| Punish Hoffner, Not the Mavericks |
| By Sally Haase August 24, 2012 MANKATO, MN— Friday, August 17th at the Minnesota State University Mankato Mavericks football practice; Head coach Todd Hoffner was escorted off the field by University officials. By August 21st we all knew why, Hoffner was arrested on child pornography charges. Here we go again. Just months after severe sanctions were handed down on Penn State after a college wide cover up of the abuse of young boys at the hand of assistant coach Jerry Sandusky; Minnesota State- Mankato will have to deal with a similar issue. Right now, from all the information that has been released to the public, it does not look like MSU- Mankato tried to cover up the crime and that is a step in the right direction. In the complaint filed in Blue Earth County District Court on August 22 alleges that Hoffner had three videos on his University issued cell phone that featured his three children who are all under the age of ten. Hoffner’s attorney says that the videos were just private family moments. I was willing to give Hoffner the benefit of the doubt with the videos and this would all be a misunderstanding and the University being overly paranoid with Penn State still fresh in everyone’s minds. However after reading the description of the three videos, it is clear that this is not a misunderstanding and these are not “private family moments”. If you want to know what was on the videos, you can do a little extra research and find out for yourself, because I will not repeat what I read and let’s just describe the videos as graphic. Hoffner, who is supposed to be a mentor to many young men who step on the campus of MSU-Mankato, exploited his own children for whatever sick reason. Hoffner is sick and needs some serious help and his children need just as much help to get through this disturbing time so they can grow up to have a normal life and, hopefully the cycle of abuse will end with Hoffner. I have to give kudos to the IT department and the University who were observant enough to sound the alarm on Hoffner; this all came about when Hoffner took his phone to the IT department because his phone was not working properly. When they could not fix the phone, Hoffner was told he would receive a new phone and all the files from his current phone were uploaded to a computer. When the IT tech transferred his files to Hoffner’s new phone he found the videos and reported it to his supervisor. After which Hoffner was placed on administrative leave pending further investigation. Hoffner will now be given a trail and if found guilty will face the proper punishment. MSU-Mankato did the right thing in its handling of the situation, but I do ask the University and the NCAA to not punish the players in this by banning MSU-Mankato from playoff appearances. I know they sent the message to Penn State that football is not above anything but MSU-Mankato has not been accused of a cover up like Penn State and the team and University should not be punished as such. The punishment should fall on Hoffner and no one else. |
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