I am a UCLA grad who comes from KY and has relatives in Louisville, Lexington, and rural KY, so:

UCLA has had some booster scandals, etc. I knew a few jocks--not very well--and I would guess (but don't know) that they got some special treatment. The difference is that the city and school are so huge, sprawling and diverse, and there are so many other diversions there that while people care about the teams, hoops in particular, it is just not nearly as intense as it seems to be in small college towns. If some UCLA football players trash a bar on Sunset, well, they might get some booster help with the cops, but it is quite possible that the bar owner would be a transplant who wore a Yankee cap on the weekends and didn't give a shitt about UCLA athletics.

In KY, yes--pretty much everybody who doesn't live in Louisville and didn't go there roots for UK basketball. Tayshaun Prince, the Pistons' forward, is an LA guy who who was thinking about UCLA or Kentucky. He picked Kentucky, in part because of how hoops-crazy he could see they were on his visit. Many guys do the same.

that really won't change things for Paterno.

Even if all you say in #68 is true, Steagles, there was one man in Pennsylvania who knew what was going on, or at least knew enough abut it, and was powerful and influential enough to stop it. Not only did Paterno wake up every morning for at least 13 years and make the decision to allow the child-rape to continue, but he made sure that Sandusky continued to have credibility of PSU football next to his name. Paterno could have ended Sandusky's reign of terror with the snap of his fingers. He chose not to, most likely because he thought it would reflect badly on the football program. Spanier, Schultz and Curley chose not to because they were scared of Paterno.

That's unacceptable regardless of what the politicians and other monsters of this case did.

“You realize that the people out there think you knew about this? They think you had to know because you know about everything.”
“That’s their opinion!” Paterno shouted. “I’m not omniscient!”
“They think you are!” D’Elia roared back.
According to D’Elia’s recollection of watching Paterno read the presentment, the former coach asked Scott, “What is sodomy, anyway?”

PSU: What STEAGLES is saying is a more reasonably-framed variant of the hardcore BSD line: Paterno and the football program are taking the hit to cover up a big scandal involving pols, power brokers, etc and the BOT is to blame. What I don't get about that is that Paterno AFAIK has not been accused of a crime in the legal sense, and I am not sure there is agreement among even his harshest critics that he committed a crime in the legal sense. His failings were moral, ethical and institutional. So, ISTM, and people should correct me If I am wrong, that even if there is some huge scandal reaching all the way up to Rendell and Corbett and PSU trustees, that really won't change things for Paterno. This is also why I don't see how the Paterno Family's "investigation" will do any good from a pro-Paterno POV. BSD types are framing it as getting "justice" for Paterno, which to me makes no sense.

if you consider it just for ~1/4 of the population of this country to think of joe paterno as a child rapist, then yeah, paterno's supporters really have nothing to gain.

A lot of these types of polls were quoted at BSD as well. Some people being wildly misinformed about big media stories/public figues is nothing new, and I do not consider such polls to be a big deal in the larger picture--sort of along the same lines as people thinking that Barack Obama is a Muslim or thinking that Barry Bonds is in prison for using steroids.

it would have been awful for him and his admirers to see paterno have to state on the record that he was just an old man shaking hands of alums and hanging out on the sideline for show

I've always taken that to mean that 1-in-4 is a baseline for cluelessness, stupidity, confusion, insanity, and paranoia.

Nobody would argue — and certainly my book does not argue — that the good Joe Paterno did in his life should shield him from the horrors of his mistakes. Some would argue, especially in the white-hot emotion sparked by the latest revelations, that Paterno's role in the Jerry Sandusky crimes invalidates whatever good he might have done. My book does not argue that either. My book, I believe, lets the reader make up his or her own mind. When people ask me if Penn State was right in tearing down Joe Paterno's statue in light of the Freeh Report's conclusion, I ask a different question: "Should they have built a statue to him in the first place?" When people ask me if the NCAA was right in unleashing draconian penalties against Penn State, I ask a different question: "Should they have held up Joe Paterno as a paragon of purity and virtue for more than four decades?"

"This is the story of a man named Joe Paterno, who in his long life was called moral and immoral, decent and scheming, omniscient and a figurehead, hero and fraud, Saint Joe and the devil. A life, of course, cannot be reduced to a single word, but …"
But … what? That was my book. There was the bloated superhero of Nov. 4, the savage villain of Nov. 5 … and I searched for the human being in the middle. I believe most of us live somewhere in the middle.
I suspect I will never have a more difficult task as a writer — I've been told by several authors that no biographer in American history has had a book change so drastically in the course of reporting. I suspect that's not right, but it is right that I was feeling my way through the dark. I was pushed and pulled, accused and derided, and that wasn't much fun. There were hundreds of questions, none of them with easy answers. But I had come to write a true book. That was what mattered. I have done my best to do that.

