I feel like there should be some ground rules to this thread.
Child molestation/sexual assault: not funny in any way what so ever. Even as a joke.
Mocking a school's cover up of child molestation and deification of an enabler of said molestation: funny
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Ugh – the cult of Paterno never fails to have their way at the State Penn.
Also, related but unrelated: The 'We Are' 'Penn State' chant is about the worst there is. Would much rather hear 'Wolf' 'Pack' and that is pretty much nails on a chalk board to me.
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I loved when they played USC in the rose bowl several years back. USC opened a can on them and were up big in the first half. SC fans started mocking them, chanting "We Are, SC."
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They don't give a fuck. In fact, they firmly believe Penn St is the victim here and Paterno was completely scapegoated and everyone else is the asshole for even thinking there a connection between Paterno and Sandusky. Read the comment section of any publication with an article on this right now, and especially social media. It's filled with this insane delusion.
And this is why Penn State needed to get the NCAA Death Penalty. They didn't learn and still think they did no wrong. In fact they've doubled down on the worship of the mean who was the enabler of the whole thing. They've proven they'd allow it to happen again because they value football over everything, including the raping of children. Fuck that whole situation.
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So true. Talk to any PSU fan and its "baseless allegations, unproven incidents, hearsay, an attempt to destroy Paterno legacy and my favorite a "witch hunt from jealous people". Disgusting
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The resentment might have grown, but an outright multiyear ban would have cut off the entire program at the knees and essentially made them irrelevant in the national scene to the point where even if they didn't want to change their ways, it would have essentially been forced upon them.
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Eh, I disagree on the point about restoring wins. The fact that didn't handle it properly is wrong, but he gained no competitive advantage for it, so why do his results on the field matter? His actions as a person are what come into question. I don't have a problem with him having that record because his reputation as a person is what is deserving of criticism.
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How can you say he gained no competitive advantage for it? The whole reason he overlooked it was to protect the image of the team he'd built, and the abuse was ongoing AFTER he knew. At a minimum any wins after he knew about the situation should be removed.
It's easy to fall into the trap of "Oh, don't want to hurt the fans", but the fans are the reason he did what he did.
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That's not a competitive advantage, like paying a player, playing someone who is academically ineligible, or anything else that creates an uneven playing field for their opponents. It's a moral issue that shows poor character, but it means nothing on the field.
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If you cover up a scandal, it's because not covering it up would lose your competitive advantage. In Paterno's case, the competitive advantage was all about running a clean program, but it turns out he swept a hideous, ongoing crime under the rug. And the reason he did that was because he didn't want to hurt the brand.
If people ignore what Paterno did, and continue to honor him, it's condoning his behavior.
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I'm not ignoring what he did at all and I think I've said as much. His behavior was deplorable, but that's him as a person and not him as a coach. As a coach, he had more wins than any other coach in history. That's not really debatable.
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He did what he did in an official capacity, and it was for both personal and professional reasons.
I see what you're saying, but part of the reason for his record wins was the last 10 years of coaching while overlooking an ongoing situation where little boys were being raped, and stopping police from doing their jobs.
I think that warrants overturning those 10 years of wins, taking away or reducing the pension, removing the statue. If we just say "Oh, it was deplorable", but we're going to overlook what he gained by doing it, we're rewarding the behavior.
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We'll just agree to disagree then. I'm fine with Penn State punishing him as his employer, but I just don't think that legal and moral issues belong in the NCAA's jurisdiction for punishments that don't do anything to ruin the integrity of the sport. A professor wouldn't lose their name on papers that they published if they did something like this but we would expect them to be punished by their employer and the legal system.
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It's not really the same thing, but they (or their university) might well lose the benefits of publishing a paper if they broke the law in order to do it.
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I agree with vtkey, but I guess I would put it in a different light.
By covering up the wrongdoings of their coaches, it allowed for the DESIRED continuity (continuity is not always desired) of the coaching staff. Allowing a coach to remain the coach after knowingly breaking the law IS a competitive advantage b/c PSU had the benefit of continuing to use a coach who either belonged behind a defendant's desk or in a prison cell. If PSU (as an institution) had done its job, the coach would have been gone and would have broken that DESIRED continuity, which imho IS a competitive advantage. The program deserved to suffer.
