This blogger watched the Tom Bradley Penn State Press Conference today with very much interest. After all, Coach Bradley, Penn State Football’s defense coach (he’s not listed as “defensive coordinator”) was selected to replace the fired legendary coach Joe Paterno.
Here’s some of the press conference:
In the full talk, Bradley spent a lot of time saying that he either could not answer a question or to ask the other person about whatever comments that person made, or actions they took. It was painful to watch.
And this blogger is not criticizing Coach Bradley for his answers, just pointing out that he was in a totally awkward situation. His friend and mentor Joe Paterno was just shockingly fired after a tenure that spanned 44 years and more wins than any coach in NCAA history.
Moreover, JoePa was seen as a good, clean, morally upstanding person. Now, and because he failed to have his assistant Jerry Sandusky arrested by the police when the man who had a penchant for doing something with boys that he should not have even thought of doing, let alone done, Paterno is out of a job.
The campus is up in arms over this, and for good reasons, in part because of what Joe allowed to happen, and in the other part, because he was fired. Abruptly.
Does this say Joe Paterno’s a bad guy? No. Not at all.
It says that he probably didn’t want to bring media and scandal and attention to his program by calling the police, because that’s certainly what would have happened.
What JoePa should have done is got some of his offensive and defensive linemen together, put Sandusky in a dark room, and given him Godfather style punishment.
JoePa should have figured out some kind of way to make sure Sandusky never even had such ideas in his head.
But he didn’t. Sandusky kept it up. And now Joe’s out of a job.
Good luck to Tom Bradley Saturday, against Nebraska.