Why Stop With a Statue

Everyone knows that the last few weeks has been very hard for the Penn State community.  The alleged crimes by Jerry Sandusky has knocked the university off of it's pedestal and, quite frankly, off it's rocker.  The aftermath of this tragedy has resulted in many prominent administrators being fired or forced into retirement and Joe Paterno is among the few that were terminated.  Last week I wrote an article on StateoftheSport.com in which I question the timeliness of his firing.  Today I'm going to defend a man that has committed no crime, possibly done nothing wrong, and is being unfairly persecuted by Penn State and the media.

Joe Paterno was not the one who molested a child in Penn State's locker room back in 2002.  Mike McQueary didn't catch Joe Paterno molesting anyone.  There aren't 40 counts of child molestation filed against Joe Paterno.  Why is he being treated like the child molester that Sandusky is alleged to be.  Paterno had a situation brought to his attention and acted on the information he was given in the proper fashion in the eyes of the law.  It is unclear what specifically was told to Paterno at this point, but it is clear that when he was presented with the grand jury's findings, he was shocked as to the charges and accusations against his former defensive coordinator.  That reaction says to me that he wasn't told in 2002 of the sodomy that McQueary allegedly witnessed.  Paterno told the grand jury that he reported an incident of touching and fondling of a possibly sexual nature to his superiors in the Penn State administration.  Since the grand jury didn't charge him of perjury, like they did with 2 Penn State administrator, they believed that what he said was what he was told and nothing less. 

I keep hearing about the moral responsibility to do more then just report it to his superiors and that there should have been some kind of follow up.  By going to his superiors, Paterno believed that the situation would be handled properly.  He trusted the men that he had worked with for possibly decades to do their part and investigate properly.  If they came back to Paterno and said the situation was looked into and taken care of then why should he follow up?  The people he trusted, now charged with perjury for lying to the grand jury, told him that everything is taken care of along with what was done, then why would he think that anything more needed to be done?  It is easy today to say that more should have been done because more crimes were committed after the fact, but based on the known facts it doesn't make sense for Paterno to do more than he did.  He heard of an incident and reported it to the people he was supposed to, end of story.  If you went to your boss, assuming you trust him/her, and reported an incident that may be criminal in nature and that boss comes back to you and said they looked into and dealt with it properly, would you do more digging?

Paterno was fired last Wednesday for not doing more in this situation.  He wasn't fired for molesting a child, performance issues, or any pending criminal charges for not fully cooperating with authorities in this case.  He was fired for following protocols specifically laid out by the school and state for the information he was given.  He followed the letter of the law and was fired.  He won't be the last I'm sure, but he is the scapegoat for Penn State University.  I haven't heard anything about the President of the university since he was fired and I've hardly heard anything about Sandusky since last Saturday.  All the talk is about Joe Paterno and the latest news is Penn State removing his statue during the Thanksgiving break.

The man coached at Penn State for 61 years.  61 years of running a good, clean program and producing not just good football players, but very good men.  61 years of contributions to Penn State's academic success and charitable foundations within State College, PA.  61 years of bleeding Penn State blue, not just for the football program, and he was fired without cause and unceremoniously and now he is being removed from the universities history piece by piece.  I say fine, but do it completely.  Rip down the library that he donated to Penn State and return every dime he donated to his university over the past 61 years.  If you want him erased for this one incident in which he did nothing wrong, then you give everything he gave you back.

I grew up in New Jersey with a dream of playing for Penn State and Joe Paterno.  Now, I'm a grown man who has never been more disappointed in a education institution.  The Penn State administration let the acts of a sexual predator slide to protect it's football program and now that same administrative body is using the Universities best employee, and the only one that followed the school's and states protocol properly, as a scapegoat.  I no longer have delusions as to what Penn State is all about and I will not support Penn State in anyway until Paterno's statue is returned to it's rightful place in front of the stadium and Penn State publicly apologizes for the way they have handled this situation.