Around the Big Ten

[Dr. Strangelove]

Like my feelings about holding PSU and Patern accountable, I feel the same way about osu and maybe more angry about that situation

-- Jeffrey Woodrow Buchanan (7/11/2012)

Retract your accusation, sir. Jeff gets more angry thinking about what OSU did than Jerry Sandusky. From his lips to your ears. Maybe he doesn't really mean that, but then again, this is the same gentleman that feels comparing Tressel with Adolf Hitler is a valid and powerful comparison.

Perhaps he's just trolling...if so, it'd be appreciated if he could keep it a bit more concise like OP. Just trying to help you out, Jeff! Think of your readers!

[Rob F]

I read it, Rob. It is an article about Paterno's influence. It is based on a single email chain over whether player stuff should be public. In other words, an absolute zero. The only reason this article is even written is because of Paterno's influence in the Sandusky debacle. It has to pile on to that to be relevant. Anyone with a brain knows that. And so when someone talks about JoePa and his influence in any broad sense or even a bad sense, it had to be included - it is the foundation of the claim. This email chain is jackshit without it.

Now, maybe I'm also misreading OP, too. You M boys are, apparently, like trying to read fucking Joyce. And he's the one author I never did get. So, please keep explaining what folks "really" mean. Or, heh, more likely, what you wished they meant.

Connect the dots, laa-la-la-laa, connect the dots, laa-la-la-laa

[lineygoblue]

Even Liney admits he loves Webber

Well, I wouldn't go that far.

But, I think that as one of the official representatives of our conference "flagship", that you are in a unique position to tell us how one situation differs from the other. After all, we know that virtue is just dripping from every lamp post in Columbus ....

I think that when OlieO brings back Saint Jim, and has him "dot the i" and all that fol-de-rol ... that it would be no different from Michigan honoring Chris Webber and his former teammates.

But please... the floor is yours. Explain the difference and how your situation is better.

Thank you,
Yer pal
Liney

this ought to be good ...

[iam416]

I don't have a dog in this Fab 5 thing, but it'd be crazy for M not to have them back at an appropriate time. Those guys still are the defining face of M hoops and will be for a long time. Many M fans will never forget those two seasons (three, I suppose) despite the absence of any championship of any kind. To many, as I said, they ARE M basketball. Why wouldn't M welcome them back? Because of a broken NCAA rule which is, at best, amoral and, arguably, immoral, depending on how profound your faith in capitalism? It's not even a PED rule, which could be amoral. It was purely a non-performance, arbitrary rule. But, that's JMO.

The guys I wouldn't welcome back on campus are guys like, well, criminals. OJ Simpson. Jerry Sandusky. Art Schlichter. A host of others. But, that's a line some, apparently some HERE, wouldn't draw.

Finally, as for Paterno and the notion that athlete transgressions should be kept private, that, or some variation of it, happens everywhere. Kids get suspended all the time for "violation of team rules" with no further description. "Insiders" give you the details, if you pay for them, which more often than not amount to a failed a drug test. Anyone acting like Paterno is some sort of evil, out-of-control coach because of THAT is fucking clueless.

[hack]

Please don't. Nothing this one has to say is useful even in the role he aims to play. He needs to be taken back to the Buckeye store and exchanged for a useful version.

[WM Wolverine]

I think much, much lower of Steve Fisher and the many others in the basketball program who turned a blind eye to the Ed Martin situation than I do of Chris Webber who took massive amounts of cash as a 17-18 year old as a loan...

Supposedly there were close to 12 Detroit/Flint/Saginaw area basketball players that took money from Ed Martin; the only one who got caught were Chris Webber because he was the only who who actually paid some of the money back and started a paper trail. Bullock, Traylor, etc. only got found out when the FBI really started investigating and were giving people a chance to perjure themselves.

[iam416]

And here's another newsflash: (a) Ed Martin and basketball players aren't the only people who engaged in this type of activity; (b) that type of general stuff has stopped one lick. Anywhere. So, again, it's not like Webber is a bad guy -- just an NCAA rule-breaker.

I certainly don't know how M fans feel about the Fab 5, but my own wild guess is that a Fab-5 day would be very successful -- and would also piss off about 10-15% of M fans. That's based on a survey of 1 -- my wife -- who was there with the Fab 5 and who's best M "live" sports memories are Desmond beating ND, M beating OSU in '93 and basically the whole of the Fab 5.

[Jeff Buchanan]

.......... smith and gee got away with it paying no price whatsoever for their behavior. The sad reality is though that while it's likely PSU is going to pay a big price for the Paterno era, osu won't for the tressel era.

This sentiment that I expressed up thread is at the heart of my disgust with osu, something I might add that has been present for longer than most of you have been alive.

