(I wrote this while I was angry and sat on it for a few weeks anticipating I would cool down. I haven't. I am a father of a 5 year old boy and I love football. I can't get over this. So here it is.)
We are back, baby!
I never thought I would see the day.
Two Penn State trustees took on the NCAA and used the legal system to revoke everything that mattered about the Jerry Sandusky case.
The long and short of it is this. Penn State's football coach Joe Paterno and Florida State's football coach were locked in a race to be the winningest college football coach of all time. It was hugely important to each of them. Both of them held on for far too long until they became shadows of the coaches they were, running their programs as ghost dinosaur CEOs with assistant coaches doing the heavy lifting.
During the last decade plus of Paterno's headless ghost run, one of Paterno's assistant coaches, Mike McQueary, caught a former Paterno assistant, Jerry Sandusky, sexually abusing a young boy in a shower at Penn State. It turned out that Sandusky was feeding his deviant lust off kids in a program at Penn State.
This kind of scandal could have destroyed any collegiate program.
McQueary went to the man in charge. He told Paterno. Paterno didn't call the police. Paterno didn't use his awesome clout to ensure this was addressed.
He looked the other way as his bosses 'allegedly' swept the whole thing under the rug.
Will we see a return of the Coach Look-the-other-way statue?
(More importantly, will it become a thing for opposing fans
to take their Joe Pa tribute pictures in front of it,
conspicuously straining their neck muscles to look away?)
With no scandal to potentially end the Paterno era, the ghost dinosaur Paterno was able to hold off the ghost dinosaur Bowden and become the winningest football coach in NCAA history.
It was a big financial and prestige win for Penn State University.
But scandals this large do not stay buried.
When the scandal finally broke, the 'alleged' cover-up was revealed as well. Paterno died with most American college football fans knowing there 'appeared' to be a cover up at Penn State that allowed more boys to be molested for over a decade and Paterno knew about it and looked the other way in order to be the winningest coach in college football history.
The NCAA IMO rightly stripped Penn State of 111 wins, robbing Paterno of his tainted crown along with issuing a variety of other punishments against Penn State University. These penalties may have been unpleasant for Penn State alumni and fans, but they were viewed as " 'fairly harsh' ...almost harsh enough" by most football fans following the story.
The penalties were positive in every way. Stripping the wins and saying to Penn State, "No, you fucking morons, kids ARE 1000 times important! We aren't going to let you get away with it." was the cherry on top. It seemed like the NCAA got it mostly right for once.
Shy of taking their time and doing a proper, lengthy investigation that would have undoubtedly revealed more shocking and sickening details in the press daily for possibly a year or more (that would have been even more brutal to the reputation of Penn State University and it's ability to attract students and retain professors ...and likely would have ended with giving the football program the death penalty....which everyone knew would never happen...), the NCAA's punishment was pretty good.
And stripping those wins felt like Justice fucking defined!
It was cathartic. America was ready to let the story die and to begin forgiving Penn State University. America's desire to see that shithole disassembled in the most painful way possible dissipated immediately.
Now the NCAA has been forced to rescind almost all of it due to legal challenges from two Penn State University trustees.
The most egregious issue of all, to me, was seeing the NCAA broken and forced to reinstate those wins because it effectively rubberstamped the decision that lead Paterno to not show basic human levels of compassion to defenseless kids and take action to get the child predator Sandusky locked up.
The Penn State loyalists have forced the NCAA to appear (to the casual fan) to say that Paterno was RIGHT not to turn Sandusky in. It was a gamble by people at Penn State and old Joe Pa and it has paid off in 2015.
Coach Look-the-other-way is now the winningest coach in college football history.
By reinstating those wins, the NCAA is effectively seen by casual fans as having agreeing that that particular punishment was too harsh. That in turn suggests that to the NCAA as well those Penn State football wins really were more important than a number of Pennsylvanian kids growing up without being sexually molested.
Perhaps some of those fans will read about what happened and they might see that the NCAA was effectively forced to back down. Those folks will get that there was no redemption of Joe Paterno in the eyes of the rest of the University officials in the US.
This was strictly a lost legal battle to a pair of shitheads.
Given that, I think it is OK for me and many of America's collegiate sports fans to once more hate Penn State.
And not the football program. The University that got away with trading kids' innocence for a few more wins for Paterno.
I hope Mike McQueary sues Penn State University for $2.95 Billion (a.k.a. their entire freaking endowment).
All those shitheads in power at Penn State had to do was follow up with the law. They chose to let greed overrule sense and effectively McQueary has taken the fall.
How is he supposed to make a living? Now McQueary has death threats made against him by freaks in the Penn State fanbase. He is beyond toxic as a football coaching hire ...for what reason? ...For ONLY reporting it to his boss? For not aggressively going to the law!?!?!
I guess his mistake was not taking that action before winning 409 games as a head coach.
(McQueary claims to have actually gone to the police, by the way. That guy probably wishes he had just grabbed a helmet and beaten Sandusky to death in the shower and left Paterno and company to try to keep that out of the police reports.)
Today Jerry Sandusky and Joe Paterno are once again synonomous with Penn State University.
Come on...What did you want me to do?
You two radicals in the Penn State fandom wanted this? Fine, let your university own it forever.
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