I'm not saying Substack is clean, but it's not necessarily dirty just because some loudmouth condemns it. Besides, what other groups must they ban to be clean enough? Hamas, which provides the antisemitism of the Nazis without the economic benefits?
Selfishly, I want you to republish your scathing piece about the HOF’s “Pre-Integration Era Committee,” published on NBCSports.com on Oct 7, 2015. It’s quoted in a piece on the SABR website (link below), but the story doesn’t exist on the NBCSports site anymore. I selfishly want it available again because A) I think it was instrumental in getting the Hall of Fame to change the name of that committee and should be available for people who want to understand the timeline of that change, and B) I quote that piece in my book (which I just turned in to McFarland yesterday!) and now the link in my bibliography doesn’t work. So, pretty please, re-posting that would be greatly appreciated.
No way. Northwestern was terrible for a long time, but Ara Parseghian had won there previously (5 winning seasons from 1958-63). OK, they only had one winning season since then (1970), but Barnett took over in 1992 and in 95 & 96, Northwestern went 10-2 and 9-3... before turning back into a pumpkin with losing season in 1997 and 1998. It was a blip. A cool blip, because Northwestern actually went to a Rose Bowl, but still a blip. It wasn't a turnaround.
K-State was one of the worst programs in CFB history. They had some success in the 1930's, but since WWII, they had three winning seasons (1954, 1970, 1982). They had been to one bowl game. Ever. the 1982 Independence Bowl, which they lost. Their best season was 1954, in which they won a whopping 7 games. Snyder took over an 0-11 team.
In 3 years, he had his first winning season. And in 1993, he guided K-State on an amazing run: 11 straight bowl games (2 of them Fiesta Bowls and 2 Cotton Bowls) and 7 of those seasons with 11 wins or more. They finished in the top ten 6 different times in that stretch. THAT is a turnaround. K-State went from basically an automatic win for opponents to one of the best teams in the nation for a full decade. While no longer an elite program, K-State at least is now considered a program like anyone else. Snyder built them up into something sustainable.
The end of the John Pont era (76-77) produced 2-20 (.091) Rick Venturi era (78-80) produced 1-31-1 (.045) and the longest losing streak in CFB history. Dennis Green (81-85) followed with 10-45 (.182) and Francis Peay (86-91) was 13-51-2 (.212). Pont, Venturi, and Green all featured 0-11 seasons. For the Golden Age of NU football (76-91) the Mildcats were 26-145-3 (.158). During those halcyon days they finished 10th seven times, 9th four times, and 8th five times in a 10 team league. That’s some record of futility. Barnett put them in their first bowl game in 45 years. Gonna stand by my statement.
One KState coach in the 1970s went 0-21 in the Big Eight during his tenure, and then was fired because the team went on probation. That's right they were cheating and won exactly ZERO games in their conference for their efforts.
I mean, I'm not gonna try and say that Northwestern wasn't putrid. They were. My argument is that K-State was just as bad for a longer period, had never had a period of success in the modern era, and then, and this is the key point, the turnaround was sustainable.
There was bumpiness in the Barnett/Walker era, but in the 18 years since 2006 the ‘Cats (same mascot as KState, interesting) went to 11 bowls, won 6, and took the Big Ten West twice. I consider that sustained success, no?
I started my Substack column 10 months ago, shortly after subscribing to this one--in fact, Joe was a partial inspiration for that move. So, regardless of what the future holds, I am grateful that Joe's played a key role in my own modest time (and roughly 80 posts) on this platform. Not that any of my 240 subscribers are asking but I'll be most interested in Joe's decision next month on what he'll do about his column in this space.
On the Substack issue, I will follow you anywhere. Whether you stay or leave I’ll be reading your stuff, waiting for you to write something that makes me cry again.
On your poll about republishing some of your old stuff, I think the poll response is overwhelmingly yes. 90%. Can’t get much clearer than that. It sort of reminds me of your recent discussion about unanimity in Hall of Fame voting. One wonders how someone could have voted no to Hank Aaron. I wonder how anyone could vote no to your republishing old pieces. But who wants to live in a world where everyone agrees about everything.
Ditch Substack. They are pretending to be “fair” to white suprrmacists and nazis, using free speech as an excuse. 1. It’s about profits, not free speech, 2. It is pointless to teach civics lessons to white supremacists and nazis.
What kind of profits do you think they're getting from these accounts, which have a few hundred subscribers (and who knows how many of those are even paid subscriptions)?
