Penn State fans rally in support of the football team Tuesday morning (Centre Daily Times Photo)
Penn State rallied for its football team this morning. From the Centre Daily Times:
UNIVERSITY PARK — An estimated crowd of 3,000 welcomed the Penn State football players for their first preseason practice this morning, just a week after the program was hit with severe NCAA violations.
The gathering outside the Lasch Building cheered and clapped as the players arrived — greeted at the door of the football building by Sue Paterno, wife of the late Joe Paterno.
And fans lined the walkway from the Lasch Building to Holuba Hall as players moved to the practice facility for their first official workout together since the sanctions that followed the Freeh report into the university’s handling of the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal.
Sandusky, Penn State’s former defensive coordinator, was convicted June 22 on 45 of 48 counts of abuse.
“After all the things that have happened, it’s good to see the community coming together,” State College resident Gene Tyworth said amid cheers and band fight songs.
Not everyone was so impressed with the spectacle:
Tone-deaf
#PSU rally must gall victims and any who care.Nobody’s heeding Freeh, and football culture tramples all.bit.ly/NG4CHQ— Dan Bernstein (@dan_bernstein) July 31, 2012
Seems overwrought. If the football team is going to be allowed to exist, pep rallies and the associated pageantry are going to come with it, no?
Update: See, we finally (tepidly) defend Penn State and the fans again demonstrate they just don’t get it:
So that makes everything else OK? (Photo via @Ben_Jones88)
The lesson here, according to this fan (and many others): It’s OK that Penn State, as an institution, did not take appropriate action to protect children because of its 87 percent graduation rate.
Got it.
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