Penn State

[AYHJA]

I'm sorry, I can't take this any more...

What...The...Fuck...

What kind of crack are the people smoking in Happy Valley..?!?! I feel like puking every time I hear a former Penn State player or a current student say that they don't get what all the fuss is about...Let me make it simple...

Jerry Sandusky fucked little boys. There was a cover up. Joe Paterno was a part of it...

That's it..! End of story..! What the fuck do you mean you don't see what that has to do with football..! A football coach was fucking little boys, other football coaches covered it up, trying to protect their football program...They should have fucking wiped football off the map for them, bring in a new wave of students, most of the students I've seen are fucking coked out of their minds man...

Unreal man...Just unreal...

[shin_dr]

Cognitive dissonance mixed with a culture where hazing and abuse is often seen as a rite of passage "toughening up" rather than something to be discouraged.

[AYHJA]

Dude, its so crazy...I just can't wrap my head around it...

I just want to ask one of them what would you do if Sandusky did that to your little brother..? Would you still want to see the Paterno statue up on your way to a game, knowing that he knew about it and they covered it up..? They should be lucky they still have a football program, I would have wiped that shit out and just let them become a Div. 2 school...

[¡ñ±£¿®∆L Ф¶†ïς@п]

I listen to a once-prominent sports radio talk show based in DC: The Junkies.
(I actually listen to a few: Jim Rome, Tony Bruno back in '09, Petros P. is hilarious, and I occasionally check in with Ben Maller and JT & Looney on FoxSports)

I try to catch it daily on the podcast, and most of what occurred in the news in the past week concerning the Sandusky trial and aftermath was all that I needed to stay abreast of the situation. With the hour or so of the 3-1/2 guys there dissecting the influx of new details happening daily, I didn't have much else to say that hasn't been expressed and seen by most of us. I still don't have an opinion as much as most others would, but to have it all come out in the open like that, the disgrace, the fall of an icon, and the entire travesty of a cover-up scandal - sad to say it was riveting, but more than that, it was something akin to criminal.

I can't even imagine what it would take for so many collective minds to turn their heads away from something as grievous as at-risk youth & child molestation.

Thanks for bringing it up so I can one more time say something for once, and then try not to give it another mind, but from its inception back in the winter of '11 (is this right; when did the allegations first come to light in the media?) to the debacle of a primetime interview by Collinsworth, (trying to guess right here again) and then this recent cavalcade of events concerning a found-guilty Sandusky, and a forever-tarnished and passed-Paterno, it is just that - unbelievable.

[Drew]

In no way am I trying to defend what happened or anything like that. I'm just choosing for this point to focus on a single aspect: the only part I don't understand is wiping Joe Pa's wins from the record book. That doesn't really make sense to me. In a culture obsessed with wins and record books (and, that's a separate point about people actually valuing that shit over the health and protection of little boys) it seems unnecessarily punitive. And, realistically speaking, the sanctions imposed on the program are actually WORSE than if they just gave the team the death penalty. PSU is gonna be essentially a DII school for like 10 years. And I really do understand all the sanctions for the university itself. It was unspeakably awful what happened, and they deserve to be punished. I'm just wondering the justification for vacating the wins beyond a simple "fuck everything PSU, we want to wipe that whole time frame from existence" And if that is the justification (which I imagine it is), I can get my mind around it, I don't agree per se, but it at least makes sense. Beyond that though? Still having a hard time understanding it.

Another small sub-point that nobody even has to acknowledge, but why was this such a bigger scandal in the Penn State context than when it was found to happen all throughout the catholic church? That shit was swept under the rug as much as possible, but (presumably some Catholic) people are calling for the entire university to be demolished and shit. Is this MORE wrong in the sports context? If so, why?

[shin_dr]

It's a "decree of consent." So Penn State agreed to it.

For the latter, even college football would have trouble matching the resources of the major organized religions. That's a whole 'nother can of worms.