Completely agree.
And now that we know the NCAA was (& perhaps others were) heavily involved the investigation, I would add to your #3 that billing it as a "completely independent investigation" was a major mistake.
What should they have done?
- Thread starter RentechCEO
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Completely agree.
And now that we know the NCAA was (& perhaps others were) heavily involved the investigation, I would add to your #3 that billing it as a "completely independent investigation" was a major mistake.
Yes, society as a whole wanted blood as the media was holding their modern day Salem Witch hunt. You don't recall the calls for the death penalty and the school itself taking a hit. It was around the clock and it would have stopped had they suspended all parties involved pending the outcomes from the judicial system. Basically it would have been put on hold for cooler minds to prevail. Instead the BoT folded up shop and passed that hot potato to anyone outside their circle.
If the Death Penalty would've been instituted, there would've been an immediate filing for an injunction. Erickson was an ass.
How in the hell can you file for an injunction where your pants are down on your ankles and you're screaming thank you sir, may I have another. The leadership at PSU at that time couldn't get out of its own way. I agree one should have been filed if that occurred, but I don't think that clown car up there in 2011 could figure that out.
Leadership is always about poise strength and character ... heat or hysteria... a mob is never justification for confusion or weakness by leaders. In that moment of decision, leaders have to focus clearly.
When my grandmother with only the kids at home... all 4'6" of her while my grandfather was in Illinois for the only work he could find was confronted by KKK burning crosses outside her home shouting threats to burn her house down ... and ethnic and religious slurs at she and the kids, my grandmother had an instant vision of clear responsibility, focus and her power. She reached into the pantry and grabbed a rifle, although not loaded and pointed it one at a time at the heads of a dozen or so of they hysterical douche bags up front that she new, dispersed the kids into the nearby back woods, called out the names and occupations or businesses of the idiots confronting her and told them to GTF off her property while mentioning the kids would see to it that the men of the family would know all their names and their deaths would be slow and painful.
Under duress she assessed the situation and acted from a position of strength and poise....not cowardice and confusion. My grandmother never went to elementary school, was tiny and under 5 feet tall, was 19 and barely spoke English when confronted with a witch hunting crowd half drunken out of control armed adult male idiots she stood her ground and was more of a leader than the entire lot of our BOT was in the post Grand Jury witch hunt. Our BOT .... filled with attorneys and, so called leaders of industry' had to know better and could have locked up the NCAA and that hooded Emmert in court... tied them in knots with injunctions. Hell, they could have called on the criminal courts to enforce a freeze on any action to protect the processes and outcomes of the criminal processes.
In short, the 'hind sight' argument does not justify our BOTs failure to lead and display courage, poise and character under fire . For leaders, It never will, it never does and it never should.
When my grandmother with only the kids at home... all 4'6" of her while my grandfather was in Illinois for the only work he could find was confronted by KKK burning crosses outside her home shouting threats to burn her house down ... and ethnic and religious slurs at she and the kids, my grandmother had an instant vision of clear responsibility, focus and her power. She reached into the pantry and grabbed a rifle, although not loaded and pointed it one at a time at the heads of a dozen or so of they hysterical douche bags up front that she new, dispersed the kids into the nearby back woods, called out the names and occupations or businesses of the idiots confronting her and told them to GTF off her property while mentioning the kids would see to it that the men of the family would know all their names and their deaths would be slow and painful.
Under duress she assessed the situation and acted from a position of strength and poise....not cowardice and confusion. My grandmother never went to elementary school, was tiny and under 5 feet tall, was 19 and barely spoke English when confronted with a witch hunting crowd half drunken out of control armed adult male idiots she stood her ground and was more of a leader than the entire lot of our BOT was in the post Grand Jury witch hunt. Our BOT .... filled with attorneys and, so called leaders of industry' had to know better and could have locked up the NCAA and that hooded Emmert in court... tied them in knots with injunctions. Hell, they could have called on the criminal courts to enforce a freeze on any action to protect the processes and outcomes of the criminal processes.
In short, the 'hind sight' argument does not justify our BOTs failure to lead and display courage, poise and character under fire . For leaders, It never will, it never does and it never should.
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If you know what you stand for and what you are about, then the screaming of a mob will not deter you...and in this case that held true. They knew they were about protecting their a$$e$ no matter what, so they did. It so happened that they were able to find a dying scapegoat and hang it on him. They sure as hell led, alright.
It is a slight mistake to call what they did a lack of leadership. It was leadership in service of the wrong goals, inspired by the wrong values. We wanted them to stand up to the narrative, and they saw it would be much easier to simply divert the flood onto the street where the Paternos and others lived.
