What should paterno have done

Either option works, preferably the latter. The NCAA already tried to take away from to , then gave them back. How the hell can you really care at this point? Everybody still does, and those wins are why Penn State got into this situation in the first place.

Paterno looked the other way, like so many other coaches have done, to get that almighty win. Only, Paterno looked away on the most heinous scandal college football has ever seen. And if what's contained in Thursday's report is true, then he did it in his 11th season, six years before the Nittany Lions ever even reached that first national championship.

Paterno was nowhere near the revered figure he became before the scandal. This is so much worse than what happened at SMU that led to the program getting the death penalty in the s. Speaking of which, what the hell does the NCAA do now? Chances are, nothing.

I'm not a lawyer, so my knowledge of malicious prosecution law is not perfect. Lawyers rarely deal with these kinds of cases, so most of them don't have perfect knowledge either. But here is my understanding of what could have happened with the Penn State case. As a non-witness, Paterno can't lawfully do a whole lot more. But imagine that he goes with McQueary to the campus police, and they then go together to speak to prosecutors. Imagine that Paterno, outraged by the notion of child sexual abuse in a Penn State shower facility, throws his weight around in an effort to get authorities to act—and they, in fact, bring charges against Sandusky.

The case goes to trial, and in a highly publicized, emotional courtroom drama, Sandusky is found not guilty. In the aftermath, Sandusky claims that he has been professionally and financially ruined.

He claims that McQueary made the whole thing up, perhaps out of spite, and Paterno should have known better than to believe McQueary. As the lead witness, McQueary almost certainly would have been vulnerable to a malicious prosecution lawsuit. Would that have happened? Probably not. If it had happened, would Sandusky have prevailed? Almost certainly not. But McQueary would have been forced to spend significant time and expense defending himself.

And Paterno, because he has deep pockets, might have been brought in as a co-defendant under some creative legal theory—perhaps conspiracy or respondeat superior also known as "master-servant. My guess is that Paterno's insurer, or that of Penn State, would have paid Sandusky a nice chunk of change to make the lawsuit go away. Given what I know about the reality of our justice system, am I critical of Joe Paterno for his failure to "do more"?

Absolutely not. If Jerry Sandusky is found to have sexually abused numerous boys between and , that's an epic tragedy. But Joe Paterno, based on what we know now, was in no position to control it or stop it. In a system that can punish witnesses for coming forward, Paterno was wise not to get too close to a bonfire. Enjoy our content? Join our newsletter to get the latest in sports news delivered straight to your inbox! Sadly, what's going on is what always happens in cases like these - only this time, the whole world is watching.

These numbers have remained consistent for years. And the Penn State example helps demonstrate why. Because it's not comfortable to talk about, we don't. At Penn State, Mr Paterno's actions have led to a lot of justifiable outrage, along with a lot of less-justifiable claims that anyone else in that position would have done things differently.

Paterno eventually lost his job for going to the university administration instead of the police with information about an assault. It was a poor decision, but a common one in these types of cases. Unless you have campaigns or an awareness program, people go to who they perceive to be the authority, instead of the police," said Lisa Cromer, co-director of the Tulsa Institute for Trauma, Abuse and Neglect.

Ms Cromer has conducted 10 years of research on why sexual abuse goes unreported. She notes that men are significantly less likely than women to acknowledge abuse, but that in a tremendous number of cases, witnesses to abuse find ways to rationalise that behaviour.

But really, that's a decision for the authorities and the courts. Self-preservation, denial and fear are all at play. Some of that stems from conscious decision-making, and some of it may be "betrayal blindness".

Jennifer Freyd, a professor of psychology at the University of Oregon, has been testing this concept, which posits that people who could suffer harm from confronting abuse - physical, professional, or psychological - are often unable to recognise that the abuse exists.

This can get a lot of people in trouble.