Louis Freeh's report on child abuse at Penn State confirms the worst: the college's brass, including Joe Paterno, knew about and actively covered up coach Jerry Sandusky's sexual exploitation of children. Paterno, who bullshitted to the end ("Nobody had any inkling", "I never heard of a man rapin' another man"), saw his personal and institutional reputation as the primary victims, a mindset still embodied by countless sports-page headlines: "Paterno's legacy may now be damaged beyond repair", "Paterno's legacy tarnished", Paterno's legacy blah blah blah.

  • BarBarSeven

    Friday Night Blights

  • TooGoodToCheck

    This sucks. And yet if powerful people, as a group, internalize the message that ignoring or covering up child-rape will fuck up your legacy, then I can imagine worse outcomes.

    You want people to do the right thing because it’s right and because the alternative is horrific.  But if it takes the threat of public disgrace, then let public disgrace be threatened and meted out liberally.

    • LaylaSV

      Unfortunately, I think that, for those involved, the actual take away from all this “blight on a legacy” public disgrace is that child rape should be covered up much more thoroughly, doubts should not be documented and anyone who might be implicated by association should move silently away from the incident as quickly as possible.

      No one here seems to be crying over damage done so much as reputations ruined and ethical action rarely arises from that kind of headspace.

    • Antinous / Moderator

      Will there be a “Let his name be stricken from every pylon and obelisk” moment? I want to see some hammers and chisels.

      • http://www.matthewpetty.com/ Matthew Petty

        Well, there is a status of him.

  • EH

    Have they found out who changed the channel on all the TVs at Penn State yesterday just as this was being announced?

    http://tracking.si.com/2012/07/12/penn-state-students-tv-freeh-report/

  • http://twitter.com/adamlcox Adam L. Cox

    Joe Paterno’s legacy is an enduring chapter in the grand American tradition of “I don’t give a crap who gets hurt as long a I’m still rich and famous.”  In a just world, Penn State would be banned from having a football program ever again. But, you know, that would be unfair to…well, I don’t know, but people would make less money and that would be wrong.

    • Benjamin Terry

      Why should Penn State be banned from having a football program ever again?  I just don’t see how that makes sense.  Is it because of money being involved? If it were a hot shot professor working on research lucrative for the university,who was molesting kids at a “Penn State Kids Science” program, and some people in Administration looked the other way…  Would you advocate shutting down the program completely, even after firings and convictions? Otherwise it seems like a “This High School can’t have a Basketball team, because the old assistant coach molested some kids, and there were people in Administration that have since been fired and/or convicted that looked the other way.” situation.  I mean, there are arguments against football in general, but I don’t see why shutting down programs at a state university would make sense due to this situation.  Seems like it would be better to clean up badness and leave programs intact (unless the programs are considered bad even when run properly).

      • soylent_plaid

        Penn State is a football institution first and a school second.  That should be all the reason right there.

        Joe’s salary in 2007 was $512,000.  Half a million bucks, just in salary.  The man practically ran Penn State for 40 years.  How much money and influence do the tenured professors get?  What would you do to protect that much power?

        When the institution of “award-winning football” results in child molestation being covered up for fear of harming that instution’s reputation and influence, then that institution needs to be dismantled.  A permanent football ban (or even a temporary ban, say 10 years) would not only send a message that Penn State puts integrity and education before the cult of football, but also sends the message that this can happen to other powerful football programs.

        That’s why.

        • Benjamin Terry

          OK.  Going off your 1st sentence, it seems you are saying that Penn State football should have been banned even before this all happened, because football, in your view, was interfering with the primary purpose of the institution?  ”That should be all the reason right there”  I’d say even in that case, some sort of state pressure should come into play to reform the institution if possible rather than trash it, maybe with state funding penalties, etc., or whatever enforcement mechanism you could come up with that would be measurable, legal, and effective.  

          I mean, I understand your moral feeling about this aspect of it, but what do you think is the proper mechanism for handling that kind of situation?  Is there something nuanced and reasonable, or do we just… grant the Feds the power of Righteous Smiting based on the criteria of “Whatever seems outrageous” and feel good that the evil jock hegemony has been crushed?

          Unfortunately, more institutions than “award-winning football” have resulted in child molestation being covered up for fear of harming that institution’s reputation and influence.  The Catholic Church, some few hospitals or mental institutions, undoubtedly some heads of state over the years…  Heck just marriages, friends and families colluding, somebody worried that unless they played along people would doubt their commitment to “Sparkle Motion”.  There are people in those institutions that are responsible.  The solution is not always “destroy the institution”.  The solution is whatever stops the badness while maintaining people’s freedom to… do whatever is not illegal/evil, etc.  That could be dismantling the institution, charging those responsible, or implementing some sort of regulations and oversight, etc.  I would say that dismantling should be a last resort among those options, though not out of the question.

