In his column “Make peace with Joe”, Assistant Sports Editor Mike Gross reports on the recent King of Prussia meeting of Penn State president Rodney Erickson and about 650 Penn State alumni at which time heated discourse took place concerning the precipitous, late in the evening, callous firing of Joe Paterno as football coach:
Gross quotes Erickson as saying “It grieves me very much when I hear ‘the Penn State Scandal’. This is the Sandusky Scandal. This is not Penn State.”
Gross relates questions form the alumni:
“Why are there no posted minutes of the now-infamous Nov. 9 meeting in which Penn State’s Board of Trustees decided to fire JoePa and then-president Graham Spanier?”
“Why was Joe’s firing handled so crudely, by telephone, late at night, perhaps engendering the violent reaction from some Penn State students?”
“Why was Erickson here instead of members of the board that employs him?”
“If it’s a Sandusky scandal and not a Penn State scandal, why remove Penn State’s president, athletic director and football coach?”
WATCHDOG: We agree that this is a Sandusky scandal. But it may equally well be a scandal involving the former attorney general and now governor Tom Corbett who used his ex-officio board of trustees membership to lead the charge to fire Paterno and Corbett’s political critic Penn State president Graham Spanier.
Was it an attempt by Corbett to divert attention from his failure to have Sandusky arrested two years earlier and reported reluctance to follow up on the accusations? The investigation was expedited only after Corbett was elected and others took over management of the attorney general office.
Below is an excerpt and link to an article from the Huffington Post that reported on the firings:
HUFF POST: [Nov. 11, 2011] Gov. Tom Corbett said Thursday that he supported moves by Penn State’s board of trustees to force out famed football coach Joe Paterno and president Graham Spanier, saying he’d lost confidence in their leadership capacity.
Corbett, who is on the 32-member board along with 10 gubernatorial appointees, made the comments after a second day of private meetings of Penn State trustees amid an unfolding child sex abuse scandal involving the university….
Corbett, the state’s former attorney general, wouldn’t answer questions from reporters about any of the board’s internal discussions in the wake of a grand jury report released Saturday that said former football assistant coach Jerry Sandusky had sexually assaulted multiple boys, including some on university property. Sandusky has denied the allegations… (more)
