[quote]UtahLama wrote:
[quote]TheBodyGuard wrote:
[quote]UtahLama wrote:
And now the digging has begun…I am sure this sort of thing is VERY common in D1 football, but at a school that prides itself on “winning with honor” all these skeletons are gonna be bad.
Meh. VERY common indeed. It’s no secret that student/athletes at big programs are given more lee-way than their fellow students. Personally, I’m not very troubled by that in principle. Life is not fair. When you enter the workplace and adult life, we are not treated equally. By the time you’re a year into your very first paying job, you will realize that such disparity of treatment is a fact of life.
The problem for me is when the student/athlete conduct crossed the line to criminal conduct. A fight is one thing. Beating people unconscious, breaking in apartments, etc. are other matters altogether. That Joe sought to protect his players makes him no different than many other big name college coaches but it does ring hypocritical and antithetical to his preaching about honor and integrity. That said, his desire to protect players could easily be taken out of context and misrepresented too.
A certain amount of protection for the student/athlete however IS in order. These are still kids by and large. They make mistakes. If student Joe Smith does something stupid, we’re not reading about it and we’re not watching it on ESPN. If student/athlete Joe Smith does something stupid, we are watching it on ESPN and reading about it. College kids are largely ill prepared for such a level of scrutiny and to that extent, I understand a coach wanting to protect his players…up to a point. These athletes are largely Alpha Male kids, with loads of hormones and maybe a history of being coddled. In a perfect world, we wouldn’t treat them this way, but the adults in their lives are to blame, not the kids that were never conditioned for the responsibilities that lie ahead for a high profile college athlete.
We’ll see how everything shakes out. But at this point, this kinda reeks of mud-slinging and piling on by a disgruntled former employee. There are serious allegations of abuse afoot here and what Joe did to protect some players long ago only distracts us from the real issue; getting to the bottom of this scandal and unearthing the culpable parties. running interference for his players is a far cry from running interference for Sandusky so he can abuse little boys.
As far as Joe and football are concerned, at the end of the day (to quote from the article) PSU “players graduated at rates far above average, and it is one of only four major-conference athletic programs never to have been sanctioned for major violations by the sport’s governing body, the NCAA.” That accomplishment deserves some respect and the attached article does little to undermine that. Yeah…football players at PSU get disparate treatment from a regular student. Duh. Tell us something we don’t know?[/quote]
Oh fully agree…but when one takes the highest of high roads (Paterno) and preaches honor and class…you are not allowed to be just like “the rest”
And the disgruntled former employee was one of the highest ranking VP’s on campus, and according to the e-mails…Paterno had her fired. That is kind of smelly to me.[/quote]
Well, to conclude they are “just like the rest” would be to ignore the higher graduation rates and the lack of major NCAA infractions. Their record is clear that they are “not like the rest” no matter how much other programs want mileage off the Sandusky matter. At the end of the day, Sandusky aside, they are not “just like the rest”. Are they perfect? No. I don’t even think that’s possible in the realm of big college athletics.