Frontpage Features

By Evan Combs

“This is the big leagues. If you make a mistake, you lose the right to play.”

That quote is from the movie "The Ides of March" starring Ryan Gosling, which I saw this past weekend.  And given the events surrounding Joe Paterno and the Penn State University football program, I thought was especially apropos given the news of Paterno’s firing by the Penn State Board of Trustees.

For years people had wondered aloud whether Paterno should still be the head coach; after the 2004 season (a losing season, naturally) he was asked to resign by the Penn State president because of his advancing age (and they were losing). Paterno brushed off those calls and refused to step down, even while recently admitting that he was little more than a cheerleader for the football team.

With as much equity as Paterno had at Penn State, he thought, and many people agreed (and from the looks of the rally that took place in State College in response to the news of his firing, they still agree), that he could stay and coach for as long as he wanted.

Those people presumably have not read this grand jury report that detailed the terror inflicted upon young boys for more than a decade by Paterno’s longtime assistant coach and former player Jerry Sandusky. Paterno played no part in the attacks, but the fact that Paterno did nothing, save for an administrative report to his “superior” that got swept under the rug, is the reason he is no longer the head football coach at Penn State.

Paterno knew he had a predator in his midst at least as far back as 1998 and did nothing about it. That he allowed this man to remain in and around the program after the first allegation was bad enough. That he continued to tacitly support Sandusky by turning a blind eye to his crimes as subsequent allegations came to light foreclosed any sort of possibility that Paterno could decide how he could leave the program.

Paterno, you do not get to choose what happens next!

Every day that the Penn State board of trustees allowed Paterno to remain the face of the football program and the university was a slap in the face of the victims and their families. It has confirmed what we thought anyway - that football, and only football, is what matters to Penn State.

Even during the press conference announcing Paterno’s dismissal, the first question was “who is going to coach the team on Saturday?” The underlying implication of this all is “gotta make sure the boys are ready for Nebraska, it is a conference game, after all.”

Such as it is with Joe Paterno.

In his preemptive statement announcing that he would retire at the end of the season with the instruction to the board of trustees not to spend any more time worrying about what to do about him, Paterno still thought he could make the rules. But this is the big leagues, Joe. When you screw up like this, you don’t get to play anymore.