The Penn State/Jerry Sandusky child rape scandal has been front page news for well over a week now featuring twists and turns and seemingly more horrible news by the day. While ESPN attempted to say that the “healing has begun” because PSU played a football game, this isn’t a story that is going anywhere any time soon.
Joe Paterno’s firing was the easier part of the story for most to follow as he is a legend in the coaching ranks who was let go for his looking the other way when told that someone witnessed Sandusky sexually assaulting a young boy.
MMA Weekly spoke to the UFC’s Phil Davis, a Penn State alum, to get his thoughts on the situation at his alma mater:
“At the end of the day it’s just sad for the children involved and I hate to see Joe Pa (Joe Paterno) removed because of this, he’s had such a long career and to have someone like him, ultimately, I suspect he’s going to be remembered for the way he left, under these circumstances and that’s really not fair,”
…
“I think he did what he could,” Davis said about Paterno. “In jobs, we have protocol, and I think he followed protocol. Whether he agreed with decisions that were made, especially in a university job, you really don’t have control over what goes on.
“If you’re in a law enforcement position and your superior says let so and so go, you’ve got to follow your protocol. You can’t just go ‘this is the law and I want to play this the way I want to play it.'”
First of all, someone in the UFC should probably tell its fighters to go with “no comment” on these situations.
The idea that Paterno “did what he could” because he “followed protocol” is absurd. The protocol in any job when you are told that someone is raping children is to call the police, not keep it in-house and then allow the individual in question to continue being around children at your university.
Even if you’re in law enforcement and you’re told to “let so and so go” if it is a case where he is being let go because of his standing in the community and there is a refusal to investigate, you don’t just back off. There are actual legal protocols for that.
Regardless, this wasn’t law enforcement, it was a state university and to act as though there is any “right” thing to do that doesn’t involve getting the police involved is absurd.
For those looking for more on the Penn State situation, the SB Nation blog Black Shoe Diaries has covered the situation very well.
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