OT: Joe Paterno statue to be taken down this weekend (maybe)
reports NFL Network’s Kimberly Jones and ESPN's Bonnie Bernstein.
http://tracking.si.com/2012/07/20/penn-state-take-down-joe-paterno-statue/
EDIT: Penn St still has not confirmed this, though:
Penn State spokesman Dave La Torre: "I'm not aware of any decision being made," regarding the Joe Paterno statue.
Penn State Board member Capt. Ryan McCombie said "We did no such thing," re: voting to take down Joe Paterno statue, made no more comment.
Penn State president Rodney Erickson’s office responded to the reports by telling the school’s donors that “no final decision” has been made regarding the statue.
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Update: Either way, it sounds like a decision will be made by Penn St President Rodney Erickson within the next 72 hours according to ESPN
This honestly looks like the university was just bowing to public pressure..Penn St. needs a rock for a leader right now, who that might be remains to be determined.t
Yeah, this makes the trustees look like complete idiots for their earlier comments ("The statue only represents the good Joe did."). They never should have said anything the first time.
I understand the PSU trustee bashing, the reasons why, and they deserve some bashing. On the other hand, IMO some of the blanket vitriol and also IMO, the competition for who can suggest the harshest punishment for PSU, is getting out of hand. They did the right thing--that's good. That it took longer then you'd like is a silly reason to bash them.
I agree to an extent, but the point is... Penn State IS reacting to public pressure, and they're doing things piecemeal, like a child, and looking to see if that will satisfy the public.
Figure out, what are the course of actions that would show a commitment to changing the culture. Paterno died, and the law handled the rest... but what is Penn State doing? A trustee just resigned today. This is beyond out of control.
Why not hire a consultant or a team to help them put together logical next steps in the Sandusky after math?
They need to hire that Olivia chick from "Scandal", she could definately stop these idiots from making everything worse than it already was.
Taking down the statue is a no-brainer. But given what they said a week ago, it doesn't seem like a very sincere gesture on their part. Let's review what they said again:
"It has to stay up," said another trustee. "We have to let a number of months pass, and we'll address it again. But there is no way, no way. It's just not coming down."
But privately, Peetz, board member Ken Frazier and most of the other trustees, whose leadership on the Sandusky matter as a whole was harshly criticized by the Freeh report, spoke adamantly about the need to keep the statue standing, the sources told "Outside the Lines." They said they hoped the passage of time would prove to be an ally, sources said.
"They don't get to tell us," the source said about members of the public clamoring for its removal. "This is a Penn State community decision."
http://espn.go.com/espn/otl/story/_/id/8166643/joe-paterno-statue-remai…
Quite a change of heart in one week. Could it be in response to the NCAA president saying the death penalty wasn't off the table?
But they are. We all know that they are. And if they kept the statue up, there would inevitably be a riot around it during a game day this fall and they would be preceived as squarely at fault for not bringing it down.
if those are actual quotes from the trustees, and if those represent the trustees' general consensus on the issue, then they all need to be fired. because they still don't "get it".
sure joepa did a lot of great things over his career, but he covered-up and enabled a criminal convicted of crimes of the most dispicable in nature. sorry, but this far outweighs the good things jeopa ever did.
They're doing the right thing here. Their motives are unknowable and ultimately irrelevant. If you have a system in place where sketchy people can be shamed into doing the right thing, you have a good system.
I'm predicting another tiananmen square-type incident.
Not sure if tanks are readily available in Happy Valley, though.
Maybe they can use Joe's old golf cart.
far away. I'm sure they can gather up one or two.
issued their report? I don't think the family has issued their report! How can they do this before the family issues their report?
Is this part of the university's self-imposed penalty?
This is the ENTIRETY of the university's self-imposed penalty.
I didn't realize we had so many Penn State supporters on this blog...I thought they were all still guarding JoPa's statue.
If true, good. Replace it with a lion or something.
Erect a statue of a "fuck-lion".
Now only if we can take down all the Paterno posts..
It's been said before and I'll say it again. It's the biggest scandal in the history of college football involving a university in our conference and it is the summer. There is not much going on and nothing wrong with these posts. If you don't like it don't click it.
If this is true, looks like those students who have been guarding the statue will have to pack their tents and go home.
Can't wait to hear what Jay Paterno has to say about this. Or maybe I can?
