Penn State Cult (Joe Knew)

[scarletmike]

So, then what do you think of PSU basically having no Compliance Dept, especially pertaining to football compliance, and everything pretty much running through Paterno? That is a distinct example of "Lack of Institutional Control" or I'm the freaking Pope. To me, that's more egregious than having a compliance department that either actively engages in covering up the typical discipline/academic/booster crap or is kept out of acting on those by a coach. That's not even attempting to look like they do everything the right way, that's saying "I'm better than your system so go fuck off and leave me alone."

 

[409fold]

So, then what do you think of PSU basically having no Compliance Dept, especially pertaining to football compliance, and everything pretty much running through Paterno? That is a distinct example of "Lack of Institutional Control" or I'm the freaking Pope. To me, that's more egregious than having a compliance department that either actively engages in covering up the typical discipline/academic/booster crap or is kept out of acting on those by a coach. That's not even attempting to look like they do everything the right way, that's saying "I'm better than your system so go fuck off and leave me alone."

Not sure what you're talking about, but PSU had a compliance department prior to November 2011 (although in Freeh's opinion it was under-staffed) --- and there was nothing in Freeh's report that indicated the department was violating NCAA rules.

I have no doubt that if the department WAS in violation of NCAA rules, it would have been made reference to in the Consent Decree. No references were made in the Consent Decree.

 

[BuckeyeNation27]

I pay my taxes, and I am currently (I think ) in good standing with the IRS. But if I go out tonight and murder somebody and then turn myself into Cincinnati police admitting the murder I committed, I shall be punished.

But it won't be by the IRS. The IRS does what they do, the state of Ohio criminal justice system does what they do. There is no "mission creep."

The Freeh Report found no NCAA violations, besides the infamous "Bylaw 10.1" (unethical conduct). Of course, "unethical conduct" is pretty nebulous. "Unethical conduct" can run the full gamut of activities from (1) the Holocaust to (2) me stealing $0.05 from my colleague's desk so I can by chips from the vending machine, then never paying him back his $0.05, and (3) everything in-between.

Anyway, the July 2012 sanctions were the first time in NCAA history that they referenced "Bylaw 10.1" as a reason for applying penalties without ALSO attaching another NCAA violation to it.

You may say, "well, that particular Bylaw 10.1 violation was so egregious it HAD to be punished." Fair enough. I say that the NCAA engaged in "mission creep" and got involved in something that had nothing to do with them.

Spanier, Curley, Schulz and Paterno were the four people fingered for guilt by the Freeh Report. Three of them are currently criminally indicted, and certainly aren't "free to go." That is as it should be (although they, of course, deserve their eventual day in court to defend themselves).

As for the fourth --- I do feel that many folk cheered the sanctions because they served as a "proxy for punishing Paterno, someone who didn't face justice in this world." Well, Paterno was dead in July 2012. That's simply "a desire to beat up a literal corpse." That's not a justification for the NCAA applying "mission creep" either.

It's not mission creep......the crime was just that awful. Again, just because there wasn't a specific NCAA rule that says don't let people use your program to rape kids, that doesn't mean the NCAA overstepped their bounds by punishing a football program for being integral in allowing children to be raped.

 

[409fold]

It's not mission creep......the crime was just that awful. Again, just because there wasn't a specific NCAA rule that says don't let people use your program to rape kids, that doesn't mean the NCAA overstepped their bounds by punishing a football program for being integral in allowing children to be raped.

I think the NCAA's actions were the textbook definition of "mission creep", but fair enough, agree to disagree. :cheers:

 

[scarletmike]

Not sure what you're talking about, but PSU had a compliance department prior to November 2011 (although in Freeh's opinion it was under-staffed) --- and there was nothing in Freeh's report that indicated the department was violating NCAA rules.

I have no doubt that if the department WAS in violation of NCAA rules, it would have been made reference to in the Consent Decree. No references were made in the Consent Decree.

But the NCAA felt it necessary to appoint an Integrity Monitor to their compliance staff (which if I recall correctly Freeh indicated was practically non-existent and toothless)? I don't remember all the specifics now, and don't care to try and track down articles which aren't coming up easily on the first 2 pages of a Google search, but I seem to remember Freeh indicating something along the lines of what I posted.

