Give Joepa the Horrific, Silent, Back-turned Send off He Deserves
Mates,
With as much as this blog and fan-base detests to our dying day the horror that Joepa knowingly allowed for decades under his watch, maybe we really can make a statement about it. There are multiple mgobloggers in every section of that stadium come Saturday, and it just doesn't seem that difficult if a few per section took literally a few minutes before the game to relay a simple message: When PSU comes out don't boo, don't make a sound, simply turn your back like Joepa did to the child molestor!
Even drunks would understand that. It would be rather newsworthy and draw the proper attention - silence and backs turned by 100,000+ fans. Shame the child molestors and their sex-offender-loving fan base.
It might be pie in the sky, but heck, if WD can take Brandon down, why not let our voices be heard in the silence. A few signs, a few encouragements to the crowd as they file in to get their tickets scanned, a bit of yelling in the stands between the rawk music selections during warm ups, and you just might get it done.
What do you think?
XM
September 21st, 2016 at 2:22 PM ^
throw the Paterno Loyalists a bone"?
Paterno betrayed the trust of countless kids, the players who played for him and he professed to love, and the university he claimed was the most important thing to him. People who put his legacy above the name of the university and doing the community a disservice and shouldn't be "thrown a bone". They should be told to take a hike, just like Paterno was. It's people like them that allowed this to happen, that allowed football to become more important than the safety and well being of children. It's this sort of "Joe can do no wrong attitude" that allowed him to operate outside of the law for so long, and allowed him to pretend that what he knew was going on wasn't really going on and wasn't worthy of his time or his concern.
September 20th, 2016 at 10:31 PM ^
I watch, with great enthusiam mind you, a bunch of 18-22 year olds running around in winged helmets to escape the rigors of life and forget about the rest of the world for a few hours each Saturday. God bless America and Go Blue! I don't want to think about Paterno or Kapernick or any other hot button issue on a Saturday afternoon.
September 21st, 2016 at 10:02 AM ^
Bummer
September 20th, 2016 at 10:34 PM ^
September 20th, 2016 at 11:15 PM ^
September 20th, 2016 at 11:18 PM ^
September 20th, 2016 at 11:52 PM ^
September 21st, 2016 at 10:18 AM ^
You might need a second plane for DON'T HONOR JOEPA. HONOR THE KIDS
September 20th, 2016 at 11:23 PM ^
September 20th, 2016 at 11:42 PM ^
You can do it, Hatter. This would be so awesome. I support you in this (though not financially).
September 21st, 2016 at 7:37 AM ^
I will chip in $100.
September 21st, 2016 at 10:10 AM ^
Cost prohibitive, especially on short notice. If we had thought of this a month ago we could have had a plane towing a banner ad all around Ann Arbor though.
Maybe next year. In Happy Valley, so it will sting a little more.
September 20th, 2016 at 11:27 PM ^
The PSU administration had a choice to make this past Saturday. No one was forcing them to honor Paterno.The sanctions have past and the football program is slowly moving forward. You would think the current team and winning football games, (which would put Paterno further in the rear view mirror) would be the administration's primary focus. They obviously felt otherwise. They also knew they were making the wrong choice as evidenced by them burying the announcement at the very end of a press release and refusing to make anyone from the school/AD (outside of Franklin and his normally scheduled press conference) available to the press for comment. If you're going to take the cowardly approach (as PSU did), then I say you deserve to get shamed. What better way to do it than on national TV?
September 21st, 2016 at 3:03 AM ^
September 20th, 2016 at 11:38 PM ^
making him a special is on way to get more people to HATE penn state. i hope michigan creams them, what a waste of a man.
September 20th, 2016 at 11:50 PM ^
This kind of thing makes us look small and petty. Self-righteously feeling better about our team because it didn't happen here. It was a criminal matter. This kind of action demeans what happened -- turning it into a sports rivalry insult.
Let's lead by example and do what PSU should be doing...move on.
September 21st, 2016 at 12:52 AM ^
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September 21st, 2016 at 8:15 AM ^
September 21st, 2016 at 9:08 AM ^
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September 21st, 2016 at 9:33 AM ^
I find the thinking that led to this comment to be small.
