Nothing Says "Sorry" Like Joe Paterno's Son Joining The Penn State Board Of Trustees

Statement on the Trustee Election: pic.twitter.com/mhwBPp1cwv

— Jay Paterno (@JayPaterno) May 5, 2017

CFT-   In a statement released via Twitter on Friday, Jay Paterno confirmed that he had been elected to serve on Penn State’s board of trustees. The Centre Daily Times reports he was the top vote-getter in elections and was one of three people elected to the nine seats on the board reserved for alumni.

Paterno is a former quarterback for the Nittany Lions and later coached under his father Joe Paterno, the school’s legendary but tarnished coach. Both were shown the door by the school’s board back in 2012 following revelations in the Jerry Sandusky child sexual abuse scandal.

​The election of Jay Paterno is bound to open up more wounds at the school as he’s been an outspoken critic about how the school has handled his father’s legacy and what he did or did not know about Sandusky over the years. It’s even more interesting because the younger Paterno has been involved in several lawsuits against the school over the years as fallout from the matter as well.

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At this point there is almost nothing - short of opening an under-15 nudist colony next to their practice field - that Penn State could do to honor the memory of a long time enabler of child molestation that would surprise me. The fact that his son was elected to the Board of Trustees for a university whose predatory grounds his father used to protect was about as shocking as the fact that he was certain enough of his daddy's "innocence" to take excessive legal action against that very same university. The seemingly unanimous decision to ignore the obvious conflict of interest (never mind marginalize the mental and physical harm his legacy indirectly did to dozens upon dozens of kids) is as tone deaf as it gets, but - in fairness - Penn State has never given any inclination that they keep their ear to the streets. Need proof of that?

Look no further than Jay Paterno posting his acceptance letter on social media as though it were something that was going to be met with anything other than outrage. This fucking guy acted like he was addressing his proud constituents when all he was doing was throwing himself on the mercy of the most ruthless of courts - the court of online opinion. I suppose you could make the argument that he trying to get out ahead of the backlash by announcing it before it eventually came out anyway, but I hesitate to give anyone from that campus-wide cult any sort of benefit of the doubt. That "thank you" note reads like the person who wrote it thought he was going to step away from the metaphorical mic to a chorus of applause. I know that Penn State and the Paterno family will never quite "get" the magnitude of their negligence, but - for Christ's sake - is it too much to ask them not to be negligent to the moral code of literally everyone else in the world?

I know this is a dangerous thing to request given their history, but lie to me Penn State. Just fucking lie to me. Add the face of everything that is wrong with your university to your Board of Trustees internally. FaceTime him in when there's a decision that needs botching. It's not like you haven't been able to keep far more incriminating secrets in the past. I've honestly become so desensitized to the school-wide stupidity that the thing that bothered me the most about this news was that Jay Paterno - himself - delivered it like it was a goddamn State Of The Union.