 

[ORD_Buckeye]

http://bwi.forums.rivals.com/threads/it-is-simply-amazing-how-much-i-hate-the-big-ten.67886/

 

[409fold]

But the NCAA felt it necessary to appoint an Integrity Monitor to their compliance staff (which if I recall correctly Freeh indicated was practically non-existent and toothless)? I don't remember all the specifics now, and don't care to try and track down articles which aren't coming up easily on the first 2 pages of a Google search, but I seem to remember Freeh indicating something along the lines of what I posted.

Freeh said that it was "under-staffed." It definitely existed. The word "toothless" doesn't appear in the Freeh Report, nor does any other similar word, at least in connection to anything "compliance department" related. So I'm still not sure what you're referring to.

Call me a cynic, but the Integrity Monitor was primarily for optics and PR. George Mitchell's an honorable guy and I admire what he has done for our country, but get him drunk and speaking candidly, and I'd bet $100 to donuts that he'd say the same thing.

Anyway, given what the NCAA did in July 2012, I think it's fair to say that it defies common sense to think that (a) the Freeh Report found an actual NCAA violation (beyond "Bylaw 10.1"), yet (b) the NCAA would decide NOT to attach it to the consent decree.

 

[Delaware Buck]

409. how reflective do you think BWI is of the Penn St, alumni as a whole? By that, I mean what percentage of the alumni views Paterno as more important than than the university itself? What percentage do you think views the BoT as some evil, corrupt entity whose goal was to destroy Paterno and cover their own asses? What percentage of the alumni find the rehabilitation of Joe's image all-consuming and that Freeh, Emmert, Ganim, Erickson, Frazier, etc. must all pay for their sins?

Anyone that expresses even a moderate view on BWI is quickly run off or ridiculed forever, yet I have seen numbers that only five percent of the eligible voters even vote in the BoT elections. The victimization of Paterno remains such a unifying theme in the PSU community, yet so few people actually bother to vote when it comes time to vote?

What percentage of people on BWI or social media do you think are being paid by the Paterno family public relations firm to expresses such stridently pro-Paterno viewpoints. It seems almost impossible to believe that even the most obscure news article that is the tiniest bit critical of Paterno will have many of the same pro-Paterno people in the comments section. BWI always claims that anyone wanting to "move on" is being paid by the BoT, but I always think that claim is just a way of trying to marginalize anyone not in lockstep who has not been run off the board.

There's an entire faction of people that started posting right around the time PS4RS got involved with the alumni elections of 2012. Their sole purpose was to drive an agenda of issues and align those to preselected candidates. It would not surprise me if these people were either being compensated by the Paterno family or some other group.

 

[ORD_Buckeye]

 

[Delaware Buck]

Well, there were other options.

For instance, the NCAA always had an option of saying "our organization's mission statement is to govern competition in a fair, safe, equitable and sportsmanlike manner, and to integrate intercollegiate athletics into higher education so that the educational experience of the student-athlete is paramount. While we are disappointed with everything we read in the Freeh Report, we find that punishing Penn State for what is detailed in the Freeh Report is OUTSIDE OF our mission statement and OUTSIDE OF our purview. As such, we're doing nothing at all. Much like the IRS doesn't go audit guys who are found guilty of murder --- we will not be engaged in mission creep."

Look, I get it. People would have been outraged had the NCAA said that. Ohio State fans would have been particularly outraged, given OSU was on probation for their own issues in 2012.

But the above statement was an option --- and I feel like the above was the correct option. One can think poorly of Joe Paterno (as I do), but one can also think that the NCAA was incorrect for injecting themselves into the matter.

I've always thought that if the NCAA simply stepped back and said "we're doing nothing", you would have seen Penn State leadership self-sanction the football team in some respect (probably sitting out Bowl games, maybe some scholarship reductions) for the 2012-2013 seasons. Of course we'll never know, because we only had 10 days between Freeh Report release and NCAA sanction announcement. The NCAA barely gave PSU leadership time to digest the report before they themselves decided to embark on a course of action. Shoot, even Ed Ray himself admitted last year he never even read the Freeh Report --- this from the guy who was ON THE STAGE (!!!) with Mark Emmert back in July 2012.

Yes, there are a subset of Penn State fans who are acting like "victims and martyrs" ---- an ironic thing is that that group exists to a large degree because of the sanctions. If the NCAA hadn't gotten involved and instead Penn State did self-sanctioning, you wouldn't see quite the same victim-complex and martyr-complex among a portion of the PSU fanbase. Those folk would be forced to be more self-introspective as they would have no outward entity to blame for things. Instead, the NCAA sanctions and overreach actually EXACERBATED that dynamic.