September 21st, 2016 at 12:28 PM ^
September 21st, 2016 at 3:38 AM ^
I would contribute for the skywriting... how much would it cost? start a go fundme!
September 21st, 2016 at 5:10 AM ^
To pass out simple printed directions about turning the back to all fans as they walk in to the stadium? I know it's a lot of paper and as outdated as the Pony Express....
Or is there digital way, besides this blog, to reach as many of these fans as possible before the game? Anybody have a crap load of Twitter followers or FB page that could reach people?
September 21st, 2016 at 7:03 AM ^
September 21st, 2016 at 9:10 AM ^
Stupid fat fuck.
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September 21st, 2016 at 9:36 AM ^
But if I see any of them, be it Spanier, Curley, etc., I'd be happy to turn my back. Otherwise, I'm not turning my back on the kids who had nothing to do with it. I'll give them the respect of a good booing the way I'd do for any opponent.
September 21st, 2016 at 10:25 AM ^
I too won't condemn current students. Let's admit it. If one of our greats from the past committed some heinous act, there would still be some who would support them and deny in the face of unrefutable proof.
I don't even boo the visiting team....unless it's OSU, MSU and of course now PSU. I will be booing them, my family and I will be wearing chartreuse ribbons and my wife will go to work Monday morning as a prosecutor who is assigned to child abuse and neglect cases. I was a cop for 30 years who made arrests in child sexual abuse cases (one of my regrets was that these cowards never resist arrest).
Having said all of this I will not turn my back only because I believe, perhaps naively that there are more students like Lauren Davis. She is an opinion editor of the PSU Collegian. She has spoken out against the Paterno Commemoration and was threatened for doing so. Davis then received the support of some faculty for doing so. Here is her article and the support of faculty story that followed..
We don't all agree on this and that's okay because the one thing that we can agree on is how vile the acts were that brought us to this discussion.
"The Daily Collegian’s editorial opinion is determined by its Board of Opinion, which is made up of members of its Board of Editors, and written by its opinions editor, with the editor in chief holding final responsibility for content.
Penn State needs a reality check.
This is not 2011. We need to move on.
Penn State announced on Thursday afternoon that the 50th anniversary of Joe Paterno’s first game as Penn State’s head football coach will be commemorated on Sept. 17 when Penn State plays Temple.
Paterno has not been a member of this university’s staff since 2011. He is no longer a community hero. Paterno was a remarkable part of this university for numerous years, and for that we have the right to be thankful. For those who attended Penn State while he was here, he has every right to remain a legend. He was a hero, and no one wants to see their hero fall.
But in light of these past years — even these past few weeks — this is in no way the right time or manner to “commemorate” him, if he even deserves to be so.
Currently, the undergraduate students at Penn State do not know what it is like to see the “legendary” coach jog onto the field with our boys in blue and white. We do not have the opportunity to bump into him in Pattee Library and exchange a few kind words.
Currently, the only associations these classes of students have with Paterno is reading and hearing his name tied with Jerry Sandusky's and lawsuits or coming from the mouths of Penn State alumni who can’t accept that their time here is no longer.
This is our Penn State. It is a Penn State without Joe Paterno. It is a Penn State that is still trying to rebuild, make amends and propel forward.
Those of us here now are beyond ready to move on.
Lauren Davis, the opinions editor of The Daily Collegian, the student newspaper at Pennsylvania State University, has been receiving threats and vile emails since the Collegianpublished an editorial questioning why the university planned to honor Joe Paterno, the university's longtime football coach, widely viewed as having failed to act on information that might have stopped his assistant Jerry Sandusky's sexual abuse of boys. The university honored Paterno on Saturday, and many Penn State fans cheered. But the editorial, written prior to the event, offered another perspective.
Referring to the students enrolled today, the editorial said: "Currently, the only associations these classes of students have with Paterno is reading and hearing his name tied with Jerry Sandusky's and lawsuits or coming from the mouths of Penn State alumni who can’t accept that their time here is no longer. This is our Penn State. It is a Penn State without Joe Paterno. It is a Penn State that is still trying to rebuild, make amends and propel forward. Those of us here now are beyond ready to move on."