I think my position vis-a-vis the Substack mess has been made clear but then as I read comments the whole Paterno in re Sandusky was brought up. I want to recommend an excellent book, Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don't Know by Malcolm Gladwell. It is NOT another Paterno - Sandusky book. It talks about a number of scandalous cases such as "How did Fidel Castro fool the CIA for a generation (double agent Cuban spy story)? Why did Neville Chamberlain think he could trust Adolf Hitler? Why are campus sexual assaults on the rise? Do television sitcoms teach us something about the way we relate to one another that isn’t true?" He does talk about Bernie Madoff, Joe Paterno, judges making bail decisions and Amanda Knox. The bottom line with many so-called experts is that they do worse than flipping coins in making critical decisions. We judge Paterno based on what we think of as all the evidence even though Joe was not privy to most of it when his former QB informed him of what he witnessed in the shower room. We ignore things that don't fit into our judgmental conclusions, such as the fact that Joe reported the report to his bosses (the Athletic Director and University President), that Sandusky was retired when the report was received and not working for Joe (if anyone enabled Sandusky it might be more accurately have been the Athletics Department and the University)). I know it isn't popular to raise any doubts now that public opinion has been given, but it seems to me there may have been a rush to judgment.
Malcolm Gladwell is a long-established hack and his most recent book, the one in which he defends Paterno (and for that matter Neville Chamberlain), has gotten the worst reviews of his career. Among other problems, reviewers complain that Gladwell relies on unreliable sources (one of his sources in the Paterno chapter is John Ziegler, who believes that Sandusky himself is innocent), and point out that what was asked of Paterno was not a nuanced understanding of Sandusky but simply to do his job and call the authorities when confronted with evidence of sexual assault. I think Tom Ley wrote about it well: https://deadspin.com/malcolm-gladwells-penn-state-rabbit-hole-isnt-very-deep-1838381737
Interesting. And again, what most people do in a crisis situation is contact what they perceive to be their "chain of command" for want of a better phrase. This is what Paterno initially did in notifying his bosses. And keep in mind that Sandusky at that point did not work for Paterno. Gladwell, hack or not, throughout his book points out that the truth in these incredible situations often times comes out later than we think we should because people do not want to think the worst of those they know and have worked with. it helps explain, for example, how Cuba's double agent was able to operate as long as she did before being exposed. The same thing is also true with many of the financial scandals such as Enron and Bernie Madoff. As outlined by Michael Lewis in The Big Short, there are usually warning signs but the so-called exports don't want to believe them so they are in denial way too long. All I have been saying is that well after the fact, when quite a bit more is known of the wrong doing itself, we tend to rush to judgment of others when we ourselves might have acted no better in similar circumstances.
The first thing to say is that these are not really reasons, but excuses. I don't accept "I told my immediate supervisor and left it at that" as an excuse, and I especially don't think any of the victims' parents should have to accept it either. Your examples kind of drive this home: I don't think the point of The Big Short is that the leaders of our financial sector should be excused for sending the world into a historic recession, if anything the point was the opposite. Similarly, it's pathetic to excuse Neville Chamberlain with "he didn't want to believe the worst about Hitler." (In fact, the two cases are parallel, and this is a glaring oversight Gladwell's reviewers have pointed out: Chamberlain wasn't just fooled by Hitler's handshake, he was fooled because he wanted to avoid war and was looking to justify that decision, much in the same way Wall Street didn't want the party to end so they overlooked the obvious signs that the housing market was rotten.)
But in particular these excuses don't work for Paterno. Paterno wasn't a loyal foot soldier who never bucked chain of command; when it came to Penn State football, he viewed himself at the very top of the chain of command. JoePos's book itself makes this clear: when Spanier told him in 2005, before the scandal, that he was going to recommend to the board that this be Paterno's last year as coach, Paterno looked him in the eye and growled, "You take care of your playground and I'll take care of mine." When Vicky Triponey at Penn State tried to raise disciplinary issues about some of his players, Paterno shot it down and said he'd deal with it internally. Paterno saw himself as outside the university's chain of command. He can't then turn around and say, well, I just talked to my supervisors and anything beyond that would have been above my pay grade.
