I've been of the mind that Paterno, at the time, did think he was doing enough and taking appropriate action, both morally and legally. I've been trying to find out whether he has any military background, but his wiki article is all football . He graduated Brown in 1950, so it's possible he did some time around Korea before his football career really took off, but who knows. In any event, football is a quasi-military culture, as are most sports, so he may have had core values that told him you run up the chain of command and then you keep your mouth shut and your head down.
Now from an ethical standpoint, is that the appropriate culture for this situation? There have been numerous films and books that deal with that. A Few Good Men is one of them. And I won't pretend to know the answer to a question that people have pondered for decades. But I will say this- this is a flimsy ethical excuse for this situation.
This article is written in the dry academic sense of black & white ethics that says there's a right and wrong reaction to every situation that can be logically defined. But that's not what we're talking about here. He says Paterno risked getting himself in trouble. We know that's bullshit. That's like saying the Queen of England risks getting in trouble if she asks the PM to explain a decision. Paterno may not have any "real" power on that campus, but he's their undisputed figurehead.
That's why I'd been hoping for an in depth statement from him that explains things. He could've said "I saw Sandusky was still around, and I asked Schultz what happened with the investigation, and he told me in no uncertain terms that they thoroughly investigated and concluded there was no wrongdoing." THAT would tell me he was thinking clearly about all the angles. But the fact that he's just accepting his firing without saying ANY of that tells me it didn't happen. Rather he didn't want to deal with this situation, and washed his hands of it by sending it up the chain of command so that he could forget about it and just focus on football. He should be judged based on THAT decision.
I understand why he got fired. But I don't think I would've done it if I were king of PSU. I think a more measured step would be to suspend him pending further investigation.
