Joe Paterno Passes Away

So as long as you win lots of football games and talk the good talk it doesn't matter how many boys get raped? THIS attitude is what's wrong with this whole situation. Putting football before the wellbeing of crime victims. If JoePa was just some guy, he'd get fired, maybe indicted for obstructing justice or perjury at worst, and everyone would call it righteous justice. But he won 409 football games, so we bend over backwards to dub him a great man, celebrating his victories and sweeping his failures under the rug.

JoePa did many very good things in his lifetime. He did at least one very, very bad thing. All of those things will, and should be, part of his legacy. We are who we are when we're faced with a crisis, and JoePa made his choice. I think it's important we never forget the cost of putting reputation and appearances above justice.

May Joe now rest peacefully, and may those who suffered  the unspeakable in part because of his failure find justice and peace of their own.

If that's true, then why was Sandusky forced to "retire'?  Seems if everything was ok, he would have remained on the coaching staff. 

Paterno was the icon in that situation. The living legend, the man running the Grand Experiment, or whatever he called it. While admirably not the venal money-grubber so many coaches are, he was also saddled with great responsibilities if he wanted credit for all that other grandiose talk and what-not. There is just no way that his involvement can be excused by saying, Well, he reported it up the chain of command, what more can you expect him to do?

If he thought is was possible that everything was investigated and handled, and he just never heard anything more about it, then he wanted the whole thing to just go away.

So if you knew a coworker committed an egregious crime, you'd just tell your boss and go on your merry way, assuming everything would work out? A little follow up by JoePa, the most powerful man in Pennsylvania, could have made all the difference.

Not to get overly religious but by way of literary example, I liken JoePa's actions to Pontius Pilate - he did what he was supposed to do, but not all he could have done, and then washe his hands of the whole deal. It's not the actions of a great leader of men.

Still Joe is gone now. I hope he found peace, but also remorse. His death does not wash away his failures, and his failures don't mean his good works meant nothing.

No,  I expect my self to see the process through and make sure that there is something done about it.  Not swept under the rug for 15 yrs.  If you were in the same position and you did as he did would you be satisfied with the results?  I think not.  I feel bad for his family and for everyone that was close and lost him and I hope he rests in peace but to ignore the fact of what happened and his role in it is not fair to all the children involved and to anyone who had ever been monlested.

The situations are not analogous.  Paterno was told by an eye witness what was occurring between Sandusky and one child.  Admittedly, it wasn't a court of law, but I suspect there was little reason to doubt the veractity of what he was told.  I also believe that McQueary was not the only one seeing strange behaviour. How can you possibly compare a DUI with sexual child molestation?  Children are routinely removed from certain environments, including their homes, if abuse is suspected.

Paterno had a moral and ethical and potentially a legal obligation to follow up on the information that was revealed to him.

Germans spoke up during the Aktion T-4 program--the euthanization of the mentally ill--and the Nazis stopped the aktion. If Germans and more importantly, the Heer, had reacted negatively to the Holocaust there would have been no Holocaust.The German Army was the state as it is in EVERY country which has a standing army.

In both the PSU scandal and the Holocaust, it was a necessary condition for said events for people to do nothing. If people had reacted morally in either case both tragedies would have been been curtailed.  Unfortunately no one did.