Penn State Scandal: Joe Paterno Deserves to Finish Out the Season

There needs to be an investigation before Penn State University fires long-time head coach Joe Paterno, and anything less is un-American.

As far as we know and according to the grand jury indictment, Paterno was charged with no crimes and by the letter of the law he did exactly what he was supposed to in that situation.

While it’s obvious that Paterno could have done more, the exact amount of knowledge that he had about the incidents mentioned in the report are unclear.

Penn State has to let the coach go, but they owe it to him for building their program to let him finish the year and retire after the conclusion of the college football season.

There are current students in the PSU program that feel Joe Paterno has been nothing but the quintessential leader, and to not let him finish the season would be a travesty.

Now, if a proper investigation concludes before the end of the season and says that Paterno showed gross negligence then he needs to be fired that day.

We as outsiders don’t know the full chain of events in this case, but from reading the Grand Jury indictment of former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky, it looks like the police were just as clueless on this matter as well.

After admitting to the crimes to a mother of one of the victims and the police confirming this with the mother, the police were told to close the case by the head of the University Police, Thomas Harmon.

The whole situation stinks to high heaven, and the fact that Joe Paterno didn’t talk to the police could have been the athletic director or vice president of the university telling him that they already had done it.

From the reports, it sounds like the people in charge of PSU had the police in the county under their thumb.

While I believe that Paterno could have done more, the university could have been keeping him in the dark as well. Let’s see what a proper investigation yields before we rush to judgment.

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