Paterno To Blame For The Sins of the World

Joe Paterno hasn't had an easy offseason. All offseason he's had acres of print covering one big subject: when he's going to leave.

He hasn't a clue. Nor do I. Can we leave him alone now, save for reading my rather good article on the subject a few weeks ago, where although it might seem as though I said that Joe should go after the 2008 season, I really meant that he should go when he damned well pleased.

At the Big Ten Media Day, when almost every little journalistic scrote worth his while gets invited to ask the 'Burning Questions of 2008', which are very like the burnig questions of 2007, he said: "I don't know! I don't know! Do you want me to spell it? I-d-o-n-t-k-n-o-w. How many times can I say it?"

And now onto the second thing: THAT Outside The Lines piece by ESPN.

Listen, I can understand that Penn State have had it's off-the-field problems. Hell, they've been well-chronicled - and made fun of - on this website. But Outside The Lines says the only reason why off-the-field problems have skyrocketed is because Penn State have been forced to get kids with "character issues". They also mention the 70% graduation rates of PSU students this year - which puts them in 12th place in the NCAA.



Although I've made fun of the issues, I'll throw this one out there: the kids' behaviour is not the fault of Joe Paterno. Nor is it the fault of any other coach in college football if his kids misbehave - unless they get invovled. The bottom line is this: Paterno is a football coach. 70% of his kids graduate. It's better than having half the football team suspended for three games because of academic violations like one ACC coach we could mention. And other schools aren't much better.

Of course there's going to be a bad apple - Chris Baker and Chris Bell were an example of too. The other ones were - to paraphrase in JoePa speak: "Just kids making mistakes".

Now let's go and win some football games..