Re: Penn State's bowl eligibility has been restored
It's hard to read through that timeline and think he didn't.
For the people who didn't read through it, and somehow still state Paterno wasn't aware. He was made aware
at least two times, and in the latter instance he had someone come to him as a person in authority, to say they witnessed Sandusky abusing a child. There's no room left for him to be naive, for him to not understand, for him to somehow not get what was going on. He had someone come to him first, making it his responsibility. And
this wasn't the first report of this sort of thing that Paterno heard!
Paterno basically was Penn State football. In either instance, but in particular the latter, had he pushed at all to insure that Sandusky was stopped and was punished, it would have happened.
Paterno didn't even call the police! If someone came to me, and laid the terrible burden at my feet of knowing someone was abusing children, I couldn't rest, I couldn't do anything, much less focus on football until I knew everything possible was being done to put this individual away. Paterno knew what Sandusky was doing, and for reasons he can't tell us, he chose instead to let it be buried.
What Paterno knew and still allowed to go on was really was truly terrible. In 1998 Paterno was made aware of some allegations regarding Sandusky. This issue was subsequently swept under the rug, and
after the season was over, they let Sandusky go.
That's right, Penn State waited to let Sandusky go until after the season was over, and that's with Paterno knowing since May what he'd been up to! The football season was apparently more important than getting rid of a potential child molester.
Then
, in 2001 Sandusky, who for reasons that can't really be explained with what we know, was allowed to continue bringing
children to the Penn State campus, was witnessed raping what appeared to be a 10 year old boy!
Who is the first person in power to be told? Paterno, that guy who had already been made aware of previous Sandusky behavior, the man who had to have seen numerous boys with Sandusky over the years. At this point Paterno knew, without any doubt, that Sandusky was a child rapist.
Now, you or I, or almost any reasonable human being armed with this knowledge would not stop until Sandusky was put away. How could we live with ourselves otherwise? Yet, what does Paterno do? He passes the buck, and then acts like it never happened. He goes back to coaching, he doesn't do anything apparently (unless it was behind the scenes actions of a devious sort to protect Sandusky). What we can infer from Paterno's behavior, is that he had a choice. He could have acted to protect children, but instead he chose to worry about his precious Penn State football program. You can guess at his motives, but he left no room for doubt in one regard. Penn State football was more important than protecting children from rape.
It's fitting that after Penn State got the initial punishment they complained. They complained that their investigation was being used against them, I mean they didn't actually think that their findings would have real consequences, who'd have thought that? They complained that the punishment was too harsh. Their priorities were wrong the whole time, why get them straight then? Why say that no punishment could be adequate, why say that the football program is trivial next to the suffering of those children? That sort of attitude would never have allowed the rapes to continue in the first place, and clearly isn't how things work in Penn State.
It's also fitting that a crowd would gather, cheer, and glorify Paterno after the punishment was lessened. Football, after all, is much more important than the welfare of children over there. What's 20+ children being raped next to Penn State football? Not much apparently, it never was, and that's the problem.
