UNIVERSITY PARK, CENTRE COUNTY - Penn State football players are throwing their support behind legendary football coach Joe Paterno. This comes one day after the Freeh report on Thursday revealed that Paterno covered up abuse by Jerry Sandusky.
Players spoke to reporters at the Lift for Life, kidney cancer fundraiser and competition.
Many impact players for the Nittany Lions say Paterno gave them a chance to play at the highest level in college football. Because of this, they're defending Paterno. Meantime, some players have a message for the victims of Jerry Sandusky.
"I have a lot of respect for Joe Paterno and what he did for the university and he might've made a mistake, but you know what, he's helped a lot of great men do a lot of great things for this university and beyond," said Mike Zordich, a Penn State fullback.
Some players say that they've read the Freeh report and have been paying attention to the Sandusky scandal. Others say they try not to pay much attention about the ongoing story, because it's a distraction to Penn State.
This year, the Lift for Life event featured offense versus defense. Usually players can be seen hauling huge weight.
The Freeh report details that Paterno knew of the 1998 incident involving Sandusky in a shower with a boy on Penn State's main campus. It also says Paterno hid the information along with top administrators at the time.
"Coach Paterno gave me the opportunity to play here, an opportunity a lot of coaches didn't so to that I owe my career to him," said Nittany Lion quarterback Matt McGloin, "you definitely have an opinion on it, but at the same time, I just keep it within myself or just talk about it amongst my teamates."
Craig Fitzgerald, the strength and conditioning coach for Penn State football said that he's not concerned about the Freeh report and instead, is focused on the team and upcoming season.
Sandusky was allowed to visit university campuses for more than a decade after the 1998 incident. Sandusky even had access to facilities on the University Park campus.
The investigations into Penn State Athletics continue with possible sanctions on the department. No players said Paterno's statue should be removed from Beaver Stadium.
Comments
I love this. It shows true mentalities and logic processes of the JoePa legions.
The denial and justifications are beautiful.
I am gathering your comments to use them
in my future classes when students
discuss, explain and jsutify how each society allowed the stranglehold of
Nazism, Pol Pat; and Mao's Culture Revolution to overcome it.
We can defend Hitler in the same light.
"He's not here to defend himself"
"He didn't know."
"The Nuremberg Report was flawed"
"He didn't actually see the little boys being raped."
Karen, Traci and you others: You have been a godsend to me.
Thnak you.
Jess J.
July 15, 2012 at 11:53 am
Paterno knew about a mother's cry that Sandusky had molested her son in 1998. Later, Paterno lied to a grand jury and said he didn't. Paterno and university president Graham Spanier and vice president Gary Schultz and athletic director Tim Curley all knew what kind of sick coach they had on the payroll in Sandusky. Schultz had pertinent questions. "Is this opening of pandora's box?" he wrote in personal notes on the case. "Other children?" "Sexual improprieties?"
It gets worse. According to Freeh, Spanier, Schultz and Curley were set to call child services on Sandusky in February 2001 until Paterno apparently talked them out of it. Curley wasn't "comfortable" going to child services after that talk with JoePa.
Yeah, that's the most important thing, your comfort.
What'd they do instead? Alerted nobody. Called nobody. And let Sandusky keep leading his horrific tours around campus. "Hey, want to see the showers?" That sentence alone ought to bring down the statue.
What a stooge I was.
I talked about Paterno's "true legacy" in all of this. Here's his true legacy: Paterno let a child molester go when he could've stopped him. He let him go and then lied to cover his sinister tracks. He let a rapist go to save his own recruiting successes and fundraising pitches and big-fish-small-pond hide.
Here's a legacy for you. Paterno's cowardice and ego and fears allowed Sandusky to molest at least eight more boys in the years after that 1998 incident -- Victims 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9 and 10. Just to recap: By not acting, a grown man failed to protect eight boys from years of molestation, abuse and self-loathing, all to save his program the embarrassment.
-Rick Reilly
outside o.
July 15, 2012 at 12:26 am
outside o.
July 15, 2012 at 12:15 am
Wow. Karen. So the fact that children were exploited by the catholic church, and during the industrial revolution, and that washington owned slaves - THAT is your JUSTIFICATION that joe paterno, A FOOTBALL COACH should not be villified? the people at the vatican profited immensely from covering up the rape of children... did not penn state football DO THE SAME THING? paterno also re-negotiated his retirement package, to reap more financial benefits, IN THE SAME MONTH that he testified to the grand jury about Jerry Sandusky's rape of children in the showers. And while I'm on that topic, PSU football - and the glory that it entailed - was used as the bait - sandusky used the football program to lure children so he could have sex with them. Justify all you want. you are entirely off base.
outside o.
July 14, 2012 at 11:47 pm
Would you still be standing up for him if it was your boy that was being raped???
Dorothy W.
July 14, 2012 at 11:30 pm
Ah, the "Paterno is dead" and so we can't criticize him attempt. Nice try, Tracy. As I said to Karen, I only wish Sandusky had substituted you for one of his innocent boy victims. Dying does not get you out of judgment. John Wayne Gacy is dead. Do we forgive him for all the boys he raped? Read the Freeh report. How the hell can you say Paterno 'did nothing wrong'? God, I hope someday this happens to you and you learn a Paterno not only didn't stop the rapist when he could have, but helped your rapist bait you. You rape-apologists make me sick and disgrace Penn State. The university is bigger than one man. Paterno disgraced us. Stop acting like he's some sort of saint!