No, I don't feel about Joe Paterno the same way I did when I started writing the book. But I don't feel about him the way his most blistering critics feel. He was a human being, filled with ideals and flaws, honesty and hypocrisy, charity and selfishness, modesty and the refusal to abdicate his throne. There was little simple about him. I chased the complicated story of a man and his long life. I hope that is the story I wrote.

According to D’Elia’s recollection of watching Paterno read the presentment, the former coach asked Scott, “What is sodomy, anyway?”

I scrap it.

I do. I scrap the whole thing. I put it aside, maybe wait a year or two, then—when the dust clears and the implications are more understood—I return and write a real biography. Joe is a wonderful writer and, by all accounts, a good guy. I love his blog, and his pieces on infomercials are some of the funniest things I’ve ever read. I can’t say this enough times—Joe is terrific. A genuine wordsmith.

But there is no possible way, one month removed from a report that details Joe Paterno’s knowledge of a pedophile roaming the Penn State campus (and his refusal to do anything about it, when he clearly could/should have), a proper biography can be released. No. Possible. Way.


...By all accounts, Joe Posnanski’s biography was—until relatively recently—a love letter to Joe Paterno; an ode to a legendary coach and the men he inspired. Well, that no longer works. Like, not partially doesn’t work—doesn’t work at all.

...Which is to say, instead of promoting a book as “the heartwarming story of Joe Paterno’s rise …”, it becomes “an explanation of Joe Paterno’s life, and ultimate demise.” Does the content of the book change? Somewhat, but only as little as humanly possible. It’s the strategy, not the actuality.

Is "What is Sodomy?" the title of Posnanski's book? It should be.

That crazification seems low, something like 30-50% of Americans believe in ghosts. Nearly 50% believe in young earth (i.e. less than 10000 years ago) creationism. Anyone who believes in either of things is ignorant, crazy, or completely irrational.

the former coach asked Scott, “What is sodomy, anyway?”

Shouldn't Jeff Pearlman know that Posnanski has probably already been paid for the book in advance, and is contractually obligated to deliver something, or pay the advance back?

At the same time, I have a hard time believing that there wouldn't be a clause in the contract about something like this, where after doing all of that work, one realize that the book asked for cannot be written. It seems ludicrous that an author would have to pay an advance back for that, but the publishing world is probably as screwed up as every other business in the world.

I still think "Rape and a Man: The Joe Paterno Story" rolls off the tongue more smoothly.

Shouldn't Jeff Pearlman know that Posnanski has probably already been paid for the book in advance, and is contractually obligated to deliver something, or pay the advance back?

the former coach asked Scott, “What is sodomy, anyway?”

I have no truck with Paterno apologists but don't find the confusion over the word inherently impossible. I'm 40 and remember looking it up a couple of times and being baffled. I knew what all the sex acts were but the definitions were so vague as to leave me to ask somebody to just tell me what counted as sodomy and what didn't.

What is WAR, anyway?

"What is Sodomy?"

That crazification seems low, something like 30-50% of Americans believe in ghosts. Nearly 50% believe in young earth (i.e. less than 10000 years ago) creationism. Anyone who believes in either of things is ignorant, crazy, or completely irrational.

Anything that isn't two married white protestants in the missionary position.

In the last months of Joe Paterno's life, I met with him on several occasions and talked with him at length when he was perhaps the most sought after interview in America. I was granted access to his personal notes, and there were many. I talked to some of the people closest to him and also some of his harshest critics. I also talked with child sex abuse experts and legal experts to offer background and context. I read anything and everything that might give me some insight into who Joe Paterno really was. I reviewed inner-office e-mails (the same ones used in the Freeh Report), documents and timelines. I searched for what is real.

When people ask me if Penn State was right in tearing down Joe Paterno's statue in light of the Freeh Report's conclusion, I ask a different question: "Should they have built a statue to him in the first place?" When people ask me if the NCAA was right in unleashing draconian penalties against Penn State, I ask a different question: "Should they have held up Joe Paterno as a paragon of purity and virtue for more than four decades?"

I suspect -- and hope -- that the Joe Posnanski who submitted the final manuscript is more clear-eyed than the Joe Posnanski who eulogized Paterno in January.

I mean, no one actually believes that the sun orbits the earth or that Joe Paterno raped children, it's just that 1 in 4 people are so clueless or crazy or confused or whatever that they'll think that they believe it and will tell that to a pollster.