I think there is room for reasonable debate about this question: Is the behavior of osu principals in the whole of the tressel affair sufficiently unethical so that the institution should be characterized as unsavory, unethical and an example of institutional culture deserving scorn and sanction?

Clearly we have precedent for such characterization within the B10 Conference in PSU. Does osu's conduct in the tressel affair raise to the level of psu's conduct in the Paterno/Sandusky affair? In my view it does albeit at a different level. But both institutions, if sanctioning bodies act as they should, deserve measures that should call a spade a spade and lay out a plan for current administrators to lead their institutions out of the toilet.

Again, to reiterate my position on this, my beef is that PSU is going to get hammered .... .hard .... not because sanctioning bodies like the B10 and NCAA have held them accountable but because the judicial system, criminal and civil, is going to see to it.

I don't think the B10 and the NCAA should feel good about this circumstance. It points out the weakness of these bodies to clean up their own houses. USC is a perfect example of the weakness of the NCAA. Carroll and his buddies cheated their asses off to rise to the top of college football and what price did they pay for it? Not much. tressel and his minions did the same. Are they getting hammered for it? No. We have already correctly concluded that given the NCAA's ability to enforce it's own rules and change bad behavior, it pays to cheat.

If college football does not want to go the way of pro sports with fans little interested in the teams and more interested in the spectacle, with money and marketing driving what the product looks like, it has to have governing bodies that have the power to curb cheating and levy penalties sufficient to change program cultures. Shrugging shoulders and saying CFB it is what it is, like talent tends to do, or simply ignoring that anything is wrong with the sport, like dsl does when defending osu's behavior in the tressel affair, is a cop out. It represents some level of cowardice in advocating for the institutional change, the holding of colleges to a higher standard of behavior in sports that are demanded, if we are to use the high profile black-eyes CFB has sustained in the last few years as examples of a need to do that.

[entropy]

talent... JoePa not only didn't stop one of his coaches from raping kids, he actually was an enabler. I think there is a line he crossed and all the good things he's done for PSU and CF in general, suddenly don't matter. jmo

as for stuff goes on all the time.. I agree. Kids skip classes, fail drug tests, and sometimes, they drink. I think there is a difference between athletes acting like other college kids and institutional corruption.

[entropy]

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. -- Joe Paterno defended his football program's integrity in a 7-month-old letter released Wednesday, a day ahead of a report that could forever mar his legacy.

In the letter, written shortly before his death and confirmed as legitimate by his family, Paterno rejected the notion that Jerry Sandusky's sexual abuse of boys amounted to a "football scandal" or in any way tarnished the accomplishments of his players or Penn State's reputation as a whole.

More On Joe Paterno

Penn State Joe Paterno dictated in December what was meant to be an opinion letter that was shown to a couple of former players. The text of that letter surfaced Wednesday. Read it here. Letter

Paterno's family stated Tuesday that the late coach didn't cover up for Jerry Sandusky in a statement issued ahead of the PSU abuse report's release. PDF

The results of Penn State's internal investigation into the Sandusky scandal are set to be released Thursday in a report that should answer many of the troubling questions swirling around one of the worst scandals in sports history.

A team led by former federal judge and FBI ex-director Louis Freeh interviewed hundreds of people to learn how the university responded to warning signs that its once-revered former assistant football coach -- a man who helped Paterno win two national titles for a university that touted "success with honor" -- was a serial child molester.

Sandusky was convicted on 45 criminal counts last month at a trial that included gut-wrenching testimony from eight young men who said he abused them as boys. By contrast, the Freeh report, to be released online at 9 a.m. Thursday, will focus on Penn State and what it did -- or didn't do -- to protect children.

Eight months after Sandusky's arrest, it remains unclear how top university officials handled reports dating back at least 14 years that Sandusky was behaving inappropriately with boys he met through his charity, bringing them on campus and forcing them into sex acts.

Among those who will be scouring the Freeh report are school officials trying to repair Penn State's shattered reputation and ex-players and alumni who remain outraged over Paterno's ouster in the wake of Sandusky's arrest. The Hall of Fame coach died from lung cancer in January, two months after school trustees fired him for what they called a failure of leadership.

Paterno himself offered a passionate defense of the university and its football program in the letter that surfaced for the first time Wednesday.

“

This is not a football scandal and should not be treated as one.
” -- Joe Paterno on Jerry Sandusky scandal
in 7-month-old letter released Wednesday

The Paterno family said the letter was given in draft form to a few former players around December. One of the ex-players circulated it to other former players on Wednesday, and it was posted on the website FightonState.com, which covers the team.

