Wow, I am disgusted.
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Bill Clinton was impeached, not for getting a hummer, but for lying about it. Martha Stewart went to jail not for insider trading, but for lying about it.

If anyone lied or covered up for this criminal, they are just as guilty in my book.
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ABSOLUTELY no allegation Paterno lied about anything....he did what he was LEGALLY required to do, report it to his superiors....my question is what were his MORAL obligations...here is a quote from the head of the PA State Police:

State police commissioner Frank Noonan said Monday that Paterno fulfilled his legal obligations and was in no danger of being charged with any criminal wrongdoing, but that he felt the 84-year-old coach had not lived up to his moral obligations.

"Somebody has to question about what I would consider the moral requirements for a human being that knows of sexual things that are taking place with a child," Noonan said. "I think you have the moral responsibility, anyone. Not whether you're a football coach or a university president or the guy sweeping the building. I think you have a moral responsibility to call us."
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Read the Grand Jury report and wanted to throw up. Think if your son was one of the kids. Who would you go after...EVERYONE who had ANY shred of prior knowledge and didn't follow through. While Paterno did all he was LEGALLY required to do, following his MORAL convictions would have included taking the GA to the police himself to get the story out to them. In addition, what about the GA's dad? He should have taken his son to the police about what he saw.

All the stories have similarities. That makes the allegations VERY solid, in my book. Throw him in general population, and see what happens when the predator becomes the prey. I'm normally not one to approve of that type of justice, but it's viable in this case, to me. :-) I'm betting that it won't even make it to trial. The guy will likely "handle things on his own" before then, I suspect. Isn't that what usually happens in cases like this? They can't face what they did and what is likely to happen to them in prison.
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It's time to go. No question.
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Exactly, that's why the VP and AD got arrested - they lied.

I'm no lawyer, and I don't play one on TV but since Joe P didn't see this with his own eyes what steps would have the police taken? Wouldn't it have been necessary to have the grad asst be the complainant? (not excusing by a long shot, just wondering). Like if someone tells me they see a crime and I call the police and say that someone told me they saw a crime are the police going to care what I have to say?
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I was born and raised 45 minutes from the Penn State . Since I was a kid, I've been a Penn State fan. I always looked at JoePa as a person of integrity, on and off the field.

He did not do everything he could do. He is Penn State. He needed to make this his life mission to either clear Sandusky's name, or put him in jail. When he did his part, and reported it to the next level, and they did nothing.... that is where he fell short.
He could have done more for the victims, the witnesses, the school , the fans. Even for Sandusky, if he was being falsely accused.

This is a failure of leadership. This is the end of Penn State.
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I don't think this is about the school or the fans at all, Mikey.
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I respect your opinion.
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JoePa to retire at end of season...his statement:

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. - November 9, 2011 (WPVI) -- Penn State football coach Joe Paterno announced in a statement that he has decided to retire at the end of the season.


The statement reads:

I am absolutely devastated by the developments in this case. I grieve for the children and their families, and I pray for their comfort and relief.

I have come to work every day for the last 61 years with one clear goal in mind: To serve the best interests of this university and the young men who have been entrusted to my care. I have the same goal today.

That's why I have decided to announce my retirement effective at the end of this season. At this moment the Board of Trustees should not spend a single minute discussing my status. They have far more important matters to address. I want to make this as easy for them as I possibly can.

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.

My goals now are to keep my commitments to my players and staff and finish the season with dignity and determination. And then I will spend the rest of my life doing everything I can to help this University.
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yes.
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I disagree.........I REALLY DISAGREE.

Crazy/telling/appropriate? to see Matt Millen break down on SportsCenter today....the gravity of this for Penn State as an institution. This is so far bigger than pointing the finger at one or two douchebags.
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Agree 100%. It's institutional failure to protect children from a predator (and I don't mean the school with the term institutional), plain and simple. There are a lot of wrongs that have been done in this case that can't be righted. This case makes me just sick. :-)
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Not enough, in my opinion. His retirement should become effective immediately.
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you're wrong pete, dead wrong. it's far less about us then it is about the kids who were raped, not even close, orders of magnitude less. everyone reread that before someone goes off half cocked. but this does impact everyone who went to, graduated or just liked penn state. I'm gutted over this, I'm gutted that the institution that I spent years cheering for and attending would allow this **** to happen. this has changed everything about how I looked at something I considered myself a member of family of. it hurts me personally that this occurred and how it was handled.
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Well said.
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I've been reading about this very closely since the moment the story broke.
Boiled down to brass tacks, what I've learned so far is that Joe had no knowledge of any specific anything (at least up until a point). The grad student fed JoePa a small piece of info on which he acted immediately. It was then handled improperly by the school officials for years.

This is another typical media lynching, and of course it needs to fall on JoePa's head because he's the face of Penn State.
It's wrong and it's disgusting.

This is a man who has devoted his life to excellence, training men to be great men, donating almost all the money he has ever made back to the college so that even more men could become greater men.
And for all this selflessness all these years, he's the bad guy for not stopping something he had no knowledge or power over? He should have stopped taking care of all the hundreds of people he was devoted to caring for, because he should have magically known everything that went on? He should have had full rein over the entire college's policy because he's a football coach?

It doesn't make even one single ounce of sense that he would have ignored this, beit specifically or otherwise. He's retiring over the sheer guilt he's feeling that it could have happened in a place that he regarded so highly and worked so hard to make exceptional. He wishes he'd have known, wishes he could have done something, wishes he could have saved these boys, and is tortured that it happened. He's made statements directly to that effect. These are statements from the one man in high profile athletics who has never been caught in a lie, never been indicted, never been called on the carpet for cheating, a truly decent man.
And he's the bad guy?

There could not have been a single person in that school from janitor to student to faculty to the president that didn't know about this when that grad student saw that ten year old boy being raped in the shower. Or when the janitor witnessed another incident. Or when the Physical Plant employee witnessed another incident.
Everyone had to believe it was being handled and handled correctly. In hindsight, of course he could have done more. So could every single one of the people who ever set foot on that campus for all those years this was going on.

Read the Grand Jury indictment. The Department of Child Welfare knew what was going on in 1998 and they did nothing.
Dozens of people who knew of this first hand did everything they could and school officials lied and hid and did nothing.
Detectives were dispatched and hidden microphone converstaions took place and they did nothing.

The one man who stands out as a decent human being who has served God and his fellow man for his entire life is being blamed and ruined over this, and it's a sick injustice.
Read his statements. His prayers are with all these families. He'll do everything he can to help them, because that's who he is. To crucify him for not doing more is ridiculous, patently unfair, and blatently obvious to anyone who is willing to take five minutes to read, rather than to listen to the dogsh1t fed them by the media.

If there's a "right" side in this sickening, painful mess, it's to pray for these young men and their families who now have to relive this horror all over again. To abandon and assail a man like JoePa and try to somehow make it his fault is disgusting.
I'd far rather people blame me. I'm more deserving. I've done tons of awful things in my life and I probably deserve to be blamed for something I'm not guilty of.
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Well said, Scott. Unless there's something that I'm not hearing about or am mis-interpreting, I feel the same way about him.
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I should also mention that I'm not a Penn State alum, no more than a run-of the-mill Penn State fan, and really don't have anything invested in JoePa except that I've followed for years all his philanthrophic activities. They've been in print for all the 43 years I lived an hour or so away from State College.
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I am almost as saddened by the way Joe Paterno is being hanged as I am of what happened to these children, Andy.
Not one person took time in this thread to attack that sick son of a b1tch Sandusky that raped these boys, but everyone has taken time to indict a good man.
It's a ****ing travesty, and it's shameful.
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