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Home 2012 August Archives for 26th

Archives for August 26, 2012

He just wanted the truth to come out

Posted on August 26, 2012 Written by The Nittany Turkey

A review of “Paterno” by Joe Posnanski.

You’ve read many reviews of “Paterno” by Joe Posnanski, so why read this one? I would be an arrogant turkey indeed if I were to think that anyone really cared about what I thought of the book. Probably, like many of you, I’ve run hot and cold on Joe Paterno through the years, the pace of the oscillations growing more rapid during the past 10 months. I found myself subscribing to many of the thoughts — or hatchet jobs, should I say? — of media writers and bloggists, as well as the opinions of my friends, many of whom were also vacillating about Joe. I’d never taken the time to think at length for myself about Joe, his principles, his high standards — which had been reduced to hypocrisy by the wonks who needed a living, breathing scapegoat upon whom to pin an alleged cover-up of the Jerry Sandusky crimes on campus.

Young and middle-aged sports writers who review a biography of an octogenarian are handicapped by the great gulf of goals and values between generations referred to colloquially as “The Greatest Generation” and “Generation X”. I, being of the much-maligned “Baby Boom Generation” — on the vanguard of it, yet — can better relate to the thoughts and feelings of an old man reflecting on his past successes and failures, as well as the crotchety moods, hanging on too long, and single-mindedness Paterno experienced in his later years. In no way am I comparing myself to Joe other than being a single generation removed from his.

Several reviewers seemed to want this book to be an expose of the entire Sandusky “cover-up” from the inside out. I’m happy they were disappointed. That was neither the original intent of the book, nor did Posnanski change course in mid-stream to incorporate a kangaroo court for Joe, which I presume those other writers wanted. There has been a certain blood lust in the wake of the scandal, with Paterno the target for the lynch mobs. I thought Posnanski did well to remain above the fray.

It is clear throughout the biography that Joe Paterno was not the “football above all” anti-hero the Freeh report wanted him to be. The following excerpt, beginning with a Paterno quote in the wake of Penn State’s first national championship season, 1982, says just the opposite.

“We have never been more united, more proud, and maybe it’s unfortunate that it takes a No. 1 football team to do that . .  .  . It bothers me to see Penn State football No. 1, then, a few weeks later, to pick up a newspaper and find a report that many of our academic departments are not rated up there with the leading institutions in the country.”

To Paterno, the way to make Penn State a great academic institution was obvious: they needed to recruit brilliant, aggressive, and vibrant teachers. “We have some,” he said. “We don’t have enough of them.” Then they needed to recruit the most promising and dazzling students, “the star students that star professors get excited about.” And the key was to raise money, more money, to endow chairs, to build science and computer labs, to fund scholarships, to build the nation’s best library. He was particularly passionate about the library: “Without a great library, we can’t be a great university.” Over the next twenty years, he and Sue would donate millions of dollars and raise millions more to build a world-class library that would be called the Paterno Library.

In challenging the board of trustees, and later challenging the faculty itself, Paterno was typically blunt. He praised some departments and called others lousy; he praised some professors and called others lazy. He said they needed to raise seven to ten million dollars over the next few months, while the opportunity was there. “I think we can be more than we are,” he insisted, “and make students better than they think they are.”

The vignettes of life in the Paterno home with Sue and the five Paterno children made for good contretemps, as well as comic relief. The one that sticks most in my mind was purported to be the seminal episode that caused Joe to impose a personal ban on swearing. A six-year old Jay was playing on the floor of the coach’s home office while Joe made recruiting calls. During one call, the recruiting target announced his plan to go elsewhere. Joe politely signed off saying the other school was a great institution and wishing the kid luck there. Then, he hung up and muttered, “Son of a bitch, I hope he hates it there!” After a subsequent recruiting call, Joe hung up without muttering. That was the six year-old Jay’s cue to exclaim, “Son of a bitch, I hope he hates it there!”

After that, Joe stopped cursing like a drunken sailor, using euphemoprofanity like “heck” and “darn”, “son of a gun” and “aw, fer cryin’ out loud!” Being a leader and a hero in many alumni eyes, he probably unintentionally caused many of his broad legions of fans to think twice about cursing.

