There was a moment of silence as well where the fans and the players "paid tribute" to the abused kids. That is when I lost control in an angry sort of way. "Pay tribute"??? Like in "honor"??? How utterly misplaced. How clueless. Let's take the frosting off this little cake shall we?
An assistant coach forms a charity for kids with tough lives - broken homes, poverty, etc. - and then systematically rapes them. A graduate assistant, now coach, actually walks in on one of the encounters and phones home and asks his dad what to do. Can you imagine this? The perv/perp is a prized member of the coaching staff but not some big lug but just this middle aged guy and the fella who caught him raping this kid is a huge athlete and he goes and he springs into action by calling his dad. Right then and there the entire issue is off the track. This cementhead calls dad when the right and proper thing to do would be to deck the perv/perp and drag him broken and bleeding away from the kid he is raping.
Then folly breaks out in full force. Jock tells the coach. coach tells the athletic director who bucks it up to the administration of the actual college. Campus police and some other law enforcement were called but nothing happened whatsoever other than eventually the school took away the perp/pervs keys to the showers but not before the perv/perp went right on raping kids.
So yesterday, in an effort to feel good or better or "to heel", they played a game and "paid tribute" to what? That horrible Paterno creature who knew one of his coaches was raping kids in the showers of the building he practically owns, and does NOTHING. What particular kind of SOB does nothing if a kid is harmed. Well, I take that back, he did call his supposed boss as if he had one and I'll betcha that the conversation was purely centered on how to keep this mess quiet so not to wreck the football program.
Long time back I was doing some graduate work at the University of Kentucky. They had just put in a new president of the school and at his first press conference he was asked what his first goal would be, to which he replied that he "would like to make the school into something that the basketball program could be proud of". I submit that Penn State is similarly out of whack.
Can you imagine shedding tears over a football coach who is fired because he didn't do anything about one of his staff raping kids and then observing a minute of silence "in tribute" to the rape victims?
I hope during that minute of silence that the screams from an abused kid echoed around the stadium. I really do.