That being said, vacating wins is also stupid.
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I would agree, except that the NCAA has set a precedent of making teams vacate wins that they believe were gained under suspect circumstances. GT really did win the 2009 ACC championship game, it's not debatable, except the NCAA forced them to vacate it, so they didn't.
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I still think that vacating wins is stupid, regardless of the reason. It doesn't do anything to change what happened. With the GT example, them vacating wins doesn't help the other teams that would have played or won the ACC champioinship game that year.
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100% disagree with that. The whole message being sold to parents, coaches and recruits about Penn St for all those years was how they did things The Right Way and how JoePa was this great humanitarian coach who would go out of his way to ensure absolutely nothing went wrong under his watch. The reason this whole thing was covered up was because if word got out, that whole mantra would have imploded and the myth of Penn St would have evaporated. The coverup was done specifically to protect the competitive advantages they had created over time.
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See above. Maintaining a false image is not a competitive advantage that is measurable on the field any more than using recent national championships and draft picks is a competitive advantage.
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When recruiting is as important as it is in college football, doing what Joe Pa did does constitute creating or maintaining a competitive advantage. I would agree with you if this were the NFL where players are drafted, and traded, but when you're out there trying to sell yourself to players and you're actively going out of your way to ensure the actual nature of the program you're leading isn't seeing the light of day to make yourselves look as good as possible, then it falls under a violation to maintain a competitive advantage.
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To each his own then, but be sure to report the Alabamas, Clemsons, and FSUs for their on field success creating an unfair competitive advantage in recruiting too, even though organic recruiting advantages are not what are deemed worthy of vacating wins. No team that has ever had a recruiting violation has had to vacate a win unless they've played an ineligible player.
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Side note, the day I heard they were taking the statue down, I biked over and climbed up in a tree to take this picture. The statue was already down but they were still disassembling the rest of the shrine.
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no idea. lots of elm on campus, it isn't an oak. i could bike over and take a picture of the tree if you want. or maybe the hill that they put in place when they removed all the concrete
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Regardless of whether or not this was appropriate, I hope PSU realizes this is the last time they should ever officially mention his name in connection with the school.
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She was called a "clueless treacherous traitor" and told to resign from the paper or transfer to another university. She was accused of hating her university and hating football, and knowing nothing about Penn State history. She was called an idiot — by a teaching assistant at a Catholic school, no less — and other words that I can't use here.
One man wrote, "I hope God can forgive you for your actions, I sure the hell can't."
The vitriol threw Davis off, especially because so many of the attacks, including personal ones, came from graduates from the 1950s, '60s and '70s.
This wasn't educated debate. It was parents and grandparents with pitchforks decrying Davis's and the newspaper's thoughtful opinion — all to protect a man who may have enabled Sandusky's crimes by not acting to stop them. Testimony in one lawsuit claimed that Paterno was told as far back as 1976 that Sandusky was abusing a child.
It was groupthink at its worst: typical blind allegiance of college sports fans, who so often toss aside reason in the name of big-ticket sports at their alma mater. Penn State's decision to honor Paterno is a manifestation of that.
And this right here is it. The overwhelming majority of Penn St fans and alumni don't think they did anything wrong, and openly attack anyone who dares to say otherwise. To them, Joe Paterno was completely railroaded, Penn St was made a massive scapegoat, and they're still not fully convinced that Jerry Sandusky actually did what he was accused of doing, and even if he did, he did it without the knowledge of anyone else. They believe this, and will cling to this to their graves.
Penn St football should have been forced to shut down based on what happened. They value football over everything, and it doesn't matter that a football coach was caught raping children in the football showers, and it doesn't matter that the head football coach actively covered it up, allowing it to continue for 40 years because had anything been done, it would have tarnished football. Football took, and still takes priority at Penn State above all else, and if you try and get in the way of the superiority of it, YOU are the problem, and you need to be dealt with.
Fuck them and anyone who associates with them. Honestly, I'm kind of disgusted we have them on our future schedule. I want nothing to do with that program from here on out.
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The overwhelming majority of Penn St fans and alumni...
