College Football 2013 Season

[Imran Siddiqui]

If Michigan State makes it to the Big 10 Championship, Wisconsin will win by at least three TDs (maybe a little less during garbage time).

- just so you can't edit this later.

[Donegeal]

Wouldn't dream of it.

[Tupac Shakur]

McArdle is hardly representative of the punditocracy.

Does David Brooks count?

First came the atrocity, then came the vanity. The atrocity is what Jerry Sandusky has been accused of doing at Penn State. The vanity is the outraged reaction of a zillion commentators over the past week, whose indignation is based on the assumption that if they had been in Joe Paterno’s shoes, or assistant coach Mike McQueary’s shoes, they would have behaved better. They would have taken action and stopped any sexual assaults.

Unfortunately, none of us can safely make that assumption. Over the course of history — during the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide or the street beatings that happen in American neighborhoods — the same pattern has emerged. Many people do not intervene. Very often they see but they don’t see.

Some people simply can’t process the horror in front of them.

Let’s All Feel Superior

[SlowwHand]

Mescaline or peyote induced?

[rah]

While I agree that there is some self delusion here, making comparisons to situations where you could be killed or seriously hurt for objecting aren't really the same thing, especially in a group setting. What we're talking about is a one on one where you know the person involved. I don't think that's quite the same.

And I do find it funny that you use an article that mentions the holocaust as supporting proof after you laughed at me when I mentioned it in the Penn State thread. Typical.

[Tupac Shakur]

Please keep your pathetic rejoinders in your own terrible thread. Thank you.

[Tupac Shakur]

Sportswriters have started to come around more quickly than expected.

McQueary’s been called less than a human being. His continued employment by Penn State has been called “inappropriate to common decency.” Whenever I even mention McQueary’s name, the responses often evoke the sort of anger that might be reserved for an accomplice to the crime, or at least someone who did nothing at all after witnessing a child being attacked.

But that is not what happened here. Not even close. Not only did McQueary report what he saw, his testimony in front of the grand jury (deemed to be “extremely credible”) singelehandedly led to two Penn State officials being charged with perjury and failing to report the alleged crime. So why isn’t the primary focus, the scorn, on them? ...

McQueary, on the other hand, was described by Paterno as being “very upset” when he reported the incident and McQueary apparently echoed that sentiment to Curley and Schultz as well. According to the grand jury report, McQueary was assured in follow up meetings that the University was investigating, that Sandusky’s access to the locker room was immediately restricted, that he could not bring children on to the campus and his charity was informed of his conduct.

In retrospect, should McQueary have been satisfied with that? No way. Should he have done more? Yes. Could he have done more? Of course. Should he be celebrated as a hero because, as he put it, he “made sure it stopped?” No. But many have even suggested that McQueary is monstrous for having called his father for guidance before immediately reporting the incident. Is that really so hard to understand? A 28-year-old, so troubled by what he has seen in his workplace, that he calls his father for counsel?

According to the grand jury report, “[T]he graduate assistant and his father decided that the graduate assistant had to promptly report what he had seen to Coach Joe Paterno.” The next morning he called Paterno and even went to his home to report the horror he had witnessed. Exactly how Paterno characterized it to his superiors remains a source of debate, but the grand jury found that McQueary made it crystal clear that this was rape. Should McQueary have gone to police, particularly after no serious action was taken? Surely. But does that error in judgment really make him less than a human being, particularly in comparison to the others involved?

The legal and moral judgments are separate paths in a case like this. Just because McQueary did not violate the law does not mean that he is entitled to a clean bill of moral health. But am I the only one who has any pity for him–for the position he found himself in, for the hindsight demands the public has placed on him about exactly what he should have done and when he should have done it?

In Defense Of Penn State’s Mike McQueary

[rah]

Please keep your pathetic rejoinders in your own terrible thread. Thank you.

Yes, it's easier to dismiss it then to discuss it when you're wrong. Did you not object when I used the holocaust in an argument?

And you should have titled your next post, 1 sportswriter comes around.
I would also be willing to cut him more slack if he actually stopped it. But nowhere have I read that he stopped it up to this point. If it comes out that he did, I'll be less harsh. But that still doesn't absolve him from seeing nothing happen for almost a decade and not doing anything further.

[Guynemer]

HOLY ****

Purdue--mother****ing PURDUE--still has a legit shot at making the B1G Championship Game. Via mgoblog: For Purdue the path is win out (home vs. Iowa, away at Indiana), Ohio beat Penn St, Illinois beat Wisconsin, Michigan beat Ohio and Wisconsin beat Penn St.

That is all extremely possible/plausible, with the exception of Illini over Wisky.

If this comes to pass... holy ****ing ****... that might be the funniest outcome of a football season in history.

[Boris Godunov]

Imagine, if you will, an Oregon-Purdue Rose Bowl game. I don't think anyone wants to see that, including Purdue fans.

[Tupac Shakur]

I want UCLA-Purdue, which I believe is still possible.

[rah]

That is all extremely possible/plausible, with the exception of Illini over Wisky.

quite

[H Tower]

Imagine, if you will, an Oregon-Purdue Rose Bowl game. I don't think anyone wants to see that, including Purdue fans.

That sounds eerily like the Rose bowl between USC and Illinois a few years ago.

[Tupac Shakur]

Good article...

"Some want to string him up because he didn't do enough, and others want to string him up because he broke the code," said Richard Gartner, author of Betrayed as Boys, the definitive book on male survivors of childhood sexual abuse. "He at least tried to get the information to the authorities and pretty much right away, the next morning. It's sad, but not surprising that he is the focus of the rage. It's easier to demonize those we don't know much about, but harder to criticize those we idolize." ...

Among those I've interviewed on the subject the people most sympathetic to you are those who have investigated predators, treated their victims, seen the graphic photos, and heard the excruciating tales. "To walk in and see it — it's a horror and a reality that the mind can't accept," said former FBI agent Jane Turner, who investigated childhood sexual abuse cases during her 25-year career. "Your mind gives you what you can handle." ...

When you were called to testify by the grand jury, you didn't just expose a predator, Kohn pointed out. You exposed the morally lax administrators, directly contradicting the testimony of the now-fired university president, the vice president, and the athletic director. "But for McQueary, the coach [Sandusky] may still be there," Kohn said. "The athletic department would be unchanged. That he didn't throw himself under the bus doesn't surprise me in the least. Look at the janitors. They didn't tell anybody."

An Open Letter to Mike McQueary

[Tupac Shakur]

State College is a close-knit community. Word would get around that a Penn State coach had met with investigators. So investigators set up a meeting in an out-of-the-way parking lot, according to those with knowledge of the case.

There, one day a little over a year ago, McQueary unburdened himself, the two people said. He needed little prompting.

He told of a horrific scene he had stumbled upon as a graduate assistant one Friday night in March 2002: a naked boy, about 10, hands pressed against the locker room wall of the Lasch Football Building, being raped by Sandusky. McQueary was explicit and unequivocal, the people said. He had told Paterno, the team’s longtime and widely beloved head coach, about the incident the next day, but he was filled with regret that nothing had happened.

“This had been weighing on him for a very long time, and our guys felt he was relieved to get it off his chest,” one law enforcement official said. “When he had the opportunity to make it right, he told the truth.”

Sandusky, in his first public statement this week, acknowledged that he “horsed around” with boys in the shower but insisted there was no sexual intent.

But for investigators, the identification of McQueary, and the account he would ultimately tell under oath, was pivotal. In the coming months, investigators uncovered other alarming facts.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/17/sports/ncaafootball/internet-posting-helped-sandusky-investigators.html

McQueary