Hardly.
Sandusky was a pedophile, and nobody is denying his guilt here. Various individuals covered for him, but the main culprits in that regard were the people at the highest levels of the school admin. I objected to the media circus surrounding Paterno simply because he was the only one whose name everyone knew, when they ignored the people most responsible. Paterno never witnessed the act as far as we know. We know McQueary or whatever his name was did, but Paterno only reported it to the people he was supposed to report it to.
McQueary had a moral obligation to call the cops since he witnessed it, but Paterno was going on only what he was told. He could have made more of an effort, but to put him in the same category as the people above who had the bureaucratic responsibility to actually initiate the investigation and didn’t, is unjust. Those people are deserving of far more scorn than Paterno, especially Spanier.
I don’t think he should have stayed on as coach, but the complete destruction of his legacy and some of the punitive measures like nullifying all the victories is wrong in my view.
Fact:
Yes, Spanier was out as prez; but he remained on the Penn State payroll as a tenured prof until he was formally indicted (last November); and the athletic director was on paid leave...he retired last Spring.
IoW, unlike Paterno, whom they fired -- they didn't fire these two clowns. That means Penn State's administrative "culprits" extended into 2012...and perhaps 2013.
And not only that, no grassroots movement on the part of Penn State fans existed as people lobbying to get these two clowns off of the Nittany Lyin' payroll...which means THEY are also part of the "do nothing" problem that carved a "refuge" for Sandusky & his pals to begin with!
I've said this on several previous threads...allow me to repeat it for your benefit:
Listen...and please listen well:
Some cover-ups exist by commission -- of which it's hard to prove JoePa was guilty of ...
and then there's cover-ups by omission...which is all too easy to conclude in this case.
JoePa was a literal "god" on campus. During those post-Sandusky shower years, he STILL at that time THE most powerful man on campus.
He hired the shower eyewitness onto his staff as a wide receivers coach AFTER the shower stall report.
All he ever had to do was to have one little convo with his asst coach -- asking if the authorities had ever followed up on that report. [Upon which he could have pushed his supposed "superiors" on campus further as to why it was never "handled" properly...I say supposed "superiors" because at one point JoePa was still powerful enough to throw his weight around campus had he so chosen]
Either that little convo didn't happen...which was outright neglect...or, he found out the answer & pursued NOTHING further that would have removed his name from the ensuing taint.
This same wide receiver coach then cont'd up the "reward" progression ... being named head of recruiting. So, JoePa & others who "Hired" him as WR coach & then head of recruiting could "research" all they want about the man they were in the process of hiring...but they couldn't find out one simple thing about the lack of authorities' pursuit of what he saw in the Penn State shower?
Sorry...there IS such a thing as common-sense credulity.
Paterno ran Penn State.
His players lived in a different system of regulation than either the regular students OR the other athletes in the school. His coaches, the same.
In the end, what I believe killed Paterno was guilt. Paterno was Alec Guinness’ character in ‘Bridge Over the River Kwai’.
Guinness was totally devoted to what he built, and he realized too late that no matter how noble and beautiful the bridge was, it was an instrument of evil.
Had Paterno risked what he’d built, it would have likely survived it. As it is, Penn State will always been known as ‘Pedophile State’, and the inaction of the NCAA in this will be one of the things that contributes to the demise of football in the USA.
This incident, the O’Bannon case, concussions, and other things will spell the end of the Golden Goose within the next decade.