Joe Paterno Has Passed Away

Fat Toad;4391718 said:
How does this apply to Paterno? Somewhere, in the middle of a very busy schedule in a very busy life - a busy life mostly spent doing well by many young men, someone makes vague (but serious) allegations against a friend of his. We don't know exactly how vague, but we do know that the man in the street who has condemned Paterno and now spits on his grave (and I am NOT talking about anyone specific, at least not on this site) thinks "the man heard, plain as day, that children are being raped, and if I'd heard that I'd have put a stop to it". Well yeah, so would anyone - including, I trust, Mr Paterno. The only problem is that scenario has little to do with reality...

I'm sure a lot of people really think they would have followed it up and saved the day. I'm equally certain the vast majority of them are wrong.

Don't get me wrong, Paterno was deep enough in it that he needed to go, just like Kimmel. When something like that happens, the entire organizational leadership must change so the organization can get past it. (God willing, I hope Penn State will get a man with the ability and moral integrity of a Chester Nimitz as their next coach. It would go a long way towards making things right again at that school.) But, remember, y'all know *nothing* to suggest that Paterno did anything worse than
1. Underestimate the importance of one piece of information, out of everything a major football coach has to deal with and
2. Underestimate the ability/integrity of the Penn State leadership to investigate properly and thoroughly.
and that does not justify the ridiculous hatred directed at Paterno. Not even close...

Paterno was a good coach who served his school and community well and who made one bad judgment call, which happened to have consequences all out of proportion to the error.

Neither deserved what he got. Have the class not to be part of the crowd piling it on.

Fat Toad, this was a very well thought out post, and it deserves a proper response.

I want to stress, again, that I've not spit on the man's grave in any way. And that I don't have hatred for Joe Paterno. I agree with most of what you say in your post, especially where you say that the consequences were out of proportion with his error. What I'll take issue with is this. 1. it's not relevant if most of us would have made the same mistake in his situation. Maybe we would, maybe we would not have. It would still be the same mistake with the same disproportionate consequences. 2. Neither deserved what he got? I'm not sure what you're referring to, exactly, but Paterno definitely deserved to be dismissed, and he deserved condemnation for his failure to act. Beyond that, I realize that people overreacted when the story broke. There are zealots everywhere who take stories like this well overboard. But it's neither classless nor piling it on to dispute whether or not the guy deserved condemnation for his involvement in the scandal.
 
Idgit;4391780 said:
bear, I'd agree with you if this were a eulogy. It's not. It's a thread on a sports message board.

I said my peace about his death, and then, as conversations very often do in threads, this thread turned in another direction. I stand by every word I've written. What's more, I don't think Paterno himself would disagree with it. He made a huge mistake in not handling the Sandusky reports thoroughly.

We all make mistakes, some of us make bigger ones than others. This was probably the biggest mistake of his life, and I don't think we're compelled to ignore it in a thread about his passing, especially when his fans were the ones who specifically attempted to gloss over the issue to begin with.

while I agree with Fat Toad...I also fully understand your point and a very good and classy job by you of keeping it clean (no name calling...etc) and above board imho
 
Zaxor;4391782 said:
while I agree with Fat Toad...I also fully understand your point and a very good and classy job by you of keeping it clean (no name calling...etc) and above board imho

Thank you, Zaxor. I knew when I waded in on the topic that I'd probably get tarred for addressing it in the thread about his death, but I really thought ROUSH8692's post deserved a response. It's an issue I obviously feel strongly about, but that's not to say that I don't also have sympathy for the Paterno family. As I said earlier, it's a sad, sad set of events, all the way around.
 

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