For the First Time in a Long Time,...........I Cried Last Night

by Tiller56 on Nov 9, 2011 8:09 PM EST

As many of you already know, I grew up in a Penn State Family. My Grandmother was a 1935 Grad of Penn State. 3/4 of my adult family, including myself, attended the university. My dad swears to this day that I came home from the hospital in a Navy Blue and White striped beanie. My Saturday afternoons were spent sitting next to my day on our familie's couch watching the man in the thick glasses, with highwaters up to his knees, guide the most boring offense in college football to victory after victory against the elite teams in the nation, and I loved every minute of it.

I learned names like Tim Manoa, and Steve Smith. I collected autographs of D.J. Dozier and Blair Thomas. I watched the 1986 Orange Bowl on VHS, over and over again. I was in the tunnel when BYU came to Happy Valley in a night game, and gave a high-five to Ty Detmer before he took the field. I was in Pasadena to witness the first ever Rose Bowl Penn State played in as a member of the Big10; a 38-20 pounding of helpless Oregon. I was at Beaver Stadium to wittness the Lavar Leap, and saw first hand when we lost in the final seconds to Michigan at the Big House.

One of the first tee shirts I can remember having as a kid said: "If God Isn't a Penn State Fan, Then Why is the Sky Blue and White". Every fall, my dad would search the stores for black Nike football cleats with a white swoosh, just like the ones Penn State would wear, for me to play midget football in. We never found black ones in my size, so I always wore white as a kid, but in my mind, they were black.

I can remember sitting at my grandmothers house on Saturday watching the game(she never missed one - even on the day she died, she was watching the game before she passed), and listening to her curse at that damn Paterno for calling what she deemed as a stupid play; yet in the next room, on a small wooden desk, sat a cardboard stand-up Joe. It very conveniently stood beneath a diploma bearing her name, which hung next to a plaque that showed a picture of Old Main, with the words "For the Glory" written above. A brick is cemented in the new wall at Beaver Stadium bearing her name, with the same words, "For the Glory" etched below.

Last night I lay in bed trying to sleep, but sleep did not arrive; only tears. It has honestly been years since I have cried, and the emotions I felt last night were only human for someone who has invested a large part of their life enthralled in the aura that was Penn State.

I was embarrased, ashamed, confused, and angry at what had happened over the last 3 days. In my mind, I kept replaying the words of our Alma Mater, that I had learned, and sung so many times as a kid. The last verse is the one that brought tears to my eyes:

May no act of ours bring shame
To one heart that loves thy name,
May our lives but swell thy fame,
Dear old State, dear old State.

It is a truely tough time for me. I turn on ESPN, and all I hear is Paterno, Penn State.......... I get text messages and calls from from friends throughout the day, asking what the hell is going on. I go to practice in the evening, and the kids all ask, what happened to Joe?

Do I want to see Joe go? Yes. Did I ever imagine, in my wildest dreams that it would end like this? No.

Keith Jackson once said of Joseph Vincent Paterno: "His mother wanted a doctor, his daddy wanted a lawyer or engineer; and all they got was a legend". Well, that legend now has a scarlet letter sewn to the breast of the plaid sports jacket he once so proudly wore, and the legacy he left behind for all of college football as we know it will never be the same.

I have no answers; not to the people who ask questions, nor for myself, so I do what any other person in my spot would do when faced with this situation.......................I cry.

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It sucks

I always respected Penn state for the greatness they’ve hadand I hate to see this cast such a dark shadow over a great school (I was able to see the school this summer it was awesome).

Don't feed the TROLL!...You have been warned.

by the maroon bird on Nov 9, 2011 8:40 PM EST via mobile reply actions

It does suck.

Nobody’s perfect though. The bad stuff that went down doesn’t mean that a lot of good stuff didn’t go down too. JoePa was still a great football coach. Those great players were still great and the games were still great (I loved that Rose Bowl game too because I hate the Oregon Duck football team more than any other team—including the Cowboys). You and all the other PSU fans still had a great time watching games with friends and family. This is a rough spot in the experience of PSU fandom, but there’s still been a lot of good and there’ll be more good down the road.

