The Dolphins Make Me Cry.com - Forums

Apparently he's in the final stages of cancer and from what I'm reading, has only a few days to live.  He was a great coach and a great leader of men.  Too bad this recent scandal will have people thinking of him differently.

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/ncaaf-dr-saturday/further-health-complications-leave-joe-paterno-hospitalized-serious-232633622.html

I think it's the scandal that killed him.

Not the scandal that killed him as he was battling cancer, but it sure hastened his death.  He probably lost his will to live once football was taken from him.   

Reminds me of what happened to a legendary Alabama coach back in the 80's

^^^This has been said over and over since he was fired.  I said it too.  It happened to Bryant.  It happened to JoePa.  Crazy how once you're passion for something is gone, you can just let yourself die.  It can't be a coincidence right? 

"Will to live" would not have saved him from the cancer he had.  Mr. Paterno would have suffered the same fate right around now regardless whether this scandal had ever broken. 

Lung cancer + 85 year old body = not a favorable result.

His "ending" has little to nothing to do with him being fired.  His "ending" had everything to do with his medical cause of death, one which would be the cause of death for a 45 year old man, much less an 85 year old.  He had cancer to the lungs with rumors mets to the blood, liver, brain and other organs.

He didn't die of a broken heart as some of you are suggesting.  He might have died with a heavy one, but not OF one.

Now, that said:  I hope he did have a heavy heart.  I do not wish to speak ill of the dead.  I do not wish to "sweep aside" all of the good that the man did in his life.  However, Mr. Paterno also did a lot of injustice in his life.  For that he paid a steep price - a valid price.  I think it's important for people to not forget this just because he died.  Young men's lives are forever tainted and ruined, cycles begun and more generations of abuse begun, because Paterno's legacy was more important than these trouble kids.

When speaking of Joe Paterno, may the man rest in peace, make sure you include ALL of it. 

I heard a recording of his side where he said he really wished he would have done more and really regrets not doing so. He said that it was all pretty strange to him and that's why he went to the top. Nothing like that had ever happened around him and he confessed he really didn't know how to handle it.

I wasn't a huge Paterno fan. Especially when the last several years it seemed pretty obvious he was getting token wins. With that said I have repsect for him and can honestly say I don't know what I would have done that many years ago. It's things coming out like this today that makes it easier for everyone to step forward and hold people accountable. I don't think it was always this easy.

It's kind of like when Eddie Murphy talked about how blacks today say they wouldn't have ever been slaves and he reminds them it isn't like they had a choice.  It's really hard to put yourself in someone's elses shoes to begin with let alone during completely different social times.

From what people around him say he was generally a good man. I hope that is true. Either way I hope he is resting in peace today!

Are you implying that stress does not have a compounding effect on medical conditions- especially cancer? -EK

^^^ I think what he is saying if Joe was a dead man walking with his illness.

I thought long and hard on this while watching ESPN during the day. I think Joe could have done more, but I agree with stopping short of being the person to contact the police. Joe did not have any evidence and I don't agree with involving law enforcement on rumors. I probably would have taken the young graduate asssitant and walked him into the police station myself. Given him the support he needed to tell them what he saw. I think that would have gone a long way and would have been the correct decision. Did Joe make a mistake in his handling of the situation, I think he did. Did he do many good/great things in other situations, I think he did.

In the end, the man was human. RIP Joe.

Well said.  It's easy to sit back and "Monday Morning QB" this issue when you are a couple years down the road, AND you have the availability of several other sources.  Paterno didn't perform these horrific acts, Paterno didn't witness the acts, Paterno didn't try to cover it up.  What Paterno did was receive a second hand accusation,  about someone who didn't work for him, and which he promptly reported to his superiors.

Thank you.


Exactly true.

RIP JoePa........ :'(

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Joe Paterno once again has the most College wins, as the NCAA is restoring his 111 victories.

I don't think they should've restored those wins.  Those 10 year old boys didn't get their rape restored.

...and Paterno didn't rape any boys.

just turned a blind eye to it at best and helped cover them up at worst.

at the risk of being the local a-hole...

