The Daily Collegian reported:

The University of Nebraska took the national football championship from the Nittany Lions, but Penn State might be stealing Nebraska's chancellor for its next University president.

Andrew Loudon, University of Nebraska-Lincoln student body president and student regent, confirmed yesterday that Nebraska Chancellor Graham Spanier will be in Hershey today for the Penn State University Board of Trustees meeting.

[...]

Loudon said Spanier's strength at Nebraska lies in academics, but he is also known as a liberal individual who pushes an aggressive social agenda.

"He very much focuses on affirmative action and a pro-homosexual agenda," Loudon said.

I think it was port that said it really is a church/religion. Now it seems that is the perfect analogy anyone can make about this. This is protection of the clergy... just happens to be college football clergy.

When this all came out I, like a lot of people with Penn State connections (in my case, father, uncle, and two cousins, along with a lot of high school friends are all alumni) thought that Paterno couldn't have really known what was going on.  He was by all accounts a good, honest guy who held his players to a much higher academic standard than almost any other coach with a successful D1 program.  He worked for a salary below market value, and gave a lot of what he did make back to the university.  He was involved in charity, accessible to students, players, and fans, and just seemed like an all around great guy.  And then there was this.  I can't square it, really - how does someone like Paterno let child ass rape slide like that?  It seems he had to have known that something happened in '98, and then again in '01, and he just let it be swept under the rug.  He failed morally and possibly legally (although at this point, with him being dead and all, that part is kind of a moot point).  His legacy is not just tarnished but completely destroyed (they should rename the library - seriously - he doesn't deserve to be remembered in any positive way) and the football program is tarnished pretty much irredeemably and forever.  The university can perhaps redeem itself, but not if they keep clinging to the notion that this was just a matter of a few bad apples - this was a deeply rooted institutional problem that was caused by everyone at Penn State and all their fans, for the worship that they offered Joe which made him feel unaccountable to anyone but himself.  I'll even take some blame myself, even as a casual fan, for making the same mistake everyone else did and trusting the man unconditionally.  If there is one thing to learn from this, it's that nobody deserves that level of adoration - even the "best" people are capable of making huge, horrendous mistakes.

Allons-y!

    I would like to add, perhaps humbly, perhaps not, a little perspective on the situation. First off, most of the folks I knew in academia knew quite well that they were in a vulnerable position if a student decided to make a false accusation- or a true one!- when it came to inappropriate sexual contact, or even suggestion. Though they don't often act like it, football programs are part of a university setting, and that makes administration inaction even more damning than it might be at, say, a large corporation. Add in that football coaches, from what I understand, are expected to have way more impact and knowledge about their kids and coworkers than even teachers on campus, and the notion that Paterno didn't know (as his family has stated) what Sandusky was doing becomes highly untenable.
     When it comes to Sandusky, what struck me during the trial was just how active he was. It wasn't as if the university failed to catch a guy who diddled a kid every five years or so-- Sandusky sounds like he was frequently cultivating his next target(s) even while consummating his current crime. Add in getting caught in the showers (how many times did he not get caught?) and I get the image that this man knew very well just how secure his position was, even if there had been a couple setbacks. This could be out of a serious lack of respect for the abilities of those who were supposed to keep an eye on him, but I believe Sandusky knew well just how willing the heads of a major football program are willing to look the other way.

Ex ignorantia ad sapientiam; e luce ad tenebras

The Joe Paterno statue at Penn State will be removed and replaced with this statue from Seattle's Olympic Sculpture Park.

This is an absolute travesty. I was one of the people who initially felt that the firing of Paterno was unjustified because it was simply a last ditch attempt by the President to avoid the blame in the situation. Like port1080, I thought that of all people, Joe Paterno could never be involved in something like this. Everybody else, sure. Well, it turns out that obviously they all had to know. And that's unacceptable. I can't imagine what possessed them to turn a blind eye to this garbage. It's not like they even tried to control the guy - get him professional help, keep him away from children, anything. That's completely insane. The NCAA should shut down the PSU football program, let all the athletes transfer elsewhere and just call it a day. Cut the board, cut all the administrators. Fire everybody even tangentially involved. Of course, none of this can make the horror that the victims went through any better, but it's a first step. A first step that should have been taken a long time ago. I mean, this crap was going on back when I was in high school. Outrageous.

I don't know what else to say.

On a related note, I was considering going to online school for a M.A. in Criminal Justice, part time. Penn State's World Campus was on the list. Looks like I can scratch that one from the running. I wonder if the number of applications and such they get will decrease over the next few years?

America! I could teach you, but I'd have to charge.

And now there are calls to review how the Culture of Denial at Penn State affected other investigations.

Full disclosure: My undergrad was at Penn State.  While I enjoyed football weekends, I rarely went to the games my last couple of years there.  I also, as a res life employee, found the football players to be amongst the most cooperative in dealing with the requirements-- both legit and stupid-- that we were required to impose.  For example, if I got a noise complaint about a party and it was being thrown by a football player, all I had to do was find a football player and he would get it under control; if it was a non-football party, I had a hell of a time just finding someone who would admit to knowing anyone who lived there.

Anyway, my two cents on the Freeh report:

1. Prior to the report, I thought it highly unlikely that Paterno didn't know what was going on.  That said, a lot of people seem to be saying that even if you didn't believe so beforehand, you can't, in the face of the report, say Paterno didn't know.  I'm trying to figure out what the damning evidence is.  No interviews of the major players.  The only thing that seems to implicate Paterno is three emails from Curley, only one of which unequivocally reference a discussion with Paterno; that one was in 2001 which would still be in line with Paterno's previous sworn testimony.  Admittedly, I haven't read the whole report but have only paid attention to the news to see what specific mentions of Paterno were in it.

2. I wouldn't object at all if Penn State football gets the death penalty.  The only argument I can see against it is that NCAA sanctions are generally used to punish things that can't be punished with the legal system; I hardly find that compelling.