Sorry you gotta deal with this.

"Dominant" is an adjective.
"Dominate" is a verb.
We'll work on "Dominance" once we get the first two figured out.

by Reedskin on Nov 9, 2011 9:07 PM EST reply actions

"You can act like a man! What's the matter with you? Is this what you've become, a Hollywood finocchio who cries like a woman?"

by Obey on Nov 9, 2011 11:13 PM EST reply actions

this is obviously "deeper than football"

this is his tears and joy, this is his blood, this is his LIFE!

by ATLredskin on Nov 10, 2011 1:17 AM EST up reply actions

It is truly tragic when we realize our Gods are just men.

Sorry for your pain man. Pray for those children.

Cut Brandon "Stabby" Banks. That is all.

by 64ShagginWagon on Nov 10, 2011 1:26 AM EST reply actions

Sorry but...

In one way I can understand his position in “I did what I was required to do” but that isn’t enough. When a person comes to you and reports what Sandusky was doing in that shower, it requires a call to the cops…. not reporting it to your supervisor the next day. Truth is Paterno should have retired years ago. Being 84 and coaching is just wrong. If the subtext for staying on the job is to get the all-time wins record that’s wrong too because it plays into what happened. I’m not knocking the coach, I’m knocking the human being who fell down on the job and essentially enabled this predator to continue. It’s the way this society operates..when something goes wrong in an institution a lot of people have to fall on the sword. He’s just one of the victims but not the real victims.

by DudleyDoright on Nov 10, 2011 9:15 AM EST reply actions

I'm not saying Paterno won't end up deserving some blame...

but I think that if you look at it from his perspective, it makes sense. Imagine that you’ve worked for 30 years with one of your close friends. Then one day some guy you barely know shows up and tells you that he saw your buddy raping a kid in the shower. You should investigate, but you’d probably be compelled to believe that your friend wouldn’t do that. So Paterno went to the administration and reported the incident. Then they come back and tell him, “We looked into it, everything’s cool.” So now you’ve got your close friend, plus your school’s administration against the word of a grad student. In that situation, I don’t know if I go to the police either. Honestly, isn’t that responsibility on the grad student—you know, the person who actually (allegedly) saw the incident happen?

It’s a little weird to me that JoePa allegedly didn’t ask Sandusky about it. I can see how that would be a really awkward thing to ask your friend about, but it’s a conversation that probably should have happened, and one that might have allowed Paterno to gain more insight into what really happened. On the other hand, his buddy might have just said, “Hell no,” and Paterno might have trusted him, and nothing would be different.

What you would really hope is that Paterno would have looked into things a little further. Sure, I probably don’t go straight to the cops with hearsay that could send my trusted friend to jail, but I would probably look into things a bit. I’d start paying close attention to how he acts around the kids he’s working with. But maybe he did look into it, and maybe he never saw anything fishy, which leads me to point of all this speculation…

Really, everybody needs to postpone crucifying Paterno until we know what he actually knew—and we may never know that. Heck, even if Paterno knew about any of the incident reports before the grad student thing, those WERE investigated by police and no charges were filed. Honestly, until we know more, I find it hard to fault Paterno for any of his actions (or lack thereof) that we actually know about. Right now it just seems to me like there’s a horrible situation going on at Penn State, Paterno is at Penn State, so people assume he had to have done something wrong. That’s not a bad basis for making a guess or having a gut feeling about his involvement, but it’s no basis at all for making definitive statements of his guilt.

"Dominant" is an adjective.
"Dominate" is a verb.
We'll work on "Dominance" once we get the first two figured out.

by Reedskin on Nov 10, 2011 10:44 AM EST up reply actions

except that

JoePa and PSU officials continued to let the Pedophiler come to and bring kids to PSU campus facilities after 1998 when the 1st reported shower incident (according to the indictment and that we know of so far) was reported to PSU Police and authorities. So really all of them are “enablers” of a Pedophiler and all are worthy of being indicted….unfortunately for the legacy of one of the greatest coaches in the game. It’s a sad day.

