triaddukefan
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Lets leave Penn State outta this thread please. Lets just focus on bashing UNC
New Findings May Delay UNC's Response to NCAA Allegations [merged]
- Thread starter CocoHusky
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I think you mean former coach. Sandusky retired twice in the mid to late '90s IIRC, and the abuse cases for which he was convicted began in the 2001-02 time frame - years after he was an employee - then nothing for several years, and then more cases beginning in '08. There's a reason we're going on what is it now 4 years and none of the school administrators have faced even a hint of a trial for their conspiracy and cover up related charges. If it was a clear case of a willful cover up, those guys would already be wearing orange and making license plates with Sandusky. Further the NCAA was so scared of more of their internal communications coming out about how/why they punished the school that they folded and unwound all the sanctions which is an unheard of action by the NCAA (wonder what they were covering up that they didn't want to get out?). Furthermore the Freeh Report that everyone used to slam Penn State is falling apart quicker than a Walmart shirt after a few washes as more people put the facts together that contradict some of the things presented. I'm not for child abuse or anything, but I'm also not for destroying reputations for personal gain, and certainly those that are emotional over such cases like this one should never be placed in a position to make important decisions that affect others.
KnightBridgeAZ
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Thanks, HoopsFan - a good evocation. I don't think the truth about the apparent "cover-up" will ever be completely known, but the only 2 things I consider certain are that Sandusky was a very evil person and there were a lot of folks at Penn State that didn't believe that and acted accordingly. The one point I thought was missed at the beginning was - had he been outed / arrested / etc. from the start, I don't see that it would have had a huge affect on the future of the Penn State program. A football player isn't going to the school because a former coach was a child molester? Someone wasn't donating because a former coach was a child molester? Instead, we got a mess.
triaddukefan
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CocoHusky
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You seem determined to not take Triad's advice and keep Penn State out of this.
The Freeh Report-Commissioned by PSU, concluded that former administrators Graham Spanier, Tim Curley and Gary Schultz and former football coach Joe Paterno intentionally concealed key facts about Sandusky's child sex abuse to avoid bad publicity after receiving complaints in 1998 and 2001. It also recommended more than 100 changes to school policies and procedures-ALL of which were accepted and implemented by PSU. You describe the report as "falling apart". In what way has the report fallen apart?
Joe Paterno on the scandal: "With The Benefit of Hindsight, I Wish I Had Done More".
If Joe thinks he should have done better, I agree with him. The fact Spanier, Curley & Schultz are not making licenses is not the same as saying that they did nothing wrong. Like Joe all three should have done better.
PSU '95
DaddyChoc
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you can use this in every other thread... smh
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If the NCAA didn't have jurisdiction, and I don't argue that point, why didn't/doesn't Penn and Pa'pa's family sue the NCAA for over stepping their authority and injecting sanctions.
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I understand the difference - likely more than you. However, the point you clearly missed is that the NCAA had no authority in the Penn State case, as their own private correspondence acknowledged. The culprits deserved to have the legal book thrown at them - but that was not the NCAA's job and they had no authority in their charter to do so. In the case of UNC, they clearly do have the authority.
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No one is disputing what you say above and the courts and criminal legal system addressed all you say. The point here, I think , the NCAA apparently overstepped it's authority and became involved in a Criminal Legal issue outside of the sport itself. The question that needs to be answered is : Does the NCAA have the authority or duty to add additional punishments to schools and person in sports that are above and beyond those given by the legal system?? In less emotional issues that would be called " Piling on". FYI I am not a fan of Penn St , I just think sometimes enough is enough. Remember each victim along with having the perp jailed received some compensation. I know--like PTSD this will long be remembered by the youths and the jailed perp. But the thousands of students that had nothing to do with the criminal acts are being punished by the NCAA, unlike the UNC where the immoral actions seemed to be known top to bottom at the University and for many years, it certainly was known by those whose grades and phantom classes had to be known
CocoHusky I guess you and I too are guilty of bringing PSU into the conversation on UNC.
