There are two types of people who defend Joe Paterno. There is the kind of person who could be shown a video of Paterno cheering on Jerry Sandusky as the defensive coordinator abused a child and still support the head coach because of how many games he won at Penn State. Then there are the people who choose not to become informed about the case because they don’t want their image of the coach to be shattered. In either case, the reason for denial is the same: Joe Paterno can’t be bad because of how much he won, and how many young men he supposedly taught to win the “right way.”
Sadly, Gary Pinkel falls into the second group of people.
The Missouri coach embarrassed himself at SEC Media Day on Tuesday with the following defense of Joe Paterno:
“Joe Paterno’s a friend that I got to know professionally, and you can’t take away the greatness of this man,” Pinkel said, according to the Columbia Daily Tribune. “He was a great man. However you analyze this, you can’t erase all that this guy’s done. You can’t do that. Nobody can do that. I think when you come out of such a tragic situation, certainly involving children and the magnitude of this in our country from a media standpoint, I anticipated really what happened. I anticipated that they would do this. You’re not going to sit back there and say, ‘Well, just things happen.’ You’re not going to do that. They’re going to be firing, and people, they’re going to make statements and they’re going to point fingers, and that’s what I anticipated a little bit. But he was a great man, a good man. I’m sure he would, maybe if he could do it over again he would have followed up a few things. But don’t take away all this guy did, and to sit there and blame him for all this, I think is wrong.”
According to Steve Walentik, Pinkel was then asked if there was anything that could be systemically learned from the situation.
“Well, I think every university is going to analyze that, and everybody’s going to have something in place to do it. It’s so easy in hindsight to go back there and say what it is. That’s the easiest thing to do. The easiest thing to do is to point fingers and say ‘You should have done this, you should done that, you should have done that.’ And that was anticipated, so for anybody to think that it would have been different than that. … But I just think the common sense factor of jumping on top of things fast and making sure there’s an analysis and making sure that there’s follow-up, I think that’s really, to me — and I don’t read a lot about it — but I think there’s certainly a lot of lessons to learn from everybody.”
Pinkel should honestly keep his mouth shut until he becomes informed on the subject. And for those of you who agree with him, you need to read this.
We already knew that Pinkel had horrible judgment based on this video, but these comments only confirm it.
And FYI, Pinkel, Paterno isn’t being blamed for all of this, he’s only being blamed for conspiring to cover up Sandusky’s pedophilia which he could have stopped several years before the awful monster was finally put in jail. Now if that’s the mark of a great man, then I’d love to hear his thoughts on the awful Mahatma Gandhi. And I honestly wonder what sort of crimes Pinkel would justify at the cost of winning football games for Missouri. Sounds to me like just about anything.
H/T Sports by Brooks