By this you must mean everyone 56+ years old (assuming everyone considered in the statement of Davis's which claimed the graduation years of the people who threw vitriol at her).
Just FYI, the scene up here is that this is very much a generational issue. The new kids don't claim any responsibility for anything that happened before they became students and the day-to-day life at Penn State is still just a new crop of college kids every year with their own goals, certainly not obliged to deign to the still-fresh social pressures that exist in this town. Read the Davis column.
However, there is a large, older alumni base with deep pockets and political connections that suggest that this issue will not fade until the people who want to keep fighting it are still alive. Don't kid yourself, this will still be a story in five to ten years, and the media will feed it to you at every opportunity.
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Comments
Free parking for anyone showing up in a white, window-less van?
Free candy giveaways at the turnstiles?
.... too soon?
Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker
Is this a joke thread? Because this should definitely be a massive joke thread.
I wish... They just announced it today
Sure did. Coworkers told me about it today.
on second thought, yo wife is probably safe.
Maybe it's more like "Wife, hide your kids..."
Nothing shocks me when it comes to the Cult of Paterno. That said, this is absurd.
Yep... this is the same cult that is desperate to restore all of his wins as well....
My feelings
This is one of the best reaction gifs I've ever seen.
Probably want to just celebrate Penn State history without mentioning names. Best course in my opinion.
First 1,000 men in the stadium get free blind folds.
I'm going to enjoy watching this.
Heard Sandusky's gonna make an appearance, but no one will know it because, to honor Joe Pa, everyone will be asked to turn a blind eye.
yeah, THIS^^^ is the one I wanted to use, unfortunately it would've required me to disable my work's safe search.
Yeah abandon thread time:
Free soap-on-a-rope to all fans 14 and under?
think this guy will show up?
Nah, he likes women not little boys
I feel like there should be some ground rules to this thread.
Child molestation/sexual assault: not funny in any way what so ever. Even as a joke.
Mocking a school's cover up of child molestation and deification of an enabler of said molestation: funny
so is asking if a notable Temple alumnus is going to be in attendance fair game? Or do I need to delete my comment above?
Like you said, he's more of a Temple fan.
Plus, different kind of scandal.
Ugh – the cult of Paterno never fails to have their way at the State Penn.
Also, related but unrelated: The 'We Are' 'Penn State' chant is about the worst there is. Would much rather hear 'Wolf' 'Pack' and that is pretty much nails on a chalk board to me.
My sister had a fit about it after the scandal and I had to stop her from revising history.
http://onwardstate.com/2015/09/25/the-true-origin-of-we-are-penn-state/
I loved when they played USC in the rose bowl several years back. USC opened a can on them and were up big in the first half. SC fans started mocking them, chanting "We Are, SC."
I'm not sure if they realized the amount of public backlash this would deservedly get and will continue to get.
Here's the thing...
They don't give a fuck. In fact, they firmly believe Penn St is the victim here and Paterno was completely scapegoated and everyone else is the asshole for even thinking there a connection between Paterno and Sandusky. Read the comment section of any publication with an article on this right now, and especially social media. It's filled with this insane delusion.
And this is why Penn State needed to get the NCAA Death Penalty. They didn't learn and still think they did no wrong. In fact they've doubled down on the worship of the mean who was the enabler of the whole thing. They've proven they'd allow it to happen again because they value football over everything, including the raping of children. Fuck that whole situation.
So true. Talk to any PSU fan and its "baseless allegations, unproven incidents, hearsay, an attempt to destroy Paterno legacy and my favorite a "witch hunt from jealous people". Disgusting
They don't even realize what the problem really was: a complete loss of perspective.
Pretty sure the Death Penalty would have only made things worse.
The resentment might have grown, but an outright multiyear ban would have cut off the entire program at the knees and essentially made them irrelevant in the national scene to the point where even if they didn't want to change their ways, it would have essentially been forced upon them.
Are the celebrations going to be held in the Penn State showers?
Party afterward in the shower for the unveiling of his new statue!
Needs a blindfold.
Technically, it needs to have his back turned on what's going on in the showers
Knowing what he knew, he wasn't about to leave his back unguarded in the shower.
