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Originally Posted by Saltheart
If they can prove he was part of actively covering things up then he's part of a criminal conspiracy. My guess is he reported it to the powrrs above him and then waited to see what happened. Everything he knew was hearsay. Its the guy who saw it first hand that should have been at the police station , not the AD office , not the coaches office , not the school admins. He should have gone to the police.
I honestly don't think a football coach , no matter how iconic , is resonsible for pushing the prosecution of a criminal based on hearsay. Once he bumps it up , its up to the school officials , particularly the president and the Security Chief to pursue it further. Outside the whole fact that it happened at PSU , the eye witness is the guy who didn't do what was right and his failure to act shouldn't fall on Paterno just cause he was the most famous guy.
I also think justice would have been served if Paterna had been given the word that he must retire "now". The same result happens but he gets to save a little respect vs the firing which implicates him in the crime IMO.
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Mike--in a place like Penn State, there are no "powers above him". Joe Paterno was the Carlo Gambino of State College, PA. You're indulging him in "passing the buck". And missing what really went on out there, for years.
You have to follow the trail back to the beginning, and start by reading the Grand Jury report. Sandusky was under investigation for child molestation in 1998. Up until that point, he was considered one of the hottest head coaching prospects in all of college football, Paterno's sure-fire successor if Joe ever retired, and if not, a leading candidate for any head coaching job in the country. He was the LB coach and defensive co-ordinator at a program known as "Linebacker U". Yet, in 1999, Paterno tells him that he'll "never" be the head coach, and shortly thereafter, he "retires" at the age of 55, prime coaching years, AND IS OFFERED NO OTHER JOB AT ANY PROGRAM ANYWHERE IN THE US!! He goes from being everyone's hottest HC prospect to a pariah. And shortly after that, the DA out there claims that the charges against Sandusky are "unfounded" despite the fact that the investigating detective has an audio tape of him tearfully apologizing to the victim's mother and telling her what a scuzzbucket he is.
An 8 year old can play this connect the dots game. The fix was put in. Sandusky retires (keeping emeritus status on the faculty, a campus office, access to the university website and all campus facilities), and in return, the allegations get swept under the rug. And 3 years later, a grad assistant comes to Paterno upset, and reports seeing Sandusky bungholing a 10 year old kid in the shower? Leaving aside the fact that this POS himself should have laid Sandusky out on the floor of that shower and dragged the kid to safety, he tells Paterno this the next day, and you think that it's peachy swell that he "reported this to his (mythical) superiors"?