r/AskReddit • u/DrCompenomics • 12h ago

Who’s the best real-life example of “you either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain,” and what happened?

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u/Faythezeal 10h ago

Joe Paterno was highly regarded until the Sandusky stuff came out.

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u/TeacherPatti 8h ago

I have a friend who is from PA. This man LOVED Paterno. LOVED the team, etc. I watched my friend (from afar, granted, via social media) freaking meltdown over this. It was painful to watch. I am a lifelong Detroit Lions fan (I know), but I've never been that into a college team. I paid way too much attention to that whole shitshow--what a way to shit all over your legacy.

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u/Badloss 7h ago

I've been a lifelong Patriots fan (yes, even in the Before Times when they were a joke) but there is a weird parasocial/religious nature to college fandom that doesn't translate to pro sports.

I love my pro teams but Penn State people genuinely attached religious / family level status to Paterno. I think it's disappointing that Bill Belichick is kind of trashing his legacy while running around with a 24 year old but I don't feel the bone-deep betrayal that they felt

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u/DeckFisher 7h ago

I think it’s just because college fandom feels so much more personal. Most college fans are fans of that school either because they live in/grew up in the area or actually went to the school. Plus there’s no billionaire owners to really drive home the point that the team doesn’t actually belong to the fans. They feel like their college team represents them on a much more personal level.

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u/dodoaddict 4h ago

there’s no billionaire owners to really drive

there’s no billionaire owners to really drive yet

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u/SkittlesLentil 2h ago

There's plenty of billionaires that have put enough money into the school/team to effectively become owners

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u/Irregular_Person 4h ago

they also don't trade players every 2 seconds. That's one of the things that kills pro sports to me. You're cheering for a brand, not a team.

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u/capiscone 2h ago

Eh they kinda do now. With the transfer portal and NIL stuff. Now players who signed pro deals trying to come back or go to another school for a 5th year.

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u/KINGGS 2h ago

What do trades have to do with any of this? It's not like if they banned trading / free agency then the roster would stay stock still forever. Players retire, and new players are drafted in every year.

You were always cheering for the brand, whether you want to see it that way or not. Especially when you're not considered a good fan if you change favorite teams.

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u/LurkerZerker 1h ago

I think the point is that the turnover rate for most players os so high these days that you're roting for a whole new cast every two seasons, with the exception of maybe a single franchise player per team. It's hard to get attached to personal stories of players improving their game over years or forming into high-performing duos on the field or whatever when they don't spend much time on the same team before being traded or dropping into free agency.

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u/KINGGS 1h ago

The turnover rate of the most important players on the field is far lower. I don't think anyone who seriously watches the sport of football would come to these conclusions, anyway.

The average football team stays pretty similar, especially at the top positions in 3 year cycles. Oddly enough, that also happens to be the average length of an NFL career.

Big players spend 5 years at minimum on their first team. Well run franchises retain their biggest players usually for longer than that, even.

But, in any case, football is a team sport and rooting for a team is inherently rooting for a brand and always has been.

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u/humanist-misanthrope 3h ago

Penn State and all other college teams are going to up and move to a new city/state in the middle of the night. They either exist where they are or they stop existing (meaning the college shuts down or shuts down its program). I don’t have any fear that USF is going to move to Nebraska or Arkansas. Although if they moved to San Francisco it would be amusing.

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u/derioderio 2h ago

Not really a sports guy myself, but as a Mormon I know a lot of die-hard BYU fans. More interestingly though, I know one guy who is completely estranged from the faith and wants nothing to do with it, but is still a super die-hard BYU fan: he watches every game of theirs for multiple sports (not just football), has lots of decals on his car, half of his wardrobe is BYU paraphernalia, regularly travels to attend games even though we doesn't live anywhere near Utah, etc.

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u/ArenSteele 6h ago

McGill University Religious Studies department used to have a course on sports fandom as a cult. They probably still do

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u/NordWitcher 5h ago

People want to belong. It could be anything really. The place they go to find their community. Some just happen to find it in a college sports team.

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u/Potato_Pristine 4h ago

I dated a woman whose family (including her) were diehard Penn State fans. When the Sandusky and Paterno stuff came out, they were full-on, flat-earth-level deniers about the whole thing. It was nuts.

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u/The_Salacious_Zaand 7h ago

What's really weird is the number of people who are die hard fans of college sports but have no connection to the school, aside from maybe living in the same state. I just don't get it, but I went to a school that jokes about not even having a football team.

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u/KillYourUsernames 1h ago

Part of this is regional and part of it is just that the teams are often more fun to watch. College football is enormous in the south. If you're from Alabama it's not hard to see why you'd care more about college football than pro.

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u/AUsernameThatIsTaken 1h ago

Notre dame has entered the chat

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u/xPhilt3rx 6h ago

There’s no harm in an older man dating a 24 year old. There is reprehensible harm in turning a blind eye to what Sandusky was doing. Joe Paterno allowed children to be damaged for life.

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u/Badloss 5h ago edited 5h ago

Again I'm not disagreeing with that, I'm commenting on how Penn state fans have a parasocial relationship with their sports programs that pro team fans don't seem to share.