How disrespectful to victims and families of those affected.
The fuck is wrong with these people in charge at Penn State...
The NCAA screwed up by restoring his wins, and eliminating sanctions early. Once the statue was taken down, it should stay down.
Eh, I disagree on the point about restoring wins. The fact that didn't handle it properly is wrong, but he gained no competitive advantage for it, so why do his results on the field matter? His actions as a person are what come into question. I don't have a problem with him having that record because his reputation as a person is what is deserving of criticism.
How can you say he gained no competitive advantage for it? The whole reason he overlooked it was to protect the image of the team he'd built, and the abuse was ongoing AFTER he knew. At a minimum any wins after he knew about the situation should be removed.
It's easy to fall into the trap of "Oh, don't want to hurt the fans", but the fans are the reason he did what he did.
That's not a competitive advantage, like paying a player, playing someone who is academically ineligible, or anything else that creates an uneven playing field for their opponents. It's a moral issue that shows poor character, but it means nothing on the field.
I completely disagree.
If you cover up a scandal, it's because not covering it up would lose your competitive advantage. In Paterno's case, the competitive advantage was all about running a clean program, but it turns out he swept a hideous, ongoing crime under the rug. And the reason he did that was because he didn't want to hurt the brand.
If people ignore what Paterno did, and continue to honor him, it's condoning his behavior.
I'm not ignoring what he did at all and I think I've said as much. His behavior was deplorable, but that's him as a person and not him as a coach. As a coach, he had more wins than any other coach in history. That's not really debatable.
He did what he did in an official capacity, and it was for both personal and professional reasons.
I see what you're saying, but part of the reason for his record wins was the last 10 years of coaching while overlooking an ongoing situation where little boys were being raped, and stopping police from doing their jobs.
I think that warrants overturning those 10 years of wins, taking away or reducing the pension, removing the statue. If we just say "Oh, it was deplorable", but we're going to overlook what he gained by doing it, we're rewarding the behavior.
We'll just agree to disagree then. I'm fine with Penn State punishing him as his employer, but I just don't think that legal and moral issues belong in the NCAA's jurisdiction for punishments that don't do anything to ruin the integrity of the sport. A professor wouldn't lose their name on papers that they published if they did something like this but we would expect them to be punished by their employer and the legal system.
It's not really the same thing, but they (or their university) might well lose the benefits of publishing a paper if they broke the law in order to do it.
It's the closest I could come up with, but that's not really how publishing papers works.
I agree with vtkey, but I guess I would put it in a different light.
By covering up the wrongdoings of their coaches, it allowed for the DESIRED continuity (continuity is not always desired) of the coaching staff. Allowing a coach to remain the coach after knowingly breaking the law IS a competitive advantage b/c PSU had the benefit of continuing to use a coach who either belonged behind a defendant's desk or in a prison cell. If PSU (as an institution) had done its job, the coach would have been gone and would have broken that DESIRED continuity, which imho IS a competitive advantage. The program deserved to suffer.
That being said, vacating wins is also stupid.
I would agree, except that the NCAA has set a precedent of making teams vacate wins that they believe were gained under suspect circumstances. GT really did win the 2009 ACC championship game, it's not debatable, except the NCAA forced them to vacate it, so they didn't.
I still think that vacating wins is stupid, regardless of the reason. It doesn't do anything to change what happened. With the GT example, them vacating wins doesn't help the other teams that would have played or won the ACC champioinship game that year.
100% disagree with that. The whole message being sold to parents, coaches and recruits about Penn St for all those years was how they did things The Right Way and how JoePa was this great humanitarian coach who would go out of his way to ensure absolutely nothing went wrong under his watch. The reason this whole thing was covered up was because if word got out, that whole mantra would have imploded and the myth of Penn St would have evaporated. The coverup was done specifically to protect the competitive advantages they had created over time.
See above. Maintaining a false image is not a competitive advantage that is measurable on the field any more than using recent national championships and draft picks is a competitive advantage.
