Will the Steelers distance themselves from Franco Harris?

[feltdizz]

With the new report shedding light on the PSU cover up by senior official's how can Franco say this...

"A lot of people are taking it as gospel, that this is the truth. I don't think there's absolute truth to the Freeh Report. There's no way it can be unless you have [former president Graham Spanier, Curley and Schultz] as part of that. I've mentioned that for months now. I've been waiting for that part of it more than anything else," he said.

and expect Steeler fans to respect him? I know he is loyal to PSU but isn't this the main reason people are angry with the program? I wonder if the Steelers will distance themselves from him if he continues this denial of the obvious.

I'm more of a PITT fan but I root for PSU as well... still think this isn't a position one should be so public about given the info that is being released.

It sounds like Franco will always ask for more info or more evidence...

[hawaiiansteel]

Franco has always been a staunch supporter of Joe Paterno and he is entitled to his opinion. I don't happen to agree with Franco but still respect him for his loyalty...

[flippy]

If Goodell ran the NCAA, he would have closed down PSU by now.

I think everyone will distance themselves from PSU to a degree for a while. I think it crosses more than just football. I suspect companies will be less likely to hire a PSU grad just because they don't want to be associated with this scandal in any way.

Nothing can return the innocence back to those kids. And JoePa allowed Sandusky to win a coach of the year award after finding out about this. That's downright disgusting. This guy's legacy is done. How nice of him to die and leave his family to deal with this mess. What a knucklehead.

I guess this just proves you have to be a little crazy to get ahead of others in this world. Nice job JoePa.

[RuthlessBurgher]

I suspect companies will be less likely to hire a PSU grad just because they don't want to be associated with this scandal in any way.

Are companies less like to hire Catholics because there have been priest after priest after priest (not just one single former defense coordinator) who have sexually abused young boys, and they were just simply transferred to new (unknowing) parishes to continue their disgusting vile behavior with all new innocent children without prosecution of any kind?

[Ghost]

The only people supporting JoePa at this point are either blind, stupid or family. Franco is clearly in the stupid category. At this point he looks like a complete moron. I'm embarrassed for him.

[Oviedo]

Individuals are at fault for what happened at Penn State not the institution. To punish the current students, teacher and thousands of alumni is stupid

[feltdizz]

Ovid.. that's the case with every college who gets the death penalty or a bad rep for athletic corruption.

I understand loyalty to PSU football but not to the people who were directly involved. I don't have any problem with Catholics in general but those who defend priest who hid the corruption are sick... and I think anyone defending the officials and JoePa are showing the public exactly how easy it is to put loyalty and corruption ahead of crimes against children

[RuthlessBurgher]

Hasn't everyone involved in this fiasco been fired, retired, died, or in prison by now? I'm not following this really at all (I'm not reading the FBI guy's report because I don't need to make myself ill), but isn't there a new college president, a new athletic director, new coaches, new players, new everything at this point?

[flippy]

Are companies less like to hire Catholics because there have been priest after priest after priest (not just one single former defense coordinator) who have sexually abused young boys, and they were just simply transferred to new (unknowing) parishes to continue their disgusting vile behavior with all new innocent children without prosecution of any kind?

JoePa is like the Pope of Happy Valley.

This whole thing was swept under the rug. PSU is almost run like the Vatican. It's eerily similar.

If you had to list your religion on a job application, then probably Catholics would get discriminated against? Unfortunately for PSUers, they've got to list the degree and education on an application. And I suspect with people being people, someone would look at a resume from someone who went to PSU and would think ewww and might associate that person with child molestation. Unfair? Sure. Just suggesting it could happen.

There are employment laws that don't allow companies to discriminate. So clearly companies have discriminated for various reasons. People who went to PSU don't fall under a protected class, so I'm just guessing someone will discriminate against them.

The alumni don't have anything to do with the scandal, but they have given $208M last year. And $1.6B over the last 5 years. Why did they give all that money? A lot of it probably has to do with JoePa and the football program at PSU putting it on the map.