I don't condone raping children, but its not related to football performance.  Even if he raped the boys himself, which he didn't, it didn't affect his performance on the field, and thus shouldn't affect his statistics.  After all, it is merely a thinly-veiled attempt to remove the black mark from the sport as a whole, having their "winningest coach" be tied to such a heinous story.  If Joe Paterno only had 14 wins and ranked 129437th all time, they wouldn't bother removing anything.

I don't like revisionist history for things that are unrelated.  I am also against repealing USC's national title and Reggie Bush's Heisman Trophy.

doesn't matter he knew about it!!! Makes him just as guilty cause he did nothing! And he stood by and let hit happen. He let Sandusky use his practice facility and locker-rooms for "coaching clinics with young kids" after he heard and was told what Sandusky was doing makes him just as big a creep as Sandusky!!

The NCAA is a joke. How, in the end,  USC got a worse punishment than Penn St is beyond me. How anyone with a soul or any common sense can defend the NCAA, JoePa, or Penn St's punishment is a joke.

Speechless. WOW. Disappointed in you Brian

At the risk of joining you on the ultimately righteous MikeO's list of disappointments (Oh, the horror), I agree with you on this.

That said, Paterno should have been open to legal or civil punishments for any crimes he committed...but vacating wins that his football team achieved is ridiculous.

Rape doesn't have anything to do with football, but it does have to do with Paterno's first job: Protecting students.  He's a teacher.  He knowingly allowed anal rape of 10 year old boys on campus.  Holy fucking shit.

So, if you don't think they should vacate win, fine.  But they did.  So, why did they reinstate the wins?  What changed?

My guess would be that they realized how stupid it was to implement a punishment of vacating wins on a football field for criminal activities off of it.

What changed is you have a bunch of morons running the NCAA. And those Ped St. fans who support this criminal of a coach badgered them enough to the point they finally caved just to shut them up. As Dave said when you work for a University as a coach you have a duty to protect the students. Letting a pedophile have full access of your football facilities while knowing what he had done and what he was doing while holding his "youth football camps" is downright criminal. If the old SOB actually lived he would be in a cell next to Sandusky. He got off easy by dying!

Give him back his wins, he ruined his family's name and his poor family has to walk around with shame knowing good ole JoePa aided a pedophile. His family has to live with that embarrassment. I hope he is watching that from hell

I think it was appropriate to vacate the wins.

A fair argument can be made that (at least part of) Paterno's motivation for protecting Sandusky was Sandusky's impact as a coach on the football program, and later (following Sandusky's retirement) the impact that such a scandal would have on the program's ability to compete (as seen after the sanctions came down).  If that is true, then some of Paterno's wins can reasonably be considered an extension of his complicity in the coverup.

http://deadspin.com/keith-olbermann-dropkicks-ncaa-and-penn-state-through-f-1680052607?utm_campaign=socialflow_deadspin_facebook&utm_source=deadspin_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

Keith Olbermann nailed it in regards to this topic.

His statue should be melted down and made into castration tools.

All wins should be erased from the history books, especially his coaching wins.  This is probably the worst crime imaginable, because most of these kids grow up so fucked up that they end up destroying themselves and the people closest to them.

Paterno turned a blind eye to his buddies crimes and that makes him guilty and deserving of having his life taken away.  His legacy needs to be erased!

Can we edit the title of the thread to remove the last word....as written the thread title has ceased being accurate when the asswipe in question ceased being.

I am reposting the joke that was previously deleted in violation of TDMMC free speach policy:

The reason why Patrino's cancer got bad so quickly was that rather than going to the doctor he just told hisboss about it.

Lets not forget who the real villain is in this story.  Not the guy who's dead but the guy that's still alive and actually DID the crime?

I don't understand why Paterno seems to get so much more heat for this story than Sandusky.  What's worse, raping kids, or (allegedly) not reporting someone else raping kids?

Sandusky is scum, everyone agrees with that.  And that scumbag is in jail.  Reason why this scumbag gets more hate is there are PA students holding rallies supporting this piece of scum.

Not more heat...just equal heat. Because he knew about it and did nothing to stop it!

