Joe Paterno is a father figure to half the NFL right now... and thousands more young people that never made it to that level. He's been inspiring people to become the absolute image of responsibility and integrity for decades and decades. It's hard to think of someone that's made as big an impact on the college world as he did.

So for his career to end like this... it's just tragic. It's a heartbreak, and it's shameful. And I don't even know what to think. First, how can I judge his actions? I don't know what he actually knew. Nobody does. When he reported what he did to the administration, did they tell him they would handle it? Did they investigate, and give him the all clear? Was he supposed to trust them if they did? Or did he know more, that the thing was as big and as ugly as it actually was. Without knowing what he knew, it's hard to defend or condemn him.

But the BoT is in a tough boat too. What are they supposed to do? Every time you hear the phrase "Penn State" these days, all anyone can think of is child molestation. How do you handle that situation? Letting anyone slide is a huge danger to the school. But firing someone like Joe Paterno is a huge danger to the school too. What's the lesser evil? At least by firing everyone they have the chance to start rebuilding.

I just don't even know what to think. The whole situation is enough to bring a grown man to tears. What a terrible, terrible situation.

If you don't know what's going on... well it's not really worth explaining. But if you do, share your heartbreak here.

Penn State fans blasted Jim Tressel. Doesn't feel so good when the shoe's on the other foot now does it?

We don't really know what happened and Joe Pa's extent of involvement, but it certainly doesn't look good. College football is crazy. I used to really respect Joe Pa, now I don't know what to think.

I don't follow football, college or professional, and even I think the Board is dealing with the situation poorly.

Should Paterno have been fired? If he was aware of multiple incidents then yes, I think this is justified. I know he reported at least one to the school administrators, but clearly they were not dealing with the problem, so it was his responsibility to take this to the police when the problem continued. He did not.

However there appear to be a number of people higher up the food chain who were aware of this and also did nothing, and they haven't been fired. If the Board has good reasons for letting Paterno go, and retaining these people, they need to come out and say so, even if they cannot go into detail. At the moment the impression I'm getting is that Paterno is being strung up because he's well known, and not because he was more complicit in the cover up. That's not right.

If he did know about the incidents then he has no honor. Not having the courage to report such a crime shows an enormous level of selfishness and makes him guilty of any incident that happened after he found out too.

If you know a molester, and said person molests someone again, then it happened partially because of you. Not doing anything is only right for the ignorant, if you have the knowledge of someone committing crimes of that level (or just any level) then not doing anything is wrong.

Edit: It has been mentioned the higher ups also knew about this, the same goes for them. The same goes for anyone that knew, no matter the position.

I tend to agree with that Donner. I see the same thing, and it's pretty sad.

As a huge college sports fan, the entire situation is just sad. A legendary coach, father figure to thousands of his players, the all-time wins leader in NCAA FBS. He doesn't report an absolute monster and his entire legacy is tarnished because of it.

I agree, he had to go. He was responsible. He was the most powerful person at Penn State. He knew that the guy was doing inappropriate things, and when one of his graduate assistants showed up and told him he saw something, all he did was send it up the ladder and never thought about it again.

Legally, he did nothing wrong. Morally? He enabled the abuse of children.

This is about more than football. This is about the victims, and seeing justice done for them. But JoePa is the public face of the university. This happened under his watch and he didn't do everything in his power. He had to go. A quote comes to mind: "All that is needed for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." Nothing was done, and evil triumphed.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/10/justice/pennsylvania-coach-abuse/index.html?hpt=hp_c1

I'm a big proponent of "innocent until proven guilty," and I wouldn't have had any problems with the trustees placing Paterno, Spanier (the university president), Curley, and Schultz on leave until the matter could be resolved. However if they are going to fire Paterna and Spanier I think we're owed an explanation why Curley and Schultz have been retained.

As a Penn State alumni I'm pretty devastated. Firing him has done more damage to the school than anything else, and I really don't think he did anything wrong. I mean if someone comes up to you and tells you 'hey I saw this guy commit a crime' and you go report the incident to someone higher up the chain to you, the burden is now on them. If they do nothing about it you either assume that A- they investigated the incident and found nothing wrong, or B- they're not doing their job. At that point it's above you in the chain of command and you've done what is right. I don't think it was Joe Paterno's responsibility to go on an all out investigation to find out what happened.

Now if he absolutely knew what was going on and knew it continued to go on I'd think differently, but either way innocent until proven guilty. The man has put his LIFE into Penn State. I mean he's put PSU before himself for so many years that if you take that away from him, his life was literally for nothing. He's done so much good for the school beyond just football. He's every Penn Stater's hero, he deserves to coach tomorrow. I hope no one shows up to the game tomorrow.

Someone reported a crime to him. Rather than go directly to the authorities he thought instead to handle it internally. You don't get to simply pass the buck and remove all responsibility. Paterno is only one person out of several who's been fired over this. It's not as though he's being singled out. Two others are facing criminal charges. The consequences he faces are relatively light in comparison.

Not being a huge sports fan, I know nothing of his legacy.

All I know is that the man was an coach / educator and is accused of not reporting suspected child molestation to the police when it was brought to his attention.

I don't care what his legacy in sports is or was. If this is indeed true, it is inexcusable. If anything, his job put him in a position of even more responsibility to act once it was brought to his attention.

If these people are guilty, string em up. Zero tolerance for this B.S.

This is the guy who knew about the alleged Kiddy-Fiddler; right? (asked for Clarification; not an accusation).

Would have thought that history of similar events over the last 30 odd years would have taught us that the two worst things you can do when learning about this sort of stuff is 1) nothing and 2) don't get the police involved.

Agree with Donner.

And not to exonerate Paterno, but if someone told me they thought they saw one of my close associates doing something that horrible I might act the same way... report it higher and encourage the person that told me to report it to the police. I think we all would hope we would react with righteous fury, but if it was a friend of mine I might hesitate before confronting them or going to the police.