Joe Paterno

Joe Paterno got the 112 wins back that the NCAA took away from him because of the Jerry Sandusky molestation scandal. So he's "officially" the winningest coach in Division I football again.

Of course he's now dead and Penn State had to agree to pay $60 million to address child abuse, but everything is good again...

This is now the dumbest thing I have ever heard in sports. Joe Paterno got those 112 wins, one at a time, over the course of more than a decade. The NCAA never had the right to take them away in the first place. How do I know that? Because they now magically "restored" them after blackmailing Penn State to extort $60 million from them. They called it a negotiation. In reality, it was done to placate some groups who were offended that Paterno had an assistant coach who did some very bad things, and because some Penn State officials covered it up. Joe may have been involved in the cover up himself. EVERYBODY KNOWS THIS. But the question and point remains. Should the NCAA have the power, retroactively, to change sports history one way or the other when no NCAA rules were broken?

Criminal activity by some people occurred. So either those wins should have been taken away or they shouldn't have been. It's the blackmail payment that disturbs me. In other words, it took a PAYMENT of a huge sum of money to say the wins were valid again.

If the money had not been paid, the wins wouldn't have been restored.

The illegal activity, then, one way or the other, in effect, doesn't affect Joe's win total. Only the money mattered. That's as wrong as anything discussed in this case so far.

If you're liberal or if you're conservative, money should not determine right or wrong. If you think he should have lost those wins or not, money shouldn't be the determining factor in the validity of those wins. It sends a very disgusting message.

A few years ago Reggie Bush lost his Heisman Trophy award when it was later discovered that he violated NCAA policy the year he won. Reggie should offer some money to the NCAA. There's got to be some figure that will get his trophy back.

The precedent has been set. What HE did couldn't have been as bad as what Penn State did.

Right?