As one would expect, Posnansky wrote much material about Paterno’s relationship with Jerry Sandusky, the two having coached side-by-side for 30 years. From the public’s point of view, they were working together; however, in reality it was nothing like that most of the time.

Paterno and Sandusky rarely agreed; they did not like each other. Paterno often fired Sandusky, and Sandusky often quit, and the two men clashed so violently in team meetings that other coaches expected a fight to break out.

Interestingly enough, Joe gave Sandusky the short shrift in his autobiography, mentioning him only once, “the same number of times he talked about Brooklyn Dodgers pitcher Sandy Koufax.” He didn’t like Sandusky. The feeling was mutual.

Sandusky, meanwhile, offered reporters funny but biting quotes about Paterno, like the time he mocked Paterno for always griping that defensive players need to have their hands up when running after the quarterback: “What else would they do? Have their hands down?” Looking back, many of the stories published about Paterno, even the most glowing, contain a slightly caustic quote from Sandusky. After a while, whenever an anonymous source took a shot at Paterno, well, Paterno just assumed it was Sandusky.

Joe thought Sandusky was a bit of a flake, but they put their heads together to come up with a perfect defensive plan to win the 1987 Fiesta Bowl against Miami for Penn State’s second Number One season. After that, Paterno felt that Sandusky had lost his coaching edge.

He grumbled to people that Sandusky was getting too full of himself. In Paterno’s mind, an earlier coach, Dan Radakovich, was the real coaching genius who made Penn State into “Linebacker U,” the ideal place for linebackers to play. He thought Sandusky was taking way too much credit. More to the point, Sandusky’s defense wasn’t stopping anybody. Even during the undefeated 1994 season, Paterno thought the defense was way too soft. The Nittany Lions gave up 21 points a game on average— too many, in Paterno’s book— and had gone undefeated only because the offense was so great. The defense was worse the next year. Paterno’s frustrations bubbled. He complained to friends that he did not know what to do about Sandusky. He began writing little notes to himself, things he wanted to say to Sandusky in meetings:

  • Why is it you are the only one who, when a meeting starts, wants to know when it will end?
  • Jerry, we ARE going to tighten up the ship.
  • I knew I should have been worried when Jerry said Wisconsin got impatient running the ball against us. We have to stop people.

It was around that time that The Second Mile entered the picture, when Paterno felt that Sandusky was spending more time with his charity than he was with his coaching. Eventually, this would be the reason why Paterno would not recommend Sandusky to be his successor, and that is why Jerry left.

Posnanski wrote a chapter about Adam Taliaferro’s tragic injury and how Paterno reacted to it. As the 2000 season rolled around, Sandusky was gone and Joe felt a new energy. However 2000 turned out to be a bad year for Penn State and Paterno. First, in the off-season, Rashard Casey, the team QB, got into an off-campus fight with a police officer, and Joe backed him all the way, against the hoots and hollers of “hypocrite”. Although Casey was found not guilty, the season went downhill right from the start. Losses — including a real stinker 24-6 loss to Toledo — mounted, there was dissent among the coaching staff and worst of all, Adam Taliaferro had a paralyzing injury during the Ohio State loss about which doctors opined that he would never walk again. Joe was devastated, feeling that he had failed to protect Adam. But Joe being Joe, he played a major role in motivating Taliaferro through treatment and rehabilitation; he is now a walking, talking Philadelphia area lawyer who was also elected to the Penn State Board of Trustees by the alumni in 2012.

Against almost constant pressure from 2000 on, back in what many consider the “Dark Years” and beyond, Joe continued coaching.  He didn’t know what he would do with himself if he retired. No one believed that he would ever quit; he would have to be hauled off the field with his boots on, having died on the field of combat. On the day in 2004 when president Graham Spanier, athletic director Tim Curley, and senior VP Gary Schultz famously joined Paterno at his breakfast table to ask him to consider retirement and give them a plan for smooth successorship, Joe’s temper flared:

Paterno recalled, Spanier cleared his throat and said that he was going to recommend to the board that 2005 be Paterno’s last year as coach.

At the end of his life, Paterno said, as if asking for forgiveness, “I have a temper. I shouldn’t have said what I said, but I was very angry. I had thought he came over to talk. But he already had made up his mind what he was going to do.”

