OT: Penn State emails reveal... stuff

Submitted by BiSB on

From Anderson Cooper 360 tonight:

(H/T Scott Bell, @sbell021)

Holy shit. That is all.

French West Indian

June 30th, 2012 at 11:59 AM ^

...to figure out.  If I were Penn State, I would try to do the honorable thing and voluntarily eliminate the football program. It's clear that it's led to a culture with skewed values, not juat at the football facilities but at the larger University and community as well.

The truth is that football is not really needed and that educational institutions can do just fine without them.  Happy Valley/Penn State could do the wise thing by eliminating the program and committing to rebuilding their community with a new identity and better values.

And as a tangent, given the way that the football/concussion issue is emerging, this might be the future anyhow and is probably something that all major football communities should contemplate (and that means us in Ann Arbor too).

BiSB

June 29th, 2012 at 9:23 PM ^

Refs change 2-pointers to 3-pointers (and vise-versa) during stoppages in play. Also, sometimes the TV folks screw up and have the wrong score posted.

Bottom line: if the NBA was going to try to fix an NBA Finals, they wouldn't just take points away mid-game.

ppToilet

June 29th, 2012 at 9:07 PM ^

It's something completely unrelated. Maybe they were throwing a surprise birthday party and changed their minds. Maybe someone filled out their golf scorecard wrong, or someone in the office has terribly bad breath. It doesn't have to be that they were covering up a heinous crime, right? Right? How can this keep getting more horrible?

antidaily

June 29th, 2012 at 9:11 PM ^

fwiw... that email screenshot looks fishy. on the one hand, the buttons are 90s looking. on the other, it has a OS X Leopard (or later) look to the window (Textfields and window close, minimize and zoom) . Leopard was released in 2007.

Blazefire

June 29th, 2012 at 9:20 PM ^

Is this one of those where they show a computer image in the backgroudn and then keep changing the overlayed text to display the content of the emails? If so, that'd explain it.

mackbru

June 29th, 2012 at 9:13 PM ^

I think it's bogus; if it were real smoking-gun, the internets would be all over this by now. Also, what news organization releases bombshell news on friday night?

Seth9

June 29th, 2012 at 11:07 PM ^

Between two major Supreme Court rulings, uncontrolled wildfires in Colorado, and the large array ongoing issues in both Europe and the Middle East, further confirmation that PSU did not react properly in the Sandusky case ranks pretty low.

Blue boy johnson

June 29th, 2012 at 9:15 PM ^

Who is being quoted in the email. Looks to me as if Curley is quoting an unknown person and sending email to Spanier and Schultz. I guess Curley could be quoting himself, but the email reads odd to me

yahwrite

June 29th, 2012 at 9:33 PM ^

The date of the email looked funny to me. I kept hearing Mcqueary witnessed the shower incident in 2002, and that was what was reported leading up to the trial, but I looked it up and Mcqueary changed it to 2001 in his testimony.

Just saying if anyone else noticed the same thing.

NateVolk

June 29th, 2012 at 9:46 PM ^

The idea that Joe Paterno, the most powerful man not just at the University but probably Western and Central Pennsylvania, knew of only one incident and did everything he could be asked to do was laughable to all but the fawning PSU faithful. Now evidence keeps trickling out to verify what common sense already told us:

Joe Paterno chose silence and cover up to uphold the public reputation of Penn State Football over true honor.  The man with ultimate power let this slime continue to use his football program as a staging ground to attack children.

Elmer

June 30th, 2012 at 10:51 AM ^

Agreed.  He was the top dog at PSU and chose to bury the incident.  The most shocking part is the others were going to do the right thing until they spoke with Joe.

After the story broke, his coments about just worrying and praying for the victims sure does ring hollow. 

 

Wave83

June 30th, 2012 at 12:04 PM ^

Wait, you are jumping to conclusions about a single email.  Getting an email like this in legal discovery is a great starting point, but you need to see other correspondence before or after it, compare its date to other events (e.g. when did McQueary witness the assault in the shower?), and depose the participants to the email.

Did JoePa order the others not to disclose?  Maybe.  Maybe he acted emotionally or in some other way that caused the administrative knuckleheads to change course.  Maybe the knuckleheads were covering their own tracks with an email that they thought might help them down the road.  Maybe a half dozen of other possibilities.

This is a bad email for PSU, no doubt.  However, what JoePa said in the meeting, whether there really was a meeting, and whether the email's author was being hones in the email are all open questions.

Elmer

June 30th, 2012 at 3:00 PM ^

I'm basing it on the email AND the fact that Sandusky's actions were no secret to the PSU football staff and Joe Pa did NOTHING to stop young boys from being abused.  Hey Jerry, you can even have access to the football facilities and keep on bringing kids over, that's fine.  You've only been caught twice.

I'm beyond tired of people sticking up for JoePa.

ixcuincle

June 29th, 2012 at 10:00 PM ^

What a shame. Joe Pa could have just said "Get the fuck out of here, you sick motherfucker" and retained his legend status. The fact that they had to cover shit up is ridiculous. 

StateSmells

June 29th, 2012 at 10:01 PM ^

Just a minor point in the overall scheme of this scandal, but can we all remember that you should never build a statue of a living person?

What do they do with this thing now?

 

True Blue Grit

June 29th, 2012 at 10:12 PM ^

it seems to me that even if the general PSU fund takes a big hit with civil lawsuits and fines, it's really the athletic program that was being protected by those in charge.  And specifically, the football program.  What really drove the decision(s) to protect the Monster Sandusky was related to the reputation and money-generating ability of the football program, including Saint Paterno.  So logically, if justice is to be served in relation to Penn State's culpability in this case, there should be severe penalties levied on the football program as well.  I doubt PSU will do that internally, so either the NCAA or Big Ten will need to take action.  Yes, they let most of the football staff go, but that doesn't go far enough.  I would like to see at least a 3 year bowl ban and loss of at least 6 scholarships per year for 5 years. 

lakeside

June 30th, 2012 at 1:15 AM ^

but then you're punishing players for the actions of previous administrators. I'd like to see everyone involved in the cover-up thrown in jail for a few years. Loss of voting rights, loss of careers. Civil suits erase bank accounts. Then they need to come back to the real world and try to adjust to the harsh realities - just like Sandusky's victims. That seems about right to me.

Stike A Pose

June 29th, 2012 at 11:06 PM ^

Considering Sandusky just "retired" out of nowhere and never got a head coaching offer when he was one of the top DC's in the nation should tell you a lot.

EDIT:  Also, considering a 22 year old female broke the story by asking questions to people around Happy Valley, I'm guessing a lot of people at least knew a rumor or two about it.