"Paterno, as has been well-documented, called all the shots in Happy Valley." -Stewart Mandel
- Thread starter Zenophile
- Start date
Anyone who thinks that Joe Paterno's prerogatives were restrained by the athletic director or the University president haven't spent 10 minutes studying Penn State Football over the past 40 years. Joe Paterno effectively had no boss at Penn State. Did he win all arguments? No, especially not near the end of his career when Spanier and several BoT members thought Joe was being stubborn about retiring. .
There was no viable alternative location for Lubrano Park. What's telling here is that our football coach thought he should have a say in where the athletic department located the baseball field. Was Joe skeptical about the BTN? Perhaps yes, but again, this came near the end of his career and this is a decision properly above his pay grade. Thank goodness Joe was ignored about the BTN.
Did Joe run the University? Of course not. He didn't hire deans nor fire professors. But he unsurprisingly cast a long shadow over the philosophies and operations of the athletic department. It's not hard to understand how he accumulated so much bureaucratic power and he knew how to use it. Joe won, he won the right way with the right people, and the paying fans and the donors adored him.
In his prime Joe was the master of virtually every detail of the Football program. Most great coaches are control freaks and Joe was at the head of the class. He hand-picked two athletic directors and his opinion was rarely contravened by those ADs.
Joe may have been right on the particulars of the Meridian Apartment break-in and he very well may have been right about Vicky Triponey. But the bottom line outcome of that affair was that Paterno demanded the right to decide for himself what punishment his team members would serve (picking up garbage at Beaver Stadium for two or three games). That effectively placed the Football program outside the processes and supervision of the University, something a younger Joe would have realized was contrary to his views about the proper role of intercollegiate athletics. I think Joe made a bad mistake in handling the Meridian Apartment affair.
Joe's decision to play Anwar Phillips in the Capital One Bowl is another example where Joe defied the intent (if not the specific letter) of the University's sanction of Phillips. That Phillips's charges were eventually dropped does not diminish the effect of Joe thumbing his nose at the University's student judicial process.
These incidents, along with Joe's shooing away of Curley and Spanier from his kitchen table at the end of the 2004 season, were probably keenly remembered by some BoT members on that fateful evening in early November 2011.
None of the foregoing proves that Joe conspired in a cover up of Sandusky. That issue must turn on actual evidence, of which there appears to be little or none. But anyone who thinks that Joe was "just a football coach" when it came to his effective bureaucratic power within Penn State exhibits incredible naivete. It certainly changed some during the last 5-10 years of his tenure, but for most of his career Joe was the unchallenged authority within Penn State in whatever matters he sought influence. Thank goodness Joe believed in running a NCAA- and B1G-compliant program, because, if he had not, we would have had a LOIC problem long before 2011.
There was no viable alternative location for Lubrano Park. What's telling here is that our football coach thought he should have a say in where the athletic department located the baseball field. Was Joe skeptical about the BTN? Perhaps yes, but again, this came near the end of his career and this is a decision properly above his pay grade. Thank goodness Joe was ignored about the BTN.
Did Joe run the University? Of course not. He didn't hire deans nor fire professors. But he unsurprisingly cast a long shadow over the philosophies and operations of the athletic department. It's not hard to understand how he accumulated so much bureaucratic power and he knew how to use it. Joe won, he won the right way with the right people, and the paying fans and the donors adored him.
In his prime Joe was the master of virtually every detail of the Football program. Most great coaches are control freaks and Joe was at the head of the class. He hand-picked two athletic directors and his opinion was rarely contravened by those ADs.
Joe may have been right on the particulars of the Meridian Apartment break-in and he very well may have been right about Vicky Triponey. But the bottom line outcome of that affair was that Paterno demanded the right to decide for himself what punishment his team members would serve (picking up garbage at Beaver Stadium for two or three games). That effectively placed the Football program outside the processes and supervision of the University, something a younger Joe would have realized was contrary to his views about the proper role of intercollegiate athletics. I think Joe made a bad mistake in handling the Meridian Apartment affair.
Joe's decision to play Anwar Phillips in the Capital One Bowl is another example where Joe defied the intent (if not the specific letter) of the University's sanction of Phillips. That Phillips's charges were eventually dropped does not diminish the effect of Joe thumbing his nose at the University's student judicial process.
These incidents, along with Joe's shooing away of Curley and Spanier from his kitchen table at the end of the 2004 season, were probably keenly remembered by some BoT members on that fateful evening in early November 2011.
None of the foregoing proves that Joe conspired in a cover up of Sandusky. That issue must turn on actual evidence, of which there appears to be little or none. But anyone who thinks that Joe was "just a football coach" when it came to his effective bureaucratic power within Penn State exhibits incredible naivete. It certainly changed some during the last 5-10 years of his tenure, but for most of his career Joe was the unchallenged authority within Penn State in whatever matters he sought influence. Thank goodness Joe believed in running a NCAA- and B1G-compliant program, because, if he had not, we would have had a LOIC problem long before 2011.
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I made it to the end of your post, and was rewarded with this final sentence, which is a classic.
To paraphrase or try to interpret --- Thank goodness Joe had integrity, because if he didn't, he wouldn't have had integrity?
