From the CHRONICLE OF EDUCATION:
…And yet we who live inside the bubble know a few things you don’t know. We know there is good reason to be puzzled at Freeh’s conclusion that Joe Paterno “closely” followed the 1998 police investigation into an allegation that Jerry Sandusky had engaged in inappropriate conduct with a boy in the showers at the university’s athletic facility. The Freeh report itself produces only two e-mails from Tim Curley, the athletics director who is now on leave, to support that argument. One indicates that Curley had “touched base” with Paterno, and the other asks for an update because “Coach is anxious to know where it stands.” The funny thing is, people didn’t usually refer to Paterno as “Coach”; they called him Joe. Of course, it’s possible that Curley was speaking in code precisely to protect Paterno; but it’s also possible that the second e-mail refers not to Paterno but to Coach Sandusky himself. We really don’t know.
But we do know that when it comes to the 1998 investigation, Freeh’s claim rests on a curiously thin reed. And though that doesn’t absolve Paterno for his inaction after Mike McQueary, a former graduate assistant, reported seeing Sandusky in the showers with a boy in 2001, it does hold out the possibility that he was not lying to the grand jury in 2011 when he said he didn’t recall the 1998 investigation. (By contrast, it does not seem plausible that Curley and Gary Schultz, now a former vice president of the university, would not have remembered the 1998 investigation, as they claimed in 2011. But we will have to wait for their day in court, scheduled for next year.) …
The Sandusky scandal is a criminal matter. It is not an opportunity for those of you who hate college football to opine about the evils of college football. The evils of college football are real enough. And professors are especially sensitive to them: There have been tensions between athletes and intellectuals ever since the first teenage Greek athlete deposited the first teenage Greek philosopher in a high-school wastebasket…
EDITOR: This is an invaluable read as are some of the comments that follow. It goes far to correct many wide scale assumptions.
Nevertheless, it is far from the last word. The big remaining question is why Penn State’s administration and leaders from the board of trustee’s accepted without question the Freeh Report and submitted voluntarily to the outlandishly Draconian penalties from the NCAA, an organization of dubious jurisdiction?
What was the influence? From where did it come? Who wielded the power?
This is why there is a need for a federal investigation. Meanwhile, RealReporting.org / NewsLanc.com will continue to seek answers.
Click here to read the full article.
