The Nebraska Cornhuskers head into Happy Valley, PA, for a crucial game against Penn State Saturday. The question is, will Joe Paterno still be Penn state’s head coach?
Before, you puke up your last meal, that is not a misprint. Paterno’s tenure will reportedly soon be over, perhaps within days or weeks, in the wake of a sexual abuse scandal that has implicated university officials, according to two people briefed on conversations among the university’s top officials, according to the New York Times.
Jerry Sandusky, a former Penn State defensive coordinator under Paterno, has been charged with sexually abusing eight boys across a 15-year period.
Paterno is under fire, as he should be, for failing to involve police when he learned in 2002 of an allegation of one assault of a young boy — around age 10 at the time.
Two top Penn State officials were charged with perjury and failure to report to authorities that they knew of the allegations.
Granted, due process has not taken place as far as being proven in a court of law and in the age of social media and message boards things do get vastly distorted. However, it is my understanding that it was an intern that notified Paterno and he then told Penn State athletic director Tim Curley.
The layers of culpability are vast, assuming the allegations are true to the extent they are being reported. Something happened, just a matter of to what degree. Paterno might not have been involved in the matter other than being a link in the chain of communication. Paterno is a coach, not a policeman or investigator.
If the intern felt that a crime was committed, the intern could call the
police. It is my understanding that at no time was it made clear that a crime was
committed but that Sandusky’s conduct was “inappropriate.” Of course it’s inappropriate, it’s also illegal.
As for Paterno, he may have fulfilled all of his legal obligations, however, when he noticed
that nothing ever came of it, he should have notified the police. If I found out my brother was taking advantage of a child, I would report him immediately, and it should be the same way with employees. This is a disgustingly grotesque situation that Paterno should have taken care of, but he did not do so which is why he probably will no longer be employed by the
end of the month, if not the end of the week.
When people think of a college football program lacking institutional control, the recent examples are Reggie Bush and USC along with Jim Tressel and Ohio State.
Just before the 2006 draft, reports surfaced raising questions about whether Bush's family received gifts in violation of NCAA policies.
Ohio State suspended Tressel for the first two games of the 2011 season and fined him $250,000 for failing to notify the school of NCAA violations involving Ohio State football players and a financial arrangement with Edward Rife, owner of a local tattoo parlor, who was at the time under investigation by the FBI for drug trafficking. The arrangement, which resulted in five Ohio State football players being suspended, involved trading championship rings, jerseys and other football-related awards for tattoos.
With Penn State, the lack of institutional control does not even begin to describe it. It’s one thing to protect adults that we have blind spots for but to let this happen to kids, there is no defense at all.
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