Posted on 01/23/2012 10:35:32 AM PST by Chi-townChief
Joe Paterno, who died Sunday morning at age 85, will go down as a martyr.
For what, it’s not clear. Not at this moment, anyway.
It likely will take the sands of time and the sifting of those fine granules through the life and complex era of a dignified man to let us know what the final chiseled decision will be.
Does the fact that Pater-no won more Division I college football games than anyone (409), had a high graduation rate, loved his family, gave huge sums to the Penn State library and stayed in a modest house in one small town forever trump that he had an alleged serial sexual predator on his staff for more than two decades?
If it does, then does it also trump that he did almost nothing about the alleged perverted criminal when he had the chance?
Angry worshippers in State College, Pa., already have said it was the Penn State trustees, who unceremoniously fired Paterno two months ago via a tacky phone call, who killed him.
Technically, the culprit was lung cancer. But a broken heart indeed might have been a contributor.
Defenders of sexually abused children say that it was Paterno’s untouchable, all-powerful football system that allowed the alleged predator, former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky, to flourish outside the law for so long. They will point out that child sexual assault is not a minor issue, but a hideous gift that never stops giving.
It well might be that Paterno simply stayed too long at Penn State — 61 years, 46 as head coach — and was eaten up by a changing world he didn’t understand. He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2007 and could have exited then with grace and class. The Sandusky thing already was well under way, but Paterno could have avoided much of its still-spreading stain by acknowledging how dumbfounded he was by modern evil.
On his deathbed, frail and wearing a wig, he told the Washington Post, seemingly mystified, “I never heard of, of, rape and a man.’’ Maybe he should have been paying more attention.
But he was a child of the Great Depression and old-school Catholicism, and the Church’s biggest legacy of the 20th century likely is the way it covered up — didn’t even acknowledge — institutionalized pedophilia in its ranks.
The saying is true, in mythology and the real world, and maybe it’s what Paterno was martyred by: Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.
There was a fiefdom at Penn State, and its king was Paterno. He was the most powerful man in the ironically named “Happy Valley.’’
And irony might be the cross of martyrdom here.
They called him “JoePa,’’ a perfect abbreviation of his last name, his beloved state and the sweet term “Grandpa.”
Can we all agree that there is no more sweetness to big-time college coaching? That it died with $5 million contracts, TV pressures and Bobby Knight?
Remember how beloved Ohio State football coach Jim Tressel was just a year ago? Remember how he went out in flames?
A long time ago, I got a chance to interview Paul “Bear” Bryant in his Alabama office. The window air conditioner rattled at full throttle, and he smoked cigarettes one after another. He was near the end, legend intact, but he seemed to me — a 20-something reporter and former jock — to be way out of modern times.
In 1983, I visited Eddie Robinson at Grambling. He had been head coach there for 43 years, and he was about to catch his idol, Bryant, in all-time victories. He was a black man at a black school, and some people weren’t going to like it when he passed Bear. Robinson seemed to be flirting with Alzheimer’s, which would plague his final years, when we chatted. But guess who spoke up for him?
Paterno, at age 56 and with 162 victories.
“I don’t care what league you’re in,’’ he said. “Anybody who resents Eddie’s moment of glory would be an awfully small person.”
In 2011, Paterno would tie Robinson’s all-time record and surpass it in his final game before he was fired.
Was it worth it?
For any of them?
When I was a senior football player at Northwestern in 1970, Paterno already seemed old to me. He was in his fifth year at Penn State, and he already had coached two undefeated teams.
I went to the Hula Bowl that year, and Paterno was the coach for the North team. He gave us a pregame pep talk, and it didn’t seem unusual or out of the norm.
His glasses were thick as jar bottoms, and I never dreamed he’d go out this way.
Perhaps it's his multiple concussions talking but when you're a bigoted jackass like Rick Telander, you may really believe that kind of crap.
martyr? I thought he died from lung cancer? JoeP was a fantastic coach, and was not aggressive in dealing/reporting/stopping child rape and lost his status because of that failure. Not sure why he would be a martyr for that.
:: Joe Paterno, who died Sunday morning at age 85, will go down as a martyr. ::
Obviously, Telander does not understand the term “martyr”.
This guy should work for the NYT. Amazing how he goes outside of the story just so he can get his digs in against the Church. What a load of crap.
Sorry, but I was kinda’ hoping JoePa would face charges in a court of law, and if found guilty, be marched of to prison.
I have no respect for the man and even less now that it’s clear that, because of his deliberate coverup, dozens (if not more) young men were sodomized by this Sandusky pervert. All because JoePa didn’t wanna’ rock the boat and screw up his football program (screw up the youngsters’ lives is ok).
And to somehow tie this to the Catholic Church’s problems is despicable!
He was a man facing scandal and disgrace but he was no martyr.
People wanted him to face an investigation and trial and probably to face civil liabilities and possibly some short jail time.
Dying cheated justice.
You don't get to be a martyr by dying of cancer.
