Phil Knight eulogizes Joe Paterno

Ax wrote:

No one has claimed he was associated with Sandusky after 2002. The reality is that he wasn't associated with him at all after 1999 when Sandusky retired from coaching.

Kinda makes you wonder why he didn't turn him in when he caught Sandusky @ss raping kids in his facility in 2002.

Read the indictment. Sandusky traveled to Bowl games with the team and one of the alleged rapes is with a boy he brought along that he violated at a Bowl Game. Are you to tell me that Joe Pa didn't know that Sandusky was with the team at their hotel eating dinner with said boy at the team dinner? Come on, Joe Pa watched it and did nothing! He also let him have an office at the facilities and had free reign to the locker room...etc. Joe Pa was told what happened in the locker room and let him still do all of this. It's sick that people are defending him after what he let his friend do while he was in charge of everything. The speech from Phil was a slap in the face of all the victims. I guess when you get rich you are out of touch of reality. If I could like Phil Knight any worse than I did before he gave that speech I would.

I'm not too familiar with this case, so maybe one of you guys will be kind enough to answer my newbie questions

Did Paterno directly see Sandusky having sex with one of these kids or is that just what was told to him?

Reminds me of the Pope and the Catholic Church, standing by while children are raped, then avoiding accountability by hiding behind ridiculous canon law. All made worse by the larger catholic community turning a blind eye and treating the Pope like a hero.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/sep/11/pope-vatican-abuse-geoffrey-robertson

Shut up. Whites like sex with little boys. It's part of the culture. Read the news. Each day people are busted raping boys and killing kids after screwing. It's normal.

grim wrote:

Reminds me of the Pope and the Catholic Church, standing by while children are raped, then avoiding accountability by hiding behind ridiculous canon law. All made worse by the larger catholic community turning a blind eye and treating the Pope like a hero.

Does it actually remind you of all that? Or are you simply taking a situation involving child rape and a large, established institution and concocting a story in your own mind about how it's similar to the Catholic Church?

How is "a situation involving child rape and a large, established institution" NOT like the Catholic Church ?

So because it is common or "normal" as you put it, does this make it ok ? Is it not something society should try to stop ?

Ax wrote:

grim wrote:

Reminds me of the Pope and the Catholic Church, standing by while children are raped, then avoiding accountability by hiding behind ridiculous canon law. All made worse by the larger catholic community turning a blind eye and treating the Pope like a hero.

Does it actually remind you of all that? Or are you simply taking a situation involving child rape and a large, established institution and concocting a story in your own mind about how it's similar to the Catholic Church?

Paterno himself said he "should have done more". Phil Knight is treating Paterno like a hero.

The level of ignorance on these message boards is truly astounding. Paterno IS a hero and anyone who doesn't understand that has not spent any time looking at all the good he has done. To answer an earlier question, no, Paterno did not witness Sandusky raping a child at any time, that was Mike McQueary, who reported it to Paterno. Paterno then reported it to his superior, Athletic Director Tim Curley, which is what he was supposed to do. It was then Curley's responsibility - and that's why Phil Knight criticizes the "investigation". Somewhere in the chain after Paterno reported it to Curley, it was buried, but it had been reported. Keep in mind that Paterno did not witness this himself, he was reporting hearsay evidence. Paterno was not an officer of the law and had no standing to arrest Sandusky or interrogate Sandusky (Sandusky no longer worked for Paterno at that time, he had resigned and had an office on campus in the Athletics building, so Sandusky's boss was Curley.)

If a subordinate came to you in your workplace, told you a story about seeing someone raping a boy in the workplace bathroom, you reported it to your boss, who was also the boss of the rapist in question, would you not feel like you had taken the right step? Would you continue to pursue the issue afterward, although you had no legal standing to do so? Would you really be that diligent about hearsay evidence if you thought the matter was in good hands? The fact of the matter is that most people would not, and for good reason - as Phil Knight said, after Joe Paterno reported the matter, it was in the hands of a "world-class university".

There is much more to this than the media firestorm that resulted after the issue went nuclear, but few in the media cared to dig deep. They just wanted scalps, the bigger the better, and the biggest scalp at PSU was Paterno. Paterno said he wished he had done more, because he is a decent man who recognizes the horror Sandusky caused. But at the time, he assumed the matter and the investigation were in good hands, an assumption that, given the previous record of integrity to that point exhibited by Curley and Spanier, is reasonable and one that nearly anyone would have come to.

Paterno positively impacted the lives of thousands of young men and donated millions to PSU, including funding the Paterno Library. His good works are well-documented for anyone who cares to see, and Phil Knight was right to praise him and criticize the investigation.

There are bound to be criticizers of this post, and go ahead, criticize this post all you like. I won't be posting on this particular thread again. I have nothing more to add and I won't spend any more time defending Paterno. His life was his defense and speaks louder than anything I could write here.

This is a great example of one power drunk, dictator, bully swinging from the nuts of another.

Neither man (Knight or Joe) is a saint and neither deserves reverence or praise as they got to the top by standing on the shoulders of those that came before them and by stepping on the necks of those trying to follow.

Former Lion... wrote:

they got to the top by standing on the shoulders of those that came before them and by stepping on the necks of those trying to follow.

Can you be a bit more specific? Whose shoulders did Joe stand on? Whose neck did he step on?

Thanks for posting that and on a much lower level- all these Nike haters are nuts. Nike has promoted running since they started making great running shoes. They have done more to promote the sport, especially at the high school level, than any other shoes company. Until you start buying EVERYTHING American don't talk about sweat shops.

I certainly hesitate to call JoePa a hero. Yes, he did much to help his players, Penn State, and his community, and none of that should be forgotten. I don't think that he shirked his legal obligations in this case, but I do think he failed the moral test.

