He had served his purpose, no big deal, not needed. That is the approach they appeared to take. Not unexpected based on how they have responded to other bad situations.
PSU scholarships
- Thread starter sadiehawkins
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He had served his purpose, no big deal, not needed. That is the approach they appeared to take. Not unexpected based on how they have responded to other bad situations.
Is your house so clean that you feel free to make such a bold statement? There are 35 college guys on a team. It only takes one of them to embarrass a program, and every program HAS been embarrassed in one form or another, so please get off your high horse.
That's funny, a PSU fan telling someone else to get off their high horse
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There isn't a high horse to be on. The the Long issue pales in comparison to how a great many of your fan base has responded to a tragedy far greater than one wrestler. The denial and support for people involved in a crime that both the courts and the school have found to have substance is embarrassing. The fans will continue to hear about it until the supporters stop with their denial. Iowa is not without issues, the lawsuit scheduled to start should be interesting. I would hope and strongly believe that the fan base at Iowa would react a great deal differently than the PSU fan base has if faced with a similar situation. Enjoy your wrestling dynasty it is impressive and looks to continue. Just stop with the 'can do no wrong' mindset. The scarlet letter will and should stay attached to the university and their fans for a long time. Perhaps if the fans started to own the mistakes people wouldn't bring them up as often. Perhaps if PSU didn't have so many jacka** fans(not you) come over here it wouldn't be brought up so often.
Don't worry about me. As long as I stay... married...I will never have that mindset reinforced by my wife!
No, it wasn't. He was convicted on aggravated indecent assault, not the other two that you keep trying to pin on him.
Long was originally charged with attempted rape. Just before his trial was about to begin, he entered a plea bargain. By pleading guilty to felony aggravated indecent assault, he would serve only 1 year in prison, and avoided the longer jail time for attempted rape.
So technically, you are right. Plea bargains sometimes work that way, it is a prosecutor's call, and not necessarily indicative of all that happened. Fwiw, Long was arrested yet again about 7-8 months after that attempted rape charge, for serious assault and public intoxication.
Long was incredibly talented, but had obvious trouble and was in need of treatment. KJ saw that and was insisting on it. Cael was not.
But feel free to sugar coat things and look for nits to pick. Afterall, Long's 3rd place finish added to PSU's total.
Doesn't need sugar coated. The kid has a problem. There was an effort made to give him a helping hand. It failed. If you choose to paint that as some sort of evil, manipulative deed and it gives you the satisfaction you desperately seek - have at it.
Not looking for nits to pick. Looking for facts to be told. also, another reason plea bargains are offered is because the prosecutors don't have enough evidence to support the charges. Do you think if that prosecutor could have proven those other charges, he would have offered the plea bargain?
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Why do you care? You could just stay on BWI and talk about what idiots we are here at HR.
So he is guilty of a felony, got it. In that neck of the woods a thing like that seems minor.
You are correct. Long was given a helping hand at ISU. He would regain his eligibility after he agreed with accepting that help which included rehab. Someone offered to bypass that help so that he did not NEED to get straightened out before resuming his wrestling. That happened to be Cael and PSU. Had he been required to get help before wrestling(as was being done at ISU), this kid very likely would have avoided his jail time. The worse thing that can happen to an addict is for that person to be "enabled". That is exactly what happened at PSU. I would think that Long has a very good legal case against PSU.
Lots of wasted mental energy taking place in the last couple of pages of this thread ...
Question on the "Cael doesn't develop talent" mantra... couldn't Frank Molinaro's rise as well as David Taylor's recent success in the NLWC argue against that. I understand Varner and others are coaching there, but Cael still has influence on development. These guys are rising to the top at the highest level of wrestling. Curious as to why people can't give him credit here.
On the contrary, you seem to focus on nitpicking...dissecting for little "gotchas."
Okay so I cited the 3 things Long was arrested for, and it turns out he plea bargained and ended up with "only" felony indecent aggravated assault, with a 1 year prison sentence.
Is that somehow proof that Long really didn't need help, and that the 55 yo female victim wasn't really traumatized, and Cael did the right thing by accepting Long with no treatment and no strings attached?
The essential truth in all this is that Cael showed poor judgement by enabling Long to compete for PSU without getting the help he needed. KJ required that Long get help if he wanted to continue to wrestle, but Cael apparently did not.
Try seeing the forest instead of focusing on a few twigs.
Curious why you say Cael gets no credit for developing wrestlers. I believe he does get some.
Some of it probably is Cael's help in development. Also, there are also extremely talented workout partners (iron sharpens iron).
But in the eyes of many, he is already starting out with such high talent, that it becomes hard to assess just how much Cael's developing comes in. He was good at ISU, but nothing like at PSU. Did Cael suddenly discover magic development fairy dust?
