Posnanski and the Paterno book

When people ask me if the NCAA was right in unleashing draconian penalties against Penn State, I ask a different question: "Should they have held up Joe Paterno as a paragon of purity and virtue for more than four decades?"

While acknowledging that books can change after the proposal, his whole pitch was premised on the idea that Paterno was a "paragon of purity and virtue for more than four decades." If the NCAA held him up as such, Joe Posnanski did not wage much of a counter-argument.

I'm also disappointed that he did not mention the money he donated to Paterno's foundation. In a column swearing his impartiality, that needs to be in there.

All that said ... can't wait for Tuesday.

 

The worry I have for Poz is whether he has a worldview/framework to deal with such difficult human questions.

It's not enough to be intellectually on point. When this stuff goes down, it never is. He tried that in the Penn State class and rightly got smoked for it.

I'm not going to pretend a spiritual framework is the only way to tackle it (although I'd make the case it's best by far). But Poz has to try to put these events in a context for me to buy his point of view. When he says the word "true," what does he mean by that? Accurate? Honest? Balanced? And what argument will Poz make for his definition of "true."

Ultimately, readers, thinkers, people settle on the question of "Why?" Why is the world this way? Why would someone do this - and then do that? Why? And if you have no thoughts for "Why?" other than, "Well, some people say this, and some say this, and some say this," you're failing your own use of the word "true." Because that word isn't the same to everybody.

 

It's sad Posnanski doesn't have any shame in glorifying child-rape enablers.

 

Wasn't it the media and the fans who worshiped Paterno? I don't really remember the NCAA going gaga for him.

 

Good point.

On the Chicago sports talk radio show, "Boers and Bernstein," which is actually about as intelligent as it gets on sports radio, former sports writer Terry Boers has been killing Posnanski the last couple days for buying into the Paterno myth to begin with. His mantra has been, "How could he not realize in all that time there what I realized in three trips?" Meaning that Paterno was an obvious fraud, and everyone knew it.

Which begs the question: Why keep writing worshipful stories?

 

If there wasn't significant asskissing of the scUM athletic department involved, it wouldn't be a book by Mr. Bacon.

 

Pet peeve: Raises the question, not begs the question.

Also, why judge the book or the writer's intentions from fragments and bits like those we've seen? Or credit talk radio for saying "college football coaches are flawed and human" only when it's profitable revisionism for them to do so?

 

Sorry, but the question he raised is a fair one, and one I've been raising on this thread for months: Why did Joe Posnanski think Joe Paterno was a saint to begin with when most sports journalists had long since concluded otherwise? Does he just not have a cynicism meter at all? He's clearly a bright man and a terrific storyteller. I find it hard to believe that he's naive.

 

Where did the author ever specify the book would be "worshipful?"

 

The excerpts so far appear to be very "deferential" and sympathetic.

So, maybe not "worshipful" but I don't see nearly enough skepticism. Yet.

 

That wasn't a reference to the Posnanski book, but to the tone of Paterno coverage and features in general over the years. Boers says that he knew in three trips that Paterno was a fraud. My question is, if everyone knew it - and I don't doubt that people did, because I spent some time in the college football media and covered multiple Penn State games - why did everyone keep writing worshipful stories about him? Why this desire to hew to the established narrative? Path of least resistance? Something else?

 

B&B is the best talk radio show I have ever heard -- and they have been absolutely killing Penn State for months.