Firing of JoePa a Good Move for Penn State

Wednesday night, as I sat in my living room watching CNN, good news turned to bad news and bad news became disgusting. Earlier that day more and more information had continued to pour out from State College, Pennsylvania concerning former Penn State assistant coach Jerry Sandusky and the allegations against him.

4:40 p.m. The day started out with a bang. In an early afternoon interview with Paterno, he announced he would be retiring at the end of the season, also saying that the Board of Trustees should not spend any time discussing his status at Penn State. That was the first thing to go wrong that day.  Paterno had a chance to show leadership and step down immediately. Having coach JoePa on the sideline for a couple more games may have made for a nicer segway into retirement for him, but it would have also condoned the abuse of 10 year old boys went unreported for going on 15 years. Paterno needed to go, and he needed to go immediately in order to do what was right for Penn State.

9:15 p.m. Wednesday night was when the announcement came that JoePa and university president Graham Spanier would be terminated immediately. This was the first good thing that Penn State did in this situation. The Board of Trustees needed to send a message that this was not okay and not something that Penn State believes is right.

9:18 p.m. Within seconds of the announcement by John Surma, the Vice Chairman of the Board of Trustees, members of the local and national media were already embarrassing themselves.  There was a press conference where reporters fired questions at Surma for half an hour.  Surma handled the questions well, but none of the questions were at all on target for what they should have been in this situation. Question after question involved football, the firing of Paterno, and how the football team would be affected by the firing.  Very little of the spotlight was on the eight victims and their families. May I remind you that this man, Sandusky, created a support center for “at risk kids”, which he used to get his hands on kids he could abuse and rape.

9:45 p.m. As news began to spread of the firing of Paterno and Spanier, students began to flock to the streets. Over the next several hours an all out riot was in the hands of the local State College police. This is absolutely disgusting. Students at a respectable university like Penn State should have been able to understand that was not the time to riot. Even if their opinions differ, they still should understand that at least eight elementary age kids were raped and the firing of a head football coach should the last thing on their minds. If anything, the mass of 2,000 students should have been out in the streets earlier in the week protesting Sandusky and the disgusting things he had done doing to these kids.

As the night began to come to an end, my mind was still racing. This whole situation seems worse to me every time I think about it. Joe Paterno is a man with an amazing amount of power at one of the most respected universities in the country and he had a chance to make a difference but what did he do? Nothing. Not only did he just push the entire situation under the rug and pretend it didn’t happen but he also maintained a friendship with Sandusky. Who would want to be friends with a guy like that?

As much as it pains die hard college football fans to see JoePa go out on such a sour note but it was something that needed to be done. The Penn State Board of Trustees was looking out for their university.  They made a decision that was hard, but helped to send a message that they were not okay with these events. It was tough to swallow, but Paterno knows that if he would have done a little more to stop this terrible series of events he would be with his team on senior night this Saturday.