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How dare you demean Walmart shirts--??? This high power issue that brings out these emotions now ---DIED shortly after the media thought they sucked all they could from this issue. Teachers, Ministers, Professors, Scout leaders, etc male and female all over the country have been guilty of acts similar to those spoken of here. Why isn't there a national program to stop it?? Why doesn't the NCAA sanction all those schools that had sexual depravity?? Why wasn't the University of Virginia sanctioned after the rolling stones article?? (Luckily they didn't)
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How are you going to punish the students?? Take away their Degrees? If none were earned --no harm no foul! Isn't it a bit silly of those who are now Suing UNC for not getting an education apparently had no issues with skating through classes or getting grades, and benefits for taking non classes. How do you judge what education they received?? Isn't the travel, social activities, interaction with coaches, governors, professors, mayors, Refs, in and by itself an education? How many were on track to become lawyers, math teachers, doctors, physicists ??? I see no benefit in harming the Student Athletes with any kind of punishment. Isn't Getting diplomas or certificates or grades from UNC punishment enough??
CocoHusky
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Q: How are you going to punish the students??
A: Take away their diplomas. If they want to earn a UNC diploma then UNC should offer the equivalent classes on line with some standards applied like the grading of an original paper.
Q: Take away their Degrees?
A: Absolutely they did not earn those degrees.
Q: How do you judge what education they received??
A: Same as for any other student, it is called a GPA.
Q: How many were on track to become lawyers, math teachers, doctors, physicists ???
A: If you take away the boost in GPA from the sham classes 91 UNC Student athletes would not have graduated. So at least 91 were not on this path and the ones that were on this path would have likely not needed a GPA boost. This boost was about remaining or becoming eligible nothing more.
Q: Isn't the travel, social activities, interaction with coaches, governors, professors, mayors, Refs, in and by itself an education?
A: No! That is like saying the experience of being in a fraternity or attending a Greek party contributes to my diploma. None of that factors into a GPA-a GPA determines if you get a diploma.
C: I see no benefit in harming the Student Athletes with any kind of punishment. Isn't Getting diplomas or certificates or grades from UNC punishment enough??
R: These Student Athletes were young adults when they made these bad decisions. These UNC graduates have a diploma they did not earn. Some employers might make the connection of a UNC applicant to this scandal. Most employers will not go beyond verifying that UNC awarded the diploma-unless UNC rescinds these diplomas. IMO UNC should rescind the diplomas of everyone who took a sham class, forfeit every contest (including National Championships) in which UNC used athletes that would have been otherwise ineligible without the GPA boost from these sham classes.
Icebear
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The Freeh report has completely fallen apart in that points stated as fact have been disproven to be fact, enuendoes have been revealed as baseless and even the cases of those already charged are falling apart to the point that local news reports the possibility of charges being dropped. The Freeh report may lead to suits against Freeh and the BoT by others. The Patrrno family has already filed suit. Rumors are that ESPN may be included for their over the top inaccuracies.
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Perception--Reality!! According to some psychologists (Dr Phil included) young adults until age 27 (approximate) are not fully capable of making good decisions. So these students regardless of their knowledge or classes or grades were in a pressure bound system where they required positive grades then and there to continue to be successful. And further, as pressure pushed young adults they had no reasons not to TRUST the older adults and administration. Was it wrong CERTAINLY--should the school be punished YES--should the students lose what they attained or be legally punished beyond having a UNC grade, certificate or diploma (all shall be scrutinized)
These are KIDS some never saw the inside of a University until they were recruited--nor did their parents. I doubt, very seriously, if the Legal system or UNC or the State of NC shall do anything to harm these athletes. We shall see. But nice analysis of my presentation nevertheless.
msf22b
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If there is any loss of credits, leading to losses of degrees (of which I have no strong conviction either way)
I suspect it will be instigated by the U in synch with the accrediting agency and will not be influenced by the NCAA.
in the U's (vain) hope to reestablish itself as a bone fide educational institution.
There is more to come.
The only reason the U announced its latest findings of transgressions is that the press was about to pounce on
a trove of E-mails that would have made the problems self-evident, so they anted up.
That remains the pattern, only admit what is public information or what is about to be.
And also to force Ms S' hand in the (also) vain hope that the NCAA will be modified with her head.
I suspect it will be instigated by the U in synch with the accrediting agency and will not be influenced by the NCAA.
in the U's (vain) hope to reestablish itself as a bone fide educational institution.
There is more to come.
The only reason the U announced its latest findings of transgressions is that the press was about to pounce on
a trove of E-mails that would have made the problems self-evident, so they anted up.
That remains the pattern, only admit what is public information or what is about to be.
And also to force Ms S' hand in the (also) vain hope that the NCAA will be modified with her head.
CocoHusky
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Name 1 fact from the Freeh report that has been disproven.
Name 1 of the 100 plus recommendation from the report not implemented by PSU.
Good thing about facts is that they are verifiable. The great thing about the Freeh recommendations was PSU actually published a checklist
indicating it had completed each recommendation.
