Warning: rant ahead!
My God, would someone in Joe Paterno’s family just step up and shuffle the old fool off to a nursing home so he can babble at the walls or something? Doddering Old Joe has just come out with his latest explanation of where things went wrong:
Joe Paterno, in the midst of treatments for lung cancer, made his first public statements since being fired after 46 seasons at Penn State, telling The Washington Post he did not know how to deal with the situation when he received a report that his former defensive coordinator was accused of abusing a boy in the shower at the Penn State football facility.
“I didn’t know exactly how to handle it and I was afraid to do something that might jeopardize what the university procedure was,” he told The Post in an extensive interview at his home in State College, Pa. “So I backed away and turned it over to some other people, people I thought would have a little more expertise than I did. It didn’t work out that way.”
…
Paterno said that until assistant coach Mike McQueary, in 2002, approached him, he had “no inkling” of a possible dark side to Sandusky, according to The Post.
“He (McQueary) told me what he saw, and I said, what? He said it, well, looked like inappropriate, or fondling, I’m not quite sure exactly how he put it. I said you did what you had to do. It’s my job now to figure out what we want to do,” Paterno told The Post.
“So I sat around. It was a Saturday. Waited till Sunday because I wanted to make sure I knew what I was doing. And then I called my superiors and I said, ‘Hey, we got a problem, I think. Would you guys look into it?’ Cause I didn’t know, you know. We never had, until that point, 58 years I think, I had never had to deal with something like that. And I didn’t feel adequate.”
Paterno affirmed reports that McQueary was not specific in describing what he allegedly saw, and he told The Post that even if he did, “I don’t know that it would have done any good, because I never heard of, of, rape and a man. So I just did what I thought was best. I talked to people that I thought would be, if there was a problem, that would be following up on it.”
I cannot believe this. Once again it’s “I just punted it upstairs”. He didn’t know what to do? Is there anyone out there who thinks that this is really that hard a question? He “was afraid to do something that might jeopardize what the University procedure was“? Is he kidding? He was Joe F***ing Paterno. I’m willing to bet that even if he somehow screwed up some PSU ‘special procedure for reporting crimes‘, nobody — not one person — would have complained or called him on it. He would not have gotten in trouble in any way. Why?
Because he was Joe F***ing Paterno, that’s why.
We’re talking about a man who was (and, in some camps, continues to be) worshiped for some inexplicable reason. Does anyone think for one second that Paterno would have received even so much as a mildly-stern talking-to had he somehow “broken PSU procedure” in the course of reporting a possible felony committed against a child?
Somebody, please, shut Doddering Old Joe up.
