There are many things that have gone on this week, but I will start with the one that has the most recent news coverage.
Earlier this week, allegations and arrests where made by Pennsylvania State Police of former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky as well as the Athletic Director and one other with over 40 charges of child molestation. This of course has also involved the name of legendary coach Joe Paterno and former graduate assistant Mike McQueary. Just the other day the Penn State board of trustees elected to fire coach Paterno, even though the police said he was not a suspect and was being very coopertive.
Please don’t get me wrong, I think these allegations are extremely serious and disturbing and, if true, should be dealt with severely. But, the question I want to raise is this. Did Joe Pa do enough? Should he have done more? Before you jump straight to the “Absolutely he did not do enough, he had a moral responsibility to do more” answer I give you this to ponder on. How many times do we see things going on in our workplace and do nothing? How many times in a day do we see co-workers taking things from the office, which is wrong and against company policy, but we choose to say nothing? Have you ever seen a store or peron being robbed and intervened, called the police, or did you just watch. Why didn’t we do more? Aren’t we morally obligated to do more? No, I am not trying to minimize the severity of the issue, but I do want to make you think first. Everybody I see on the news is saying Joe Pa was morally obligated to do more, but it is easy to say that when it’s not you in the situation and you don’t know ALL the facts of what was done. Just yesterday the attorney of the first victim said that Penn State was wrong to fire Joe Pa.
As the head football coach, and only the head football coach, is it really Joe’s job to conduct and investigation into the matter? Or do you trust your superior to do his job and contact the authorities and conduct an investigation into the matter and leave you to do your job which is football. And if you see Jerry Sandusky walking around the campus two, three, four months later, do you assume there must have been nothing to the allegations? And further more, look at all of your friends. Could you fathum that any of your friends, that you have known for years, could possibly do such horrible things?
Again, I am not trying to minimize the severity of the situation. I do want you to put yourself in Joe’s position before you jump on the bandwagon of people that want to hold him to a higher standard than that of themselves. I will say this, if and only if Joe had a greater knowledge than what he says then yes he should be held accountable and terminating his employment would be correct and possibly charging him as well, along with the other three people involved. But the fact of the matter is, we just don’t know at this point. We only know what the media is bunching together, which is a bunch of bits and pieces.
I hope this has been more thought provoking than heart provoking, as I was intending it to be. God Bless
