Posted on 07/16/2012 4:36:36 PM PDT by Third Person
(CNN) -- Vicky Triponey knows all too well the power Penn State's late football coach, Joe Paterno, held for more than half a century over the insular slice of central Pennsylvania that calls itself Happy Valley.
She experienced firsthand the clubby, jock-snapping culture, the sense of entitlement, the cloistered existence. It's what drove her five years ago from her job as the vice president who oversaw student discipline. She was told she was too aggressive, too confrontational, that she wasn't fitting in with "the Penn State way."
She clashed often with Paterno over who should discipline football players when they got into trouble. The conflict with such an iconic figure made her very unpopular around campus. For a while, it cost Triponey her peace of mind and her good name. It almost ended her 30-year academic career.
Another person might have felt vindicated, smug or self-righteous when former FBI Director Louis Freeh delivered the scathing report on his eight-month investigation of the Jerry Sandusky child abuse scandal.
The inquiry, commissioned by the board of trustees, exposed how the personal failings of Paterno and three other Penn State leaders -- along with the university's football-first culture -- empowered an assistant football coach who molested fatherless boys for more than a decade.
"There's no joy," Triponey told CNN as she sat down for an interview Friday, the day after the Freeh report was released. She said she found solace in the public recognition of Penn State's "culture of reverence for the football program," as the report phrased it, and that it is "ingrained at all levels of the campus community." Freeh found that the culture contributed to the Sandusky scandal.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Same thing happened to Jan Kemp (I think that was her name) when she blew the whistle on the athlete grade fixing priorities at UGA in the 1980’s. She was crucified.
I know that Paterno is really taking it in the shorts these days, but I can’t help but see him as more of a victim in all this than some sort of perpetrator. And, I’ve never been a big Paterno fan (or detractor). His last couple of months on earth must have been pretty miserable with the cancer and all this craziness surrounding him.
He wasn’t a victim, he was an enabler. The kids who were molested are the real victims.
Football is to Penn State what islam is to Mecca. It is a violent, sodomizing cult.
Do you think it could have been as miserable as having a grown man...? Well, you know.
Too bad the miserable creep didn't live long enough to be marched out of a courthouse with his hands in cuffs, on his way to wearing prison jammies like his butt-buddy Sandusky was. Never had any use for JoPa and my suspicions were confirmed. What a disgusting human.
Now he has to deal with God and there ain't gonna' be any attorney present.
F*** Joe Paterno. His lack of decisive action enabled a serial pedophile to rape children for decades. And he did it all knowingly and willingly to protect a stupid football program.
If it were up to me his corpse would be dug up, set on fire, and the remains fed to wild dogs.
I mean, I'm a big fan of the New England Patriots, especially during the current Bill Belichick coaching era. I think Belichick is a great coach and a major part of the success of the team these past 10 years, but if one of Belichick's coaches did what Sandusky did and Belichick tried to cover it up, I'd be the first one calling for Belichick to be thrown to the curb and tarred and feathered. And if the Patriots fell back to last place under a new coach, I would still hold the same opinion.
No, you’re right about that, that’s for sure.
It’s an ugly story from beginning to end. The perpetrator was unbelievably brazen but I suppose that kind of perpetrator often is brazen.
Yeah, that's what I said
Child Sacrifice
Great civilizations and sports dynastys they've all been built on
Child Sacrifice
And you know you can't bake a cherry pie without...uh...uh, well you know.
Look, you want to keep the cash register ringing?
Want to keep your job?
Then just STFU!
You may be a master of understatement but I agree with you completely.
JoPed conveniently died, lying through his teeth right to the end.
I hope somebody destroys the statue of him.
Why do that to the wild dogs?
If it was up to me, the students would be allowed to move to other colleges, and Penn State would be shut down at at the expense of those who allowed this. Extreme crimes require extreme punishment, at least as a warning to others.
Way to begin, sparky.
And he became even more brazen because he knew the school would look the other way.
Oops. That really was an accident.
What disgusted me today was hearing the ESPN morning chorus (the Mikes) of radio broadcasters trying to explain why SMU deserved their death penalty for money payments but it would do no good to give a a football death penalty to Penn State. The argued it was too late and it wa suncessary to send such a message. Right. Plus they said Penn State should continue to play all their football games so it did not harm the rest of the Big Ten as per revenue. That was their logic. (and ESPN get its share of the game no doubt). Amazing and quite telling when it come to the “money” at stake.
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