[NU Sports] If you ran Penn State...

[Tom Maycock]

>I rarely agree with SjT here but I think he's right. This situation (as we currently understand it) is not under the jurisdiction of the NCAA. Just imagine that Sandusky was an associate enginnering professor and Paterno was the dean of the engineering school. The same failure of judgement happens but it's completely removed from football. From what we know now, this did not affect any player eligibility or competitive edge on the field.


I agree. It's hard to see how it becomes an NCAA issue. On the other hand, I wouldn't be terribly surprised if the NCAA does take it up anyway. 

Whether it's a college football scandal or not is probably just semantics at this point. It's clearly something very different than the standard issue grades/benefits/boosters/academics sort of scandal. But either way, it is certainly a blot on the reputation of college football, especially since it involves one of the few coaches and institutions that most of us held up as an example of doing things the right way.

> I am scratching my head trying to think of why McQueary and Paterno would even consider looking the other way when the learned about Sandusky's behavior. It makes no sense at all. The only thing I can think of is that Sandusky holds the keys to A LOT of skeletons in Penn State's closet.

Setting aside the tragedy of all of this for a moment, that is one of the fascinating human psychology questions here. Assuming the facts are generally what we understand them to be, what would compel Paterno to not do more? Personally, the blackmail angle just doesn't strike me as very likely. Granted, we're already deep into the "unlikely" territory here, so nothing would really surprise me. But somehow I think the real reasons are probably much more subtle than that. Was it friendship? Fear? Concern about impact on won/loss records? Simple bad judgement? 

Or have Paterno's faculties just failed significantly, to the point that he thought he was doing the right thing? For a while there, it really seemed like Joe wasn't doing very well, and he seemed very old and confused. But more recently, he's seemed pretty sharp in interviews. So, the "just confused" excuse seems unlikely. 

If Paterno had a visible failing prior to this, it may have been a tendency to be too lenient on law-breakers recently. Perhaps there is a pattern there. 

Tom