The crux of this and the punishments really comes back to JoePed and Spanier. Spanier served on the NCAA infractions committee for years. He got that position by touting the success with honor bullshit. He was also one of the most hawkish rules enforcers on the committee, always looking to hammer athletic departments for actions that did not meet the success with honor bar. He was also the guy that pushed for heavier penalties against OSU and had no love for Tress. He was also good friends with Ray and Emmert. So when it came out that Spanier was aware of Jerry's actions for years and did nothing to stop it and covered it up, people like Ray and Emmert felt they had been deceived for all those years and needed to take a strong course of action against PSU. So that's some context for why the penalties were presented the way they were and again as other have stated PSU had options.

Why do you think you BOT and Erickson accepted the consent decree? You can take the BWI position that Erickson was an egghead that wanted to do away with football culture or do you think it's possible that Erickson knew that the evidence against C/S/S and Paterno was very strong and he had no interest in it coming to light? It seems like the most likely prospect is that they were already convinced that things had been covered up for years and that accepting the punishment was the best course of action.

 

[Delaware Buck]

Those are good questions.
I've always said that Tom McAndrew is on the Paterno payroll. At the very least, he is DEFINITELY a Paterno insider. A DEEP insider. He knows stuff. Shoot, he was the first person back on that Saturday afternoon in January 2012 who had the news that Joe's death was rather imminent. He also knew that the Paternos were going to use Outside the Lines on ESPN to announce their lawsuit against the NCAA --- he previewed that story a couple days before the actual Sunday morning ESPN broadcast.

Here's another fact for you to chew on. Tom McAndrew was also involved with The Second Mile and had been for years right up to the indictments. Both the digital and print version of BWI sold email addresses and home addresses to The Second Mile without advising users of this arrangement. I found this out the hard way when we got a family friend a year's subscription to the print version of the Blue White Illustrated. A week later we started getting Second Mile newsletters, donation solicitations, invitations to events, personal appears from Jerry himself, etc... It's hard to tell where the Second Mile stopped and PSU started because they were the same organization. When people claim Jerry was reported to the Second Mile it's a joke. Jerry was the Second Mile. Curley would have know that nothing would ever come of that report (if it even happened and Curley stated under oath it was never reported to anyone).

McAndews is a creepy guy, FWIW.

 

[Delaware Buck]

I really wish all the Paterno-bashing and BWI-baiting could be moved to another forum.

Do I think Paterno was an enabler who basically fiddled while State College burned? Yeah. Do I think the denizens of BWI are a pack of clueless idol-worshipers? Of course.

But I would occasionally like to read something that's actually related to Nittany Lion Football ca. 2015, and it's tedious as fuck to have to wade through a bunch of gratuitous attacks on these two entities in order to find the needle in the haystack.

Is there any way we can cut off debate on BWI, JoeBots, the Paterno family and the Penn State Board of Trustees here on the College Football forum and move it somewhere else?

You're really want to know what's going on with PSU football? It can be summed up like this:

1. The current coach is more of a used car salesman than an X and O guy and his game day coaching is lacking
   
2. They are 29-20 since 2012 and were 7-5 in 2015 - see #1
   
3. They will be going to a third tier bowl this year - see #1
   
4. They just fired their OC - see #1
5. The recruiting class looks good but kids are staring to decommit - see #1

That's about it.

 

[MililaniBuckeye]

You're really want to know what's going on with PSU football? It can be summed up like this:

1. The current coach is more of a used car salesman than an X and O guy and his game day coaching is lacking
   
2. They are 29-20 since 2012 and were 7-5 in 2015 - see #1
   
3. They will be going to a third tier bowl this year - see #1
   
4. They just fired their OC - see #1
5. The recruiting class looks good but kids are staring to decommit - see #1

That's about it.

Yep, that about covers it...carry on.

 

[Delaware Buck]

Not sure what you're talking about, but PSU had a compliance department prior to November 2011 (although in Freeh's opinion it was under-staffed) --- and there was nothing in Freeh's report that indicated the department was violating NCAA rules.

I have no doubt that if the department WAS in violation of NCAA rules, it would have been made reference to in the Consent Decree. No references were made in the Consent Decree.

The issue was about separation of responsibilities. That's what Freeh raised because this is this is auditing 101 shit. It's why SOX exists in the corp world. The same people responsible for athletics revenue generation cannot be the same people responsible for compliance of said sports. It's just common sense that these need to be separate positions with different reporting structures and segregation of duties. PSU accepted this and changed the way it ran these departments.