Also note that there will be a certain percentage that will misunderstand a poll question, or give the wrong answer out of mischievousness or brainfart (how many of us when giving directions have said left instead of right). I think about half of the 15-20% who give "nonsensical" answers fall into this category.

But I agree wth Pearlman here.

This can be a difficult question for historians, because "sodomy" has meant all things at all times. Sometimes when Bernardino of Siena is ranting about the sodomites he's upset about homosexuals and sometimes he's upset about men who perform oral sex on their wives. Hell, sodomy laws that have been on the books in my lifetime have been used to prosecute everything from bestiality to heterosexual adultery to married couples not being vigilant about pulling the blinds down.

As a general rule, that's a sign that you should seriously rethink your position

a) Posnanski is too close to the Paternos to approach the topic in the way that IMO it should be.

i really don't see any way in which this book can be a meaningful account of this situation. it really should just be lost.

I'm getting the feeling that Posnanski's Paterno book will be in line with the early consensus about it to the same degree as the Moneyball film was in line with the early consensus about it.

i'm not exactly sure what someone means when they say this.

noone is ever going to get paterno's account of this--that's lost forever.

cannot for the life of me understand the cult of personality that formed around Paterno.

Sorry, what is BSD?

cannot for the life of me understand the cult of personality that formed around Paterno.

It's like asking why Knute Rockne was such a big deal in Indiana.

He was a beloved elder statesman who won "the right way" and pretty much built the program from the ground up. What's hard to understand about that? It's like asking why Knute Rockne was such a big deal in Indiana.

allegations of this level are more or less uncontested.

i really don't see any way in which this book can be a meaningful account of this situation. it really should just be lost.

Don't know how many of you recall Michael Sokolove's book Hustle, a Pete Rose biography as much about the making of the Charlie Hustle myth as it was about Rose's gambling downfall. I'd be interested in reading a Hustle-like account about how the national media fed into the Paterno=God concept over four decades and how so many commentators -- not just Posnanski and Bill James -- defended him until it was too late.

Football is a big deal in Pennsylvania; that is part of it as well.

I don't think Krzyzewski would get the support Paterno has gotten either, but then maybe they would surprise me.

wasm't there a whole big thing at duke just a few years ago, where the entire campus rallied around some athletes who were accused of raping a stripper?

]Sorry, what is BSD?

BSD is the SB Nation Penn State fan site, and is known for having the hardestcoriest of the hardcore, and as such has drawn some net attention during the scandal.

Football's a big deal in Arkansas too, didn't stop us from running Petrino out of town for something far less serious. I know its not the same thing, but there wasn't even a debate here. No matter how much you love sports there has to be a line, I guess I just can't imagine how Paterno's conduct didn't cross it.

Keep in mind, it took a decade of abuse from Nolan Richardson before we got tired of his ranting and he hadn't tried to win a game in years.

As an Arkansas native, I'd say a far better comparison would be if -- god forbid -- Frank Broyles had been implicated in a Sandusky-esque scandal. And if Broyles had coached the Hogs twice as long as he did. And been even more successful than he was.

JFK was before my time, too (I was born in 1968), but it seems that "the allegations against him" didn't get widespread mainstream media attention until a decade after his death. Judith Campbell Exner was the first mistress to come forward, around 1975 or so.

Totally different situations in several different ways. Two obvious ways: Moneyball underwent a lot of changes as a movie project and was delayed--Soderbergh dropped out, Sorkin was brought into write. This thing was AFAIK still just Poz and his computer talking to people in State College and the publication date has been moved up.

the excerpts suggest, to me, none of this.

Also, there was no evidence and the driving force behind the prosecutor seemed to be a washed up former ATL prosecutor who was almost disbarred and got her own TV show somehow.

There is an interesting homophobic undercurrent in this whole thing, of course. One might speculate that his homophobia was his true downfall here, that it kept him from doing the right thing, because doing the right thing meant acknowledging that this kind of thing happens. His defense, if not encouragement of the despicable Rene Portland might provide another data point to consider.

However awful Nancy Grace is, Mike Nifong is much worse.

However awful Nancy Grace is, Mike Nifong is much worse.

However awful Nancy Grace is, Mike Nifong is much worse.

wasm't there a whole big thing at duke just a few years ago, where the entire campus rallied around some athletes who were accused of raping a stripper?

Nancy Grace is an even bigger piece of crap. Her murdered fiance was lucky to have been killed rather than marry her.

For the record: The accuser was pretty clearly lying, as per the evidence. See here.