I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.

by GeoFly on Nov 10, 2011 11:05 AM EST up reply actions

I'm really just talking about Paterno here.

How do you know that Paterno knew anything about the 1998 incident, let alone the statements Sandusky made in that conversation with the mother when police were hiding in another room? Charges were never filed and the media didn’t get ahold of it back then, so how do we assume that Paterno knew about it? You’re not wrong in saying that Paterno allowed an alleged pedophile to run his camps at PSU, but how do you know that Paterno knew he was an alleged pedophile at that point? The only time we KNOW Paterno knew something was the 2002 incident. My earlier post explains why I don’t think we can crucify Paterno for that. He didn’t want to go to the cops against his friend based on hearsay—in fact, Paterno even says that the witness wasn’t very specific with him about what happened, just that something bad/inappropriate went down. Paterno never actually saw anything. He reported it to his bosses, who said that they investigated it and found no issue. So he trusted his friend and bosses against the word of a man who also didn’t go to the police, despite the fact that he was the only person claiming to have actually witnessed anything.

Even if you want to guess that JoePa knew about multiple accusations against Sandusky, there’s not any hard evidence to back that guess up. You can’t go around stating guesses as facts until you prove them.

Following the 2002 incident, I haven’t read anything about Sandusky’s Second Mile camps continuing at PSU (if they did, that’s the only thing I think anyone can really get on Paterno for, and even then, I think there’s a decent defense). In fact, PSU took away his locker room keys and reported the incident to The Second Mile.

Also, regardless of what you might guess about Paterno’s actions on a moral basis, he did nothing wrong from a legal standpoint, so no, he’s not worthy of being indicted.

Based on his own statements from the 1998 incident, Sandusky definitely did something wrong. Repeated accusations against him are evidence he may have done more. If the Janitor from the 2000 incident saw what he said he saw, he was wrong for not going to the cops. Ditto for the grad student in 2002. Based on current evidence, I just don’t see what Paterno did that was willfully wrong. We don’t know that he hid anything he knew about. We don’t even know that he knew that much.

"Dominant" is an adjective.
"Dominate" is a verb.
We'll work on "Dominance" once we get the first two figured out.

by Reedskin on Nov 10, 2011 12:39 PM EST up reply actions

Sorry, but

Your just dead wrong here. In a case like this, there is no “chain of command”. Paterno admitted that the GA told him he witnessed “touching and horsing around” in the shower. Not only did Paterno not go directly to the cops, he didn’t even tell his bosses until the next day.
A guy called into Danny Rouhier’s show last night with the perfect explanation for this. What if it ha neen one of his own grand kids that was being raped? Would he have waited until it was convenient, then only told his supervisor then? Not a chance.

I don’t care about Penn State one way or the other. But I do know that, until now, Paterno was one of the most respectable people in all of sports. Because of that, I am choosing to give him the benefit of the doubt, and go with the line of thinking that he was simply turning a blind eye to the mistakes of a close friend. That’s awful, yes. But the alternative is that he did it to preserve his legacy. Which would be disgusting.

What keeps getting lost in a lot of the stuff I hear and read, is that this is NOT about a legacy, it is NOT about football, and it is NOT about a university. It is about children. Children whose lives are forever changed, for the worse. And not JUST because of one man. Some of these victims could have been saved by people speaking up. This guy had been running this program since 1977. I have a hard time believing it took him twenty years to act on his heinous impulses. There’s no doubt in my mind that he did this many times before, and that someone, somewhere, along the way witnessed it.

If I’m McCreary, Paterno, Schultz, ,Curley, that janitor or his supervisor, I simply don’t sleep at night knowing that my inaction most likely helped other children get raped.

I’m sorry if this is too harsh, but I have strong feelings about this. I have 3 girls, and something like this terrifies the shit outta me. That piece of shit Sandusky deserves 100 times more than what’s coming to him. He will probably get off easy by hanging himself. Paterno, deserves what he got. No more, because he didn’t “break the law”, but no less either, because he didn’t go by the moral code he had set for himself, and preached to others, his entire life.