Freeh was probably laughing his ass off on this one because it's the lowest hanging fruit and a strong indicator that things were about to get a whole lot more interesting.

 

[Joe Pa Thetic]

Those are good questions.

I've always said that Tom McAndrew is on the Paterno payroll. At the very least, he is DEFINITELY a Paterno insider. A DEEP insider. He knows stuff. Shoot, he was the first person back on that Saturday afternoon in January 2012 who had the news that Joe's death was rather imminent. He also knew that the Paternos were going to use Outside the Lines on ESPN to announce their lawsuit against the NCAA --- he previewed that story a couple days before the actual Sunday morning ESPN broadcast.

I also think that the Paterno family is a strong bank-roller of PS4RS. And why not? Bank-rolling PS4RS is a pretty good "back-door" way for the Paterno family to have BoT members do their bidding within the walls of Penn State. I've expressed my belief about the Paternos being bank-rollers of PS4RS a number of times on BWI: those posts tend to get deleted quickly. I think one reason for that is because PS4RS has Tom McAndrew on THEIR bank-roll. Note when McAndrew posts: he often is parroting messages that come from PS4RS leadership. Shoot, he had a post like that just within the past 48 hours.

http://bwi.forums.rivals.com/threads/a-message-from-ps4rs.67610/

One fact about BoT elections that I've pointed out a few times is that "the alumni-elected trustees, people like Anthony Lubrano, are only getting 40% of the votes from the 6% of alumni who vote." Those numbers are not exactly correct --- but they are close. The Paterno Loyalists may say "our alumni trustees are getting elected, thus the majority of the alumni agree with us!!!!" --- but it's a fact that (a) they don't even get 50% of the votes of people who do vote, they benefit from fractured elections where 35 different alumni run for only 3 spots, and (b) not even 10% of the alumni who are eligible to vote do so.

Michael Weinrieb wrote a Grantland (RIP) article in October where he referred to "Paterno Loyalists" as "relentlessly vocal." That phrase nailed it. I truly do believe that "Paterno Loyalists" are only ~10% of the PSU alumni base/fan base. But Lord knows: they are a 10% THAT DOES NOT EVER SHUT THE FUCK UP. Do the math: if 10% of people talk about one subject 100% of the time, while the other 90% of people talk about one subject only 10% of the time (they don't talk about that one subject as much because, well, they have a life and other stuff to do) --- well, it at least seems like the 10% of people are the majority.

http://grantland.com/the-triangle/2015-college-football-penn-state-james-franklin/

If one visits the Scout and 247 message boards for Penn State, there is some scandal discussion, but it's mostly just football, football, football. Even the scandal discussion there is not completely one-sided.

I was at the Penn State @ Michigan State game in East Lansing on Saturday. That makes the 19th Penn State game outside of State College that I have attended since November 2011. That's a lot of games. Those 19 games include every B1G outside of Iowa, Maryland and Rutgers. I always sit amongst the opposing fans, because I like to chat with other folk and I find it more fun. Only ONCE in those 19 games have I been heckled with anything Sandusky or child rape related: that was some fan at Wisconsin in 2013, who was promptly told to "stop acting like an idiot" by his fellow fans.

IMO, the internet isn't reality. Tons of Penn State folk could give a damn less about football. Among those who do care about football, I believe that most of them have accepted things and moved on (some, admittedly, slower than others), and just want to enjoy the new era of Penn State football. Most opposing have absolutely no desire to give Penn State folk grief about it --- after all, it wasn't them that screwed up. There's a lot of tough "fuck Penn State" and "fuck people who aren't JoeBots" talk on the internet, but I'm of the firm belief those folk are outliers.

Thank you for the detailed post. I think Audibles is at least more rational than BWI. Of course, some of the same crazies are present on Audibles as well. I was dismayed that the fine "irondoc" poster was run off Audibles, however, a while back. For the first couple years following the scandal, Irondoc was bringing the goods when it came to news before it was released to the public. Irondoc said often on there that he had a source in the state police, and too many of the things he wrote subsequently proved true for him to just be making shit up. But the Cutlists that are Audibles could not stand the fact that Irondoc was critical of Paterno and said that there were damaging e-mails before they were made public.

I have read so much stuff on the scandal over the past four years that I had forgotten (or maybe I never saw it back in 2012) the Lubrano post you put on BWI recently that sure made it sound as though Lubrano was trying to brace the fanbase for damaging info about Paterno in advance of the Freeh report.