illegitimate children and then accidentally killed himself with a shotgun. Another cousin was arrested for stealing cats. My grandmother belonged to the Ku Klux Klan. It's natural to avoid talking about these things, and in the case of the late Joe Paterno, I understand his family's impulse to clear his name because he associated himself with a pervert, but come on: Enough is enough.
Coach Paterno's family hired a team of lawyers led by Richard Thornburgh, former Governor of Pennsylvania and former Attorney General ofthe United States under two Presidents, to prepare a report that directly rebuts the report published last July by Judge Louis Freeh that was the basis for heavy NCAA sanctions against Penn State University and Coach Paterno's subsequent termination after 46 seasons. Judge Freeh's report was exhaustive, including 430 interviews of key University personnel and the review of 3.5 million pages of documents over the course of seven months, and was damning for Penn State University and Joe Paterno personally, citing "...the total and consistent disregard by the most senior leaders at Penn State for the safety and welfare of Sandusky's child victims." The report was prepared under the supervision of an experienced former investigator, criminal prosecutor and Director of the FBI, so there is no doubt as to its validity, but as far as Joe Paterno's family is concerned, the Freeh report's fatal flaw is that it concluded that Coach Paterno conspired to conceal the sick sexual appetites of his longtime assistant coach, Jerry Sandusky, in order to prevent exactly the kind of disaster that has ensued. Rather than just admit their loved one's complicity in such a disgusting affair, his selfishness, his obsession with his own legacy and yes, his cowardice, the Paterno family hires Mr. Thornburgh's group of ambulance chasers to print up something that exonerates the coach, a document entirely self-serving, and ultimately worthless. For the Paterno family or Mr. Thornburgh to call the report "independent" is ludicrous.
In his heyday, Joe Paterno was a legendary coach who won two national championships and more football games than any other coach in the history of American college sports. His teams went undefeated five times, he won 24 bowl games, he coached dozens of All-Americans and NFL prospects and three members of the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He was a member himself of the College Football Hall of Fame and his program had a reputation for excellence rarely equaled in college sports, but it was all built on a lie. At exactly the same time that Joe Paterno was preaching teamwork and discipline and integrity to his players, he was actively protecting and facilitating a child predator on his own staff, throttling investigations, intimidating witnesses, concealing Jerry Sandusky's pedophilia, doing nothing to disrupt the machine that was Penn State football. Jerry Sandusky ran the Penn State defense and defense wins games, and there was nothing more important than winning: Nothing. National attention, major bowl appearances, television contracts, sponsorships and millions upon millions of dollars were flowing into State College, Pennsylvania, and losing all that by arresting Jerry Sandusky was simply too much to bear. Game after game, year after year, decade after decade, Joe Paterno knew that his defensive coordinator was seducing, molesting, imprisoning and raping young boys and did absolutely nothing to stop it, and if that all blew up in his face, then I have no sympathy for the late coach. If he was fired, if his statue was taken down and hidden away, if his program was gutted and his university was dragged through the mud, if his reputation was ruined and he died a broken man, then Joe Paterno had nobody to blame but himself and his family should stop wasting money and paper on a worthless report. What the Paterno family misses, and the report they commissioned misses, is that Joe Paterno's reputation matters less than the safety and welfare of the innocent young boys that Jerry Sandusky brutalized for so many years, and by dwelling on the coach's tarnished record rather than the victims of Sandusky's deviant desires, Joe Paterno's family guarantees that they will never be able to move on.
Source: http://progress.psu.edu/the-freeh-report
Source: http://espn.go.com/pdf/2013/0210/espn otl FINAL KING&SPAULDING2.pdf
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