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Penn State Students To Show Joe Paterno Support With Tuesday Evening Pep Rally

The fallout from the indictments brought against Jerry Sandusky continues on Tuesday. Joe Paterno’s scheduled morning press conference was canceled in the wake of the allegations that the former assistant coach had committed sex crimes against eight minors, all boys, spanning ten years.

Sandusky was officially indicted last Friday on 40 counts of child sexual abuse. His hearing, originally scheduled for Wednesday, was pushed back to December 7th according to Tuesday reports. The coach responsible for transforming Penn State into ‘Linebacker U’, retired in 1999 after 30 years with the program.

For the time being, at least, head coach Joe Paterno has not had his name involved in the scandal, although he apparently knew about at least one of Sandusky's alleged crimes dating back to 2002, and yet Sandusky continued to have access to Penn State' football facilities. Meanwhile, Athletic Director Tim Curley and administrator Gary Schultz were both dismissed from their positions after being charged with perjury for failing to report alleged abuse to the police.

While we wait for this sordid story to continue unfolding, students at Happy Valley have planned a Tuesday night pep rally at Joe Paterno’s house, according to Ben Jones of StateCollege.com. According to Jones, the rally is intended to be a show of support for Paterno, but there is concern that the situation might get out of hand due to the sensitive nature of the scandal and the sheer volume of students that could potentially participate in the event.

For more updates on this unfortunate story, stay tuned here at SB Nation Pittsburgh and at SB Nation’s Penn State blog, Black Shoe Diaries.

Photographs by dizfunk used in background montage under Creative Commons. Thank you.