Paterno put both hands on the table, looked Graham Spanier in the eye, and growled, “You take care of your playground, and I’ll take care of mine.”

Spanier looked at him with surprise. Paterno went on. Before the meeting, he had written notes to himself that seem to be for use in case the argument got hot:

  • I am NOT going to resign.
  • I am 77, but not old, and the arena is where I thrive.
  • Loyalty— Commitment to Education— more than wins + losses.
  • I’ve raised millions of dollars at this very table for the University.
  • Realizing that graduation rate, etc., are what Penn State athletics are all about.
  • I can rally the alumni. People in the country. We are special. We are Penn State.

All this and other scribbles were written in pencil. In blue pen, at the bottom of the yellow graph paper, he wrote what appears to be his final bid: “If I fail (7– 4, 8– 4), I retire.”

Of course, we all remember that the 2005 record was 12-1 and Penn State finished the post-season ranked number three.

Many thought Paterno should have quit back then, while he was ahead, but he hung on. His relations with the press and the public became crotchety and bitter. His health declined. He had to coach many games from the press booth. Still, the stubborn old coot didn’t feel it was time to hang them up. “What am I going to do? Mow the lawn? Play with my grandchildren?”

It took more than a few bad seasons to pry the old coach out of there. It took a scandal.

The take-down of Paterno has been covered eight ways to Sunday elsewhere. Posnanski does a pretty straight reporting job, capturing the emotions of Sue, Scott, and Jay along the way.  And sadly, Joe’s final hours found their way into a biography whose subject was to have been a man still living.

In the epilogue, entitled “Encore”, Diana Paterno, Joe’s daughter, had the following to say:

“Since he died,” said Diana, “I have thought a lot, ‘What would Dad do?’ I thought about his character, the whole thing, the board of trustees, the way it ended. People talk about revenge or getting back at people or whatever. That’s not what Dad would have wanted. He would have wanted the truth to come out. That’s all.”

Amen to that.

Did Posnanski succeed in covering his subject? I believe he did. He did not inject his personal opinions and biases into it, which is what I want from a biographer. I believe that someone who reads this book fifty years from now will be able to construct an accurate mental image of Joseph V. Paterno, and his complexities as the coach, the father, and the man. That’s what I want from a biography.

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Filed Under: Penn State Football, Penn State Scandal Tagged With: biography, football, Joe Paterno, Joe Posnanski

Myers’ Impassioned Speech to BoT

Posted on August 26, 2012 Written by The Nittany Turkey

The Penn State Board of Trustees weekend retreat promised to have some thrills and chills, and this Turkey was not disappointed, tuning in from afar. In particular, Joel Myers addressed the board with the impassioned speech below, for which he received a standing ovation.

Jerry Sandusky is convicted as a sick and monstrous man. Under the guise of helping children, he victimized them. Those victims continue to suffer to this day. Some were victimized on our campus, and we take as much responsibility for that as is humanly possible.
By shining the light on what happened and becoming a leader against child sexual abuse, we hope to save tens of thousands of potential future victims nationwide from a similar fate as well as help those who have suffered here.

Education and awareness is the key to reducing sexual abuse, which is a plague upon this nation. Education is what we are all about. One in four girls and one in six boys are sexually abused. Sexual abuse is not a rarity. It is all too common in this society. We are learning it has happened not only at Penn State but at other colleges and universities. If there is any good from this tragedy, it is the spotlight that has been shown on this epidemic of child abuse and the challenge to stop it.

Penn State is a great university. It was great prior to November and it is today. It was a great university prior to the Freeh report and it is today. Penn State was a great university before the NCAA’s unfair sanctions were forced upon it and it is today.

We have had high admission standards. We are one of the top universities, not only in the United States, but in the world.

Penn State leads the way in many fields. The Penn State faculty, staff, students, alumni and the entire Penn State community contribute significantly to Pennsylvania, the United States, and the global society.

Once we became aware of this tragedy — and we have also learned that villains of this type are great manipulators and coverup artists — we did everything a good institution should do to move forward, and we took action to get the facts out.

We hired an independent investigator to explore and provide his expert opinion and findings. However the Freeh report, despite what the NCAA consent decree says, is still being reviewed by the Board, and has not been fully accepted. We committed to a full disclosure. We committed to move forward in a healthy way, correcting what was wrong, and providing information to law enforcement officials so that those accused would have their day in court.