In response to the attacks on Davis, more than 50 faculty members signed a letter to the Collegian calling for support for Davis. "We note with anger and sorrow that Davis has met with vicious, personal threats that are toxic to the climate of our campus. We brook no compromise when it comes to the safety of our students, and we tolerate no action that would curtail the right of students to dissent from administrative policy or campus consensus," the letter says. "Retaliation, especially of the kind directed at Davis, provides pernicious cover for the spread of misogyny and sexual violence on a campus where these are already of grave concern. We must therefore be vigilant in our opposition to it. To do otherwise would be to default on our responsibility as teachers."
The letter ends by calling "upon the university's central administration and Board of Trustees to join us in condemning the hostile reaction to Davis."
Penn State President Eric Barron issued this statement in response, late Monday: "Our student newspaper and Lauren have the full support of the university. We absolutely support freedom of speech and are saddened by those who fail to recognize the rights of our students and the value of their opinions."
GO BLUE!!!!
September 21st, 2016 at 10:43 AM ^
it's not 'condemning' the current students. the act of turning our collective backs in silence is 'condemning' joepa and a university that still commemorates that child-molestor-enabling-for 40- years non-hero. it is dignified and also calls attention to a problem that all recognize, or at least all but a substantial % of the penn state molestme lions fan base.
i would add that the letter you posted was not all that strong in it's push back- it should have used words like 'shame' and 'disgrace' and had a more severe tone to properly address the utter inappropriateness of the joepa celebration.
September 21st, 2016 at 11:56 AM ^
September 21st, 2016 at 2:44 PM ^
The student who wrote the opinion piece is correct. And the statement by Penn State's president isn't very comforting. To me it reads a lot like "Look, everyone, she is allowed to have an opinion. Just ignore her." When they should be saying "She's right. Everything she is saying is right."
September 21st, 2016 at 10:52 AM ^
Nobody likes what happened there - it is outrageous. And to think some people actually knew about it is sickening.
That said, all of these types of discussions come off as a bit too sanctimonious for my taste. it's not really a tough position to take, to be against child molestation.
The other unknown: there are a lot of claims that the "PSU fanbase" is still too much into protecting JoePa, etc. How do we know this? From polling of the fans? I think it's hard to say what most PSU fans feel. I bet most of them are decent people who think what happened was tragic. Do we really think they are some kind of different people than you and I?
September 21st, 2016 at 11:21 AM ^
Like 5 mins ago. I think it's reasonable to assume that the AD, the administration, and the fans still support his legacy.
September 21st, 2016 at 12:40 PM ^
"It's not tough to take a stand against child molestation, so let's not."
September 21st, 2016 at 1:50 PM ^
"It's not tough to take a stand against child molestation, so let's leave it to law enforcement, just like every other crime."
FTFY
September 21st, 2016 at 1:59 PM ^
Because the only way we de-incentivize crime is through the legal system, not through social norms and mores.
September 21st, 2016 at 3:19 PM ^
surrounding the Sandusky scandal shows child molestation and its cover-up are considered deplorable by our society's moral code. As I said above, do whatever you want, but don't expect this protest to yield change.
September 21st, 2016 at 11:47 AM ^
Something about the idea seems counterintuitive to me: "Let's turn our backs for a few seconds, get that disapproval thing going, and then let's have fun and watch some football."
Yes, it's a statement. But it doesn't really accomplish much.
September 21st, 2016 at 1:25 PM ^
i'll allow it. proceed.
September 21st, 2016 at 2:23 PM ^
I suspect the viewership of mgoblog is surprising large compared to the number of posters.
I'm trying to locate some statistics. Strangely, Alexa says 11.5% of mgoblog's views are from China!?
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/mgoblog.com
hmm... almost 2 million views per month! WD might count for 1 million?!
https://www.similarweb.com/website/mgoblog.com#overview
Not surprising...a lot of traffic comes from Ohio and Staee sites.
September 21st, 2016 at 3:25 PM ^
September 21st, 2016 at 7:50 PM ^