Bill Curry, former head football coach at Alabama, was interviewed last week by Mike & Mike on ESPN Radio. It’s probably the best set of comments on the whole affair at Penn State.
You can listen to the interview here:
I was struck by a few things.
First, Curry talked about the sacred trust given to mentors, teachers, and coaches. That sacred trust is children. He talked in terms of “betrayal,” capturing rightly how grievous all of this is.
Second, he affirmed is love for Joe Paterno. He refused to stand in judgment and took a posture of hopefulness in Paterno’s having done, at the time, what he thought was the right thing to do.
Third, regarding the desire to rush to judgment, Curry reminded everyone to be very slow to judge. No one is perfect. “When you learned of something did you always do exactly the right thing?”
Curry’s a class act.
Check out Joe Posnanski’s great recent piece in Sports Illustrated on Curry as mentor.
Faith Improvised 
Ray S.
I only read the ‘blub’ you wrote here, so my comment will be short and based only upon this. When the facts come out about this case then it will be time to make a decision (judgment) on whether the right thing was done by Paterno or not. Despite his apparent stance, it appears Curry already feels Paterno is guilty by his comment “When you learned of something did you always do exactly the right thing?”
Here’s my problem with that statement where this situation is concerned. We’re not talking about hearing about someone being tripped in the hallway; this is molestation/rape. And yes, I was personally the head over
an organization 10 yrs ago when I found out someone had molested a younger person(to a much ligher degree than twhat is being alleged here) and I DID IMMEDIATELY move that person out of that organization. It’s time we stopped protecting the guilty and stood up for the innocent.
I consider a “class act” as being someone who does the right thing while in a pressured situation. Another name for that is ‘character’. Let’s stop using the “nobody’s perfect” excuse and demand some accountability.
timgombis
I don’t think that was the force of his words. I think Curry hit the right notes in talking about the situation as an unspeakable horror and a betrayal. I think he was just calling out those who easily rush to judgment, but he did it in a way that didn’t excuse others’ behaviors at all.