Or thank goodness Joe ran a clean program, because otherwise it wouldn't have been clean.
I think evan suggested that Penn State had a LOIC problem in 2011. Of course, it was in the bot, not the football program.
I can not believe how DUMB Mandel comes across throughout the entirety of his response.
QUESTION:
Stewart: At Penn State, fans feared for years that JoePa would complicate his retirement and the hiring of a new coach by declaring his son Jay the successor. I hope it goes without saying that everyone would have preferred that "nightmare" scenario to the true nightmare that happened. Now, Bill Snyder has come out andsaid he wants his son Sean to succeed him as coach at Kansas State when he retires. I find myself again wondering how exactly a school deals with this sort of declaration from a coaching legend. How do you see this playing out? - Foster, Wilmington, North Carolina
MANDEL'S ANSWER:
It's an interesting and potentially dicey situation for a couple of reasons. For one thing, Snyder, now 75, already retired once. At that time he gracefully stepped back, only to watch the school hire an outsider, Ron Prince, who mucked up the program so badly in three years that Snyder himself came back to the rescue. So you could see why he'd want more say in whom he entrusts to be the next coach at Bill Snyder Family Stadium. Furthermore, Sean Snyder is arguably much more qualified to take over the program than Jay Paterno would have been at Penn State. While only technically a coach for the past five years, Sean has been the program's director of operations for two decades. If anything he's more in tune with the daily ins and outs of running a power program than a regular position coach, who deals with only his own little corner of the larger enterprise.
Ultimately, it's not an exact parallel. Paterno, as has been well-documented, called all the shots in Happy Valley. The president and AD were his puppets. Snyder, though he carries a lot of weight, works for two of the more influential voices in college athletics in AD John Currie and president Kirk Schulz (who serves on the NCAA Executive Committee). When the time comes, they'll hire whoever they think's best for the job, be it Sean Snyder or an outsider. And it matters when exactly that time will be. If Bill Snyder decides to run off into the sunset after another 10-win season, you better be awfully sure you've got the right guy if you're going to tell him you're going a different direction. If he goes 5-7, it might be a much different decision.
Thie 2004 incident you reference is a myth. Joe invited Spanier & Curly (& others) to his house to discuss retirement, and then changed his own mind.
Yes, I am aware that the 'story' of that evening has been retold differently -- including by Joe himself.
Why would the head of the football program be overruled on football matters? Isn't that his, you know, job?
I think Evan was being a moron, but I have no Freeh citation to back it up.
How about Joe knew the actual truth about those incidents and because he did, he fought for what he knew was the right thing to do instead of turning it over to an avid " witch-hunting" wackadoodle who, even though she was female, had a hard on for Joepa. Talk about someone wanting control! Gee, remember the Rashard Casey case?
Consider Ohio State's current situation. I do not know all the facts, but some people claim the suspensions are for weed use. If so, I read a quote from Urbie that it has nothing to do with a legal issue, bu t is is with team policy. Well if they were caught smoking weed, last time I checked, I don't think the state of Ohio has legalized yet, unless Bosa has a diagnosis of glaucoma!
Mandel's point of view doesn't need any sort of proof, but anything counter does? Convenient! The mere fact that Paterno was fired without cause by the BOT after 61 years of exemplary service is your proof. Firing the head coach is kind of a football-related issue! They were even aware of his intention to retire after the season, but he was overruled.
This post is really telling, only someone extremely biased would interpret it the way you did. After the whole "some" incident, this is just hilarious. When will you realize that you're position is so bad, your only option is to awkwardly twist people's words in an attempt to prove your point?
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Did you ever consider that Joe "won the battle" because he was right? No one gave Joe anything. What power and influence Joe had he earned through exemplary service to The University, the athletic program and football at PSU. Unlike his enemies on the BOT he earned his spurs the old fashioned way, he worked for them............and produced for over 6 decades.
This is a good point. Any administration that is second guessing decisions of someone assigned to lead any program on a repeated basis will soon be looking for a new hire, one way or another.
That doesn't mean that you won't have disagreements occasionally. But in general, if there are a lot of those, then usually a new hire is not far behind.
Yes puppets was an unfortunate term and saying Joe would've appointed Jay HC is insanely stupid but Joe did have alot of power over the football program.
But hey so did Bobby Bowden and Bear Bryant and so do about 50 coaches today....You don't pay the football coach more than your AD and president without knowing you are giving them alot of power over their job.
With great power comes great responsibility and no one ever understood that better than Joe.
But hey so did Bobby Bowden and Bear Bryant and so do about 50 coaches today....You don't pay the football coach more than your AD and president without knowing you are giving them alot of power over their job.
With great power comes great responsibility and no one ever understood that better than Joe.
The notion that Paterno ruled PSU is well documented by people with no documents and a severe aversion to research... and the most extreme of this lot combines both with a severe addiction to story telling (the sensational) and hatred of the effort to write an interesting article based on fact finding (the mundane). Blow the flames of mythology Stewie ... keep on blowing it's what you do...best ! 
i wont give this guy the clicks or the attention but Id simply like to ask him to show me where it has been "well documented" . Id love to see that info. Im willing to bet the only thing he comes up with is the free garbage where he stated Curely was joes errand boy or something. Even that would explain his "well documented" info with regards to spanier. Boob
Since we're fighting for the truth here, let's clarify one important point. vickey triponey is not and was never female.