Penn State has had a clean and enviable athletic record, one of only three universities in the nation to never have a major sanction by the NCAA. Penn State has maintained one of the highest graduation rates among football athletes compared to their peer institutions. This didn’t occur in only one year, it happened year after year, decade after decade.

One should ask why is it that the NCAA wants to tear down this model?

Why is the NCAA, which includes among its members, schools and universities who graduate 20 percent of their basketball players and 50 percent of their football players, sanctioning Penn State for allowing athletics to trump academics, when it is Penn State which graduates 88 percent of its football players, not one year or two, but year after year and decade after decade.

These sanctions are a blight on the NCAA and our competing institutions that make up the NCAA boards.

My 9-year old son has said to me, “Dad, I helped cheer Penn State on to victory last year and now those wins have been erased. I did what you always told me to do, Dad, I gave it my all, and my cheering and enthusiasm helped support the student athletes. I felt good when we won games. It does not seem fair that they took away those wins, not only from Penn State, but away from the athletes, from the fans, and from me.”

Hundreds of thousands of Penn State families have similarly suffered. How does this help the concept of higher education, of fairness and dignity, of inspiration? What is it even based on and what does it even mean? It is a fiction; the games were won based on hard work by thousands, unrelated to Sandusky and his crimes. It is one more fiction that the NCAA has used to simply inflict hurt on the Nittany Nation with no benefit to anyone. It is designed to damage innocent students who played on the field and millions who attended the games. It is a petulant child gone wild. The NCAA has lost its moral compass. In the cold light of day we must realize we have to stand up against this, not stand down.

There is also the issue of the “vultures” – coaches from other schools stalking our football players outside the football building after the NCAA said it was “legal” to steal away our players, even though the NCAA normally considers such recruiting illegal. The NCAA essentially said stealing is legal against Penn State.

If we must play the schools that did this to us lets be sure the crowds overwhelm them with our noise and good sportsmanship and the Nittany Lions show them no mercy on the field.

Should we even be a part of the Big Ten if our own conference schools helped tear us down? I thought they were here to help us, not to hurt us. In my view this does not fit with the ideals of fair play that we teach our students. In the cold light of day we must realize we have to stand up against this, not stand down.

The NCAA are people who tell Penn State that we put athletics before academics. The reverse is true. Perhaps these university presidents were looking in the mirror when they conjured up that statement.

For institutions of higher learning to disregard the facts and reach false conclusions betrays the very core principles for which institutions of higher learning stand and have stood for centuries.

Shame on them all. I am tired of being told we need to put practicality above principle. In the cold light of day we must realize we have to stand up against this, not stand down.

Our lawyers have used the term “crammed down,” where Emmert, the man who “negotiated” with our president Rod Erickson essentially said “you sign this agreement or you have the death penalty, you will play no football for four years.”

“Also, Mr. President, you are not allowed to tell the Board of Trustees. You are going to do this because if you tell them and it leaks out, we will settle for nothing less than four years of the winds of October and November blowing through an empty Beaver stadium. By the way, Dr. Erickson, we do not care if by not telling the Board of Trustees you may be violating the charter of the University. And we do not care, Mr. President, that by not telling the Board of Trustees and getting their approval, you will be violating one of the major recommendations of the Freeh report itself and the very principles we are telling you to abide by. We are the NCAA, Mr. President, and we are a dictatorship. We do what we please and you, as an NCAA member, must accept it. So we have power over your institution now and forever.”

Interestingly, some in the NCAA say it did not happen that way, they say no “death penalty” was threatened, but review of the quotes from Emmert and Ray support that it occurred, just as President Erickson has said. I will pass out a review of the quotes that demonstrate these comments. But, even there, a straight answer from the NCAA seems impossible to secure. We see parsed words in a clear attempt to paint Dr. Erickson as a liar. This too is not acceptable. In the cold light of day I believe we have to stand up against this not stand down.

Are these tactics and this lack of clarity and candor what the NCAA stands for? Threats, coercion, lying, stealing, and intimidation are not what we teach our students as appropriate business tactics for a profit or non-profit organization. I would hope such answers on a test would get a failing grade for ethics in the Smeal College of Business and in a law class at the Dickinson School of Law.

