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Primarily about Penn State football, this is a tale told by idiots, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

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Paterno Statement from Cancelled Final Presser

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ESPN managed to unearth the prepared statement Joe was to have read at the press conference he scheduled the day of his summary dismissal. Here it is:

Let me begin by offering Sue and my prayers for all of the people impacted by these events. I know it is small comfort given the circumstances.

I also understand that there are a lot of questions regarding the events involving former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky, Tim Curley and Gary Schultz. However, because of the status of these ongoing legal matters, I will not speculate or answer questions about the charges or the people involved beyond this brief statement.

As the Grand Jury report notes, I was subpoenaed last January to testify regarding an incident in 2002. As my very brief testimony established, my role was limited to a single report made to me by an assistant coach in 2002. The coach in question came to my house on a Saturday morning and informed me that he witnessed former coach Jerry Sandusky in a shower with a young boy. The coach made it clear that he felt strongly that there was something inappropriate going on and that he was very upset by what he saw. The coach made no specific allegations of any identified sexual act, nor did he use any graphic terms – just the idea that what he saw was wrong and that he did not know what to do next.

At that time I told the coach that he had done the right thing and that I would take the appropriate next step. After consideration I determined that, given Sandusky’s status as a retired employee governed by a retirement package negotiated with the administration, I had no authority to act directly. The next day, in accordance with University policy, I contacted the head of my department and related what was told to me. That was the last time the matter was brought to my attention until this investigation and I assumed that the men I referred it to handled the matter appropriately.

I know that there are many other questions that people want to ask, but I ask that we all be patient and give the judicial process time to do its deliberate work. Finding the truth is what will benefit the victims most of all, and that is who we should all keep in mind as we deal with this tragedy.

In order to give that process adequate time I will not be answering any questions on this matter, nor will I have further comment, until the legal process is completed.

This statement was probably the work of Joe’s son Scott, who is an attorney. I don’t believe that there is anything particularly new or revealing in it, as it was obviously meant to be an indication that the matter would be kept under wraps due to the pending investigation. Joe did, however, explain that he washed his hands of it when he reported it to his department head the next day.

Joe chose not to mention the earlier incident of which he had knowledge. The world knew, too, thanks to the Patriot-News.  Of course, the conditions under which Sandusky retired were somewhat suspect, too, and obviously involved Joe. So, I don’t particularly believe the sentence, “That was the last time the matter was brought to my attention until this investigation and I assumed that the men I referred it to handled the matter appropriately.”

Assume? You know what they say.

That’s all behind us now. When I saw the leaked statement, I had to choose between leaving sleeping dogs lie and sharing it with you dawgs. I chose the latter.

Paterno’s Tuesday Press Conference

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Penn State media relations people have requested that questions for Joe tomorrow be restricted to the Nebraska game and Senior Day. Seems like that leaves out something pretty big. Wait, I’m thinking…

Anyhow, you can read the request verbatim at Blog, Sweat & Tears. Read it and come back, because I don’t necessarily agree with all that the author says.

Will the reporters avoid mentioning the elephant in the room?

Will the reporters avoid mentioning the elephant in the room? Not hardly. It’s going to happen and it’s going to be very interesting to see how Paterno sidesteps the questions. Will he tell reporters that he can’t answer any questions about it because it is an active court case about which he’s not permitted to speak? That would probably be a lie, because the questions would not be about Curley, or Schmidt, or Sandusky, but about Joe, and he’s not a defendant. Besides, no one tells Joe what to talk about. He decides that. However, one source has stated that Paterno will be a witness for the prosecution, so he could probably get away with stonewalling it and blaming it on the lawyers. Or will Joe just say, “You all got a memo telling you what you could ask about, and if you don’t play by the rules, you’re outta here!” There’ll probably be University police there for handling intransigent reporters. Finally, will he just walk out, declaring the press conference over?

The University would love to sanitize and filter any information pertinent to the Sandusky case through its media relations office. Control of outbound information is of paramount importance to paranoid, power grabbing university administrators. The ivory tower doesn’t like stuff getting out that isn’t approved by the ivory tower. The stuff that does go out, that they want to go out, is generally watered down or released for a specific purpose. At the university with which I was associated, for example, it was typically very difficult for the local newspaper to get certain financial records, even though the “sunshine law” says they have to fulfill such requests. However, when a certain powerful administrator — who just happened to be the Vice President of Finance and Business Affairs — wanted to get the president fired, suddenly, the local newspaper was given free reign over the president’s expense account records and anything related to them. That was the president about whom you might have read my previous mention, the one who made the mistake of paying an out of town hooker with a University credit card. Once the newspaper got hold of that information it was a hasty exit for that ex-president. In Penn State’s case, they can try to suppress information about this sordid episode, but Showergate is just too big a story for media not to use every tool the law provides to scratch and claw for their information.