Not old men who die in their mid eighties of natural causes.
Martyrs are people who give their life willingly for a great cause.
Don't cheapen the term.
Certainly not for a man who made an exorbitant amount of money teaching grown men to run around playing a game with an inflated ball for decades.
They are facts as reported in the news media. You believe all that, do you not? Penn State is as the name implies a public institution. Its police have arrest powers. Joe Pa made a police report. They investigated and closed the investigation. Neither Jim Jones nor David Koresh were Catholic. None of the hundreds of public school teachers arrested for sexual impropriety in the US each year are protected by the Church. Check your Scripture; I’m pretty sure that’s your only source of righteousness, in Matthew I’m certain it says “judge not, that ye be not judged.” Let’s see if the Evangelicals and Pentecostals who shriek about the Church can live up to their own standard of perfection.
All it takes for evil to win is for good men to do the MINIMUM that the law requires.
I just wonder what difference it would have made had the scandal not broke, would Joe be still with us, would the cancer had been as aggressive?
I must admit, it does seem so weird that he went so fast, especially since just the week before he gave the interview, yes he looked weak, and had a wig, but I would have thought he had at least a few more months.
Did you happen to read what immediately follows that passage? It shoots holes in your premise.
We are also told to
I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters, msince then you would need to go out of the world. But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler—not even to eat with such a one. For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? God judges those outside. “Purge the evil person from among you.”Sounds like there is some judging going on.
1 Corinthians 5, 9-13
As with almost all things human it is about the money.
Paterno was protecting the huge money maker that is any Big Ten football team. A Big Ten team like Penn State is going to suffer a loss of income because of a scandal like this.
I won’t get into the matter of the degree of Paterno’s guilt. It seems to me that he is less guilty than dozens of others, some of whom were involved with firing him.
Or even this writer, who would insist that colleges must stand up for “gay rights” at the same time as he brushes over the fact that the perp was gay.
But it’s certainly noticeable that everyone in the media just loves to blame it all on Joe Paterno, and glosses over all the rest of it, including a DA who committed suicide over the case and a university president who was recently hired specifically because he promised to expand gay rights on campus.
The same reason they attack RC priests for things done 30 years ago at the height of the sexual revolution which they so much love, while giving a free pass to school teachers and others who are still up to the same dirty tricks.
They are happy to say that Joe Paterno, the ideal hero, was really an evil man. But NOT that homosexual pederasty is the real problem, and that it continued there not because of Paterno but because of his superiors. Maybe he could have done more—but so could the whole lot of them—president, deans, board of trustees, and law officials.
It's almost seems to be the worst when it comes to sports and what those engaged in at any level - as student, coach, for college or pro, get away with.
We need a wall of separation between school and sport.
You can include yourself in that clique, MikeWUSAF, since you find female teachers seducing male adolescents as humorous. That’s a fact.
I write a paragraph, you respond to a sentence? And yes, I’m a Papist, son of the Whore of Babylon, etc...
When he heard that one of his former assistance coaches, who had access priviledge to the locker rooms was raping kids in the shower, “Joe Pa” told him to take it outside of Penn State. According to many reliable sources, some who left Penn State because of it, he was notorious for shutting down investigations or letting his football players skirt ethic violations-all to protect his football team. And Penn State was more then happy to support Paterno as long as he brought in the money.
As far as scripture goes, it also says “Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment.”
Bingo! Excellent ap!
(I may even "steal" this 'cause this actually hits directly upon the most common FREEPER defense of Paterno on paterno threads...)
This takes direct aim at the creepy ethic I've seen from too many FREEPERs which essentially conveys, "Whatever is legal is moral."
Paterno's defenders are oft' guilty of this immoral equivalency...to conclude that once you've done the bare Minimum, you're "off the immoral hook."
Well...there's an Ultimate Judge. And I don't think He's so influenced by the lame "he did what was 'required' by reporting it to his superiors."
Pathetic. Lame. Sorry excuse for people living on this planet.
Jesus says what is "required" is to love our neighbor as ourselves...to love our neighbor kids as we love our own kids...and if these lame-ass FREEPER Paterno defenders & other Paterno defenders out there would be satisfied to hear that their Little League coach told a Little League board or a scoutmaster told a "higher up" volunteer about abuse...but then NEVER followed up directly with authorities when nothing came of it...then God protect their children and ANY children they are associated with.
And God will have to do it, because they certainly aren't!
I'm not sure when I've been so ashamed of so many so-called "conservatives" as I've seen with the JoPologists!
In the eye's of Liberals this is true. But to those that have even an ounce of Honor left in them, they see that this man lived a life in shame.
For to be told that harm was being done to children and not do everything in your power to put a stop to it makes you a coward.
When people say he did so much for the young men in the football program, the children who were raped, can point towards that same program and say "He ignored us".
When people point at the record book with Paterno's name, it should say 0 and 1. Because in the end he lost at what really mattered.
ED
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