Indeed, they JOINED the mob.
Even IF JVP and the admins were dirty as hell, the BoT played a role in how Jerry got where he was able to act with such impunity. They were part of the enabling.
Rather than what? How did the crowd react to what the BOT cowards elected to do? Honestly, what would the crowd have done? If the BOT thought there would be an issue, then they had at their disposal many ways to keep Joe and the players from harm without firing Joe. Just dust of the gray dusts and rediscover your imagination. A statement saying Joe was being put on administrative leave for his protection and that of team due to the hysteria surrounding the situation would have worked just fine. A well crafted statement could have thrown the focus where it should have been. Gutless and cowardly acts are just that.... there are always rationally tactical alternatives to weak and cowardly one when poise and reason are applied ...
Maybe now, but at the time, it was PR 101: Apologize profusely and hunker down and wait it out, take your medicine. The problem was, they thought their audience was the public at large. The manipulated public will never be appeased. Still isn't to this day. So what was left was the alumni, students, supporters, etc. Had PR 101 recognized that THIS was only true audience that they could affect, things might have been done completely differently.
You mean the one that was implicated in Franklin sex abuse scandal, aka the original "Conspiracy of Silence"?
Kidding, but it's pretty funny Freeh couldn't even come up with his own material.
While perhaps true, HR101 is no different now than it was on November 9, 2011. Firing an employee via telephone and then offering him to the media as a scapegoat was (and still is) 100% indefensible.
If Emmert was going to do nothing and "slink away" who would expose the BOT? Do you believe that the NCAA would have done nothing if PSU had told them to bugger off?
So, just that I understand what you are saying, place Joe, Spanier, Curley and Schultz on paid leave (I guess McQueary too) and then just tell the rest of the world: "Get back to us after the trials". No payments to victims or settlements, no report like Freeh's etc. Just continue on as before just with those guys under suspension. Also, if CSS is found not guilty then reinstate them to PSU (well Spanier and Curley). Is that about right?
Great question! Once Spanier got involved, Joe was out of it. Noonan's remark presupposes that Joe believed C/S/S had dropped the ball on some level and consciously decided to wash his hands of it. I would wager any amount of money that Joe was certain C/S/S had handled the matter in '01 appropriately and once MM failed to voice any concerns, upon Joe's follow up with him, never gave JS another thought.
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Still waiting for that Pitt posters answer to my question.. Not expecting him to answer as its easy to see he is a passive aggressive troll.
You are going to upset Towny's circle jerk by posting on BWI...
This is correct. At the time, the PSU fanbase were mostly apopleptic at the idea that the BOT would see the report first (the presumption was that they would edit it to make it look better for the BOT and worse for Paterno), so they demanded that it be released to the public at the same time the BOT got to see it.
After the fact, the same people in the same fanbase pivoted without any sense of shame whatsoever to the position that somehow it was a bad idea for the BOT to do what they demanded the BOT do.
Okay let's entertain your theory. Paterno reports McQueary's allegations to Curley and Schultz (there are numerous inconsistencies with that, but never mind) and then steps aside (we'll ignore the 2/27/01 email that shows he was still involved 21/2 weeks after the fact). Even though Jerry is still hanging around the athletic facilities and nothing seems to have happened, Paterno assumes that his report of sexual child molestation handled responsibly.
But what about 2011? He suddenly gets a subpoena to testify about 2001. Cops! Prosecutors! Grand jury! How come he didn't storm into Spanier's office and demand to know why he's being questioned under oath about something that was supposed to have been handled a decade before? How come he didn't call Curley into his office and give him a dressing down? Why didn't he go to one of the BOT members that he was buddies with and give them a heads up (like, hey, if these guys didn't report this back in '01, Penn State's in some deep doo-doo). Legally, Paterno could tell others what he testified to in front of the Grand Jury.
Instead, he kept his mouth shut for almost a year as the situation spiraled out of control.
Here's another choice: Keep you your mouths shut and say nothing but: "We will leave this to the legal system."
There is no excuse for the mess they made of this. None.
Freeh wrote exactly what Frazier and Tomalis told him to write, with a big assist from the NCAA. Frazier and Tomalis (and some others) wanted the big press conference and they wanted to make sure that Paterno's legacy was forever ruined.
If it hadn't been Freeh, it would have been some other hired gun willing to do their bidding for $8.5 million.
Let's not pretend otherwise, m'kay?
Nothing that happened had anything to do with the NCAA. It was a criminal matter. There was absolutely no allegation of any violations of any NCAA rules until Freeh started colluding with Jule Roe.