The Catholic church rakes in the tithes, so again, it's pretty similar stuff.

[flippy]

Hasn't everyone involved in this fiasco been fired, retired, died, or in prison by now? I'm not following this really at all (I'm not reading the FBI guy's report because I don't need to make myself ill), but isn't there a new college president, a new athletic director, new coaches, new players, new everything at this point?

I started reading some of the stuff when the news first broke, but had to stop. It got too graphic for me.

There are new people, but I'm not sure the people involved have been punished to the degree that you would expect for these types of violent acts. And even though there are new people, it just seems the program/school should take a massive hit for allowing this to happen.

But at the end of the day it's about the money and that's more important than doing the right thing.

[Sugar]

Are companies less like to hire Catholics because there have been priest after priest after priest (not just one single former defense coordinator) who have sexually abused young boys, and they were just simply transferred to new (unknowing) parishes to continue their disgusting vile behavior with all new innocent children without prosecution of any kind?

Are companies less likely to hire people who were educated in public schools? After all, there has been far more sexual abuse in schools than in the Catholic church. We could go on and on and on. Hopefully, people are hired and accepted for their own abilities and attitudes and not because somebody did something wrong in an otherwise good institution that they were part of.

[grotonsteel]

I suspect companies will be less likely to hire a PSU grad just because they don't want to be associated with this scandal in any way.

I don't think so. If a student is talented he is going to get a job. For example Penn State Engineering Program is pretty well respected in industry. Students are going to get job. The only reason they might struggle to get a job is because of Economy and Joe Pa has nothing to do with it.

Say Joe Pa was associated with Carnegie Mellon. Do you think people will stop hiring Computer Science students from that school? No way. They will be still having 3-4 job offers before they graduate.

[flippy]

I don't think so. If a student is talented he is going to get a job. For example Penn State Engineering Program is pretty well respected in industry. Students are going to get job. The only reason they might struggle to get a job is because of Economy and Joe Pa has nothing to do with it.

Say Joe Pa was associated with Carnegie Mellon. Do you think people will stop hiring Computer Science students from that school? No way. They will be still having 3-4 job offers before they graduate.

The way I look at this is everyone knew as soon as the scandal broke that JoePa was calling the shots and probably covered everything up for the good of the program.

Yet as the story unfolded, the students and alumni stood up for JoePa. The players stood behind him. The alumni still gave their $200M in support of JoePa and this school.

I know that's only a subset of people, but it make people associated with PSU look foolish. So I suspect some will see PSU on a resume and look for the next resume. There's close to 20% unemployment. Employers can be as picky as they want and try to find the right candidate. They can use whatever they want to disqualify a candidate.

And corporate ethics is important given the backdrop of Enron, Siemens, etc. with corporate scandals out the ying yang. With CEOs and CFOs signing off on financials with personal accountability, companies have to be even more careful about who they hire.

Many companies don't want to hire employees associated with business scandals because they don't want it to impact their culture. I'm just suggesting some people may think this way. And I could see why they would with so much personal accountability.

We all know the people at PSU are just people like every other kind of people. But the most important piece of hiring is protecting your corporate culture. And companies try to minimize risk. Why hire someone from PSU when there's just as good a candidate available from Pitt or some other college?

There's a ton of luck associated with where someone ends up working. No matter what it is you do, there's probably thousands of others that could do your job better than you can if they were given the opportunity.

PSUers will get jobs. I just bet it might be harder.

[D Rock]

PSU students get hired so much because the people doing the hiring are PSU people. I went there...I know plenty of people who got jobs and I said to myself...What? How?

The PSU alumni network is huge and biased, and that wont change.

[NorthCoast]

Individuals are at fault for what happened at Penn State not the institution. To punish the current students, teacher and thousands of alumni is stupid

Not really. The institution is at fault for not having established rock-solid checks and balances. No different than the rogue trader that caused the oldest bank in England to go bankrupt on a billion dollar gamble. Yes, it was one individual. But the institution suffered the consequence.