Greetings From "Not So" Happy Valley, PA 11/10/11

Did you ever have a really, really old relative not know that he was sitting at Thanksgiving dinner and not curled up in a foxhole on an Okinawa beach? Remember when no one had the heart to tell him that the carver wasn’t a samurai sword and the turkey was not General Takagawa? You probably wouldn’t blame him for much, which is why it’s difficult to be too self-righteous when discussing the fate of the face of Penn State Football, and the university in general for over 60 years, head coach Joe Paterno. The thing is that as anyone who knows Penn State football knows, Paterno is, and has been for a while, a mere figurehead as far as recruiting and play calling go. I wonder if he even knows where he is half the time.

As of today, the Pennsylvania DA has stated that Paterno had fully cooperated with their investigation into the child molestation charges against former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky, and is in no way a target of the investigation. Unlike the two alleged eye witnesses to the attacks who lied under oath and were also arrested, Paterno never himself witnessed any wrongdoing, and when informed of it he immediately reported it to the athletic director, and the chief of campus police, and all they did was ban Sandusky from the Penn State campus. Now, had Paterno been an actual eyewitness and merely responded in this manner, then I totally agree with putting him out to pasture. The truth of the matter is that unless he actually witnessed the attacks, merely reporting what he was told is not a reason to fire the man.

The reason that the media was calling for his head, and they were the only ones doing so by the way, as proven by the riots that occurred on campus after it was announced last night that he had been fired, is because Paterno just didn’t answer their bloodlust for gossip fast enough. For the record, Paterno wanted to hold a press conference, wanted to get out in front of this thing, but was not allowed to by the school. Since the media was the only one doing the talking, they now have the sports world convinced that a man who broke no laws, broke no NCAA rules was somehow guilty of wrongdoing. The Board of Trustees at Penn State has been trying to quietly retire him since 2004 when they actually asked him to retire and he simply said “no.” Why didn’t they fire him then? Well you saw what happened when they fired him now. And why is Mike McQueary, the man who actually witnessed the incident and told Paterno about it instead of going to the police, or stopping it himself, still allowed to coach? I don’t care who it is, or if it means my job, if I see a young kid getting raped in a shower, there is going to be a rapist with a severely cracked skull in that shower pretty soon. This really does look like a convenient excuse for the Board of Trustees to fire someone they wanted out 7 years ago, and it is sickening.

Now should Paterno answer questions on this matter? Of course he should. And now would be the perfect time considering he is no longer the coach. What this situation begs is what I call a “Watergate” approach to questioning – How much did he know? When did he know it? Who did he report it to? One can interpret his contacting criminal defense attorney J. Sedgwick Sollers (a brilliant attorney, btw) as either an effort to do that, or even more disturbing, that maybe the rest of this story has yet to be told.

There is no doubt that everyone involved allowed this to become a major distraction longer than it had to be by not stepping out in front of this immediately. What Paterno should have done was to reassure the parents of his latest recruits and more importantly, the parents of the alleged victims, that he did everything he could to get to the bottom of this issue and hold people accountable. That he has waited this long has done irreparable damage to his legacy, and to Penn State, and considerably more significantly, to the lives of the alleged victims and their families. Given the limited information so far, I can’t agree that his actions were something you should get fired over, but it certainly doesn’t help that Joe Pa, the face of the University, seems to have given such a tepid response to such a horrific crime.

Joe Frazier had the best left hook in boxing, and retired with only four losses, all while fighting during the “Golden Age” of heavyweight boxing 1960 to 1980. Who did he lose to? Only to two of the other greatest heavyweights of all time…twice to both George Foreman and Muhammad Ali. In an era that had the likes of Sonny Liston, Floyd Patterson, then later on Kenny Norton, Leon Spinks, and Larry Holmes, Joe Frazier secured his place as one of the best heavyweights of his, so by definition, of any, era. He was one of only eight fighters to win both Olympic Gold and the Heavyweight Title, but what truly defined him were three simply epic fights with Muhammad Ali.

Imagine what it must have meant to a man to be defined by an opponent he both resented and admired; whom he both hated and loved. For the public, his battles with Ali were epic, for both fighters, the toll was obvious.  But this is the legacy this great fighter leaves, and we were fortunate to have experienced it.  

Conrad Murray, you asshole...don't you know that you cannot get away with killing a white woman in LA County unless you can run for 2,000 yards in a single season or your name is OJ?