So, I believe that while Paterno might succeed in restricting tomorrow’s questions to football itself, the Nebraska game, and the players, he won’t get away with that forever. That’s the great thing about the country that we live in. We still have freedom of the press. Remember that it was the press that brought down the mighty Nixon. They’re salivating over this one.

Joe Spouts a Few Non-Sequiturs (Updated)

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At the weekly Joe Paterno press conference, the questions came fast and hard about the Alabama loss, and Joe even seemed uncharacteristically willing to deal with them. The only thing was that without even quoting Shakespeare this time, the venerable Head Lion was semi-inscrutable.

About Chima Okoli’s injury:

As I said, we’ve only practiced the one day. And yesterday was just to try to get an understanding of what happened to us against Alabama, to try to correct some mistakes. We really have not talked about who is going to play and exactly what we’re going to do. We spent this morning doing that.

And we’ll go out this afternoon to see what some people are ready to do. So that’s a tough question for me to answer right now and know what I’m talking about, because I couldn’t give you an honest answer on that.

About the quarterback controversy:

 I think we’ve made a decision up to a point that we want to play both of them (Rob Bolden and Matt McGloin) for a while until we find out exactly which one we think might be better for the football team and help them win.

But, right now, I think it’s a toss up. I think both of them are doing well. There again, I think I said after the ballgame I’m reluctant to have people start blaming it on the quarterback. I mean, I think we’re just not making plays.

We started that ballgame (Alabama) where we had a chance to make some big plays, a couple in the end zone, one of which would have been a tough catch, but the other one should have been an easy catch going down the sideline for touchdown.

We just didn’t it’s easy to pick out somebody and blame him, particularly the quarterback, because it’s such a predominant person. The ball comes to them and they do something with it.

But I think both quarterbacks have played well enough for us to win with. And I’m reluctant right now to tell anybody, “hey, we’re going to start this guy,” because it would look like as if I’m, like the other guy didn’t play well. I thought they both did a pretty good job, really.

I think we have to help them. I think some guys on the team have got to make some plays. We’re the same way; we go in the ballgame, second year in a row we played that football team without [forcing] a turnover. And a year ago we had four or five and we had three turnovers in this one.

When you get in a tough football game against a good team, you’re in a uphill battle all the time. So anyway that’s one of my typical long answers to a simple question. We’ve got two quarterbacks. And as we talk now, whether we have two quarterbacks a week from now, we’re going to we’ll see.

About coaching from the booth instead of the field, and the timeout debacle (and everything else but the kitchen sink):

 The timeouts, that goes back to the confusion on the sideline goes back to the fact that, again, you think your kids understand certain things.

Two kids got hurt and they didn’t know whether to go down, come in, come out. They come out of the game late. And in order for us to save ourselves five yards we had to call a timeout on the sideline. I think that we’ve got to do a better job, obviously, of making the kids more game aware so that when that happens – you’re hurt, sit down, stay there until we make a substitution for you. We’re allowed to do that. We don’t want you to be phony about the substitution, but we had kids who were half off the field, back on the field, back out. And the guys on the sidelines weren’t sure what exactly was going on. And finally we ran out of time.

So I think we’re all right there. There again, that’s an obvious thing. Here you go in the first quarter, you take three timeouts. I’m angry. I’m angry upstairs. I didn’t know exactly what had happened either. I’m yelling down at them [coaches on the field], “you guys going to make up your mind what you want to do?” And then, of course, after I had a chance to talk to some of the guys, I found out that the kids were the guys who created the problem.

So I think we’re all right that way. I don’t think that’s a problem. We’ve got to catch the ball and we’ve got to make some things happen on defense in a tough ballgame. We just haven’t done that. It’s as simple as that.

Now, why we haven’t done it, obviously you’ve got to take a look at yourself and say, “hey, maybe there’s something I as a head coach have to do a little differently.” I don’t know. But we can’t expect to win consistently when you don’t get a turnover on defense.

I guess we were almost last in the country last year in the turnover ratio, and we were allowing too many on the other side of the equation. So that’s where we are.

About how the front seven performed and what they’ll have to do to stop Temple’s running back:

 I thought we played well on defense most of the time, except for the fact that we didn’t come up with a couple of interceptions.

The only time I was disappointed in the way we played defense was when they scored the last touchdown. It looked like a couple of guys got a little bit discouraged and nobody rose to the occasion to make a play.

But I think overall the down guys played fairly well. I mean, better than fairly well. I don’t think we got blown off the board, what have you.

They have a couple of fine running backs. I think the one kid ran for, had the ball about 25 times, ran it for about 115, 120 yards. I thought and most of that came towards the end in there. So I would disagree with you, Joe, on your evaluation, if I understand what you’re saying.

And I thought that part was fine. Did we come up with an interception? We had a chance for one, on the third down and 12. We had a chance to get the interception. We didn’t come up with the ball. They took it in there.

So things like that that we have got to do better. We’ve got to change the game around on defense once in a while. That part I think is a legitimate criticism.

I don’t see anything specific in there about how the linebackers played and I see no reference at all to Temple’s running back.

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