I put a few soap boxes together this week, stood atop them and shouted for Paterno and the entire athletic department to be fired, effective immediately. Last night a board of trustees in Pennsylvania ended the 61 year career of college football legend Joe Paterno and fired the school president, Graham Spanier. This is the first step forward and the first clear sign that Penn St. is taking this matter seriously.
I understand that we live in America and the phrase "innocent until proven guilty" has been uttered by many in the past few days in regards to Paterno and also to the man charged with over 40 counts of sexual assault on minors, Jerry Sandusky. In this particular case, after reading all the grand jury testimony, of which I consider to be the facts, I believe that Sandusky is guilty until proven innocent. This case has brought up a lot of emotions that I'm not used to feeling when writing about sports. Before I read the grand jury testimony, I was shocked and frustrated. After reading those documents, I became angry and wanted to hurt all the people named in those documents. I felt deep sadness for the victims of these terrible crimes and somehow wanted to step up on their behalf and do something, anything to help. The reality of the situation is far more complicated than that. All I can do is have a voice, express my concerns and help make others aware of how serious this matter really is.
Two of my friends, who don't sit in front of a computer all day as I do, feel strongly that Joe Paterno is innocent and did everything he was supposed to do as a football coach. As I was trying to help them understand and asking them to read the grand jury documents, I had to come to terms with the idea that not everyone sees this the way I do; not everyone wants to know every last detail and not everyone feels the deep sadness and anger that I do. That's a tough pill to swallow, but I am doing my best to accept that this is a case that has rocked the entire country, not just the sports world and not just a small town in Pennsylvania.
The investigation was literally set in motion within the last 24 hours and this case will get much uglier before we have a resolution. We will definitely have more questions than answers in the weeks, months and years to come. The violence that broke out last night was a simple reminder that college students are not as smart as they think they are. The streets filled with cops, cars and news vans flipped over, a city burning because the football coach of their college was fired. Were those people really out in support of former coach Paterno or have they been wrongly inspired by the occupy movements taking place across the world? I believe it's the latter and that makes this even more disturbing. I will continue to follow this case, with a heavy heart and open eyes because This is not about players taking money from boosters, it's not about Terrell Pryor driving a brand new car for each day of the week and it's not even close to what many called the "tragedy" of recruiting violations at USC. In my mind, it's not about football, coaches, legacies or wins, it's about protecting our children and standing up when we know something just isn't right, instead of looking the other way.
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