As for "people do not want to think the worst of those they know and worked with," that *maybe* could have flown if the 2001 incident was the first time he heard (although the fact that he told administration shows that he knew the worst was *possible,* which raises the question of why he didn't follow up to see what they found.) But it wasn't: Paterno was aware of the 1998 investigation into Sandusky (email from Tim Curley: "coach is anxious to hear where it stands"). So now is it that he didn't want to think the worst of Sandusky, *twice*?
It's true that sometimes we learn facts that people at the time couldn't have known, which may cause us to judge those people unfairly. But in this case, the relevant facts that emerged, the things we didn't know at the time, are things *Paterno* knew: about 1998, about 2001. This is not about hindsight. It's about assessing what Paterno knew and why he didn't do more with what he knew.
Not arguing with you about the whole Joe should have done more position. It's my position as well. However, Pennsylvania law at the time DID require he notify his superiors which he did, it DID NOT require that he notify the police, which he did not. I understand that we hold higher expectations for people in positions of power even if not required by law which is why I believe Joe should have done more. It is also somewhat ironic that his former QB/graduate assistant who provided the report to Joe did the same thing Joe did (reported to his superiors but not to the police). He too was fired, filed a wrongful termination lawsuit, and received a judgment for more than $10 million. The University appealed and later settled with him for an undisclosed sum of money.
I think we’re really blessed in 2024 to have crystal clear vision and the absolute confidence to know that in the late 1990s and early 2000s, we would not only have easily and incontrovertibly picked out a pedophile but we would also (using those 2024 standards) not rested until that pedophile was arrested, tried, and convicted.
Some people, acknowledging that Paterno was human but based upon decades of his life and work and deeds and words prior to this saga, will take him at his word and believe him when he said that in hindsight, he wished he had done more. Others will not. I won’t convince anyone with this but I can’t let these “We all know Paterno was in on it” comments stand without saying something. Anyone can chime in on this but I may exercise my prerogative not to engage so I don’t help turn this into a rehash of an old, sad argument where no one wins.
For those who are interested, I’d highly recommend Joe’s book on Paterno. It is not a hagiography and was excellent.
I read and own Joe’s book on Paterno. I don’t think Paterno knew what Sandusky was doing and allowed it. But I don’t think saying Paterno was grossly negligent is overstating things either.
Paterno at the end was like when the older grandparent is left in charge of kids. No real oversight.
There’s no need for sarcasm, if your points are good. Nor straw men (no one is saying “Paterno was in on it).
I’m certain Paterno believed he should have done more, but what good is that to Sandusky’s victims? What Posnanski and Gladwell tried to whitewash is that Paterno should have done more, not with hindsight, not with special insight, but with ordinary sight, with what he knew then. You talk about “picking out a pedophile,” but Paterno didn’t have to do that--Sandusky was picked out for him. That’s why he called the college president, as you pointed out! So do you feel that was sufficient? Was Paterno really unaware for the next decade (he met with McQueary in 2001) that Sandusky was still operating Second Mile at Penn State?
Except his points aren't good. Paterno did basically zero, which is a long f'n way from "have easily and incontrovertibly picked out a pedophile but we would also (using those 2024 standards) not rested until that pedophile was arrested, tried, and convicted."
That Bobby Bowden note made me smile. Brought some good warm feelings on a cold night in St. Paul, Minn..
I'm very into reading old Posnanski stories that have "disappeared" once a week, and I'm VERY into reading them on a platform that isn't Substack (and, though I probably will remain a subscriber regardless, I will have a decision to make if your decision, Joe, is to stay here, when there are other options out there).
Don't forget to open some basketball cards too! Those were almost even more hilarious.
Hey Joe,
Two things. A good friend of mine died Friday from ALS. Big Red Sox fan. Please open a pack for him this week.
Also, might want to search the Wayback Machine for old articles. Archive.org. Great resource.
Note: Bear Bryant died a month after coaching his last game. Paterno worried the same would happen to him.
Before making a decision on leaving Substack, you might want to delve a little deeper - there may be a smear going down:
There Are Major Factual Issues With Jonathan M. Katz’s ‘Atlantic’ Article, “Substack Has A Nazi Problem”
https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/there-are-major-factual-issues-with
I'm not saying Substack is clean, but it's not necessarily dirty just because some loudmouth condemns it. Besides, what other groups must they ban to be clean enough? Hamas, which provides the antisemitism of the Nazis without the economic benefits?