If you know a kid is being raped and you do nothing about it....that says alot about you as a human being and makes you no better than the guy doing the rape.

Bingo ... this sums it up. It isn''t like he, or the AD, just didn't realize he needs to report it. The motivation was wins and losses to the program.

I have to wonder why Paterno didn't encourage McQueary to go to the police when Mcqueary came to him with the news.

I also think McQueary is a real pansy ass because he didn't do anything to stop what he was seeing.  If I had been there,  Sandusky would've been spitting out his teeth.

i don't think the 112 vacated wins or whatever it was went far enough .. that program clearly demonstrated that football was more important than child rape.  I think disbanding the football program would have been appropriate.

^^^ Since this was clearly on the AD and President, I guess they should have vacated the wins by the men's & Women's basketball teams, volleyball teams, wrestling team, cheerleading teams, etc, etc.

Both of these are serious questions in my mind. If anything, this is the guy that needed to be run through the ringer.

Everyone's a tough guy in hindsight.

(http://www.bangersandnash.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/user350313_pic11603_1327052508.jpg)
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(http://www.bangersandnash.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/mark_wahlberg_hero_26-450x337.jpg)

And what would you do if you ever came across a man molesting a child?

Well, that depends on many factors.  If it was my (hypothetical) child, then I would probably be less inclined to accept explanations.  But in McQueary's case, he said that he heard potentially incriminating sounds ("rhythmic slapping") but didn't see anything happening.  And given that Sandusky already beat a case a few years earlier and clearly had the weight of the higher-ups behind him (to the extent that nothing would happen for another decade), I can't exactly fault McQueary for not going all Charles Bronson in the situation.

McQueary probably should have went to the police too, although I'm almost certain that Paterno would have had that swept under the rug (as he did before).  But punching Sandusky out wouldn't have actually accomplished anything except making McQueary unemployable and taking food off the table of his own children.

Castrate him on the spot.  Trust me , he'd never walk again....not tough talk, just know what I  am capable of doing....scary but true.

Maybe in the short term around that campus but as it stands, the guy in unemployable currently and definitely would have been able to get a job in the long term if he had done something.

I'm not sure how "the guy who was blacklisted from football for a decade after assaulting a respected pillar-of-the-community senior citizen and 'falsely' accusing him of a horrible crime" would have people banging down his door today.  Do you think the women who accused Cosby of rape 20 years ago currently have their mailboxes full of acting job offers?

As long as Paterno was shielding Sandusky, McQueary going to local police would have accomplished nothing (as it did in '98).  The only way to really get something done would have been to go to (non-local) media, which is fraught with its own problems.

You are going to alter history to make your argument? Hell, if that is the case I'll go ahead and concede because your argument is now that Sandusky was getting falsely accused. I'll never win the argument of historically inaccurate alterations.

No, my argument is that in 2001, McQueary punching Sandusky out and going to the police would likely have resulted in Paterno throwing McQueary under the bus, with the resulting narrative (in 2001) that McQueary falsely accused Sandusky of a horrible crime.  (i.e. exactly what happened in 1998, which is why 'falsely' was in quotes)  There is no reason to believe that the local police would have been any more interested or competent in 2001 than they were 3 years earlier, unless it was Paterno/Penn State pushing the issue.

Would McQueary's name have been cleared a decade later?  Sure.  But who wants to hire a college position coach that's been out of football (via blacklist) for a decade?

That could hold more water if in fact it had been Paterno & Penn State that actually pushed the investigation once it happened. The investigation was solely because of the accusers. Had there been an actual instance of being caught in the act with a child present things would be hard to ignore. I won't pretend to know that child's mindset but I don't think he would have left his savior out there in the wind looking like he was the one in the wrong. That could be wrong but I don't see it playing out the way you do.

But McQueary never said that he actually saw the assault, only that he thought he heard something suspicious (and he repeatedly stuck to that point).  This is why the guy he called for legal advice told him to go to Paterno instead of the police.

I think the reason why it went somewhere in 2011 is because it got to the level of the PA state attorney's office.  If it had stayed local, King Paterno would have buried it forever.