        • Antinous / Moderator

          Penn State is a football institution first and a school second.

          Colleges are just krill tanks for big business.  Why should Big Sport be left out of the feeding frenzy?

    • Justin Caffier

      Penn State grad here, disgusted with Paterno, not a football fan, dislike the atmosphere it creates, AND I’ve spent the past 8 months facebook shaming people who are turning a blind eye to JoePa’s involvement so they continue the hero worship.

      Having said all that, the idea of perma-banning PSU from having a football program is asinine beyond belief. This punitive knee-jerk reaction accomplishes nothing and punishes who exactly? Current and future players? The millions of fans? This “end the football program” reaction boggles my mind.

    • Skinjob2707

      In a just world, Penn State would be banned from having a football program

      If the NCAA doesn’t institute the death penalty, they will never again have any authority.  SMU got the death penalty for paying players tens of thousands of dollars, a far, far less heinous crime than allowing children to be raped in your locker rooms.  PSU is the textbook case for a football program with too much power.  5 or 6 years ago Paterno was asked to retire and said no.  When you can’t fire the football coach they have too much power.  When the football coach uses that power to protect his immediate subordinates from the consequences of their actions, you have no institutional control.

  • fuzzyfuzzyfungus

    I, for one, am glad to hear that his legacy was damaged in the passive voice. We wouldn’t want the idea that one is responsible for one’s legacy getting out…

  • http://imcravingpresidency.tumblr.com/ SedanChair

    I think this is the beginning of the end for big college football. We already know that the game as played is simply too damaging to players’ brains. And all the high-flown talk about leadership and character is obvious malarkey; everybody praised Paterno as the epitome of a football leader, but it turns out his character was a joke.

    • jerwin

      Here’s the atlanta journal constitution on Paterno’s legacy,or the one he might have had were it not for his loyalty to Sandusky:

      Until last fall, Paterno symbolized all that was right about college sports. His teams won, but he didn’t sacrifice his standards to do it. Penn State’s graduation rates were impeccable, his players were as good off the field as they were on, and his financial support of the university often had nothing to do with the football program.

      Here are the figures on graduation rates

      Penn State: 87 percent (statistically indistinguishable by race)
      Average among b0wl-bound college football games: 68.2 percent (60 percent for African Americans)

      (Notre Dame’s rates, at 94 percent, are measurably higher)

  • CSBD

    Wait… did I miss something?  When did the Vatican buy Penn State?

    Im pretty sure that at some point in the mid 90s they (the Vatican) were able to obtain a patent on institutional cover up of ongoing child rape… if Penn State violated their Holy Patent, why aren’t the Vatican Patent trolls out in force?

    • jerwin

      What, exactly, are you trying to say?

  • absimiliard

    The guy aided and abetted a child-rapist.

    I hope his “legacy” is ruined forever. frankly I hope that the very name “Paterno” becomes synonymous with “Likes child-rape and will help you rape young boys if you get him a touchdown”.

    -abs IS bitter, and never liked football (American or “soccer”) anyway, the only thing better than “ruining his legacy” would be a post-humous prosecution of the son-of-a-bitch (by which, I mean to imply that he’s at least half canine, not that his mother was an assertive woman {though she may well have been, in addition to not knowing how to raise a child up such that they don’t condone the rape of children})

  • awjt

    Now think about all the rape and shams going on right now that we don’t know about.

  • http://twitter.com/LOLvis Greg O’Realy

    Will paternoslegacy.com get picked up better by Google if it’s a straight 301 redirect to the Freeh report, or a little preamble and a link?

    • http://bhtooefr.org/ Eric Rucker

      I believe a 301 will tell GoogleBot that there’s nothing there, and to look at the Freeh report instead.

      Preamble and a link will get picked up by GoogleBot as its own page.

  • Skinjob2707

    PSU is no different from any other large university.  Administrators happily destroy the lives of others saying they are protecting the university from scandal when they are really only protecting themselves.  I defy anyone who works in academia to read the Freeh report and not conclude that PSU sounds just like their institution.  Universities are in urgent need of governance reforms so that administrators can no longer abuse the power they have over others.   Sending more to jail would be a great start.

  • lakelady

    There’s another aspect to this that few are talking about. Paterno grew up in a generation where no one spoke about child abuse. Heck, I’m at least generation younger than him and I never heard about child abuse when I was a kid. Our environment as kids affects our perspective on the world. What this episode points out is how easy it can be to be blind to what’s around us. I can imagine Paterno thinking that from what he knew of Sandusky he could never imagine a friend and colleague of his being capable of raping a child. What Paterno certainly was guilty of was being too trusting… trusting of his friend, trusting of the authorities, trusting the system. In the end when the reality of the abuse came to light in the past year I think it shattered his worldview and literally broke his heart and killed him.