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Is Penn State the biggest sports scandal/tragedy/drama of our time?

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by 21, Nov 14, 2011.

  1. dixiehack

    dixiehack Well-Known Member

    Not as many victims, but in terms of impact on the sport, boxing never really recovered from Mike Tyson's rape case.
     
  2. MileHigh

    MileHigh Moderator Staff Member

    While the plane crashes were tragic -- add in Oklahoma State basketball -- they cannot be compared to Munich/Penn State/Baylor. They just can't.
     
  3. linotype

    linotype Well-Known Member

    As I read this thread, I fear someone at the Mouse will turn this very question into a macabre game of "Who's Now?"
     
  4. PCLoadLetter

    PCLoadLetter Well-Known Member

    And the Munich air disaster in 1958 that killed half the players on Manchester United (plus staff members and several journalists), and the crash two months ago that killed the players from the Russian hockey team Lokomotiv Yaroslavl.
     
  5. Clerk Typist

    Clerk Typist Guest

    Baron, exactly. I though that was pretty obvious. Army 1951 was as big in its time (and before mine) as Penn State 2011 is in this time. Which goes right to 21's question.

    Munich has one parallel to Penn State. IOC president Avery Brundage (and his fellow IOC delegates) stopped play for only 24 hours. After the memorial service, the Games went on. Many thought that appalling, but it was the first example of the phrase, "If we don't -----, the terrorists win." One can replace terrorist with pedophile and IOC with Penn State and the pictures match up.
     
  6. DanOregon

    DanOregon Well-Known Member

    Shoot - I heard about the Thin Thirty over the weekend. That sounded pretty bad.
     
  7. kickoff-time

    kickoff-time Well-Known Member

    To me this is the biggest cover-up ever in sports and probably the biggest cover-up since Watergate.

    It compares to the Black Sox scandal.

    It is not a scandal in the way that Tiger Woods was having extramarital sex and is not a sex scandal period. This was rape and child abuse and we have only begun to see if McQueary was lying for some reason or just how far it goes.
     
  8. Beef03

    Beef03 Active Member

    In my time which is much shorter than some of yours, so the last 28 years, it's Penn State. The only thing that comes close is Graham James a major junior hockey coach that sexually molested Theo Fleury, Sheldon Kennedy and I believe one other player who was never named over the course of a number of years. The sick fuck got three years was out in 18 months and later received a full pardon under some fucked up glitch in the system that has since been changed. Other complaints have since been filed.
     
  9. Clerk Typist

    Clerk Typist Guest

    Beef, you're right. Actually have Fleury's bio in my office to read one of these days. God, please don't tell James that Penn State's starting a hockey program.
     
  10. jlee

    jlee Well-Known Member

    Penn State is the worst to me, but I'm too young to remember Munich.

    When I the number of people who had to turn a blind eye to the sexual abuse of children, it's the kind of thing that makes me trust people less in general. Maybe on judgment day I'll be told I've done worse, but damn.

    For those who remember the Munich tragedy well, how did it affect your daily life afterward? How did it affect the way you see sports? Does that still hold true today, even just a little?
     
  11. ColdCat

    ColdCat Well-Known Member

    I'm not sure that was even the biggest scandal that day. The point shaving in college hoops spanned three years and included many big name programs, including double-champ CCNY and Adolf Rupp's Kentucky (despite Rupp issuing denials that were simultaneously racist and patently false)
     
  12. da man

    da man Well-Known Member

    Dave Bliss absolutely had a squeaky clean reputation when the Baylor scandal hit. And I'd say a player murdering his teammate, followed by the coach flat-out telling his players to lie to investigators by telling them the dead player had been a drug dealer in order to cover the coach's cheating tracks (an order that was caught on tape by an assistant and released to the public) ranks pretty damn high on the shock and disgust scale.
     
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