OTL based their investigation off of court documents, Judicial Affairs documents, and interviews with victims of the Apartment Fight of 2007. The piece also has interviews with Joe Paterno, Graham Spanier, Ron Bracken, and Dave Lictenfels from Scouts Inc.
I thought this was nothing but a drive-bye attack perpetrated by goons at the world wide leader. We can only be thankful that this was done by OTL and not the incredibly useless E60. Otherwise, we would've had to sit through Jeremy Schapp's sanctimonious bull shit. Bob Ley's sanctimonious bull shit is much more palatable for some reason.
The court documents seemed to form the back bone of the investigation. ESPN trots out the 46 players charged since 2002 but only 27 have been found guilty. I'm not here to say that all 46 didn't do anything wrong, however, it isn't a good faith move to cite 46 charges but then bury the 27 convictions. If charges were dismissed it means that the person is in fact not guilty so why trot it out as a shock statistic. For more in depth analysis on this, as always, turn to RUTS.
The Judicial Affairs documents are used to show that Penn State football or the athletic department exerted some sort of influence to get a "slap on the wrist" for players involved. We must remember that Judicial Affairs determined these punishments while criminal charges were still pending and not one person had been found guilty of anything in the Apartment Fight. Also, Coach Paterno imposed his own punishment for the entire team which was separate from the criminal proceedings and Judicial Affairs. In sum, the punishments imposed by three separate institutions probably amounted to justice if not what the victims demanded.
The victims who were interviewed painted a brutal and bloody picture of the apartment fight. I am not going to say that their impressions need to be disregarded. However, we must remember that it is only one half of the story and none of the players themselves, for whatever reason, commented on the incident. Of course the victims are upset, however, the justice system does not function to satisfy the victims of crimes. Just because the victims are upset does not mean that justice was not done.
What I thought went waaay outside the lines were some of the interviews which were conducted. Ron Bracken's interview bothered me because Mr. Bracken has already announced his retirement and now is taking a free shot at coach Paterno and the program. Plus, Ron has disapproved of the way Joe handled the fight from the beginning. These are hardly the words of a neutral party:
It (Joe's clean-up punishment) is also a calculated move to undercut the Judicial Affairs office by taking matters into his own hands and meting out his own punishment. That will make anything Judicial Affairs decides to do look like overkill and further advance the perception that Judicial Affairs has some vendetta against the football team.Hey, Ron, enjoy your retirement because the rest of us certainly will.
President Spanier came out looking great in this piece. Spanier says all the right things to every question he is asked. The smart play all the way.
Joepa, however, was clearly upset that he had to be at this interview let alone listen to the questions he was being asked. I would feel exactly the same way. Joe seemed to near a blood-rage at several points and rightfully so as Joe was accused of interfering with the JA's investigation via text message and for lowering character standards to win. Each of these accusations are completely without merit. The murderous glow in Joe's eye tells me the accusations are false.
GO STATE! WEATHER THE STORM!
