Redistributing the Blame for Joe Paterno and the Penn State Scandal

I woke up this morning and thought that there was no way I was going to end up writing anything about the sexual abuse scandal in Penn State and the firestorm that has surrounded the exit of longtime head coach Joe Paterno.

Then the day went on and all I saw was outrage against the students who rioted in wake of Paterno's execution and continued outrage over Paterno's actions.

First of all, let me say this; rioting in support of Joe Paterno was one of the dumbest things I have seen a student body, nay, a fan base do in my entire life. The actions of the students at Penn State were inexplicable and the idea of rioting never should have gotten off the ground.

However, saying that the students are all misinformed, misguided sheep, following the Paterno that they have known for years is off base. While it was a large number of students, it was still just an isolated portion of the nearly 100,000 students that populate the university's 24 campuses. In fact, the students will be staging a "Blue Out" and selling blue ribbons with the proceeds going to fight child abuse.

Now, let's move onto the seemingly uneven distribution of outrage that is going on across the country.

Let me start out by saying that I am a 21-year-old kid, I have no children of my own and I completely agree with the people that have told me that I won't understand this completely until I have children. That's fine, I can't argue that point.

Still, I find the past 24 hours to have been a misguided storm of anger and outrage toward Joe Paterno and his supporters by both the media and the people of this country. I understand why it happened; Paterno is the figurehead of that university, and when there is someone of his prominence involved in an issue like this, he is going to get covered in the most muck.

However, the lack of outrage toward the administration at Penn State over their actions since the news came out has shocked me.

I'm completely fine with those of you that say Paterno had to go. He did. I would have liked to have seen Penn State give him the courtesy of a face-to-face meeting or allow him to hold a press conference and resign himself, but it didn't happen that way.

(The source for the following information is the grand jury investigations into the allegations, read it at your own risk.)

The part of the story that bothers me the most is the fact that Mike McQueary, the graduate assistant that saw the abuse taking place back in 2002 is still going to be on the sidelines this Saturday when Nebraska came to town.

That boggles my mind.

The anger against Paterno has been for the fact that all he did was call the athletic director and tell him what McQueary told him, but to actually see something like this taking place and to not take immediate action to stop it is what disturbs me the most.

McQueary was an eyewitness source, and instead of immediately stopping Jerry Sandusky from doing what he was doing, he called his dad and went to talk to him, and then he called Coach Paterno.

Paterno then met with Athletic Director Tim Curley about the allegations.

Sure, any human being can look back right now and say that Paterno should have called the cops as soon as he heard what McQueary saw, but remember the shoes you are in at that point.

Paterno had been a head coach for nearly 40 years at that point and with the organization for over 50. He was trained to take all information regarding some type of violation or discretion to his superiors and that's the way he worked for his entire adult life. Is it an excuse? No, but it's somewhere to start. 

He has been called the "King" of the university and the entire town, so he was a big part of what was controlling everything that was happening. Sandusky was Paterno's "right hand-man" for years, but I don't see what Paterno did as trying to cover things up. The university tried to downplay the allegations back in 2002, that's for sure, but Paterno reported what he was told and administration later met with McQueary. They then downplayed it to just "inappropriate conduct," when really it was rape.

Blame Joe Paterno, that's completely within the spectrum of rational thought. However, don't forget to blame Mike McQueary and the janitors that saw another abuse take place two years prior to the McQueary incident without telling anyone. Beyond that, blame the entire damn administration for dealing with making the university look good first and dealing with Sandusky second. Keep going, blame the police who listened into a conversation Sandusky had with the mother of one of the victims as she told Sandusky to stop showering with boys, something that he couldn't promise to her. Blame the NCAA for the way it has grown to where schools try to cover up infractions before trying to stop them from happening altogether.

From what I have found over the past 24 hours, I am in the minority in the fact that I don't have as much outrage at Joe Paterno as the rest of the known world, and I fully expect some of you to disagree with me, and that's fine.