“Yet there remains in the public sphere this erroneous belief that JoePa was a conspirator in the alleged cover-up of the Jerry Sandusky scandal.”
Erroneous heck! There is email proof that he was a conspirator. His own sworn testimony was that he knew and did nothing!
Darn right he knew ‘Gator. His desire to ‘cover up’ goes way back. From a long ago Sports Illustrated issue’s article, (discussing/regarding ongoing NCAA violations and scandals), various college coaches were quoted for the story. Joe’s quote was this little gem: “I’ve never blown the whistle on anyone yet”, says Joe Paterno, “and I never will”. Years later he knew about what was happening with the child abuse.....but in his own words spoken years before, he wasn’t gonna tell.
Post the text of the email.
Post the court records where he said this.
“Erroneous heck! There is email proof that he was a conspirator. His own sworn testimony was that he knew and did nothing!”
You know, I am willing to give his memory the benefit of the doubt on this. Given the time and the environment that he grew up in (a better time than this one, IMO), and his advanced age, I believe that it simply “did not compute” in his mind - that a good part of him simply refused to believe it. My mother, a college graduate in the 1950’s, lived a fairly sheltered life. She did not actually know that this sort of thing actually even existed until she was in her very late 20’s. So, I asked her, how she could have taken philosophy courses, reading the Greek books such as Gorgias, etc., and not realize this. She explained that it was so far beyond her sphere of experience and imagination that it simply was glossed over and ignored.
I never did buy into the crap line that Paterno was so wrapped up in his insular life in Happy Valley that he didn’t know what Sandusky was up to. He knew what was occurring, and his loyalty to Sandusky came first.
Paterno may not be provably guilty of a cover-up, but he was plainly incredibly negligent - and he plainly didn't give a sh-t about Sandusky's victims.
I'm glad he lived long enough to get fired and die in shame.