"Over and over again, I have heard Penn State officials decrying the influence of football and have heard such ignorant comments like Penn State will no longer be a 'football factory' and we are going to 'start' focusing on integrity in athletics," Paterno wrote. "These statements are simply unsupported by the five decades of evidence to the contrary -- and succeed only in unfairly besmirching both a great university and the players and alumni of the football program who have given of themselves to help make it great."

Paterno also wrote, "This is not a football scandal and should not be treated as one."

Among those receiving Paterno's 712-word missive Wednesday was former linebacker Brandon Short, now an investment banker in Dubai. He told The Associated Press that he will be looking to the Freeh report to find "some clarity, hoping that it is a fair assessment of what happened, and we would love to see answers."

He added, "Let's see the report and save all judgment and innuendo until after we've read it."

[hack]

Yikes. I really feel for PSU fans. All of us know what it's like to really pour a lot of energy and money and emotion into a football program and an identity, and it must be just exceptionally painful at times to reconcile truth and reality with the decades of cherished memories. I'm not surprised many aren't trying. A lot less throws some fans into denial, as we've seen in Columbus.

[lineygoblue]

Bigger and bigger ...

[hack]

No denying though that the Fab Five are an anomaly in Ann Arbor. A different kind of narrative in Michigan athletics that lots never warmed up to and helps explain why after the sanctions the program essentially hibernated for a decade. Not worth the risk of it happening again was a pretty common mindset.

The players themselves were so much fun and those guys are of my vintage as well and I have fond yet blurry memories of making pledges recite their names and numbers over and over again until hoarse and whatnot, not to mention how visceral that fucking Carolina game still is. Fact remains though that their playing fast and loose with the rules hurt them on and off the court and I didn't like it. I appreciate basketball especially when it's played by players who heed the little things, drill themselves and master the footwork etc., and take the craftsman's approach. I think if they were half as disciplined as they were talented they would have won some hardware, but they weren't and that balances against the positive memories.

Me aside, in the end I think it would be age specific. Embracing the Fab 5 in some sort of event like that would be something people my age would do because of the memories they have tied up in it, as with Talent's wife perhaps, but I bet there's plenty of people for whom the Fabs are irrelevant to their experience and identity. A lot of them for the wrong reasons, mind you.

[entropy]

July 12, 2012
Abuse Inquiry Faults Paterno and Others at Penn State
By JOE SEXTON
The most senior officials at Penn State University failed for more than a decade to take any steps to protect the children victimized by Jerry Sandusky, the longtime lieutenant to head football coach Joe Paterno, according to an independent investigation of the sexual abuse scandal that rocked the university last fall.

“Our most saddening and sobering finding is the total disregard for the safety and welfare of Sandusky’s child victims,” said Louis J. Freeh, the former federal judge and director of the F.B.I. who oversaw the investigation. “The most powerful men at Penn State failed to take any steps for 14 years to protect the children who Sandusky victimized.”

Freeh’s investigation — which took seven months and involved more than 400 interviews and the review of more than 3.5 million documents — accuses Paterno, the university’s former president and others of deliberately hiding facts about Sandusky's sexually predatory behavior over the years.

“In order to avoid the consequences of bad publicity," the most powerful leaders of Penn State University "repeatedly concealed critical facts relating to Sandusky’s child abuse from the authorities, the board of trustees, the Penn State community and the public at large.”

The investigation’s findings doubtless will have significant ramifications — for Paterno’s legacy, for the university’s legal liability as it seeks to compensate Sandusky’s victims, and perhaps for the wider world of major college athletics.

Already, though, the fallout from the Sandusky scandal has been extraordinary, its effects felt in everything from the shake-up in the most senior ranks of the university to the football program’s ability to recruit the country’s most talented high school prospects to a growing wariness among parents about the relationships their children have with their sports coaches.

Sandusky last month was convicted of 45 counts of sexual abuse, including rape and sodomy, by a jury in Bellefonte, Pa. The jury found he had attacked young boys at his home, on the Penn State campus and at other locations over many years.

Freeh was named to head the investigation by the university’s board of trustees shortly after Sandusky was arrested and two senior university officials were criminally charged for perjury in November 2011.

“No one is above scrutiny,” Kenneth Frazier, a trustee, said at the time Freeh’s probe was announced. “He has complete rein to follow any lead, to look into every corner of the university to get to the bottom of what happened.”

The Paterno family, in an attempt to blunt the force of any critical findings by Freeh, had issued a statement Tuesday that sought to undermine the fairness of the investigation. The statement said Paterno, who died in January, had been eager to tell all he knew about the university’s dealings with Sandusky and had admitted to having failed to do more to stop Sandusky. But it lamented what it called the improper and misleading disclosure in recent weeks of aspects of Freeh’s findings.