If it makes it easier to understand, Aaron Hernandez was arrested for murder when he was on the Patriots and the fandom immediately dropped him. People were disappointed but they didn't feel like their own family member did something unforgiveable, there were no rallies in support of him like there were for Joe Paterno. People felt connected to Joe Paterno in a way that I don't see outside of college football.

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u/galagapilot 6h ago

#JoeKnew

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u/unassumingdink 5h ago

I don't know, that shit is like the mother of all age gaps. Or possibly the great-grandmother of all age gaps.

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u/EconomyOk2490 6h ago

I mean if it helps deepen the betrayal feeling, its not unbelievable got a handy with Kraft from a trafficking victim

Just doing my part

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u/No_Argument_Here 7h ago

but I don't feel the bone-deep betrayal that they felt

Well, yes, because one is a consensual relationship with an adult woman and the other is RAPING CHILDREN. The fuck

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u/Badloss 6h ago

Joe Paterno never raped children, but that's not really the point regardless. The parasocial relationship is what I'm comparing here. I do not view professional sports figures as members of my family or religious-adjacent objects of worship, but college sports communities often do engage in this

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u/AUsernameThatIsTaken 1h ago

What you’re writing makes sense. People are adding small deviances from your point and I appreciate you keeping a tight scope

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u/wackychimp 5h ago

College fans have a shared origin story. Not only do you love the team (like you would in Pros) but you also likely love the campus, surrounding town, etc. You also came into your own as an 18 year old on campus, met lifelong friends, maybe even met your spouse there.

You also share that with the players. They went to the same classroom buildings, partied in the same dorms, bars, campus quads, as you did.

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u/TheseusOPL 19m ago

The difference is in your first sentence. You are a Patriots fan, someone who went to Penn State would say they are a Nitany Lion.

This mostly is for alumni, etc, but it often continues with families.

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u/TeacherPatti 7h ago

You are right. I live in Ann Arbor, MI, but am not a U of M fan.

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u/JohannesVanDerWhales 14m ago

Vintage Gulf War era Patriots joke: "Did you hear the iraqis have a new plan to win the Gulf War? Yeah, they decided to shape their Scud missiles like a football so the Patriots can't catch them!" Yes I remember the before times.

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u/PiccoloAwkward465 4h ago

This man LOVED Paterno. LOVED the team, etc

I get it and realize this is common. However it's so fucking weird to me, having gone to a college where sports just weren't really a huge focus. We didn't even have a football team.

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u/DK_Notice 2h ago

I'm from the pacific northwest. I went to a D1 school, but didn't care about football at all. A few years later I helped move a friend across the country to State College, PA so she could attend Penn State. This was 2007. That whole town lived and breathed football, and Joe Paterno. He was like a god there, and it was weird. Football in the eastern USA is simply a whole different level.

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u/PiccoloAwkward465 1h ago

It's wild. I'm thrilled that SUNY had its attention on academics. I think the only athletes I knew were in women's rugby.

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u/unassumingdink 5h ago

As a kid, I ate breakfast off a TV tray with Paterno's face on it. My great-aunt had a framed letter from Joe on her wall. It was hard adjusting to him suddenly not being a hero anymore.

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u/oaky180 7h ago

Man. Fuck the packers

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u/Starpork 1h ago

I have friends in Central PA and State College specifically (I went to Penn State too). Within a couple years of the revelations many people didn’t even talk about it anymore, like they wanted to pretend it never happened. These days there is a sizable movement to bring back the statue, put his name back on the buildings, etc - like he was the victim of a hit job or something. And when I say sizable, state-level politicians campaign on it. Sick shit that is completely symptomatic of the loss of moral accountability in this country.

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u/Beautiful-Cup4161 7h ago

I used to pass by his statue sometimes when I was working. My favourite local restaurant had napkins with a phrase about how we're in Joe's valley. He was a local god.

Many local people defended him rabidly.  Students rioted in support of him. They tipped over a news van, if I remember correctly. It was a very embarassing time.

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u/kjm16216 6h ago

You know they didn't actually remove the statue. They just made it look the other way.

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u/saxguy9345 6h ago

I very much dislike what you said but it made me laugh 

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u/galagapilot 6h ago

I heard they threw a tarp on it and covered it up, similar to how JoePa helped cover things up for Sandusky.

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u/zoeypayne 2h ago

Classic story of a guy who cared too much about make believe that he couldn't see reality. Sports are just a game, folks.

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u/gringo411 6h ago

They almost killed a reporter. I was a senior at the time. To this day I experience shame when I tell people where I went to school.

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u/SkepticMech 5h ago

The news van was local high school students, not PSU students. Not that it negates your point about the local response...

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u/Beautiful-Cup4161 5h ago

Really? Their parents let them go to a riot downtown at night?

I found a video of it on YouTube and it's old and blurry but they look a little old and their voices seem a little deep for high school students.

But I'm a dinosaur with no kids so I don't really know what high schoolers look or sound like

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u/magikarp2122 1h ago

I watched it live, there were kids in PSU shit. I’m pretty sure the other person is wrong, and it was PSU students.

