The Wall Street Journal published a story today about Coach Paterno's clashes with the administration with disciplining his players. Apparently the coach thought he should be the one to decide whether or not they could play in games even if arrested. Paterno also thought the administration should have no part in their discipline and threatened to have one official fired for her refusal to back down from him. The newspaper reported:
"Legendary Penn State football coach Joe Paterno clashed repeatedly with the university's former chief disciplinarian over how harshly to punish players who got into trouble, internal emails suggest, shedding new light on the school's effort to balance its reputation as a magnet for scholar-athletes with the demands of running a nationally dominant football program.
In August 2005, Mr. Spanier, the university president, suggested that Dr. Triponey meet with Mr. Paterno. Athletic director Curley, assistant athletic Director Fran Ganter and Joe Puzycki, the assistant to Dr. Triponey, also attended the Aug. 11 meeting, according to two people knowledgeable about the meeting. Mr. Paterno loudly criticized Dr. Triponey at the meeting for meddling, these people say.
The following day, Dr. Triponey sent an email to Messrs. Spanier, Curley and Puzycki summarizing the meeting and sharing her thoughts and concerns. In the email, which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, she said that football players were getting in trouble at a "disproportionate rate" from other students, often for serious acts. She said her staff had tried to work with the athletic department, sometimes sharing information, but that whenever her department initiated an investigation into a football player, the phones lit up. "The calls and pleas from coaches, Board members, and others when we are considering a case are, indeed, putting us in a position that does treat football players differently and with greater privilege."
Dr. Triponey also wrote that Mr. Paterno believed that the school's code of conduct should not apply to any incidents that take place off campus—that those should be handled by police—and they shouldn't be allowed to affect anyone's status as a student.
"Coach Paterno would rather we NOT inform the public when a football player is found responsible for committing a serious violation of the law and/or our student code," she wrote, "despite any moral or legal obligation to do so."...
In 2007, as many as two dozen players broke into an off-campus apartment, sparking a melee that captured headlines and prompted the police to file criminal charges against six Penn State football players. "Pretty much the entire Penn State defense broke in and started swinging bar stools and stuff," says John Britt, then a third-year criminal-justice major who was beaten up in the incident. Mr. Britt says he took a beer bottle to the back of the head—and that players apparently continued to beat him after he'd lost consciousness. (Now 25, Mr. Britt serves warrants for state court in Philadelphia.)
Dr. Triponey's department began an inquiry. According to a Penn State employee's record of the proceedings, Mr. Spanier was involved in at least nine meetings with representatives of the judicial-affairs department, and Mr. Paterno was involved in at least six.
In a meeting with Messrs. Paterno and Spanier and others, Dr. Triponey complained that the players were stonewalling her and suggested that Mr. Paterno ought to compel them to be truthful, according to one person familiar with the meeting. Mr. Paterno angrily responded that his players couldn't be expected to cooperate with the school's disciplinary process because, in this case, they would have to testify against each other, making it hard to play football together, these people say.
In the end, police dropped many of the charges against the players, and two pleaded guilty to misdemeanors. The school's inquiry led to four players being suspended for a summer semester. They did not miss any games...."
Rest of article.
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
More comes out at Penn State
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6 comments:
I'll bet if they had smoked synthetic marijuana Paterno wouldn't even have made them miss one whole game against a much easier opponent!
Other schools take bad behavior far more seriously. If you were to hit some guy in the head with a beer bottle at a different school, you'd be off the team permanently.
Kicking a guy in the head in a parking lot is COMPLETELY different, though. For that, a booster supplies you with the highest priced lawyer in the state and you get the charges dismissed in time for the biggest game of the year. We all understand that!
I remember Paterno's reaction to the Florida State player being accused of rape a few years ago -- the player, AJ Nicholson, was a known trouble-maker, who had gotten a DUI and charges of resisting arrest. But Paterno said the following about the situation:
“There’s so many people gravitating to these kids. He may not have even known what he was getting into, Nicholson. They knock on the door; somebody may knock on the door; a cute girl knocks on the door. What do you do?”
I don't know, coach, WHAT DO YOU DO?
Don't think Nicholson was ever convicted of the rape, but he has been far from trouble-free since. He was cut by the Bengals after a domestic assult situation with his girlfriend. He also was convicted of burglary and grand theft in 2007.
Paterno's default appears to be that anyone who is good for his (or anyone's else's) football program IS above the law and above consequence. I don't know if that's because he's 160 years old or if he's just an idiot.
I wonder how many other people over the years have been the victims of crimes committed by Penn State players and never saw any justice because of Paterno's influence.
i tend to think that paterno in this instance is probably handling his team like other coaches would do. most all schools have episodes of bad behavior. perhaps , the whole college scene across america is out of control.
i dont disagree with his tendency not be run over by the press or some non-atheletic administrator
at the University. joe paterno , or any coach should not be criticized for wanting control over his team. If a player gets caught stealing laptops or smoking a joint, I am not against Joe Paterno organization taking responsibility for their actions and trying to build and influence a young man's life.
That being said, this subject has no bearing on protecting a child pederast/ rapist / predator.
Yes, Frugal Gal...too bad coaches too often no longer see themselves as someone who can be a positive influence on a young player. Instead, they become enablers to the detriment of the young person AND society.
The players are often pawns and too young to see that letting them avoid responsibility for their actions is not in THEIR interest.
The old goat should have gone home twenty years ago. Instead JoePa stuck around for selfish reasons and to break records while he protected a child predator on his staff and football players he thought should be treated differently by the school and law enforcement simply because they were on "his" team. It's all going to come out, and it's not going to be pretty either.
Good lesson. Never stay TOO long.
The relevance of this article is that Paterno lets football skew his sense of right and wrong.
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