This account from a new biography of Paterno is so icky in so many ways. Paterno tells Penn State’s castrated-by-coaches president he’s not retiring, and he makes clear what the Best Party School lists make clear year after year: At Penn State, it’s all about playgrounds.
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From another review of the same book:
[E]ven leaving the scandal aside, the coach comes across as a self-mythologizing monster, consumed by his legacy of winning on the football field.
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UD thanks David for the second link.
August 22nd, 2012 at 11:01AM
The reviews are scathing. I wasn’t expecting that as the author’s other work has been pretty good. Maybe they should have used the year instead of rushing the book to print.
August 22nd, 2012 at 4:52PM
Football coaches work on term contracts, but would an older coach have a possible age-discrimination claim if he were not renewed only or primarily because of age?
August 24th, 2012 at 3:26PM
Theprofessor–it would be a big surprise if Spanier hadn’t run his decision past in-house counsel, at the very least, to determine potential legal exposure in the event Paterno were canned. For a big-ticket discharge with potential big-money stakes, maybe outside special counsel and a PR advisor.
Whether we like it or not, America’s big institutions will sometimes regard civil and criminal penalties as a mere cost of business. (Last I heard, e. g., the only criminal charge in connection with the big BP oil spill a while back was lodged against a mid-level engineer.)
August 25th, 2012 at 11:16AM
Personnel decisions, lawsuits, etc. A new university president blasted into town a while back with his own administrative team. An established senior administrator, who’d been favorably evaluated by the new president, felt slighted when the new team’s pay was set at about 70% more than hers. After a duke-out with the president, she was kicked to a support department, then left the university.
Then she filed suit. The settlement was for 2/3 of a mill. The university retained outside special counsel to defend itself.
The replacement administrator, by the way, was hired at about the salary desired by the complainant. Plus, to guard against the new administrator going off the reservation, the president installed a second, nominally assistant administrator who, I’m told, was permitted to report independently to the president. My rough guess is that the unwillingness of the president to respond to that pay equity complaint cost the university maybe $1.5 million over the last decade, and God knows what-all in administrative discord.
I’m not even sure where you’d start calculating the economic consequences of failing to clean house at Penn State.