Deacfreak07
Ain't played nobody, PAWL!
The first time.
Similar to Paterno if the everything plays out this way. He will lose the civil suit as well.
The first time.
You guys are missing the real story. Paterno did nothing himself. Nor did he coverup what Sandusky did.
He should have done more, but it wasn't his crime.
This will be a very sad footnote but will not destroy over fifty years of coaching.
Possible jail time for Paterno
"Michael McCann, a sports law professor and NBA TV's on-air legal analyst, wrote for SI.com this week that Paterno's statement to a grand jury will come under close scrutiny as these other cases go to trial.
Plus, when the lawsuits start to roll in from the young victims' families -- and those will be for a staggering amount of money -- Paterno could still be found negligent in a civil trial."
Serious question.
If someone that you thought you knew well, and had interacted with on a daily basis for 30-odd years was accused of such a thing, would you have trouble believing it?
That's kind of what I think may have happened. Not to excuse, but he might have thought "McQueary probably wouldn't lie about it, but he may not have seen what he thought he saw. I've known Jerry a long time and I just can't believe he'd do something like that. I'll let the AD know and maybe he can find out what the heck is going on."
To me that's not *that* hard to believe. People delude themselves into thinking their friends are better than they are sometimes, and overlook their failings. While I agree that Paterno is basically a dick to the media and has always had a siege mentality as far as his program goes, he seems to be very loyal to his guys and put a lot of belief in them. Maybe this is an unfortunate manifestation of that?
I've spent quite a bit of time saying he was rightly fired, he should have done more, and he may not be done paying for it yet. But now I'm just trying to think of it from the perspective of how this got where it is. I cannot imagine Paterno wanted things to spiral out of control to this extent (even before the story came out). I'm sure he would have known he was putting his job at risk if he protected it. So how it did it get there? And I think a chain of events like this might at least start to explain.
If I knew of a similar prior incident involving that person, no, I don't think I'd have that much trouble believing it.
I (and others) have said on the various Paterno threads that this would have been a plausible explanation in 1998, but after that incident/investigation, I don't think JoePa gets to go down that road. He was on notice with the prior events, so saying he "just couldn't believe it" is just him sticking his head in the sand.
When kids Wikipedia him in 30 years, this will be in the opening page, and the first link people chase. This is the single greatest scandal in the history of sports. The only comparisons seem close are OJ and Shoeless Joe. None of the other coaches come close.