WE ARE....IRONIC!

To the surprise of no one, Camp Paterno filed their lawsuit against the NCAA, announcing it in somewhat grandiose fashion on Bob Costas' television show Wednesday night. That in and of itself seems a bit demonstrative, coming as it does from a family that holds up their hero as a man not only of principle but of quiet earnestness. But it's nothing when you begin to compare what their lawsuit implies (and, frankly, directly says) against what went on over the years leading up to the utter and complete collapse of the Penn State football image just 18 months ago.

The lawsuit seeks "to redress the NCAA's 100 percent adoption of the Freeh Report and imposition of a binding consent decree against Penn State University. The reality is that consent decree was imposed through coercion and threats behind the scenes and there was no ability for anyone to get redress," according to the Paterno lawyer/mouthpiece, Wick Sollers.

Really. Something related to Penn State football was "imposed through coercion"? There was "no ability for anyone to get redress"? I'm confused -- are we still talking about the poor, put-upon hero who was elevated to god-like status in his half-century coaching football and his quarter-century harboring a child rapist? Or are we talking about the countless children who were violated in unspeakable ways?

The suit is also designed to go after Louis Freeh and his report. You remember Louis Freeh -- he was the guy brought in to investigate the disgusting and disgraceful happenings at Penn State under Paterno's watch. Freeh was independent and not beholden to Happy Valley, Joe Paterno, Penn State or anyone else who wanted this kept under the rug where they felt it belonged. He was also the former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, perhaps the most elite investigative unit in the world. There was nobody else to pin responsibility on besides the men who did nothing to protect children -- so Freeh bludgeoned Penn State's leadership (including Paterno) with the painful facts, after spending months working with an investigative team of additional former FBI agents and federal prosecutors. This was not a witch hunt, as the brainwashed masses in Happy Valley will have you believe -- this was an investigation into facts, long since ignored.

The lawsuit goes after Freeh, as I mentioned, with Sollers referring to Freeh as a "co-conspirator" (in the land of make-believe that Camp Paterno still lives in, it's all just a big conspiracy against Saint Joe) and saying that "the NCAA stood on the sidelines instead of doing what they should have done with a full investigation. We have given a lot more allowance to Louis Freeh than he gave to Joe Paterno, and the people he named in his report."

Ah, so Freeh shouldn't have been given leeway to do as he saw fit? You mean, like the leeway that Joe Paterno and others gave to Jerry Sandusky to do as he saw fit?

The lawsuit also puts Joe Paterno and his legacy above the PSU football program, something which his denizens would have you believe patron Saint Joseph never did. Yet here we are seeing the Penn State athletic department have to remind the world that they aren't part of this lawsuit and they aren't interested in pissing off the NCAA any further. They know how reprehensible the rest of the country sees the situation in Happy Valley and they want to begin to heal:

"Despite our request, the Paterno family has not shared any information about its planned legal action," chief legal officer Donald Remy said in a statement. "We remain committed to working with Penn State toward the continued successful completion of our voluntary agreement with the university and to working with the NCAA's independent monitor, former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell."

Imagine that...the Paterno family not sharing information. The Paterno family putting themselves and their reputation ahead of the University and the current players. The Paterno family acting as though the NCAA has no business governing a University football program or disciplining someone who made their ill-conceived fame as a result of NCAA competitions in an NCAA league.

Elsewhere, the lawsuit and mouthpiece Sollers said that Freeh should have taken longer than the months he did take in order to get it right. So yes, the Paterno family is suggesting that the best course of action was to take less action. To wait. To let things develop. All under some mysterious and made-up pretense that suggests that the truth simply reveals itself after enough time passes. It does not. Most people know this automatically. When there is an excessive arrogance and individuals feel they are above the rules, corruption follows. When that corruption is revealed, defiance often follows that. Acceptance of their lot in life rarely comes in situations like these. The fact is, the Paterno family will never acknowledge that their father has any culpability in Jerry Sandusky's actions or should be viewed as anything other than the man who was unreasonably elevated to godlike stature, complete with trophy and shrine.

