Friday, November 11, 2011

How a House of Cards Come Tumbling Down

State College, Pennsylvania, also known as Happy Valley, the home for Penn State, the university that has been rocked this month by a scandal that has shook the very foundation of what we think of high education, and trust with those, we place, in people to take care of children and harness their talent, and teach them.

What has happened with Jerry Sandusky, and the entire University, can only be said to be, tragic, horrific, devastating, and just plain SICK!

Here is a middle aged man, who was discovered in the University’s football locker room shower, with a 10 year old boy, sexually assaulting him, and someone sees it, and tells the head coach, a LEGEND in the NCAA, the 409 plus wins, right now mean absolutely NOTHING! NOT A DAMN THING! Joe Paterno has nothing left as far as a LEGEND is concerned, no more than what Woody Hayes left Ohio State with, after he cold cocked a Clemson player for intercepting a pass on his Buckeyes in the Gator Bowl back in the 70’s… Paterno will have to live with what He DIDN’T do, or not enough to do, to protect that small child, who along with more than 8 children over a period of time, that no one really knows how long this man has had his clutches in.

The University of Miami, Ohio State, and even go as far back as SMU, those penalties and infractions have very little meaning in the grand scheme of things when you see what took place on the campus of Penn State!

Pay players to play at your school is wrong, I agree—they get scholarships and that should be enough, then you have the players that traded their jerseys and championship rings for tattoos, alright that could be considered to be a no-no, and even the SMU players being bought cars and given cash through boosters, that’s wrong too—HOWEVER how do you explain this? YOU CAN’T! THIS IS SICK!

Our children, your son or daughter, we entrust with adults to teach them and give them the guidance, with in the confines of sport or academics…. How many stories have you read over the last 10 or 15 years, where a teacher has been arrested for improper relationships with their students, or worse—someone has become pregnant because of that relationship!

We hear it, we see it, and as a society, aren’t we just sick and tired of it? Don’t you think its about time WE do something about it? Put an END TO IT!

The laws are getting tougher, and we are now aware if there is a sexual predator in our neighborhoods, we can mark them, and see them, but we still have to do more! PROTECT OUR YOUTH! They don’t have a voice, and we have to speak for them!

Penn State will have to face this music on their own, the law suits that will come flying at them, and the house cleaning that they have already done, with firing the Athletic Director, the Vice President of the School, and Head Coach Joe Paterno, an icon, and the face of Penn State for over 40 years!

There was once a time, in the NFL, that announcers would tell the viewers, when the cameras would pan the Dallas Cowboys Sidelines all through the 70’s and into the 80’s that Tom Landry was the only coach that the Cowboys had ever had… well Joe Paterno’s stay at Penn State is almost like that, he wasn’t the ONLY coach that the school has ever had—but he sure had been there the LONGEST!

Penn State will over come this dark cloud in time, how long? Well that’s for society to answer, but it won’t happen over night, and it might take as long as it has for SMU to get away from that stigma of their wrong doings in the 80’s.

For Sandusky…. Every one says the same thing—they hope that he finds himself in a prison that will take care of Jailhouse Justice, that might be harsh, but we all know how pedophiles are taken care of in prison… swiftly and without hesitation!

Just a thought!