Paterno, in a letter he had prepared but was not published before his death, asserted that whatever the failings in the Sandusky affair — his or the university’s — it did not constitute a “football scandal.”

“Regardless of anyone’s opinion of my actions or the actions of the handful of administration officials in this matter, the fact is nothing alleged is an indictment of football or evidence that the spectacular collections of accomplishments by dedicated student athletes should be in anyway tarnished,” Paterno said in the letter.

One new and central finding of the Freeh investigation is that Paterno knew as far back as 1998 that there were concerns Sandusky might be behaving inappropriately with children. It was then that the campus police investigated a claim by a mother that her son had been molested by Sandusky in a shower at Penn State.

Paterno, through his family, insisted after Sandusky’s arrest that he never knew anything about the 1998 case. But Freeh’s report asserts that Paterno not only knew of the investigation, but followed it closely. Local prosecutors ultimately decided not to charge Sandusky, and Paterno did nothing.

Paterno failed to take any action, the investigation found, “even though Sandusky had been a key member of his coaching staff for almost 30 years and had an office just steps away from Mr. Paterno’s.”

[entropy]

July 12, 2012
Abuse Inquiry Faults Paterno and Others at Penn State
By JOE SEXTON
The most senior officials at Penn State University failed for more than a decade to take any steps to protect the children victimized by Jerry Sandusky, the longtime lieutenant to head football coach Joe Paterno, according to an independent investigation of the sexual abuse scandal that rocked the university last fall.

?Our most saddening and sobering finding is the total disregard for the safety and welfare of Sandusky?s child victims,? said Louis J. Freeh, the former federal judge and director of the F.B.I. who oversaw the investigation. ?The most powerful men at Penn State failed to take any steps for 14 years to protect the children who Sandusky victimized.?

Freeh?s investigation ? which took seven months and involved more than 400 interviews and the review of more than 3.5 million documents ? accuses Paterno, the university?s former president and others of deliberately hiding facts about Sandusky's sexually predatory behavior over the years.

?In order to avoid the consequences of bad publicity," the most powerful leaders of Penn State University "repeatedly concealed critical facts relating to Sandusky?s child abuse from the authorities, the board of trustees, the Penn State community and the public at large.?

The investigation?s findings doubtless will have significant ramifications ? for Paterno?s legacy, for the university?s legal liability as it seeks to compensate Sandusky?s victims, and perhaps for the wider world of major college athletics.

Already, though, the fallout from the Sandusky scandal has been extraordinary, its effects felt in everything from the shake-up in the most senior ranks of the university to the football program?s ability to recruit the country?s most talented high school prospects to a growing wariness among parents about the relationships their children have with their sports coaches.

Sandusky last month was convicted of 45 counts of sexual abuse, including rape and sodomy, by a jury in Bellefonte, Pa. The jury found he had attacked young boys at his home, on the Penn State campus and at other locations over many years.

Freeh was named to head the investigation by the university?s board of trustees shortly after Sandusky was arrested and two senior university officials were criminally charged for perjury in November 2011.

?No one is above scrutiny,? Kenneth Frazier, a trustee, said at the time Freeh?s probe was announced. ?He has complete rein to follow any lead, to look into every corner of the university to get to the bottom of what happened.?

The Paterno family, in an attempt to blunt the force of any critical findings by Freeh, had issued a statement Tuesday that sought to undermine the fairness of the investigation. The statement said Paterno, who died in January, had been eager to tell all he knew about the university?s dealings with Sandusky and had admitted to having failed to do more to stop Sandusky. But it lamented what it called the improper and misleading disclosure in recent weeks of aspects of Freeh?s findings.

Paterno, in a letter he had prepared but was not published before his death, asserted that whatever the failings in the Sandusky affair ? his or the university?s ? it did not constitute a ?football scandal.?

?Regardless of anyone?s opinion of my actions or the actions of the handful of administration officials in this matter, the fact is nothing alleged is an indictment of football or evidence that the spectacular collections of accomplishments by dedicated student athletes should be in anyway tarnished,? Paterno said in the letter.

One new and central finding of the Freeh investigation is that Paterno knew as far back as 1998 that there were concerns Sandusky might be behaving inappropriately with children. It was then that the campus police investigated a claim by a mother that her son had been molested by Sandusky in a shower at Penn State.

Paterno, through his family, insisted after Sandusky?s arrest that he never knew anything about the 1998 case. But Freeh?s report asserts that Paterno not only knew of the investigation, but followed it closely. Local prosecutors ultimately decided not to charge Sandusky, and Paterno did nothing.

Paterno failed to take any action, the investigation found, ?even though Sandusky had been a key member of his coaching staff for almost 30 years and had an office just steps away from Mr. Paterno?s.?