~
I want you to finish Joe's hall of fame...sorry unless I missed it
Selfishly, I want you to republish your scathing piece about the HOF’s “Pre-Integration Era Committee,” published on NBCSports.com on Oct 7, 2015. It’s quoted in a piece on the SABR website (link below), but the story doesn’t exist on the NBCSports site anymore. I selfishly want it available again because A) I think it was instrumental in getting the Hall of Fame to change the name of that committee and should be available for people who want to understand the timeline of that change, and B) I quote that piece in my book (which I just turned in to McFarland yesterday!) and now the link in my bibliography doesn’t work. So, pretty please, re-posting that would be greatly appreciated.
https://sabr.org/latest/posnanski-hall-of-fames-pre-integration-committee-announcement-creates-more-questions-than-answers/
Poll question: Rerun a column on the weekend. Bonus: Let a brilliant reader pick each week's column.
My pick: "Natural Lee."
I look
The greatest turnaround in college football history is Gary Barnett at Northwestern.
No way. Northwestern was terrible for a long time, but Ara Parseghian had won there previously (5 winning seasons from 1958-63). OK, they only had one winning season since then (1970), but Barnett took over in 1992 and in 95 & 96, Northwestern went 10-2 and 9-3... before turning back into a pumpkin with losing season in 1997 and 1998. It was a blip. A cool blip, because Northwestern actually went to a Rose Bowl, but still a blip. It wasn't a turnaround.
K-State was one of the worst programs in CFB history. They had some success in the 1930's, but since WWII, they had three winning seasons (1954, 1970, 1982). They had been to one bowl game. Ever. the 1982 Independence Bowl, which they lost. Their best season was 1954, in which they won a whopping 7 games. Snyder took over an 0-11 team.
In 3 years, he had his first winning season. And in 1993, he guided K-State on an amazing run: 11 straight bowl games (2 of them Fiesta Bowls and 2 Cotton Bowls) and 7 of those seasons with 11 wins or more. They finished in the top ten 6 different times in that stretch. THAT is a turnaround. K-State went from basically an automatic win for opponents to one of the best teams in the nation for a full decade. While no longer an elite program, K-State at least is now considered a program like anyone else. Snyder built them up into something sustainable.
He is a wizard.
I love a spirited debate (about who’s worse!)
The end of the John Pont era (76-77) produced 2-20 (.091) Rick Venturi era (78-80) produced 1-31-1 (.045) and the longest losing streak in CFB history. Dennis Green (81-85) followed with 10-45 (.182) and Francis Peay (86-91) was 13-51-2 (.212). Pont, Venturi, and Green all featured 0-11 seasons. For the Golden Age of NU football (76-91) the Mildcats were 26-145-3 (.158). During those halcyon days they finished 10th seven times, 9th four times, and 8th five times in a 10 team league. That’s some record of futility. Barnett put them in their first bowl game in 45 years. Gonna stand by my statement.
One KState coach in the 1970s went 0-21 in the Big Eight during his tenure, and then was fired because the team went on probation. That's right they were cheating and won exactly ZERO games in their conference for their efforts.
That’s impressive. NU had a player arrested for betting on and throwing games!
I mean, I'm not gonna try and say that Northwestern wasn't putrid. They were. My argument is that K-State was just as bad for a longer period, had never had a period of success in the modern era, and then, and this is the key point, the turnaround was sustainable.
But, my God, 26-145-3 is truly awe-inspiring.
There was bumpiness in the Barnett/Walker era, but in the 18 years since 2006 the ‘Cats (same mascot as KState, interesting) went to 11 bowls, won 6, and took the Big Ten West twice. I consider that sustained success, no?
To quote ths famous diplomat Billy Martin I think you are both right
Who could ever argue with Billy Martin?
I started my Substack column 10 months ago, shortly after subscribing to this one--in fact, Joe was a partial inspiration for that move. So, regardless of what the future holds, I am grateful that Joe's played a key role in my own modest time (and roughly 80 posts) on this platform. Not that any of my 240 subscribers are asking but I'll be most interested in Joe's decision next month on what he'll do about his column in this space.
On the Substack issue, I will follow you anywhere. Whether you stay or leave I’ll be reading your stuff, waiting for you to write something that makes me cry again.
On your poll about republishing some of your old stuff, I think the poll response is overwhelmingly yes. 90%. Can’t get much clearer than that. It sort of reminds me of your recent discussion about unanimity in Hall of Fame voting. One wonders how someone could have voted no to Hank Aaron. I wonder how anyone could vote no to your republishing old pieces. But who wants to live in a world where everyone agrees about everything.