In so many recent years Cael is taking the very best high school wrestlers and keeping them at that high level.
If some Jr high school coach got hired at college, and got Pico to wrestle for him, and Pico goes out and beats Retherford (again), should he get all the credit, or would it be fair to say Pico was already at an extremely high level?
I teach and used to coach. I know that I am a much better teacher now than I was when I started over 20 years ago. I imagine Sanderson has improved since ISU just as Brands has improved since VaTech...
To be fair, this thread is titled "PSU scholarships". It shouldn't be a surprise that it has attracted PSU fans. Anyway, arguing about Long serves no purpose.
Well PSU wrestling fans aren't saying it. The fans of other programs are the ones making the point. Why would I ask PSU fans if they don't believe it?
Great answer. Thanks... sounds like in all sports, all the factors you mentioned play a role. It's similar to how Alabama's scout team in football could probably take out more than half of D1 football programs. Is Saban an amazing coach? Is it the top recruits? Is it better practice partners? All play a role and you probably need all 3 to work together to really have sustained success.
I don't know who you root for but you asked "why won't people here give Cael any credit" I just wanna know why does it matter if he doesn't get enough credit here? This is an Iowa message board, I don't go over to bwi and expect to see everyone talking about what a great coach Brands is so what's your point?
Football is a bit different than wrestling. One or two players can carry a team even if the rest are mediocre, all the formations, moving parts etc. Same with basketball. One wrestler can only do so much for his team come NCAAs or at best, six points in a dual. A football or Bball player can have a great game but even with the best, very hard to predict.
Wrestling is easier to predict and has less upsets. A #8 or #9 team will not beat PSU next year. Can I say that because of the coaching? Sure, Cael, Tom, Tom, John all have a say in how their wrestlers develop but the talent is usually there in the first place. Recruiting is vastly more important in wrestling than most sports. I would predict Podunk State over Alabama before I would take Alex Kocer over Zain.
I'm a Penn State alum, and I'm embarrassed and disgusted by the whole thing. Joe Paterno f*cked up. I don't know if it was denial, greed, fear, or ignorance, or maybe a little of all four, but he, and many others, just f*cked up, and kids got hurt. What's astounding to me is that SO many people made the wrong decisions. Where was the person saying "woah woah woah how does that man still have access to our facilities?" I will never understand the ineptitude on so many levels of the university and law enforcement. University officials have been convicted of child endangerment. There is no excuse. I probably shouldn't post this here, but your post struck a nerve, bc some of us get it.
Society may be more tolerant if more people approached the situation like you do. The deniers and enablers do no favors for the school
You could tell Diceman was half assed in his reply in its brevity
The technical term for "responding to Jammen" is: Whack-a-Mole.
Kind of where I come down on it as a Penn State fan but not an alum. JoePa may be down the list of offenders - further down than the likes of Freeh (who has never met an investigation he hasn't screwed up), Desmond Howard, and others want to have him since many are only interested in making this some "football culture run amok" story rather than overall institutional failure -- but he is damn well on the list. If he was your run of the mill coach, maybe just telling your titular "boss" what you heard and wiping your hands of it is sufficient, but with great power comes great responsibility. If you want to take the good things from being an icon, you've got to deal with the hassles, etc. But that's what can happen when you allow a guy to coach into his freaking 80s. If only he had just punched an opposing player in the throat or something.
The dead-Enders are pissed that Sandusky's charity and the powerful people behind it, including powerful board members, were never put under the microscope - as the football angle was sexier, but that doesn't absolve Penn State's administration from blame.
it will all be a great case study for risk mitigation going forward.
I don't post nearly as much on the football board as there are 8-10 guys on there who continually post threads splitting the same hairs they've been splitting for 6 years - hoping against hope for some magic bullet that will make it all go away.
I moved on from the scandal 2-3 years ago. PSU has some guilt in the whole affair, but to me less than the charity Sandusky ran, the local prosecutors office who deemed the evidence as insufficient, and the state AG (who swept the whole thing under the rug until he became governor, and then faked outrage). So to me, PSU comes in 4th most culpable among institutions/offices. Then when you view the people at PSU, JoePa was probably the 4th or 5th most culpable in not stopping the harm that came to the university and children. That's just my opinion. I'd put McCreary, the AD, the security chief above him for sure. McCreary should have stopped whatever was happening immediately, and the AD and security guy were the real coverup guys. Joe should have asked more questions, but he didn't. That is on him. So when I view the entirety of the matter, MANY people who were sworn to protect children failed them for reasons both tied and not tied to football and/or PSU. Some of the reasons were politicial and not altruistic (PSU board members, charity board members and supporters, state AG, local elected prosecutor, etc). It was a complete fubar.
