By now you’ve all heard about the horrifying allegations against former Penn State football coach Jerry Sandusky and the failure of the athletic administration, including legendary football coach Joe Paterno, to report the allegations against Sandusky as witnessed by a Penn State grad assistant to the proper authorities. Whether or not Sandusky is eventually convicted in a court of law, there can no doubt about what should happen.
Joe Paterno must be fired.
To be clear, it does not appear that Paterno has violated the letter of any law. He did what he was technically obligated to do, reporting then-Grad Assistant Mike McQueary’s experience of walking in on Sandusky assaulting a ten year old boy to the athletic administration. Legally, he fufilled his obligations. Morally, his actions are as bankrupt as they come.
Let’s first consider Paterno’s position. He is the longest-tenured college football coach in the country. His name and image have become synonymous not only with Penn State football but with the university itself. He has had the opportunity to play an instrumental role in the maturation of thousands of young men during their time at Penn State. Beyond teaching them football, it was his privilege to instill in them values, lessons and morals that they would carry with them for the rest of their lives. He betrayed that privilege and the boys he was allowed to mold into men when he failed to do something substantive about the incident that McQueary reported to him. I say something substantive because reporting what happened to the athletic administration and watching them cover it up is tantamount to doing nothing. Paterno did nothing more than legally cover his ass.
Coaches are as much parents as they are teachers of sport. If you are a collegiate athlete, you spend more time around your coaches than anyone save your immediate friend group. That time affords them the privilege to impart wisdom both practical and moral upon young men who remain very impressionable. This role is as vital and sacred as their ability to actually lead their team to victory. Let’s think about the lessons that Paterno is teaching through his actions in this situation: that we should place our own interests above basic human decency, that we have no obligation to help those who cannot help themselves, and that doing just enough to escape legal culpability is fine even if we hurt others by doing so. Joe Paterno, you are morally bankrupt.
In displaying such low standards for moral behavior, Joe Paterno has sacrificed his privilege to teach young men. He has no credibility, no moral foundation to stand on and no reasonable defense for his actions or rather his inaction. If the Penn State administration values the role of coaches to not simply teach the game but to also impart wisdom, then they must fire Joe Paterno before he can coach another game. Paterno’s role in this situation is so fundamentally disgusting that he does not deserve the opportunity to resign or retire on his own terms, much less to ever roam the sidelines for the Nittany Lions again. At this point, it’s not about beating Nebraska on Saturday or anything related to football. It is about demonstrating that doing what is morally right is far more important than protecting yourself or your cronies from the negative ramifications of their actions. The Penn State administration has an opportunity to do just that.
Inaction in the face of injustice is morally indefensible.
From the CAC to the 'CAC 
I respectfully disagree; he went to his superiors with what he knew. Obviously he could have (and probably should have) done more but I’m not going to throw out 46 years of being an exemplary person because of one admittedly terrible thing that he really had nothing to do with. He should have reported it; I don’t change my opinion of him because he didn’t. There are hundreds of men who cite Joe Paterno as a major role model in their lives; this matters more to me than failing to go above his legal responsibility in this case.
“Probably” should have? Amazing. Frankly,and with all due respect your logic is ridiculous. First of all your 46 year number is wrong,because from 1998 to present he harbored and enabled a serial pedophile. Role model? So what is the tradeoff number? you’re allowed one child to be sexually abused for every 50 citations of good? Joe Paterno chose self-preservation over saving children from rape. There is simply no other way to look at it. Forty six, fifty, one hundred previous years be damned.”Nothing to do with” Last i checked JoePa is member of the human race isn’t he? Here’s is all we need to know how “Exemplary” Paterno is/was he was told of a chile being raped in the very facility he worked and chose not to call the police.
I refuse to believe that going to his superiors make him responsible for this, which is what the consensus seems to be. Paterno made a dreadful moral error in not reporting it to the police, but he met with his superiors the day after he was told. The idea that he covered it up is to me, foolish, because he told those in power at the university about it. Paterno is responsible for a decision that was made with the wrong interests in mind, but the idea that he perpetrated some clandestine coverup is laughable to me. He reported it, just not to enough people. In my opinion he should have finished the year and then been let go. Firing him now makes him a scapegoat and allows people like you to assume he knew everything, when in actuality if you read the 23-page release from court you’d know he actually knew a lot less than people think. It’s easier to blame him than to actually consider everyone involved, so people do. I’m not defending his actions. I’m saying he’s getting too much blame for this.
The 23 page Grand Jury report might indeed lead some more very serious trouble for the legend . If he lied to the grand jury he is in a world of trouble.The day AFTER he was told? I guess this is where we will continue to disagree,the magnitude of this type of allegation. I’m just curious,when you look at the timeline in the indictment,what is so laughable about a coverup? Do you think in 1999 when Sandusky was excused from his job as DC,Joe being the King of all things PSU football,didn’t ask why? Too much blame? He enabled a pedophile,what don’t people understand about that? By his own admission he wished he had done more. Really Joe? Someone reports a child being raped in your facility and you wait till the next day to tell your superior(which is debatable as to who answered to who up there). Then you never mention it again,all the while seeing the accused daily? At some point a normal human would probably say,hey I wonder what ever came of that. Please,give me a break. He isn’t getting near the amount of blame he should be.The other three cretins are going to jail. Meanwhile Joe gets his precious football program rightly stripped and people want make him some kind victim? If this were your son,would you say it’s okay for Joe to finish out the year on what would essentially be a victory lap. I mean he DID tell his superiors.