When recruiting is as important as it is in college football, doing what Joe Pa did does constitute creating or maintaining a competitive advantage. I would agree with you if this were the NFL where players are drafted, and traded, but when you're out there trying to sell yourself to players and you're actively going out of your way to ensure the actual nature of the program you're leading isn't seeing the light of day to make yourselves look as good as possible, then it falls under a violation to maintain a competitive advantage.
To each his own then, but be sure to report the Alabamas, Clemsons, and FSUs for their on field success creating an unfair competitive advantage in recruiting too, even though organic recruiting advantages are not what are deemed worthy of vacating wins. No team that has ever had a recruiting violation has had to vacate a win unless they've played an ineligible player.
Side note, the day I heard they were taking the statue down, I biked over and climbed up in a tree to take this picture. The statue was already down but they were still disassembling the rest of the shrine.
Interesting that they went out of their way to prevent people from photographing the removal of the statue.
Congrats for climbing the tree for a photo.
It would have been disrespectful to the Cult of JoePa to allow unflattering images of their idol to be taken
The most shocking thing about this photo is that horses can climb trees.
and ride bikes
Or turn on treadmills.
Mulberry? Oak?
no idea. lots of elm on campus, it isn't an oak. i could bike over and take a picture of the tree if you want. or maybe the hill that they put in place when they removed all the concrete
I'm guessing they are bringing back human sacrifices as well...probably why they are holding off on details.
Props to the Temple fans who turned their backs during the Paterno tribute video. The administration and much of the fanbase of PSU sickens me.
you know it's bad when even this guy thinks you crossed the line.
Yep you can add PSU to schools I truly hate in football after this past weekend and interactions with their fans.
Welcome aboard. What took you so long?
Regardless of whether or not this was appropriate, I hope PSU realizes this is the last time they should ever officially mention his name in connection with the school.
Yeah, they learned.....
Notthatthere'sanythingwrongwiththat.gif
Actually, no. There are so many things wrong with that.
I don't think so brah
This is a troll, right? Obviously those are Pitt fans just trying to make PSU look even worse. I mean, no one could be that stupid, right?!??!!
Sweet jesus, there's denial, and then there's this. I'm speechless.
I certainly hope so, but PSU looks bad enough already, without people demeaning themselves.
Same shoes, same shorts, same shirt? Gotta be a parody of some sort.
via GIPHY
FYI, Peter King linked to this article by Juliet Macur of the NYT from last week:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/17/sports/ncaafootball/why-is-penn-state-...
And here's one from Lauren Davis, Opinions Editor at the Penn State Collegian:
http://www.collegian.psu.edu/opinion/editorials/article_ef670526-70c0-11...
Needless to say, neither were particularly thrilled with the decision to honor Paterno
And this right here is it. The overwhelming majority of Penn St fans and alumni don't think they did anything wrong, and openly attack anyone who dares to say otherwise. To them, Joe Paterno was completely railroaded, Penn St was made a massive scapegoat, and they're still not fully convinced that Jerry Sandusky actually did what he was accused of doing, and even if he did, he did it without the knowledge of anyone else. They believe this, and will cling to this to their graves.
Penn St football should have been forced to shut down based on what happened. They value football over everything, and it doesn't matter that a football coach was caught raping children in the football showers, and it doesn't matter that the head football coach actively covered it up, allowing it to continue for 40 years because had anything been done, it would have tarnished football. Football took, and still takes priority at Penn State above all else, and if you try and get in the way of the superiority of it, YOU are the problem, and you need to be dealt with.
Fuck them and anyone who associates with them. Honestly, I'm kind of disgusted we have them on our future schedule. I want nothing to do with that program from here on out.
By this you must mean everyone 56+ years old (assuming everyone considered in the statement of Davis's which claimed the graduation years of the people who threw vitriol at her).
Just FYI, the scene up here is that this is very much a generational issue. The new kids don't claim any responsibility for anything that happened before they became students and the day-to-day life at Penn State is still just a new crop of college kids every year with their own goals, certainly not obliged to deign to the still-fresh social pressures that exist in this town. Read the Davis column.
However, there is a large, older alumni base with deep pockets and political connections that suggest that this issue will not fade until the people who want to keep fighting it are still alive. Don't kid yourself, this will still be a story in five to ten years, and the media will feed it to you at every opportunity.