Chico C.
July 14, 2012 at 11:03 pm
The Freeh Report has been discredited by "experts," huh? You realize Penn State PAID for it, right?
As for the disgusting Washington comparison, Washington FREED his slaves at the end of his life, by the way. And not only was slavery legal, I ask if Paterno freed the children he helped Sandusky rape at the end of HIS life or freed them from their nightmares.
It's great that Paterno won some football games for the kids you cite in this article. Sure, he gave them some good times. Well, John Wayne Gacy made some kids laugh in his day job as a clown, too. That doesn't excuse all the kids he raped and murdered, does it?
Paterno did not make a "mistake." He made a choice, a choice to not only cover up for a child rapist but to allow him to continue to use Penn State's facilities as bait to lure more victims.
To invoke the victims of SLAVERY is absurd, but even if there was this moral equivalence you imagine, guess what? We can't do anything to help the victims of slavery, but we sure as HELL can do something for the victims of Sandusky-Paterno. Since you're SO concerned with justice on these issues, then you should be the first one to tear down this little tin god's statue, Karen.
And by the way, I'll bet you'd see this a lot differently if Sandusky had raped you instead of little boys. I only wish he had to spare one of them the horror you seem to be fine with. Maybe while his [censored] was in your ass and you were screaming for him to stop, you'd scream about moral equivalence instead of for help.
Chico C.
July 14, 2012 at 10:59 pm
Jessi Lillo
11:54pm Jul 13
Tear down JoePa's statue? Abolish Penn State football? Close down the University? Yes, wonderful ideas. But only a beginning.
Right after that we need to tear down Mt. Rushmore, the Washington monument and any other statue, building, park or plaque that honors or bears the name of any of our elder statesmen who owned slaves. After all, these men and those in their employ systematically raped, tortured and starved the generations of human slaves they owned. We must then redesign all of our currency because nearly every coin or banknote depicts one of these despicable humans. No matter that recalling and exchanging all U.S, hard currency will completely crash our economy (so what, those guys were bastards and our currency is offensive because of it?) because step 4 of the plan involves burning the Constitution. Those jackasses considered Blacks one fifth of a person and allowed those they governed to hang, beat and rape Black citizens for nearly 200 years without penalty.
Next, we must go after the churches. Start with the Catholic churches, since they allowed their priests to molest thousands. Also, their superiors at the Vatican not only harbored [censored]'s, but profited immensely from it. Anne Frank wasn't the only child to die in the concentration camps, you know.
Now that the little stuff (slavery, the Holocaust, institutional racism and rape by men of God)is obliterated, we can move on to what is REALLY wrong in the world- college football.
The ACC, Big Ten, and NCAA must go. One of these bodies allowed the other two to acquire universities with documented institutional cover-ups of multiple rapes and other crimes by their football players and staff. Granted, these crimes were against women and therefore not heinous enough to warrant the firing of a coach or anything, but we must wipe them out anyway. Carnegie Mellon has to go too. Do you know how many children were exploited and killed during the industrial revolution?
I hope I'm not leaving anyone out, but the whole Penn State scandal has me so righteously indignant and morally superior that I can't look at the big picture. I'll try to get there, but without the Constitution or free enterprise, there will be no media to tell me what to think.
Karen W.
July 14, 2012 at 3:42 pm
I wish the media would leave JoePA alone. He isnt around to defend himself and did nothing wrong. What he was told was nothing but hearsay under the law. From various news reports in the beginning Mike McQueery didnt see anything either, he HERD slapping noises coming from the shower. The chain of command is preserved for our miliatary and police forces, not PSU or corporate entities. I am a Penn State World Campus Student in the Criminal Justice program, proud of what I'm accomplishing at my age, and proud to be a PSU student. Leave the Paterno family alone, please.
Traci T.
July 14, 2012 at 12:41 pm
The FREEH report has been DISCREDITED by experts.
You have all jumped the GUN.
This isnt over.....
FOOLS better read this.....
The BOOM is getting ready to be lowered
http://www.johnziegler.com/editorials_details.asp?editorial=219
Sir M.
July 13, 2012 at 7:57 pm
The FREEH report has been DISCREDITED by experts.
You have all jumped the GUN.
This isnt over.....
FOOLS better read this.....
The BOOM is getting ready to be lowered
http://www.johnziegler.com/editorials_details.asp?editorial=219
Sir M.
July 13, 2012 at 7:57 pm
The FREEH report has been DISCREDITED by experts.
You have all jumped the GUN.
This isnt over.....
FOOLS better read this.....
The BOOM is getting ready to be lowered
http://www.johnziegler.com/editorials_details.asp?editorial=219
Sir M.
July 13, 2012 at 7:57 pm
The FREEH report has been DISCREDITED by experts.
You have all jumped the GUN.
This isnt over.....
FOOLS better read this.....
The BOOM is getting ready to be lowered
http://www.johnziegler.com/editorials_details.asp?editorial=219
Sir M.
July 13, 2012 at 7:57 pm
The FREEH report has been DISCREDITED by experts.
You have all jumped the GUN.
This isnt over.....
FOOLS better read this.....
The BOOM is getting ready to be lowered
http://www.johnziegler.com/editorials_details.asp?editorial=219
Sir M.
July 13, 2012 at 7:57 pm