KnightBridgeAZ
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There is no question (and I was an operational auditor when I worked) that controls, procedures, etc. that should have been in place at Penn State were not. Had they been in place, perhaps circumstances would have developed differently. The recommendations of the report, at least as much as I heard, seemed sound.
I think there is little question that things did not go as they should have at Penn State, and in a society that believes, at some level, in vengeance you get the Freeh report. If you investigate on-line you will find that indeed, some of Freeh's findings HAVE been called into question, and circumstances resemble Icebear's description. At issue (apparently) is that he was perhaps over-zealous in some of his investigation.
I don't doubt there were - as I noted in an earlier post - folks who did not behave as they ought to have, but as I understand it Freeh's report was purportedly colored by a preconception of the motivation for their behavior that may not have been valid.
CocoHusky
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What I read about on line are parties (The Paterno Family, The State of Pennsylvania, and some PSU Alumni & Administration) determined to litigate the findings of the report and the impact of the sanctions of the NCAA and some aspects of the Freeh report. The zeal of the investigation and some of the suppositions are fair game for litigation but that should not be confused as refuting a fact or than an entire report falling apart. Here is the difference by way of example: Finding of Fact: The Administration had a plan coordinated and documented in Email and backed up by testimony to report Sandusky to the authorities in 2001. After consulting with Joe Paterno the administration changed the plan and Sandusky was not reported. Supposition: Not reporting Sandusky in 2001 allowed more children to be hurt. The latter is simply not verifiable while the former has been verified by testimony and emails.
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1. There are a number of "facts" from the Freeh report that have been disproven. To name one, he states that Sandusky received about 70 payments from PSU for various things after his retirement. The correct number was six. A mistake of that magnitude gives at least some indication of the lack of attention to detail in the report. There were also clear misstatements of fact insofar as what email information Paterno had seen. None of this is any defense of Sandusky, whose crimes were beyond heinous, but are an indication of a rush to judgment, where the outcome was partly predetermined. As for the recommendations, there were many things wrong with PSU's system and how the incident was handled. The fact that they accepted Freeh's recommendations is completely irrelevant as to whether the report was completely or even largely correct. And whether the report was correct is completely irrelevant as to whether the NCAA had the power to do what they did. (They didn't, and they acknowledged that privately.)
One big problem with the report is that it had several large indicators of having started with a conclusion and then worked backwards. Two of the issues:
- Freeh did not interview most of the key witnesses. In the 1998 incident, for example, his team did not talk to 14 of the most important witnesses, including Schultz, Curley, the D.A.'s office, the Department of Public Welfare, the Penn State police department, and the police department's attorney. This same sort of ignoring witnesses occurred in the 2001 review. The report went on to report on what and why these people did, despite not having interviewed them. Why would Freeh's team not have spoken to all of these witnesses if it was a legitimate investigation?
- Freeh's team did not have subpoena power, and no one testified under oath. Also witnesses were allowed to speak anonymously. These two things greatly impaired the credibility of the report,as they would impair the conclusion of any investigation.
http://espn.go.com/pdf/2013/0210/espn_otl_FINAL KING&SPAULDING2.pdf
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[QUOTE="CocoHusky, post: 1391247, member: 5823" The zeal of the investigation and some of the suppositions are fair game for litigation but that should not be confused as refuting a fact or than an entire report falling apart. Here is the difference by way of example: Finding of Fact: The Administration had a plan coordinated and documented in Email and backed up by testimony to report Sandusky to the authorities in 2001. After consulting with Joe Paterno the administration changed the plan and Sandusky was not reported. Supposition: Not reporting Sandusky in 2001 allowed more children to be hurt. The latter is simply not verifiable while the former has been verified by testimony and emails.[/QUOTE]
Additional supposition: that Paterno knew about the change in plan, that Paterno influenced the change in plan, or that Paterno approved the change in plan. There is no evidence in the Freeh report or elsewhere to draw a conclusion about that. And there are no emails to support or refute it.
Additional supposition: that Paterno knew about the change in plan, that Paterno influenced the change in plan, or that Paterno approved the change in plan. There is no evidence in the Freeh report or elsewhere to draw a conclusion about that. And there are no emails to support or refute it.
Icebear
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http://www.sbnation.com/college-foo...paterno-family-freeh-report-outside-the-lines
Other major findings include:
- The allegation is false that Joe Paterno participated in a conspiracy to cover up Sandusky's actions because of a fear of bad publicity or for any other reason.