Despite the yarns the locals loved to spin, Joe Paterno was not innocent nor ensconced in humility. He was -- and his family is -- arrogant and defiant and under the severely mistaken impression that nobody has any right to hold a man responsible for what went on under his watch. They'll gladly let him take credit for the good things that went on -- just not the horrific things. 

This lawsuit will drag on for quite some time. In the end, PSU will not benefit from it, nor will the football program. Joe Paterno's statue wasn't only taken down because we all learned he wasn't the angel everyone in central Pennsylvania insisted he was.-- it was taken down because PSU wanted to move on and put him in their past.

Camp Paterno is not nearly ready to allow that to happen.

Paterno's Blemish to Remain at PSU

The Joe Paterno statue was removed from outside of Beaver Stadium early Sunday morning...but prior to it being removed, PSU students and fans came by to pay even more respects to the Demigod that is Joe Paterno's myth. I know that many PSU fans have come to grips with the size and abhorrent nature of this scandal...and the fact that their leader betrayed them, and most-importantly, innocent children by covering up a scandal for at least 15 years- those people seem saddened, disgusted, rightfully angry and shell-shocked.  But many PSU fans, students and alums still don't get it.

Before we go any further, I want everyone to keep an eye out for the signs a god figure is being created by man:  The impression of infallibility, the belief that no one ever has, nor ever will do their job close to as well as them, the thought that a person is bigger than the institution for which they work...and any erection of permanent statues and structures in a living person's honor are all good ways to spot fans that have become truly fanatical and finally have resigned themselves to simply worshipping at the altar of a false god.

If the stories of the myth of Paterno are true, at one point, he was humble enough to worship a God higher than himself. But sometime, while being genuflected to over a five decade span, he began to believe that very few that came before him, if any, were as important as he.  His actions, statements and even silence tell the tail to a great extent, but allowing people to raise a statue in his likeness while his lungs still drew breath was probably the greatest sign of his hubris.

But it's pretty obvious how this monster was created. Do a quick search for the statue, and you'll find what I found- photos of posters and notes along with articles still defending a man and a legend that's indefensible.

That's why the NCAA's impending actions are of the utmost importance.  Tomorrow, both the NCAA, and possibly the B1G, will announce how they plan to punish this structure that created an outlaw assistant coach, a head coach without a moral or ethical compass or any respect for the law or human decency and high-ranking officials that believed the family was more important than anything else.  That family needs to be destroyed.  Sadly, through firings, guilty verdicts, resignations and more and more proof of atrocious, repetitive actions and behavior, JoePa still remains a gleaming legend in the minds of tens of thousands...if not more.

The NCAA, nor a conference has ever had to hand down a punishment for something like this...Thank God something like this has never happened before. We're in unchartered, murky, foul, wretched waters.  And if the message is sent loudly and clearly enough, hopefully, we'll never have to witness anything like this again.

But those that continue to worship at the altar of Papa Joe clearly are too dense to understand anything but a nuclear winter.  A football season in which Beaver Stadium sits cold and silent might finally send the message in a manner that they understand.

The Dismantling of a Legend Rightfully Continues

For about a decade, I can remember Joe Paterno telling the world that if he wasn't coaching football, he'd would literally die.  In fact, he credited the game and his players for keeping him young-acting and alive.  In hindsight, there seems to be a ton of truth to that.

We know a lot about the guy that we didn't years ago.  We know that he struggled privately with various illnesses...most noteworthy, the cancer that took his life shortly after he was fired.  But, the most dangerous illness Paterno probably suffered from was a mental illness that made him believe in a reality that simply didn't exist.

In Joe Paterno's world, football, loyalty, reputation, public perception and graduation rates were more important than laws or even lives.  No one will ever say that it was a bad thing that so many of Paterno's players graduated from college.  In fact, many of his players were given opportunities at lives they would have never had if it wasn't for Paterno's football program. But, there were many parts of his program that were in shambles before most of the world ever knew what The Second Mile even was...or knew of the disgusting underbelly of its founder.

