I regret that Joe Paterno’s illustrious career ended the way it did, but what on earth could he and his supporters expect? Once it became known that he had been informed of Sandusky’s actions in 2002 (four years after the first incident — timeline here) and did nothing more than report it to his boss, what else could be done? He should have reported it to the cops, as should his boss. Instead, it looks like the school administrators took actions which would keep Sandusky away from the school’s facilities but not prevent him from meeting and allegedly abusing children. That smells of cover-up.
Paterno and Penn State football have rightly had a reputation as being squeaky clean, and heaven knows he’s ensured that his football players have gotten more than a ticket into the pro football ranks by insisting they attend class and graduate. That makes this all the harder to understand. He’s been a good man, an honorable man, and yet he let this kind of behavior by a friend go by with nothing more than a report to the athletic department.
Maybe he’ll write an autobiography and explain this. I think he owes the Penn State community and especially the children who were abused an explanation.
One friend, either on Facebook or Twitter, noted that if you see an article that uses the form “JoePa” to refer to him, it is almost sure that what follows is exculpatory.
Deadspin did a wonderful, biting look at Joe Posnanski, who had the great misfortune to both be working on a book on Paterno at the time all this went down, and living with him and his family at the time. Posnanski today penned an incomprehensible apologia at Sports Illustrated, which you fairly expect; after all, the most damning interview of Michael Vick that I have read was published, not on the pages of SI or in ESPN the Magazine, but in GQ, of all places, by Deadspin’s Will Leitch. For the reasons that Posnanski has been in close contact with the man, that he had a narrative he must now obliterate and start anew, I cut Posnanski some slack for issuing otherwise unforgivable comments like these:
Really, Joe? This man who had been aware of his underling’s abuse but did not call the police — what was that? This is a “scapegoat”? He did the minimum legally required, signed off by the university’s legal counsel per the grand jury’s report.
Since when does a scapegoat consult an attorney before acting?
Joe is too close to this, too married to the image of the old Joe Paterno. But the rot we all got to see this week was always there; it just waited for someone brave and tenacious enough to uncover it.