As I understand the facts, people at PSU knew there was an issue with Sandusky but by their actions pretty much just said "don't do it on campus," and left it at that. Happy Valley is a small, small place, and JoePa was a larger than life character in it -- no way he & Sandusky weren't interacting. If he didn't question why Sandusky was still walking around, still involved in a charity that dealt with young boys -- well, to me that fails the moral test.

I also have read that JoePa actively tried to block the dean of student discipline from disciplining his players for their various misdeeds, of which there seemed to be a number in recent years. He got caught up in the "our program is bigger than the school" attitude.

He did much good, but he "retired" 15 years too late.

Paterno coached and won games believing he had narrowly avoided a real disaster by obstructing evidence of sexual child abuse from reaching agents of justice. Close one, Joe, that really could have been bad! When weighing two scenarios, he preferred one where children were raped and he won more games to one where children were safe and he won less games.

I am sad he is dead, because he will never stand trial for his crimes.

1955 wrote:

I certainly hesitate to call JoePa a hero. Yes, he did much to help his players, Penn State, and his community, and none of that should be forgotten. I don't think that he shirked his legal obligations in this case, but I do think he failed the moral test.

There was no moral test. You guys are making the mistake of retrospection. You have to realize that all he heard were RUMORS. It was not his job legally or morally to investigate RUMORS. If he SAW something happening, then that's where a moral test might be fitting. I.e., he should have pursued the matter until Sandusky was removed. But it was just a RUMOR, no facts.

And he is not a trained investigator so that would have been very inappropriate for him to investigate. He did the right thing by handling it to the people who are in charge of investigating. That's what you do with RUMORS.

Pathetic

The level of ignorance on these message boards is truly astounding. Paterno IS a hero and anyone who doesn't understand that has not spent any time looking at all the good he has done. To answer an earlier question, no, Paterno did not witness Sandusky raping a child at any time, that was Mike McQueary, who reported it to Paterno. Paterno then reported it to his superior, Athletic Director Tim Curley, which is what he was supposed to do. It was then Curley's responsibility - and that's why Phil Knight criticizes the "investigation". Somewhere in the chain after Paterno reported it to Curley, it was buried, but it had been reported. Keep in mind that Paterno did not witness this himself, he was reporting hearsay evidence. Paterno was not an officer of the law and had no standing to arrest Sandusky or interrogate Sandusky (Sandusky no longer worked for Paterno at that time, he had resigned and had an office on campus in the Athletics building, so Sandusky's boss was Curley.)

If a subordinate came to you in your workplace, told you a story about seeing someone raping a boy in the workplace bathroom, you reported it to your boss, who was also the boss of the rapist in question, would you not feel like you had taken the right step? Would you continue to pursue the issue afterward, although you had no legal standing to do so? Would you really be that diligent about hearsay evidence if you thought the matter was in good hands? The fact of the matter is that most people would not, and for good reason - as Phil Knight said, after Joe Paterno reported the matter, it was in the hands of a "world-class university".

There is much more to this than the media firestorm that resulted after the issue went nuclear, but few in the media cared to dig deep. They just wanted scalps, the bigger the better, and the biggest scalp at PSU was Paterno. Paterno said he wished he had done more, because he is a decent man who recognizes the horror Sandusky caused. But at the time, he assumed the matter and the investigation were in good hands, an assumption that, given the previous record of integrity to that point exhibited by Curley and Spanier, is reasonable and one that nearly anyone would have come to.

Paterno positively impacted the lives of thousands of young men and donated millions to PSU, including funding the Paterno Library. His good works are well-documented for anyone who cares to see, and Phil Knight was right to praise him and criticize the investigation.

There are bound to be criticizers of this post, and go ahead, criticize this post all you like. I won't be posting on this particular thread again. I have nothing more to add and I won't spend any more time defending Paterno. His life was his defense and speaks louder than anything I could write here.

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I would encourage many of you bashers out there to read this as you seem to be fairly ignorant as to how to deal with legal issues of sexual misconduct at a large institution....

I think this is the only intelligent post on the matter I have seen here. It is highly likely that JP did what he was supposed to do and all the ignorant, uninformed Monday morning quarterbacks here make statements as if they were there and as if they know what to do from a legal perspective. My guess is that JP dealt with 10-20 problems of this magnitude every week. He must decide what to do. In this case it is his JOB and OBLIGATION and in his contract to report it to the University and not tackle it himself as he is not qualified to have anything to do with this issue.

The University has expert staff and lawyers to deal with these problems and the experience as well (sadly, it happens a lot). They are supposed to examine the issue quickly and determine whether law enforcement should be contacted and then DO IT if the situation demands it.

The true liars and cowards here are the administration who, without question, looked the other way and failed to do their jobs - But then that always happens in academia - coward finger pointers throwing anyone under a bus to escape exposure of being incompetant.. This was Penn State's job to do and I hope an investigation is on the way because the responsible heads should roll, not JP.

By the way, I don't like football or Penn State. JP was probably and egomaniac but that isn't a crime anymore than you all being ignorant, bashing, jerkoff posters on an anonymous message board is. Get the point?

Phil Knights eulogy was very respectful and honest. He was right to call out the Penn State Board of Trustees; they kicked Paterno to the curb in an hour of pandemonium, instead of letting cooler heads prevail and proceed with integrity.

If people took the time to actually Read all the information on Joe Paterno and the Grand Jury report on Jerry Sandusky, instead of lazily skimming headlines and accepting the medias slant for sensationalism maybe they would come to a different realization. Oh shoot, but that takes Time and a Brain to access info and ponder facts...

Thank you, Phil Knight, for your unconventional conscience.