The Lions' Pride

It's interesting reading, and but I kind of disagree with it - but I think you forgot about what Joe himself said. If you take into account what he told the Washington Post, then there's nothing left to guess about Joe's role in all this. He was very specific on his actions, and his decision making process. If you take his words as the truth, we don't have to guess at anything. You can criticize him for making those choices, but it's all there.

The way I view it, Freeh thought he had evidence that Joe lied about his part in this - and then used that evidence to judge him in the court of public opinion as guilty of conspiring to protect Sandusky and lying about his knowledge of the events in 1998. The Paterno Report effectively deconstructed that evidence.

I don't really see what's left to debate when it comes to Joe's role in the tragedy.

I watched Jay Paterno make the rounds on Monday. I don't think he was pushing the "facts" point from the new report...he openly said "I don't know what Joe knew" or "We may never know what Joe was told". The point of the Paterno Report, supported what I've been saying for the past year and a half, which was I'm going to take 61 years of a man doing the right thing and standing for the right thing and side with that instead of taking one incidence that has LITTLE known facts and condemn the guy. The report did a great job in showing the chance of Paterno knowing in 1998 was low...even as Jay said he doesn't know for sure.The report did a great job beating up crazy assumptions made in the Freeh Report. The Paterno's had to include stories of Joe doing the right thing because after all, this was a character assassination made by people that don't know him at all...and this matters when people automatically assume the worse. I see where you're going here Jeff but I took a different approach with the Paterno Report and Jay Paterno (so proud of this guy). Most of this is not black and white as Freeh would lead EVERYONE to believe...and I think the Paterno's were successful in getting this message out.

I agree with jive - it's all opinions based on the evidence we know. Freeh was given access that nobody else has, so the only thing people can do is go off of whatever evidence he presented.

At this point, the best approach is a logical one: look at the facts, look at the possible theories, and look at how they match up with all the information we know. Every theory has holes in it, and generally the best one is whichever theory has the fewest holes or has the most easily explained holes.

Personally, I don't like to start from 10+ year old testimony. We have emails that they sent at the time, as well as certain general facts, such as McQueary went to Joe, he did not go to the police, etc. I think it's reasonable to fit theories to the facts, then see if they can explain the testimony.

If we're going to use Joe's words, I think the most interesting ones are "In hindsight, I wish I had done more." Now, some people see that as condemning. But why would a man who knowingly covered something up say that? Why would he admit that he should have done more? Someone who covered it up would become defensive and say that he did exactly what he was supposed to do. He would start to shift blame to others.

Claiming there was a cover up makes zero sense in the long run, based on the actual facts of the situation.

Don't you think that the fact that these rather nebulous email artifacts were even "sitting around in a desk draw" indicates the lack of cover-up? If I were truly trying to cover something up, I would not leave one shred of evidence sitting on a computer or in a desk drawer in my office. It just doesn't past the sniff test for me.