I report this bit with a somewhat skeptical eye. The notion that Joe Paterno will actually do something about his team’s discipline problems that makes me want to stand up and applaud just seems highly improbable.
Then again, Joe Pa is now so dead old that it doesn’t seem like much of a stretch to think that the guy is getting really fed up with those darn kids!
Angered by the arrest of six of his players in connection with a fight at an off-campus apartment, Joe Paterno will be disciplining his entire Penn State football team – for the entire season.Speaking yesterday before a university alumni function in Valley Forge, Paterno said he was going to require all his players to perform community service.
Paterno said his players were “going to clean out the stadium every Sunday after every home game.” He also said the Nittany Lions would work with the Special Olympics and build a home in Centre County through Habitat for Humanity.
He added that the players would turn their pay for cleaning up Beaver Stadium over to the university’s club sports, whose participants usually perform the work to raise money for their teams.
“We had kids involved in something that was embarrassing and I think we ought to prove to people that we’re not a bunch of hoodlums,” the 80-year-old coach said at a news conference.
“Obviously, I’m probably going to have to keep one or two of them out of a game and drop one or two on the depth chart,” he said. “And then whatever [university officials] think they have to do, they do. I want to do something where the whole team kind of says, ‘Hey, we’re all wrong, let’s go.’ “
Slow clap, Joe. Slow clap. I’m just stunned – not only to see Joe Pa do something like this, but to know that Joe Pa still has this much authority over the Penn State football program. We at HLS salute you!
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