- There is no evidence to support the allegation that the football culture at Penn State was somehow to blame for Sandusky's crimes. Former Attorney General Dick Thornburgh says that including such a claim, with no factual basis to support it, undermines the credibility of the entire report.
- Freeh's failure to conduct interviews with most of the key witnesses is a glaring deficiency. In the 1998 incident, for example, Freeh's investigators failed to interview at least 14 of the most important witnesses, including Curley, Schultz, the District Attorney's office, the Department of Public Welfare and the University's police department or its outside legal counsel. This pattern was repeated in the 2001 review. Having never talked with these individuals, the Freeh report still claimed to know what they did and why they did it.
- Freeh investigators did not have subpoena power, and no one testified under oath. Worse, witnesses were allowed to speak anonymously, something that would never happen in a legitimate legal proceeding.
- The conspiracy claim made by the Freeh report based on a string of three emails falls apart under scrutiny. Because of a technology switch in 2004, most of the Penn State emails for the time in question are not accessible. Moreover, there are no emails authored by Joe Paterno and none that he received. In fact, the emails referenced by the Freeh report show that Joe Paterno knew few details about Sandusky, that he acted in good faith and that he did what he thought was right based on what he knew at the time.
- The validity and thoroughness of the Freeh report was oversold to the public, leading to the report being accepted in full and without review by The Board of Trustees and the NCAA.
For even better detail find Jim Clemente's and Dick Thornburg's full reports.
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The Athletic Director's email chain that is often quoted as the smoking gun that Paterno directed a cover up clearly stated that he (the A.D.) changed his mind about the plan to report Sandusky. I mean come on, he's taking full responsibility for that decision, so how can you pin it on anyone but the guy saying he made the call? I mean, good god, it's freakin' memorialized in an email authored by the accused. Not to mention one of the prosecutors on the case (I think his name was Frank Fina maybe? It was a 60 Minutes interview a while back) said that through the various interviews that the State Attorney's Office conducted with Paterno, they found no evidence that he participated in a cover up. That kind of puts to bed the idea that if he were still alive he'd be charged too. Don't forget that PSU's entire connection to this is based on that assistant coach's recollection of the shower incident, a story that seemingly has many versions (first he did nothing, then he slammed a locker, then he made sure the abuse had stopped, so his story is just a bit dubious for sure). So it's basically his changing word versus the A.D. and the other administrator who all told the same story over and over again as to what they were initially told about that incident. You have to wonder why the NCAA and Freeh and PSU as an unwilling defendant are fighting so hard against the release of documents. I mean, they should be all for helping the poor abused kids, right? Watching the NCAA cave to keep certain information out of public hands raises a red flag as to the motive behind making 3 administrators and a football coach the fall guys. Let's be real about the Freeh Report. Freeh was not some unknown to the PSU board that they vetted and determined was the best man for the job. If you went on his high profile failures alone a normal person likely wouldn't hire him. But, he had connections to PSU board members who knew they could hand him a pile of money, and a conclusion, and could count on him to fill in the blanks which he did with the help of Pepper Hamilton, a law firm that conveniently bought out Freeh's just after the report's release. For $8 million Freeh would have wrote a 200 page report pinning it all on the Easter Bunny if that's what his clients wanted. Then of course Gov. Corbett who was the impetus behind the firings of Paterno and President Spanier later said that was probably a mistake. Funny how lots of things in this unfortunate case are much clearer in hindsight, but I do wonder what the PSU board is hiding - my guess something really bad in relation to the Second Mile, but we may never know. You'd think after the Duke lacrosse case people would have learned some lessons, but as long as the public wants its pound of flesh, it apparently doesn't matter who it comes from and at what cost.
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I found that aspect pretty ironic that two years after Paterno was destroyed for his actions and handling of the situation, that the NCAA's abuse guidelines basically say to do exactly what he did. You couldn't make it up. Also with respect to the recommendations that Freeh made, I believe PSU accomplished them so quickly because apparently many of them were already in place, at least informally. Freeh's report merely formalized them. PSU is a huge institution, so making large scale administrative and policy changes to a university system with tens of campus locations, tens of thousands of employees, and 100,000 total students does not happen overnight or cheaply, yet that's exactly what seems to have happened at PSU. I'd be willing to bet many of the 100+ recommendations were already in place and the ceremonial checking off the list, along with the hiring of Mitchell and his glowing quarterly reports about PSU's "progress," that allowed for some sanctions relief on an almost clockwork-like schedule was window dressing and part of the plan from the beginning.
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