I really shouldn't think this is funny, but I kinda do. There's a pitchfork with my name on it somewhere
at PSU these days? They need to bring in a consultant who the residents of Pennsylvania trust, are familiar with and who has a proven track record of leadership.The person that comes to mind is Tom Ridge, former governor of PA and initial director of the Office of Homeland Security. He could be objective and not blinded by past PSU loyalty.
...that this is disputed in the very article you posted right?
I wouldn't say disputed. It is just not officially confirmed. The article has a PSU spokesman saying he has not been briefed on a decision yet. That does not mean "no decision has been made."
I hear they are moving the statue to the school's library as a reminder to keep quiet
but I still laughed!
Oh my goodness.
a guy on anther thread said "they aren't going to take the statue down, they are just going to turn it so its looking the other way". or something to that effect. Both got laughs out of me.
That's equal parts terrible and hilarious.
Well done... best if only laugh yet from this thing.
This is the first Penn State joke I haven't felt bad for laughing at.
Biggest scandal in sports history...It's about time. Move along delusional Penn State students...
Not relevant to the topic at hand at all, but +1 for the username. In fact I will be drunk on Higgins next weekend. Ever been drunk at the Silver Dollar?
Here right now. Catching up with a little mgo before going to the water. Just so you know, the water is very, very warm this year. Ok, back to vacation.
I live in PA...and they are reporting that the only thing they will be doing is turning the statue around, as all he did was look the other way the entire time.
They must read MGoBlog in PA.
As said by a friend of mine: "No need to completely remove it, just put it in the library to remind students to keep quiet"
I've always thought of PSU fans as pretty normal but I've been consistently amazed at the amount of craziness that has shown itself through this whole thing. It seems like a large percentage of penn staters have refused to believe this is anything more than a witchhunt
Only know a couple PSU fans but only one really acknowledges what happened. He's torn obviously but understands what happened is fucked up. The people that want now hate Paterno and want to take the statue down definitely are the minority from what it looks like...
PSU fans as a whole are actually quite nice. I remember in 1993 some friends talking all kinds of trash in State College ("Welcome to the Big 10"!) after UM won and not getting much of any response until someone mentioned Paterno's name in a benign fashion; the way they described it at that point it was like those ghosts at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark when they went all Crypt-keeper on the Nazi's.
This really is a perfect storm; an institution that has by far the highest amount of itself wrapped up in the image (now memory) of a single person encountering the worst crisis/fall from grace in the history of organized college athletics. While most PSU people I know have simply crawled into a cave for awhile, others are at a different stage of grief and it ain't pretty.
"...an institution that has by far the highest amount of itself wrapped up in the image (now memory) of a single person encountering the worst crisis/fall from grace in the history of organized college athletics."
I think this is correct, but there's a causal link. Because Paterno was so idolized he was allowed to amass too much power with too little accountability, and that made the coverup far more likely than it would have been in a system with more checks/balances and transparency.
you have spent most of your time just on this board ...... cause the PSU fans from the Lloyd era were totally batpoop crazy! Lloyd was handing JoePa his lunch all blended up in a liquid cause that's the only way JoePa could swallow it ..... and the PSU fans just could not deal with it. They cried constantly about the refs and they had this big conspiracy thing going where the refs had ties to Michigan and yada, yada, yada. The Big Ten and ESPN and The Unitied Nations all had it in to bring down PSU so the fix was in for Michigan to win. There was a period of a few years where the combined scores of the UM PSU games was like 135 - 30 or something stupid like that. When ever somebody threw that up on the board you could almost hear the PSU fans screaming as they jumped out their office building windows.
Yeah I've never roamed the PSU boards. I do live in Delaware though so I know a good number of Penn State fans and students and every one of them just doesn't want to talk about it and knows its really messed up but then I go and read some boards and everyone is crazy. Just crazy
The PSU Rivals board in particular was notorious for having a lot of real dead-enders and tinfoil-hat types. It's a mistake to extrapolate from the most vocal people on a message board to the entire fan base.
If the fans are claiming they won't be donating anymore, does this mean PSU won't be able to turn to fundraisers to make up for any money they lose if they get the death penalty?
One commenter said that if they moved the statue to the sports museum, they would be fine with that, but if it is removed totally, they shall simply stop donating essentially. It is very sad on one level to see people furiously trying to continue the cult now that the personality is gone and his reputation destroyed. On another level, they really need to just make a clean break someday - moving a statue which now represents something horrible and tragic to another location so it can serve that same purpose is some warped form of bargaining. This university and the Nittany Lions fanbase are going to be vacillating between denial, anger and bargaining for a long time, I think.
Removing it totally is the start of whatever healing can be managed there.