I am heading to a PSU men's hoops game tonight and will be with some folks from the university, one connected to the Athletic Department.
Tell them we're with 'em.
Hard as the majority of the hounds on this board have been baying on the trail of the Penn State officialdom and coachdom, the cumulative arguments of the unsilent minority have finally sunk in with me. In a dream last night the truth finally came. So to make amends for my prior attitude on the case, I’ll share it with the board.
Jerry Sandusky was and is a prince among men, tirelessly devoting his time and energy to expanding the world of underprivileged youth. He developed such a rapport with the kids that others, such as their parents, occasionally grew jealous and provoked misunderstandings like occurred in 1998. That matter was thoroughly investigated and it was concluded that Sandusky had behaved even better than he claimed.
The prosecutor at the time was so embarrassed by even having looked into the activities of the sainted Sandusky that he decided to dispose of the evidence of his disgraceful suspicions. He threw his computer and its hard drive separately into the river and then disposed of himself even more thoroughly.
For his part, Sandusky, though he was Joe Pa’s heir apparent, decided to retire at age 55 to spend more time with the boys. But still the jealous critics would not be stilled.
Fortunately they never got hold of the snoopy janitors, who couldn’t seem to fathom anyone else’s efforts to promote cleanliness and hygiene in the showers.
But then in 2002 some drunken graduate assistant coach wandered into the locker room in the evening, where he shouldn’t have been, and heard the sounds of those janitors slapping their mops around. The sound conjured up a hallucinatory vision of Sandusky and a boy, possibly triggered by the provocative title of Sandusky’s autobiography
Touched: The Jerry Sandusky Story, published the preceding year.
Having sobered up but still haunted by his hallucination, the grad assistant went the next morning to see Joe Pa. Joe told him he was reporting to the wrong guy, and stopped him before he could waste his time talking about what he thought he’d seen. “I’ll handle this,” said Joe. “Wail 'til you're called. You must give your report to the proper person.”
Joe then summoned his boss to his home (being one of the few people who can summon their bosses when they wish). “Curley,” Joe said, “Jerry may have been horsing around again. Do your duty, and although it’d be very nice if this didn’t get out to hurt our football program . . . and the University, of course . . . I want you and Schultz to pursue it to the full extent. Let the chips fall where they may, within the University walls.”
So Curley and Schultz investigated, interviewed the grad assistant and left no stone unturned. They eventually concluded that nothing had happened at all. So there it sat. But the prosecutorial hounds would not stop baying, and now they’ve brought false charges based on the scanty evidence of alleged assaults on only 20 or so boys, and they've quibbled about the conscientious investigation by PSU in which the files are so blank that they prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that nothing happened.
Since then those so willing to condemn the PSU officialdom have been acting like Nazis and genocidal African tribes. Thankfully, students have rioted on campus in a counter-display of violence aimed at protecting the innocent football program and its iconic, but fired, head coach. Well, we have to keep our priorities straight, do we not?
