Penn State Scandal: Firing Joe Paterno and Mike McQueary Is Right Thing to Do

If Joe Paterno and Mike McQueary walk out onto the field for the Penn State vs. Nebraska game on Saturday, it will be a disgrace to the sport of college football and, more importantly, to the victims and their families. 

There is nothing right about letting two people, who—while they may have fulfilled their procedural obligation—failed epically in their moral obligation, to walk out onto the field and coach a football game.  

The sycophants who blindly support Paterno are too drunk on their own Penn State passion to take a minute and realize how grossly at fault Joe Paterno is. Sure, Paterno can pretend he didn’t know the full story, that he alerted his superiors and washed his hands of it, but he can’t look at himself in the mirror and believe for a second he couldn’t have done more at that time. 

This grand jury report speaks volumes to his lack of judgment and his eroding character. 

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The graduate assistant and his father decided that the graduate assistant had to report what he had seen to Coach Joe Paterno ("Paterno"), head football coach of Penn State. The next morning, a Saturday, the graduate assistant telephoned Paterno and went to Paterno's home, where he reported what he had seen.

Joseph V. Paterno testified to receiving the graduate assistant's report at his home on a Saturday morning. Paterno testified that the graduate assistant was very upset. Paterno called Tim Curley ("Curley"), Penn State Athletic Director and Paterno's immediate superior, to his home the very next day, a Sunday, and reported to him that the graduate assistant had seen Jerry Sandusky in the Lasch Building showers fondling or doing something of a sexual nature to a young boy.

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Anyone still chanting “We love Joe”?

When learning that his grad assistant had seen a 60-year-old man in the showers with a 10-year-old boy, regardless of the physical contact he saw, authorities should have been alerted. A boy. A man. A shower. Case closed.

Yet Paterno did the procedural thing and left it at that. And when the same man showed up on his campus year after year, with countless other kids, Paterno just went about his business, never once thinking of the position he might be putting these kids in. 

“The Penn State way” has been a mantra for decades that meant doing the right thing; now it’s a symbol of passivity in the face of evil. It’s the symbol of doing what is obligated of you, rather than doing the right thing. It doesn’t matter what Joe Pa knew for a fact or didn’t; he knew enough to know that if it were his child in that shower, it wouldn’t have been alright. 

Still, Paterno has his supporters. Kirk Herbstreit, while somewhat guarded in his answers, has managed to politely back Joe Paterno's wish to finish out the year. When asked on SportsCenter if Paterno should be allowed to coach out the season he spouted off about how the players of Penn State deserve to have their Hall of Fame coach on the field.

Perhaps the time in the ABC booth has eroded his sense of fair and balanced opinion, or perhaps he’s never had it to begin with, but no one should give a damn about what players deserve. Victims since the 2002 incident in the Penn State showers could have been helped had someone in the Penn State interweb, starting from McQueary all the way to Graham Spanier, decided to look out for the best interest of the victim. 

Walking out onto the field with Joe Paterno and Mike McQueary in tow should give no player on that team a sense of satisfaction. Their mere presence will override the quality of the game, and win or lose, Penn State players will be far from the story of interest. Even if Herbstreit believes the players are being treated unfairly if Joe Paterno can’t be there, it’s nothing in comparison to the unfair treatment of these victims and their families. 

Paterno’s declaration showed no sense of perspective on the situation or his culpability in it. His legally manufactured statement only served to raise more questions about his selfishness and his character. Darren Rovell put Joe Pa’s statement in perspective.  

The perspective is that he has no perspective. Still, in the midst of this chaos Paterno thinks that he is still in control. He is no longer in control. This is no longer his university. Acting athletic director Mark Sherburne released a statement to build trust between the university, its students and the nation. 

Sherburne writes: 

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We can promise you that we are doing everything in our power to restore that broken trust.

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The restoration of that broken trust should start with saying goodbye to the face of the university, and the wide receivers coach who doesn’t deserve to be there in the first place.  

While Paterno may have been at fault, there was no more egregious offender of morality and personal responsibility than McQueary. Upon witnessing what he believed was the sodomizing of a 10-year-old boy, he proceeded to walk out, call his father and leave for the night. No call to the cops; no attempt to stop the crime that was being committed.

Panicked? Shocked? The emotion is irrelevant. He acted cowardly and irresponsibly. 

What is not talked about, but is also alarming, is that he would accept employment with a university that, upon hearing his allegations that Jerry Sandusky committed rape, never notified the authorities and continued their professional and person relationship with Sandusky. They merely took away his shower access.  

McQueary has shown as much poor judgement as anyone not named Jerry Sandusky. Yet there is still the possibility that the university allows him to walk out onto that field Saturday and represent a university that is supposedly committed to cleaning up their image.  

Penn State is full of proud alumni and good people of good moral character. They deserve to have peace and order restored. They deserve to get back to a university that works hard to stand for honor, dignity and responsibility.

They can’t do that with Joe Paterno and Mike McQueary strolling their sidelines. Not now, and in the case of McQueary, not ever.

It’s time to say goodbye, even if that means saying goodbye to a legend. The healing can't begin until Paterno and McQueary are gone.