Joe was in total control of Penn State. Remember how he always unlocked the front gate to The Mall in the morning to let people on campus and then locked it up for the night? It really sucked when he was running late in the morning during the winter and I'd stand there freezing waiting for him to open the campus. Plus he'd check for student and employee IDs before he'd let anyone through. He made me late to class a few times.
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Exactly right. When we're talking public universities, these coaches are the highest-paid state employees. Of course, Joe was vastly underpaid compared to other top coaches.
When looking at power, consider Nick Saban and Alabama. There is no doubt that Alabama has a rabid football culture. Football is the thing down there. Saban, an active coach with no talk of retiring any time soon, has a statue near the football stadium merely for winning a national championship (he got the statue after his first title). You don't think Saban has power within that school?
Regarding football culture, again consider that Alabama puts up a statue of a coach for winning a national championship. Penn State had put up a statue of Joe two decades after his last national championship to honor him for career achievements both on and off the field. Remember that it included Joe's quote about leaving the university a better place (which he did). Joe's statue wasn't just about football. Of course, Joe hated the statue because that wasn't what he was about. To say that Penn State had a "football culture gone awry" related to "hero worship" is ridiculous.
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Building on the above point, I would say that Penn State is one of the few places with a top football program where said program has maintained its proper place within the university community. That is, of course, largely because of Joe. Penn State has a higher academic ranking than a lot of schools with historically top football programs, so it is not a university that just hangs its hat on football. Joe, obviously, was heavily focused on academics, both with his players and looking at the larger university. Remember that a few weeks after winning his first national championship in 1983, Joe was invited to speak at a board of trustees meeting. They wanted to congratulate him and hear about football. He instead talked about what the university could do to improve its academics. How many other coaches back then or since then would do that?
By the way, that January 1983 bot meeting was the first one that Joe had attended. He had been on campus for 33 years and had been the head coach for 17 years at that point, and that was the first bot meeting he attended. I don't recall him attending other bot meetings. For a guy who supposedly had all the power at Penn State, you didn't often see him in the presence of the university's so-called leadership.
I do recall Joe saying "NO" to a bunch of retirement things given to Sandusky. But he was overruled by some asshole named Erickson...
This! Joe was very much against the BTN and Spanier went ahead with no problem. Spanier stated this in interviews and joked about it. SMH too powerful, what a joke of a statement.
Which is exactly what made Penn State such a juicy target for the media rush to judgment.
Douche Bag, you want the Paterno's to reveal/release evidence ahead of a civil trial? Wow! You want the Paterno's to give up any advantages they may have? How about the fact that the judge has gag ordered place. Idiot!
Congratulations. Every piece of evidence offered in these two paragraphs directly contradicts your opening assertion. Back to English 101 for you.
Wrong. Every Penn State student, including football players, is subject to the university's disciplinary process. What Vicky wanted was the ability to punish athletes OUTSIDE that normal disciplinary process, just like her pal Mark Emmert did to Penn State. Vicky wanted the power to summarily bench an athlete who had been involved in some kind incident. That was a power that she wanted to assert solely against athletes, and not for Penn State students involved in any other extracurricular activity. For example, she didn't want the power to bench an actor from a Thespian production if she had been caught smoking dope or the power to suspend a student's column in the Daily Collegian if he had been arrested for underage drinking. She specifically wanted to make an example of Penn State athletes (I believe that there is a memo in which she directly states that). Now you are entitled to your own opinion about whether that's a good idea or not, but you are not entitled to your own facts. The fact is that Triponey wanted power over Penn State athletes that she did not have over any other Penn State students. She--not Paterno-- is the one who wanted to handle football player related issues "outside the processes" of the University.
Furthermore, in her quest to "make an example" of athletes, she wanted to be able to publicly humiliate athletes by issuing press releases about allegations of wrongdoing. Again, this is not something that she wanted to do vis-a-vis any other class of Penn State student. Not only would this have exposed Penn State to lawsuits, it very well could have been a violation of FERPA.
Ironically, it wasn't Paterno who was power hungry -- it was his accuser, Vicky Triponey, who was the power crazed lunatic.
I'm not disputing any of your points above regarding Triponey's and Paterno's respective stances concerning the disciplinary process of football players. But the bottom line effect of Paterno abrogating the OJA, however justified he may have been versus Triponey at the time, was to set the Football program apart from from the University's disciplinary process, at least perceptually.
Making the squad pick up litter at Beaver Stadium on Sunday morning in response to a violent breaking and entering and assault by at least a dozen players was a joke, and then Joe shortened the "punishment" to 2-3 games.
I recall hearing that one of the problems for Paterno in the Meridian Apartment affair was that Triponey wanted the players to "rat" on each other and Joe felt that would tear the squad apart.
Perhaps the real culprit here was Spanier who, as president, should have separately sat both Triponey and Paterno down and firmly set the boundaries for each.