As Paterno aged, he did what a lot of older people do- he began to slow down and care less about the details that once defined him.  In this process, he stopped looking for lawlessness and poor behavior; and worse, he stopped caring about this behavior's repercussions.  It's been pretty well-documented that in the 00s and after, PSU football players were arrested at a much-higher rate than they had been in the previous decades under Paterno's watch.  In spite of that, the head coach didn't see the interest in the change of the program as anything more than a "witch hunt". A few years of rough water and sub-par records later, Paterno's Lions emerged once again as a powerhouse.  And Paterno's national reputation remained mostly-unblemished.

On the field, Paterno was fiery...even when hobbled by injuries or illness. His players reflected that fire with a hard-nosed brand of football that reflected the lunchpail perspective that the simply-dressed coach often exuded.  But, like some other legendary coaches before him that held on a bit too long, discipline and principles were sometimes replaced with outright anger, a bully's mentality and little proof that consequences existed for the actions.  But, in press conferences, Paterno's awe-schucks answers were lauded by the media and Nittany Lion fans alike.

The man could do no wrong...even when he did wrong. If he assailed an official as he ran toward the tunnel, not only would he not get penalized in the second half, ABC would cheer on the effort as spunky and gritty. If he dodged questions in press conferences, we'd hear about how he was a master at handling issues with political savvy and wisdom that young people just don't have.  I'm pretty sure that he didn't think that the final serious issue that he'd ever have to deal with on this earth, was the cover-up surrounding one of his ex-assistants sexual deviancy and mis-conduct.

I'm also sure that he believed, no, knew, that he was above the law.

His grandfatherly public persona was hardly ever broken.  Even after he was fired, his boyish smile and pithy comments to the student body made it seem like the entire Sandusky case was an overblown mis-understanding.  But in spite what some PSU alums and fans try to tell us, there was no misunderstanding here.  JoePa knew exactly what was happening...and intentionally directed people to look the other way and cover-up some of the most-monstrous behavior imaginable.

Outside of cannibalism, is there anything that our society is more disgusted by than adults that make children their sexual prey?  I can only speak for myself and the people I know well...but I don't think anything is lower than this.  It has the power to completely ruin lives- it robs the victim of not only their childhood, but also an adult life of much of the perspective and joy we take for granted.

YET, Paterno, part of Penn State's administration, and much of its athletic department thought it was better to protect one of their own than bring to the light this horrible darkness. This is the worst case of lack of institutional control that the NCAA will ever investigate.  They probably will not give the football program what they deserve later this year...but that in itself is a different conversation and enough material for a month of posts.

Delusional.

PSU fans continue to defend the deceased leader of their football program, but nothing I've read, and no one I've talked to, can convince me that Paterno is any different than a gangster that saw the family as more important than law, decency or those who aren't part of his inner circle.  He abused his bigtime power in a small town to perpetuate a conspiracy that left lives shattered and all but encouraged lawlessness to continue. As recently as last fall, Sandusky was welcomed into Penn State's facilities by Paterno and Co. as a guest of the coach. Now try to relate for a moment. Could you, would you, welcome a child predator into your home time and again if he wasn't repentent? I'd hope not.  Could you, would you,give him the apparatus to continue his abhorrent behavior? Probably not. Could you, would you, instruct others to lie on his behalf in order to protect him? Absolutely not.

The more that's investigated, the more awful this case becomes.  The more digging that occurs, the more we all get to see just how dark things really were.  And while Paterno and his PSU lemmings were never guilty of the repetitive act itself, they were all guilty...and all should pay in some way.  It seems only just that the PSU football empire that Paterno built should be dismantled by the scandal that he covered up for a decade.

Knocking down statues and chipping away at the legacy should be the just the beginning of the destruction of a mythical legend that simply doesn't match the true story. But sadly, by dying, Paterno got off way too easy...and he'll never see the consequences of the fraud that he enabled and perpetuated.