The victims and their families deserve the most thoughts,prayers, and respect in all of this. Next to them, i feel sorry for the football players who’s college careers will most likely be ruined because of this. And I also feel bad for the Penn State community, and alumni, who deserve so much better than to have their cherished university forever stained by the sick, twisted, DISGUSTING acts of a ~~man~~ monster who does not deserve to walk this earth, let alone walk the halls and represent such a proud, respected, University.

Where do they teach you to talk like this? In some Panama City "Sailor wanna hump-hump" bar, or is it getaway day and your last shot at his whiskey? Sell crazy someplace else, we're all stocked up here.

by CJHutch on Nov 10, 2011 2:24 PM EST up reply actions

I get what you're trying to say, and I agree that child molestation is a horrible thing.

But you have to remember that all JoePa had was hearsay. Imagine you’ve worked with a guy for 30 years. He’s your friend. You trust him. You trust him more than this grad assistant who you’ve probably known 1-5 years, and who you don’t have the same type of personal relationship with. So when the GA tells you something like that, you’re not just going to completely know he’s telling the truth. You’re going to doubt him, because you don’t believe your friend would do something like that. In that situation, wouldn’t you (as Paterno) expect that the GA, the actual eyewitness, would go to the cops? And when he didn’t, wouldn’t that make you doubt his story even more? When one person tells you that he saw your friend do a horrible thing, it’s not insane not to go straight to the cops, and it’s not insane to doubt the incident. JoePa trusted that the eyewitness would go to the cops if his story were true. He assumed that school officials were telling him the truth when they told him they’d investigated the incident, and that they didn’t see reason to take action against Sandusky.

I think you’re right that Paterno will feel horrible about this for the rest of his life. Anybody would. But Paterno didn’t see anything. He didn’t know anything for sure. So far, all I see that he did wrong was to trust his close friend and school authorities over a GA who didn’t go to the cops with the incident that he witnessed. It was a mistake, but honestly, I’m not sure that most people don’t make that same mistake. Given the situation, I don’t find his actions unreasonable. People make it seem like Paterno chose to protect his friend or turn a blind eye even though he KNEW about the molestation, but I don’t think that’s it at all. I think he chose to trust the people who made the most sense to trust.

And while Paterno is easier to get caught up in talking about, I agree that, first and foremost, people should be thinking of the victims, and then of everyone at PSU who feel horrible that their school’s reputation has this black mark on it.

I don’t really expect to sway your opinion—you obviously have very strong feelings. This is just honestly the way I feel about Paterno’s actions.

"Dominant" is an adjective.
"Dominate" is a verb.
We'll work on "Dominance" once we get the first two figured out.

by Reedskin on Nov 10, 2011 10:33 PM EST up reply actions

Look, I do understand

Where you’re coming from. I get that this guy was a longtime friend of Paterno. But if he felt the situation warranted telling his boss, then it warranted telling the cops. This is not shoplifting a Snickers bar. It’s too serious of an issue to simply dismiss. I am pretty sure most people, and and ANYONE without something to lose, and would have called the police. Or, if at the very least, confronted Sandusky immediately.

by CJHutch on Nov 11, 2011 1:35 AM EST via mobile up reply actions

We will here very soon from Paterno

and his side of the story will be made public.

Crying Lion

by Tiller56 on Nov 11, 2011 6:48 AM EST up reply actions

Then again

Maybe not. Kind of disappointing, I was looking forward to hearing from him.

by CJHutch on Nov 11, 2011 6:32 PM EST up reply actions 1 recs

I guess

but as the Chinese Philosopher once said………….. “We’ll See.”

