The culture of cover-up at Penn State’s football program was no doubt deeply rooted, and you have to wonder what’s going on at other college athletic programs that have a legendary coach and a cash cow in the form of a fat TV contract. An excerpt from Reed Albergotti’s WSJ article:

“In an Aug. 12, 2005, email to Pennsylvania State University President Graham Spanier and others, Vicky Triponey, the university’s standards and conduct officer, complained that Mr. Paterno believed she should have ‘no interest, (or business) holding our football players accountable to our community standards. The Coach is insistent he knows best how to discipline his players…and their status as a student when they commit violations of our standards should NOT be our concern…and I think he was saying we should treat football players different from other students in this regard.’

The confrontations came to a head in 2007, according to one former school official, when six football players were charged by police for forcing their way into a campus apartment that April and beating up several students, one of them severely. That September, following a tense meeting with Mr. Paterno over the case, she resigned her post, saying at the time she left because of ‘philosophical differences.'”

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Joe Paterno tells President Nixon, another cover-up artist, to “shove it”: