Paterno Negotiated Exit During 2011 Season, World Stunned...(Updated-Halo Removal)

((HT: NYTimes/Becker))

((halo update info at bottom))

So, let's get this straight...

Not that the HQ is shocked, surprised, or stunned...

But, apparently, Joe Paterno was negotiating his own golden parachute in plenty of time just as the grand jury investigation was getting warmed up. Jo Becker has discovered that the 2011 season was set to be Paterno's last and he and his family was to receive $3-million, be forgiven on a $350,000 interest-free loan, garner use of the university's private plane, and watch games from a private box for 25 years at Beaver Stadium.

Some members of the Board of Trustees were privy to the arrangement and, after being "bombarded" (Becker's verb) by hate mail and threatened by a defamation lawsuit, the school BoT caved.

But, according to Becker, the family says it was the other way around:

On Friday, Wick Sollers, a lawyer for Mr. Paterno and his family, said that it was Penn State that last summer proposed the lucrative retirement package, and that many of the aspects of the proposal — use of the plane, the luxury box — had existed in prior contracts.

If this does not confirm that the interview below was a complete and total demonstration of hubris, the HQ doesn't know what is...
((HT: ESPN))


And this one...
((HT: MSNBC.com/"Today" Show))


We could continue... but it's too easy...

And it's also too easy to say that the remodeling of parts of the Lasch Building is a good start. In all reality, it's the analogy of putting lipstick on a pig. The building, if you want to start some kind of cleansing, needs to be torn down for all it symbolizes and stands for on a campus that has a culture of denial and absolute power.

The HQ agrees with Bobby Bowden, among countless others, that the Joe Paterno statue outside Beaver Stadium should be torn down and any representation of the Paterno name needs to be removed from any building in Happy Valley. The Board of Trustees needs to be blown up for all of their inactivity, cowering, and manipulation of the system to give the family a parachute and concealing the negotations until recently.

A thought echoed here...
((HT: WHP-TV))


And, despite how incredibly unrealistic and idealistic the idea is, the school needs to stop playing football for a while. If the continued sheltering of a child rapist doesn't symbolize all that was wrong inside the university, the HQ doesn't really know what else ever would...

To think the HQ actually agrees with SAS is just how bad this whole deal is... and that's a lot of screaming we're putting aside for this...
((HT: ESPN))


Penn State played football last post-season because of image preservation- even if it was the bowl game in Dallas... No, not that one... the other one.

The Paterno family has paraded itself shamelessly in front of any camera for the last week because of image preservation. Joe Paterno orchestrated his own exit during a grand jury investigation because of image preservation.

Paterno/Sans halo

For what's left of Penn State to preserve what's left of it's image, it needs to collectively start over- and return to small town ideals that created a Happy Valley in the first place.

And that means, in scientific terms, approaching absolute zero...
And while, yes, it's a very cold place... sometimes that's the only way to start over...

((Update--Michael Pilato, an area artist who had painted a mural in State College with an image of Joe Paterno....has painted over the halo. The halo had been placed there upon Paterno's death. The act comes just 2 days after the release of the Freeh report))