I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.

by GeoFly on Nov 10, 2011 4:00 PM EST up reply actions

Told by a graduate assistant in 2002 that former Nittany Lions defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky had sexually assaulted a boy, believed to be 10 years old, in the showers of Penn State’s football complex, Paterno did nothing more than inform athletics director Tim Curley and university vice president Gary Schultz of the allegations. Paterno never personally called police. His son, Scott Paterno, told the Philadelphia Inquirer on Wednesday that his father never even asked Sandusky — his assistant coach for three decades and who was once considered his heir apparent — about the incident.

THIS is the reason. Quote from ESPN.

by DudleyDoright on Nov 10, 2011 9:43 AM EST reply actions

Might as well be gospel.

/rolls eyes

"No one ever accomplishes anything alone in football. We all like to think that we can, but that's just not true. It's always been a team game, always will be." - Tom Dempsey

"Leadership is getting someone to do what they don’t want to do, to achieve what they want to achieve." - Tom Landry

by jakezze01 on Nov 19, 2011 11:10 PM EST up reply actions

Paterno has gone from hero to pariah

Only Paterno could have destroyed himself, 400+ wins doesn’t mean shit compared to the suffering he allowed. I cant believe a man so respected and trusted acted in this manner.

by alwaysremember21 on Nov 10, 2011 9:55 AM EST reply actions

I am truly sorry for the pain your family must feel

A institution that has been such a huge part for that many generations of your family, on institution that everyone viewed as doing things the right way, has turned out to be worse than anyone could imagine.
Real men, great men never condone or belong to organizations where such abuses have a chance of being perpetrated Without grave consequences.
This is a slap in the face for all of us, not just the Penn State family. The only way in my opinion for Joe Paterno to save any face at all was to resign immediately and condemn everyone else who had knowledge of these incidents; sadly, neither the nor anyone else of that institution did anything like that. It has me shaking my head in wonder at what our society has become-a place where money and power are valued more than the rights of people and the innocence of children.

The world looks mighty different when you're peeking out your belly button

by Skins Fan '77 on Nov 10, 2011 11:03 AM EST reply actions 1 recs

Man, you almost made me cry

I tried thinking last night what would happen if something like this happened to Joe Gibbs and the Redskins. It’s really the only way I can try to imagine something like this on a personal level since Loyola College doesn’t have any national stage athletics. It’d be very easy for me to walk away from the Skins at that point, but obviously alma maters are a much different bag – one you are tied to for life. It’s a shame so many good PSU people are affected by this. Man, I have no words, but am glad you do.

Either way, well said and chin up.

"Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, first make sure that you’re not, in fact, surrounded by assholes." - William Gibson

by Kevin Ewoldt on Nov 10, 2011 11:58 AM EST reply actions

Damn, I'm sorry

I got rapped up in my rant without paying the proper respect to what you had to say Tiller. I truly feel for you dude. Like Kevin said,I really don’t know what to say. The word condolences keeps popping up in my head. I know that ain’t quite right, but it’s all I can think of. I’m sorry for you man, I really am.

by CJHutch on Nov 10, 2011 2:33 PM EST reply actions

Tiller…

My condolences to you, your family and friends and the entire Penn State family.

Editor at Alligator Army - The Florida Gators Blog
The Florida Gators - The most despised team in all of college football - Which is fantastic.

by FlaGators on Nov 10, 2011 3:29 PM EST reply actions

I appreciate your willingness to share.

This is the best writing I’ve seen you do, Tiller. No solace, I’m sure. The Penn State community at large should not need to bear the shame of this horrific reality. They are in no way the biggest victims here, but it is a burden that they did not earn nonetheless. Thanks for being open about it.

