Penn State will honor Joe Paterno before Temple game
It’s Paterno’s 50th anniversary as head coach of the Nittany Lions
The much anticipated Temple football game against Penn State at Beaver Stadium will be making headlines for other reasons on September 17th.
According to Penn States’s team promotional schedule, they’ll be “commemorating the 50th anniversary of Coach Paterno’s first game as Penn State head coach.”
It is not yet known what exactly Penn State will do to honor him.
This will be the first time Paterno will be recognized at the stadium after the sex-abuse scandal involving his assistant coach, Jerry Sandusky.
The Washington Post reported new allegations against Penn State’s most famed football coach in July. According to the new court documents, a man testified that Paterno ignored his complaints of a sexual assault by Sandusky in 1976, when he was just 14 years old.
This allegation suggests that Paterno was aware of Sandusky’s actions far earlier than it was previously reported.
The 1976 victim said that while he was attending a football camp at Penn State, assistant coach Sandusky touched him as he was showering. The boy testified that he told Paterno that Sandusky had sexually assaulted him, and Paterno chose to ignore it.
“Is it accurate that Coach Paterno quickly said to you, ‘I don’t want to hear about any of that kind of stuff, I have a football season to worry about?’ ” asked the lawyer of the victim.
“Yes . . . I was shocked, disappointed, offended. I was insulted. . . . I said, is that all you’re going to do? You’re not going to do anything else?”
In 2011, Paterno testified to a grand jury that he first became aware of possible abuse by Sandusky in 2001. He said at that time that he knew of no other events involving Sandusky and a boy.
Paterno was fired in 2011 amid the investigation that found he had concealed details relating to Sandusky’s serial abuse of young boys. The investigation also proved he protected Sandusky from being reported to the authorities.
Despite the scandal, the Penn State alumni group is pushing for a bronze statue of Paterno to be restored on campus and now will be honoring him before the game against Temple.
As soon as this was announced many people on social media were upset. As of about 6:30pm, Joe Paterno was the #4 trending topic on Twitter.
Despite the public backlash, Penn State hasn’t put out any statements yet in regards to this issue.