Phil Knight Criticizes Penn State While Speaking at Joe Paterno's Memorial

On Thursday, a crowd gathered for Joe Paterno’s memorial service, and several people said a few words in remembrance of one of the greatest college football coaches of all-time.

Former players such as Franco Harris, Matt Millen, Todd Blackledge, Lenny Moore, Blair Thomas, Ki-Jana Carter, Brandon Short and OJ McDuffie were all in attendance for the memorial.

Then there were bigger names in the world of sports like Nike co-founder Phil Knight, who had met Paterno 33 years ago.

Knight went in front of the crowd and conducted a speech that directly addressed the elephant in the room: the Jerry Sandusky sexual abuse scandal that crippled Paterno during the last three months of his life.

He was ultra-critical of the university and provided comments that should force Penn State into thinking about how they have handled the whole situation. It was passionate and clearly something Knight had wanted to get off his chest.

Knight had a simple question for the audience, reports Ben Jones of the website StateCollege.com:

Knight also talked about the real villain in this tragedy, according to Sports Illustrated’s Stewart Mandel:

Per CBS Sports, the speech was met with a thunderous round of applause, as finally somebody stopped beating around the bush.

Knight is saying that Paterno really wasn’t at fault for the biggest scandal in the history of college sports. His main point was that the lack of institutional control from the board of trustees was the real cause of this horrific situation.

Essentially, he is giving Paterno a free pass.

It comes as no surprise that he would get a standing ovation at the man’s funeral, but he still doesn’t convince me that Paterno isn’t at fault to a certain extent.

His lack of control over the situation allowed other kids to become victims when the problem could have been extinguished 10 years ago with strong leadership from Joe Pa. He didn’t lead, and the problem persisted.

But, as you can see by his comments today...Knight clearly doesn’t agree.