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u/daninlionzden 7h ago

They’re penn state students what do you expect lol

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u/memymomeddit 5h ago

The Sandusky thing was followed by hazing deaths and now the fraternity drug cartel.

Happy Valley is a gorgeous area and I'd have probably loved going to school there, but in retrospect I'm glad I didn't.

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u/Beautiful-Cup4161 2h ago

Sandusky wasn't even the only pedo from that area convicted in the 2010s.

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u/magikarp2122 1h ago

Yep, State College is beautiful, and a nice town, that has grown from what has turned out to be a corrupt shit pile of a college. Now I’m very biased, I’m a Pitt alum, but Penn State should not have a football program anymore, and honestly they should be looking into cutting a lot of funding from it. Also, Joe fucking knew.

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u/WeirdIndividualGuy 4h ago

The sad part is we have the same exact situation happening today via the Epstein files with barely even a fraction of the public outrage

Penn St students shamed Paterno to death, literally. History could repeat itself

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u/magikarp2122 1h ago

The outrage from Penn State students was that Paterno was fired for covering it up, not that he covered it up.

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u/Financial_Taro_6484 2h ago

My friends got tear gassed. I was out of town for a wedding and was getting called a pedo because I was wearing merch and hadn’t heard the news. Those guys stopped being my friends pretty quickly

My best memory from Penn state was the year before when thousands gathered in the streets the Sunday before finals week to peacefully celebrate the capture of bin Laden. It was the last time I ever felt patriotic. Then the next year, going there felt like going into a very evil place

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u/Exemus 2h ago

It was a weird time. We all hated Sandusky, but many weren't convinced Joe Paterno knew it was happening. He was a very old fashioned guy who would have likely dismissed that kind of talk. But that enabled this stuff to take place while he turned a blind eye.

It doesn't make it right, by any means. And I sincerely hope that's really why he didn't do anything, but we'll likely never truly know his reasons.

One frustrating part was all of the misinformation where people would be like "oh Joe Paterno... Wasnt he that pedo who raped kids?" They'd think it was Paterno rather than Sandusky. So old Paterno fans were really bothered by that.

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u/magikarp2122 1h ago

He grew up in Brooklyn, he 100% knew what that kind of talk meant.

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u/Exemus 9m ago

I get it, and a lot of people feel the way you said. It's how I feel now that I've had time to reflect on it.

My point is that I think most of the people defending him felt the way I mentioned. Many couldn't or wouldn't believe it.

Very few would defend him if they knew he was aware and ignored it. At least I hope.

Maybe I'm the idiot, idk. Just giving my two cents as someone who was around at the time.

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u/CaptainAwesome06 7h ago

I used to work with a lot of Penn State alum. The hardon they had for the guy was almost cult-like. When the Sandusky stuff came out, they looked like they just learned Santa Claus is a pedophile.

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u/txa1265 6h ago

they looked like they just learned Santa Claus is a pedophile.

I still work at a place with a huge population of Penn State alums ... and the way I saw things you had a 1/3 - 1/3 - 1/3 split ...

A third reacted as you said, a third put their head in the sand as if nothing happened, and a third actively dismissed it all as a meaningless distraction and didn't care about it actually happening but cared more about the potential negative impact on the school.

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u/tibbles1 6h ago

Highly regarded is a massive understatement.

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u/CarlJustCarl 5h ago

The football program should have gotten the death penalty from the NCAA. I’d have disbanded them for 20 years to let the shame sink in.

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u/Ok_Historian_1066 1h ago

Completely agree. This should have been such a penalty that no program would ever consider allowing this to fester again.

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u/sando138 4h ago

There used to be a statue of Joe Paterno on the grounds and they yanked that shit out of the earth the second his involvement came to light. As a former student I expected they would just spin the thing and put it back, make him look the other way. They did leave his name on the library for a little though, to stress the importance of keeping quiet.

(He went from hero worship to tarnished legacy at mindblowing speed and good fucking riddance.)

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u/Get-Fucked-Dirtbag 6h ago

"And what happened"?

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u/StormNFlo46 6h ago

Yeah. For the non-sports fans

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u/Faythezeal 6h ago

He turned a blind eye to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penn_State_child_sex_abuse_scandal

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u/Kevin_Uxbridge 5h ago

From the 'Findings' in the Executive Summary in the Freeh report:

"The most saddening finding by the Special Investigative Counsel is the total and consistent disregard by the most senior leaders at Penn State for the safety and welfare of Sandusky's child victims."

Can't put it any more clearly than that.

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u/lovefist1 5h ago

People still drive around here in Pennsylvania with bumper stickers that just say 409 on them

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u/kilamumster 2h ago

I had to look this up. Something about ppl saying they're not making light if the child rpe but 409 wins is important but really, not making light of rping children. 409 is appropriate if they make it look like the formula 409 logo fir whitewash cleaner.

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u/kneel23 1h ago

Yeah I mean he was an absolute hero there was movies made about him. then, WHAM

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u/Salty-Spring7096 9m ago

I hate that the NCAA relented and restored his wins. Dude got off easy in the end and even then Penn State couldn't handle it. Will always root against them.