OT: PSU trustees back president on NCAA action

A lot of posters over there seem to have convinced themselves that PSU would get off on technical grounds because the coverup there didn't fall under any NCAA regulations. They completely miss the bigger point that should have been immediately obvious, which is that the coverup/enabling at PSU was so much worse than anything that happened at any other school that the NCAA would have lost all its credibility forever if they didn't hammer PSU a lot harder than any of the other schools.

Good to see that the board of trustees backed the president, although it would have been nice if they had censured McCombie and those other zombies who backed him.

I used to think it was just unique to BSD, but then I checked out reddit's PSU subreddit and it just as bad there.  They have posters convinced this FBI child porn thing is a plot by other B1G schools jealous of their success and we engineered all this.  

When the worst football violations in the conference that anyone can remember were a few undocumented stretching minutes and a few black market tattoos. The stench out of State College is overwhelming and limitless.

mccombrie can't be that delusional to feel it wasn't warranted or that he has any legal standing. he has to be grandstanding to make a name for himself for some future action or election.

can you imagine if d.o.e. comes down on them hard also?  don’t think they would, it’d ruin penn state, even academically.

Fully taken with a grain of salt but it's still weird.  Private planes are not very big.  So why try something so risky when someone could easily walk 40 feet and see what you're doing? 

And I would think even Sandusky wouldn't be stupid enough to send love letters when those boys could take them to the police. 

Where were these witnesses when the actual abuse was taking place?  Talk about gutless.  If you see a kid raped...you turn and walk away? WTF?

BTW I have no faith in the post office to do this investigation...shouldnt it be an FBI issue since it is across state lines?  The post office cant even be trusted to track a package properly.

true, but the other side of that is: "we have a witness that couldn't defend himself, so of course they will blame him, its incontestable and unsubstantiated."

The trial is for perjury, not for the cover up itself. The paper trail makes it well nigh impossible to dispute the latter, so I expect the defense (as so often in a trial for perjury) to be that while testifying before the grand jury the defendants could not accurately remember the events of ten years before. I expect a whole lot of "I don't recall", "I can't remember:, "Yes, I've read the e-mail you're referring to and no I don't remember ever writing or sending it."

They're going to say as little about Joe Pa as they possibly can, because to say anything would be to confess memory of events that need to have been forgotten.

totally agree. part of the article addresses the courage psu president erickson showed dealing with "an impossible choice" and that he was "an honorable man ... faced with impossible alternatives."

tough shoes to be in, very much a modern day pit or the pendulum

The school was out of control and kids were raped. Get them out of the big ten. I am embarrassed and the SEC schools rip us constantly here in Florida. Yes, we get lumped in with pedo U. I don't care if Hoke was their lawyer, advisor, whatever. F them!

Erickson was not some outsider brought in to clean up Penn State. He is a long time senior administrator. I'm not inclined to give any of them the benefit of the doubt that their hands were completely clean, fair or not.

I've seen only one proactive step, hiring Freeh. That was a good move, but the alternatives were probably much worse for them. They just weren't in a position to stonewall multiple investigations.

The statue only came down hours before the NCAA ruling was announced. That could not have been a coincidence. Erickson and PSU have never come out and said the punishments were fair, or even that they deserved any punishment from the NCAA. They certainly took no steps on their own in that direction. They simply say they accepted the penalties they negotiated because they had no choice. This was smart, but I don't see it as particularly laudable.

Yes, Penn State could have battled the NCAA, but that would have been incredibly reckless. They would have been booted out of the Big Ten. While I don't know this for a fact, I would bet they were told just that. Their programs would be hurt while they were fighting and if they lost it would be disastrous. Despite all the message board zealots, I think most people at Penn State realize that and thumbing their noses at the NCAA would not have helped the careers of anyone in charge in Happy Valley.

I'll give Erickson and the board credit for serving at a very difficult time. Beyond that, I'm reserving judgment.

darn 503 gateway

If you take a look at BSD, or *gulp* Blue White Illustrated, its been definitively decided by the fans who post there that the Freeh report was: (1) a set-up by the trustees to frame poor innocent Joe Paterno for the fact that they themselves were actually pedophiles; (2) total lies made to justify the fees charged; (3) some other conspiracy whose end goal was to frame Paterno; (4) not "due process"; and/or (5) nothing more than mere allegations that haven't been proven one iota.

So, if you start from the premise that the report is totally wrong/a frame job, then you can see where these trustees are coming from.  That said, they only think it is wrong because it makes a conclusion that they don't like - there is no evidence that the conclusions ARE wrong, but since there isn't an email from Joe saying "Go get'em, Jer!" Paterno must be 100% innocent and in fact a victim of all of this.

In short, delusional.

Damn you for telling me not to do something! Although I should have listened...