Ditch Substack. They are pretending to be “fair” to white suprrmacists and nazis, using free speech as an excuse. 1. It’s about profits, not free speech, 2. It is pointless to teach civics lessons to white supremacists and nazis.
What kind of profits do you think they're getting from these accounts, which have a few hundred subscribers (and who knows how many of those are even paid subscriptions)?
Sabían has to become the commissioner of the college football championship, then lead the secession movement of big time football from the NCAA.
Not even a mention of Pete Carroll?
Coaching GOAT? Has to be John Wooden.
Depends on where you live and favorite sport.
Scotty Bowman, 9 Stanleys with 3 different teams.
I think my position vis-a-vis the Substack mess has been made clear but then as I read comments the whole Paterno in re Sandusky was brought up. I want to recommend an excellent book, Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don't Know by Malcolm Gladwell. It is NOT another Paterno - Sandusky book. It talks about a number of scandalous cases such as "How did Fidel Castro fool the CIA for a generation (double agent Cuban spy story)? Why did Neville Chamberlain think he could trust Adolf Hitler? Why are campus sexual assaults on the rise? Do television sitcoms teach us something about the way we relate to one another that isn’t true?" He does talk about Bernie Madoff, Joe Paterno, judges making bail decisions and Amanda Knox. The bottom line with many so-called experts is that they do worse than flipping coins in making critical decisions. We judge Paterno based on what we think of as all the evidence even though Joe was not privy to most of it when his former QB informed him of what he witnessed in the shower room. We ignore things that don't fit into our judgmental conclusions, such as the fact that Joe reported the report to his bosses (the Athletic Director and University President), that Sandusky was retired when the report was received and not working for Joe (if anyone enabled Sandusky it might be more accurately have been the Athletics Department and the University)). I know it isn't popular to raise any doubts now that public opinion has been given, but it seems to me there may have been a rush to judgment.
As usual, people believe what they want to believe.
Spoken in a noncritical way to both sides. To each his own.
Malcolm Gladwell is a long-established hack and his most recent book, the one in which he defends Paterno (and for that matter Neville Chamberlain), has gotten the worst reviews of his career. Among other problems, reviewers complain that Gladwell relies on unreliable sources (one of his sources in the Paterno chapter is John Ziegler, who believes that Sandusky himself is innocent), and point out that what was asked of Paterno was not a nuanced understanding of Sandusky but simply to do his job and call the authorities when confronted with evidence of sexual assault. I think Tom Ley wrote about it well: https://deadspin.com/malcolm-gladwells-penn-state-rabbit-hole-isnt-very-deep-1838381737
Interesting. And again, what most people do in a crisis situation is contact what they perceive to be their "chain of command" for want of a better phrase. This is what Paterno initially did in notifying his bosses. And keep in mind that Sandusky at that point did not work for Paterno. Gladwell, hack or not, throughout his book points out that the truth in these incredible situations often times comes out later than we think we should because people do not want to think the worst of those they know and have worked with. it helps explain, for example, how Cuba's double agent was able to operate as long as she did before being exposed. The same thing is also true with many of the financial scandals such as Enron and Bernie Madoff. As outlined by Michael Lewis in The Big Short, there are usually warning signs but the so-called exports don't want to believe them so they are in denial way too long. All I have been saying is that well after the fact, when quite a bit more is known of the wrong doing itself, we tend to rush to judgment of others when we ourselves might have acted no better in similar circumstances.
The first thing to say is that these are not really reasons, but excuses. I don't accept "I told my immediate supervisor and left it at that" as an excuse, and I especially don't think any of the victims' parents should have to accept it either. Your examples kind of drive this home: I don't think the point of The Big Short is that the leaders of our financial sector should be excused for sending the world into a historic recession, if anything the point was the opposite. Similarly, it's pathetic to excuse Neville Chamberlain with "he didn't want to believe the worst about Hitler." (In fact, the two cases are parallel, and this is a glaring oversight Gladwell's reviewers have pointed out: Chamberlain wasn't just fooled by Hitler's handshake, he was fooled because he wanted to avoid war and was looking to justify that decision, much in the same way Wall Street didn't want the party to end so they overlooked the obvious signs that the housing market was rotten.)