Jarvis Jenkins
Kory Lichtensteiger
Tim Hightower
Santana Moss
Chris Cooley
Phillip Buchanon
Byron Westbrook
Tashard Choice
Oshiomoghu Atogwe

by Jim America on Nov 10, 2011 10:01 PM EST reply actions 1 recs

I understand to a degree what you are feeling Tiller

I’m not a Penn St. alum, so it’s not even close to the way you are feeling right now, but I had some of the same thoughts. My Pap Pap, who is my only living grandparent, worked at Penn St. for around 30 years. He was on the main campus for a lot of that as the head cook, as well as managed the food and beverage area. He was pretty good friends with Paterno, and very good friends with Sandusky while he was there. He retired around 1990 though, so as far as we know, none of this was going on then. All I could think of was him and how devastated he would be when he found out about this. He lives and breaths Penn St. football, and he’s 85 now. One of his sons went there (my uncle), my uncle’s son and daughter as well. I feel for everyone that’s associated with the university and hope the people that are left after the dust settles are strong enough to lead that university back to being as respected as they were prior to Nov. 5th. Take care and as the saying goes, time always heals.

by tmarine17 on Nov 11, 2011 3:16 PM EST reply actions

Thank you to everyone for all the kind thoughts

it’s somewhat superficial on my part to be so inthralled in a situation like the one that has happened at PSU, but it really bothered me, and although this is a Redskins board, I consider you all(as Ken so eliquently put in a post 2 weeks ago)my family.

It was something I needed to get off my chest, and I appreciate you taking the time to read this, and having an understanding of where my head and heart are at this time.

Again, thanks to all.

Crying Lion

by Tiller56 on Nov 12, 2011 7:27 AM EST reply actions

I find it funny

That 90% of the focus is on Paterno. Paterno had no factual information to report to anybody. The “eye-witness” had the responsibility to notify police, NOT PATERNO. Why does nobody see that the grad student was the Eye Witness, and the grad student had an obligation to tell police what he saw. The only reason Paterno even got involved was because the grad student told paterno INSTEAD of immediately notifying police of one of the most horrendous crimes an eye-witness could ever witness. In fact, I’m sure Paterno probably told the grad student he should notify the police of what he saw.

If a person tells you they witnessed a serious crime… then that person never notifies the police, would you believe them? The eye-witness is the only person who had the factual information that the police needed.

I would hope that anybody here that witnesses such a thing would immediately notify the police, and NOT a college football coach, or somebody else who has no experience in law enforcement.

My two cents.

by Kurtstack on Nov 12, 2011 11:20 AM EST reply actions

And yes

The university made the right PR move to fire paterno. Paterno certainly told them I’m not leaving unless you fire me.

by Kurtstack on Nov 12, 2011 11:21 AM EST up reply actions

the first failure was on Mcqueary for not stopping it outright when he saw it

but Paterno covering it up is bad as well, he should have been fired on saturday

by alwaysremember21 on Nov 12, 2011 12:58 PM EST up reply actions

I just hope

That if you ever witness a rape, you don’t run to tell your dad and a college football coach, but instead beat the pulp out of the guy, then call 9-1-1. Mcqueary got off easier than Paterno. Unacceptable.

by Kurtstack on Nov 14, 2011 1:12 PM EST up reply actions

Yea, I don’t know how anyone can walk away from a kid in that situation. Horrible.

"Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, first make sure that you’re not, in fact, surrounded by assholes." - William Gibson

by Kevin Ewoldt on Nov 14, 2011 2:39 PM EST up reply actions

I agree completely with all of this.

Hearing someone SAY that they saw your close friend doing something illegal is not usually grounds for going to the police. It might’ve been grounds for asking your friend some tough questions, but the onus is on the eyewitness to go to the cops.

"Dominant" is an adjective.
"Dominate" is a verb.
We'll work on "Dominance" once we get the first two figured out.

by Reedskin on Nov 16, 2011 11:09 AM EST up reply actions

Supposedly he(McQuerry) did go to the cops - he's not allowed to comment. It's the law.

what we heard in the grand jury report, was not everything that happened. Also, remember, wittnesses are not allowed to talk about their testimony.

Crying Lion

by Tiller56 on Nov 16, 2011 12:29 PM EST up reply actions

Both law enforcement agencies with jurisdiction on campus say McQueary is a liar.

No police reports were filed.
And I agree w/ Kurt.
I also feel for you Tiller, even though I know condolences from a Cowboys fan are only worth…well…they’re probably not worth anything to you! haha

by jakezze01 on Nov 19, 2011 11:14 PM EST up reply actions