An old axiom: "You will regret that which you did not do far more than that which you did do."
Probably true. I'll bet Joe Paterno regrets not chasing down the allegations of rape happening in the showers of the Penn State locker room. I'll bet he really regrets it now that he's out of a job, asked to fuck off and has his "legacy" ruined beyond repair, but that's attrition, not contrition. I learned that in Bible school and also from Morgan Freeman. What he should have done is trusted that his linebacker coach, Mike McQueary, was telling him something that was so urgent and so important and so completely fucked up that it needed to be looked into right now and stopped immediately, instead of whatever it was he did do, which I can't find anywhere, but what must have been a sort of "passing the buck" up the chain of command. Meanwhile, a predator systematically raped kids for years. Good job, guys.
I get that you're attached to JoePa and stuff because football, especially college football, in the United States is like a religion, and as such, often makes blinkered, unthinking assholes out of people. And because he's been around since fucking LBJ was in office, and has 409 victories. Right. And one colossal fucking failure, the failure to remember that you work in a school, and as such, are charged with the education, protection and fostering of children, even if some of them aren't strictly minors. The football program IS NOT more important than the school to which it's attached, no matter what you think, and the fact that we act like it is in this country is one of the reasons we as a society just might be in decline. Bread and circus, folks.
In fact - and this will be hard for some people who really love it to accept - football, in and of itself, is not important at all. When it inspires and tells stories or has heroism inherent, then, yeah, it's doing something. But it doesn't matter, not any more than a TV show or a comic book or a cookie or a rose or gentle wind on an autumn day. Might be nice, but pretending that it matters makes us into something less than people. There's nothing wrong with enjoying football, but ultimately, the word "game" in there should be a BIG clue - it's an amusement for most, a recreation for some, but not important - at all. Sorry.
And JoePa? Well, the great and powerful and venerated Joe's kind of a crotchety asshole. You might even have seen something like this coming. He lost his temper and did something to a ref that the law would call "assault" back in 2002, and made light of an alleged sexual assault on campus in 2006. And then, of course, there's this, which is hardly a phenomenon confined to Penn State, but taken with everything else, well - it makes kind of a pattern.
What I'm more than a little confused by is the lack of outrage over McQueary having ACTUALLY SEEN what was happening and not having stopped it or called the cops himself. You know what qualifications are required to call cops over something like that? A pulse, a spine and a brain. That's it. McShithead's apparenlty lacking in one of these important categories. Now, of course, the university Prez is fired and Paterno's gone - but McQueary's on "paid administrative leave?" What the fuck is that about? Any Penn State riot that misses burning down that guy's fucking house is a pointless riot.
Now of course, we're past the "Penn State Is Emotionally Retarded" stage with the riots, and we're into the other half of the Penn State brain holding candlelight vigils for the victims. While I'm glad that they seem to have (sort of) moved past the idocy stage, with all of the campus moodswings they're into right now, I think you'd need Dramamine just to go to class. You know 'class?' Those things they have at colleges that aren't football?