McQueary never reported any such thing to Paterno. That is pure fabrication.
He could believe things were handled appropriately and still be questioned about the incident. Hell, how many people were questioned about 1998? We don't know what conversations happened between Joe, Curley, and Spanier in 2010-2011.
In terms of JS hanging around the facilities, Mike never questioned it until he learned of the GJ investigation in summer of 2010. If Mike didn't question JS being around, why the hell would Joe?
The board should not have told Louis Freeh to scapegoat Joe Paterno and Penn State football.
There. Is that clear?
Doesn't sound like an independent investigation anymore. I can see how that would go:
Interviewer: Mr. Freeh, were you given free (Ha ha) rein to pursue the evidence wherever it led?
Freeh: I was told to stay away from Joe Paterno and the football program.
Yes, I could see that going well.
I hope Aoshiro is not in a position where he has to make management decisions.
Are we sure about that?
We know for a fact that Paterno did not want Sandusky bringing Second Mile kids into Lasch.
Who overruled him?
It was more a matter of us thinking that the BOT had screwed things up so badly and went public to double-down on their horrible handling, so we had hopes that a truly independent investigation would yield more sensible results. Few people at the time realized what Freeh was all about at the time. Once that whole deal unfolded and we started to hear how Freeh was intimidating interviewees and we caught bits and pieces of the whole deal being headed to a preconceived conclusion, we all got nervous about what was going to come out of the report that far from independent. Freeh grabbing the chance to grandstand and mention reasonable conclusions even took the BOT by surprise and in saner moments for some of them, they realized it was a huge error to give Freeh that much latitude. Had the BOT gotten out in front of the story like logic dictated they needed to do, we're not in this mess and all its messy branches of distrust, etc. 4 years later. They threw away about as strong a goodwill asset as any school ever had in the Paterno legacy, which remains an unforgivable breach of their fiduciary responsibilities.
Q: I think you used the term fondling. Is that the term that you used?
Mr. Paterno: Well, I don’t know what you would call it. Obviously, he was doing something with the youngster.
It was a sexual nature. I’m not sure exactly what it was.
I didn’t push Mike to describe exactly what it was because he was very upset. Obviously, I was in a little bit of a dilemma since Mr. Sandusky was not working for me anymore.
So I told — I didn’t go any further than that except I knew Mike was upset and I knew some kind of inappropriate action was being taken by Jerry Sandusky with a youngster.
This actually hurts your argument. First "It was a sexual nature" is either very, very poor grammar (something Joe was great at), was transcribed incorrectly or Joe was mumbling/stammering/stumbling for words to describe it. In any case, after that he clarifies to say "I don't know what you would call it" Which clearly defies his previous statement (sexual nature).
He then goes on to say that MM didn't describe it to him in detail, nor did he ask.
Regardless, Joe followed protocol (then and now) and reported it to the head of campus police (which is exactly how PSU described then and now, Schultz' office).
According to Paterno, in his sworn testimony, he never discussed McQueary's allegations ever again with anybody at PSU after he reported it to Curley.
let's not mince words:
Freeh's grandstanding was a job interview to get Pepper Hamilton to buy out Freeh, Sporkin & Dorkin and farm independent work for the NCAA
nice frikkin gig: collect a $8.5 million paycheck from PSU to throw Paterno and the football program under the bus, provide cover for the likes of Frazier and Corbett, become a partner in a newer, larger organization, and have Mark Emmert promise you future business
Yes we do. There is a notation in Paterno's own handwriting saying that he didn't want Sandusky bringing kids into Lasch.
Why didn't Freeh tell us who overruled Paterno?
We also know that Joe's recollection was wrong. Quite frankly, too much weight is being put on each word JVP spoke through this whole mess.
First, Paterno testified that he only reported the matter to Curley, so there goes your "Schultz was a cop so Paterno reported it to the cops" theory.
Q: You indicated that your report was made directly to Tim Curley. Do you know of that report being made to anyone else that was a university official?
Mr. Paterno: No, because I figured that Tim would handle it appropriately.
I have a tremendous amount of confidence in Mr. Curley and I thought he would look into it and handle it appropriately.
Second, no matter how inartfully McQueary phrased it, Paterno got the message:
"So I told — I didn’t go any further than that except I knew Mike was upset and I knew some kind of inappropriate action was being taken by Jerry Sandusky with a youngster."
I guess you didn't get that far down in the cited testimony.
Third, with regard to Paterno's use of grammar,you must not have heard or read the phrase, "He's got a knee" to describe a player with a knee injury.
I always thought Paterno's irregular use of grammar was supposed to be part of his charm.
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