In addition, the very processes of the NCAA were not followed by the NCAA and the NCAA seems hell bent on turning a deaf ear to concerns by anyone to review its own despicable actions. In the cold light of day I believe we have to stand up against this, not stand down.

This all contrasts very sharply with the aggressive actions Penn State took quickly and with transparency and candor as the difficult news surrounding the Sandusky crimes came to light.

I personally believe, the NCAA is no longer worthy to be considered a representative of higher education. Furthermore, this powerful NCAA, an association of university presidents, apparently free of control by faculty and university boards is now seriously damaging the mission and reputation of higher education in America. The NCAA needs the fresh air of reform to blow through it. I say to the faculties and the boards of American colleges and universities, take back your institutions. I applaud the recent actions of our own faculty senate in this regard.

Finally, if any of the sanctions against Penn State are to stand, they need to fit within the rules and standards of the NCAA, need to fit within the due process of the NCAA procedures in its charter and by-laws that its member institutions have agreed upon, and needs to meet the high standards that higher education stands for in a system of fairness, and within the American system of the rule of law and justice.

Trustee Anthony Lubrano supported Myers, but trustees Keith Eckel and Mark Dambly said dwelling on the NCAA sanctions won’t help Penn State move forward. Eckel spoke.

“It’s time for this board and this university to stop looking back and start looking ahead. I in no way defend the decisions of the NCAA but I embrace our mission and our responsibility to serve our 95,000 students, our research, our extension, and our faculty.

“I believe that many times we live with unfairness. It is extremely unfortunate that we find ourselves in these circumstances, but at the same time we are Penn State and as our chair said, we are going to move forward, we’re going to meet our mission.

“We are absolutely going to be the university the nation looks up to again.”

Not if we’re viewed as a bunch of cowards who allow ourselves to get slapped around by bullies at every turn. Sorry, Eckel. This isn’t your truck farm.

“To talk about things we can’t change is not a good use of our energy and our time,” added Dambly.

The chairwoman of the BoT, Karen Peetz, said, “We must not — and will not — waver in accepting reality and responsibility. We will take decisive action to right wrongs, change and improve processes and operations, and demonstrate values-based leadership in all that we do.”

In other words, she said nothing.

She was right about one thing, though: It ain’t going to get any easier. “Victim 1” has filed suit against the university. So, the piling-on effect will continue. I’m not saying that the family wouldn’t have sued Penn State if the Freeh report wasn’t accepted, but with that tacit admission of guilt, the university is ripe for the taking. They’ve already told the judge and jury they’re culpable, so the only things in doubt are the amount of the award and how many other victims will join the party, encouraged by the comparative ease of the plaintiff proving a case when the defendant’s defense is, “Please don’t hit me too hard!”

There’ll be another all day session on Sunday. One of the issues to be discussed, but not decided upon, is the search for a new university president and provost. No votes will be taken this weekend at all; therefore, this has been classified as an informational, rather than a business, meeting.

So much for the rumors I ridiculed presented last week about heads rolling at the weekend board meeting. One prediction was that Spanier would spill the beans during the week, which he did. The rumors about the Clery Act coming to a head were untrue, yet it seems that part of this weekend’s meeting will be devoted to retrospectively condemning internal record keeping practices in anticipation of being slapped silly by the US Department of Education.

That’s the Penn State way of late: make a grandstand play at the eleventh hour in hopes of appeasing the big bad bullies. It didn’t work with the NCAA when PSU removed the Paterno statue and announced the resignation of fomer BoT chair Steve Garban in the days leading up to the draconian, unfair, vindictive sanctions. The NCAA perceived only weakness. So why should washing dirty underwear in public make the Feds feel like going easy on PSU?

The other rumor was that the accreditation issue would come to a head this week, but the visit by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education isn’t scheduled until November.

I had the feeling that this weekend’s board retreat would be somewhat of a dog and pony show, and I think I was right.

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Filed Under: Penn State Football, Penn State Scandal, Sports Tagged With: board of trustees, Jerry Sandusky, Joe Paterno, Joel Myers, Karen Peetz, NCAA, sanctions

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