It should be investigating the university’s relationship with Second Mile, the State College charity for at-risk youth where Sandusky found his victims.
Penn State athletics and Second Mile were intertwined on many levels, most notably the depiction of Nittany Lion athletes on trading cards to promote the non-profit organization. Sandusky used his status as architect of Linebacker U to seek funding for Second Mile, making athletes and donors unwitting accomplices.
For their generosity in helping manifest a monster, they have no choice but to be ashamed.”
The above is right on point because the Second Mile Charity that was created by Jerry Sandusky has slipped away into the shadows over the past few months and has not received the kind of review by both legal authorities and the news media and in our opinion…and it is just an opinion….there is a lot that went on at the Second Mile Charity which worked with thousands of at risk kids things that a Helluva lot of people in State College and the State of Pennsylvania want to keep quiet and we can understand why because when you put together a convicted sexual predator of children like Jerry Sandusky with a charity that served poor kids that are almost always vulnerable and lots of “very powerful people” around then there are things that come to mind that we are just not going to write in this blog because they sicken us so much just to consider “might” have happened.
On what the Penn State alumni and fans MUST DO right now as they take in the enormity of EVIL that has happened at “their” university and athletic department Jeff Steiner of the Centre Daily Times which is in State College outdoes himself in his latest:
Penn State’s football program’s mystique shattered, Jeff Steiner, Centre Daily Times
“It is important to separate ourselves from the need to protect the idea of Joe Paterno. Time, and only time, will have the final word on his name. His meaningful contributions will always be appreciated. But, the current challenge is too daunting to conflate it with a defense of the idea of JoePa. His legacy must stand up to the bright light of scrutiny and the chips must fall where they fall.
An honest accounting will show that we have ownership in the pride that precipitated the downfall. Whatever faults he may have had, Joe Paterno did not build the pedestal from which he fell. A general sense of over-importance and self-righteousness swept him there.
We now must set aside this hubris and make some tough decisions at a time when we face a disturbing void of leadership. We are starved for unfiltered accountability. But, the more responsible people are in this matter, the more they are scrambling to protect their personal interests.
With enormous criminal and civil exposure, the university administrators who have the core ownership for what occurred are likely to never publicly own their actions and inactions. The university board of trustees rendered itself powerless as a fiduciary entity by willingly ignoring what was unfolding until it reached a complete crisis point. Only through immense public pressure did a single trustee recently resign.
The one true moment of personal responsibility and reconciliation occurred when Paterno said, “This is a tragedy. It is one of the great sorrows of my life. With the benefit of hindsight, I wish I had done more.” Understandable in its intent, the efforts of his family to protect his name only serve to distance these words.”
Amen to that Jeff Steiner.
Back in the High Rockies as our wives and children headed off to bed after dinner on Sunday night and the Alamos Malbec wine was replaced with cold Anchor Steam beer as we pondered the work week ahead and what NCAA president Mark Emmert might say early on Monday morning for us, a Coaches Hot Seat member that actually played in a couple of games on an opposing team against Penn State and Joe Paterno in the late 1970s said what all of us were thinking or have thought over the past few horrific months:
“I only wish I could talk to Coach Paterno right now and ask him just what in the Hell happened.”
Double Amen to that.
