Journal : OpenRoadWorks

Admittedly, I am biased - I am a de facto Penn Stater.  After one of the most trying months on record with the explosive allegations that broke in the mainstream media in early November, Penn State and Joe Paterno have taken a beating.  I wrote about the anger and sadness that this caused at the time and still causes upon further reflection; it provoked me to assemble the facts about the "Penn State scandal" that I could in order to truly understand the evolving situation and learn from it. Then Syracuse happened , incidentally because of the allegations that broke at Penn State.  And Jim Boeheim denied that he was Joe Paterno .  Admittedly, I had an initial hunger for retribution - if Paterno got fired for not doing enough of the right thing, then Boeheim should definitely be fired for doing nothing at all and further defending a man "he knew could not have possibly done what he had allegedly done". But this is THE momen...

The last week has been interesting to say the least.  A few days ago, I shared what many in the Penn State community feel but might not have been reported by the national sports media like ESPN, Sports Illustrated, Sporting News, CBS Sports, and others.  I will not link away to those sources as I have become convinced that articles and "thought pieces" from the likes of most of their writers are a bit tainted by the visceral emotion of the whole affair.  It makes for dramatic reading, but it does little to help sort out this mess. As a side note, there is one well-articulated article worth reading, which is Joe Posnasky's piece, " The End of Paterno ".  Joe Posnasky, incidentally, was working on a biography about Joe Paterno over the last couple of years, which will now likely end up as a seminal work on Paterno from start to finish when it publishes some time in 2012 or 2013 (likely after criminal proceedings finish)....

Paterno coaching in his prime in the late 1960's I grew up watching Penn State football.  This was because my father grew up on Penn State.  We have a family of Penn Staters, across my own family but also grandfather, great uncles, cousins, and others - several of which studied, taught, and still live in State College.  For Penn State, college football and academics go together.  This was the life's work of Joe Paterno, a Brown graduate and star quarter back and cornerback (still holds the Brown career interceptions mark) who followed his former coach at Brown, Rip Engle, to central Pennsylvania.  Joe was born from a family of Italian immigrants who carried "old world" values and a passion for education.  Joe was almost a lawyer, but he found himself drawn to the power, elegance, and teamwork of the all-american gridiron sport, thus becoming a coach. Penn State was not far removed from being an agricultural school when Joe first arrived...