In November 2004, four of Penn State's leaders, including then-president Graham Spanier, sat down at Joe Paterno's kitchen table on a Sunday morning. The men asked the iconic coach to retire. Paterno said no, and that was that.
That same month, seven members of Penn State's board of trustees proposed sweeping reforms that would have strengthened the board's oversight power of Spanier and other campus leaders, including Paterno, according to documents obtained this week by "Outside the Lines." The group told the full board, "Decisions scrutinized with the benefit of hindsight need to withstand the test of being informed decisions."
But the board never took a vote on the proposal. Spanier and then-board chairwoman Cynthia Baldwin considered the reforms -- and, just as Paterno had done, said no, three current trustees say.
The revelation comes to light five days after former FBI director Louis Freeh's firm released its school-sanctioned report on what the university did to protect children in the wake of the arrest of former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky and the board's Nov. 9 firing of Paterno and Spanier. The report, which blasted the board for poor governance and a failure of leadership, has led some trustees to say they now regret the good-governance proposal never was put to a full vote by the board's 32 members eight years ago.
Joel Myers, a longtime trustee, said the Freeh investigators told him that if the good-governance proposal had been adopted by the board back in 2004, "This (crisis) could have been avoided."