But in particular these excuses don't work for Paterno. Paterno wasn't a loyal foot soldier who never bucked chain of command; when it came to Penn State football, he viewed himself at the very top of the chain of command. JoePos's book itself makes this clear: when Spanier told him in 2005, before the scandal, that he was going to recommend to the board that this be Paterno's last year as coach, Paterno looked him in the eye and growled, "You take care of your playground and I'll take care of mine." When Vicky Triponey at Penn State tried to raise disciplinary issues about some of his players, Paterno shot it down and said he'd deal with it internally. Paterno saw himself as outside the university's chain of command. He can't then turn around and say, well, I just talked to my supervisors and anything beyond that would have been above my pay grade.
As for "people do not want to think the worst of those they know and worked with," that *maybe* could have flown if the 2001 incident was the first time he heard (although the fact that he told administration shows that he knew the worst was *possible,* which raises the question of why he didn't follow up to see what they found.) But it wasn't: Paterno was aware of the 1998 investigation into Sandusky (email from Tim Curley: "coach is anxious to hear where it stands"). So now is it that he didn't want to think the worst of Sandusky, *twice*?
It's true that sometimes we learn facts that people at the time couldn't have known, which may cause us to judge those people unfairly. But in this case, the relevant facts that emerged, the things we didn't know at the time, are things *Paterno* knew: about 1998, about 2001. This is not about hindsight. It's about assessing what Paterno knew and why he didn't do more with what he knew.
I recommend this review of Posnanski's Paterno book for many of these details: https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/08/paterno-a-relentless-failed-defense-of-penn-states-disgraced-coach/261376/
Not arguing with you about the whole Joe should have done more position. It's my position as well. However, Pennsylvania law at the time DID require he notify his superiors which he did, it DID NOT require that he notify the police, which he did not. I understand that we hold higher expectations for people in positions of power even if not required by law which is why I believe Joe should have done more. It is also somewhat ironic that his former QB/graduate assistant who provided the report to Joe did the same thing Joe did (reported to his superiors but not to the police). He too was fired, filed a wrongful termination lawsuit, and received a judgment for more than $10 million. The University appealed and later settled with him for an undisclosed sum of money.
I think we’re really blessed in 2024 to have crystal clear vision and the absolute confidence to know that in the late 1990s and early 2000s, we would not only have easily and incontrovertibly picked out a pedophile but we would also (using those 2024 standards) not rested until that pedophile was arrested, tried, and convicted.
Some people, acknowledging that Paterno was human but based upon decades of his life and work and deeds and words prior to this saga, will take him at his word and believe him when he said that in hindsight, he wished he had done more. Others will not. I won’t convince anyone with this but I can’t let these “We all know Paterno was in on it” comments stand without saying something. Anyone can chime in on this but I may exercise my prerogative not to engage so I don’t help turn this into a rehash of an old, sad argument where no one wins.
For those who are interested, I’d highly recommend Joe’s book on Paterno. It is not a hagiography and was excellent.
I read and own Joe’s book on Paterno. I don’t think Paterno knew what Sandusky was doing and allowed it. But I don’t think saying Paterno was grossly negligent is overstating things either.
Paterno at the end was like when the older grandparent is left in charge of kids. No real oversight.
There’s no need for sarcasm, if your points are good. Nor straw men (no one is saying “Paterno was in on it).
I’m certain Paterno believed he should have done more, but what good is that to Sandusky’s victims? What Posnanski and Gladwell tried to whitewash is that Paterno should have done more, not with hindsight, not with special insight, but with ordinary sight, with what he knew then. You talk about “picking out a pedophile,” but Paterno didn’t have to do that--Sandusky was picked out for him. That’s why he called the college president, as you pointed out! So do you feel that was sufficient? Was Paterno really unaware for the next decade (he met with McQueary in 2001) that Sandusky was still operating Second Mile at Penn State?
Except his points aren't good. Paterno did basically zero, which is a long f'n way from "have easily and incontrovertibly picked out a pedophile but we would also (using those 2024 standards) not rested until that pedophile was arrested, tried, and convicted."
Yes, there's a reason I said "if" instead of "since."
That Bobby Bowden note made me smile. Brought some good warm feelings on a cold night in St. Paul, Minn..
I'm very into reading old Posnanski stories that have "disappeared" once a week, and I'm VERY into reading them on a platform that isn't Substack (and, though I probably will remain a subscriber regardless, I will have a decision to make if your decision, Joe, is to stay here, when there are other options out there).
Don't forget to open some basketball cards too! Those were almost even more hilarious.