LaVar Arrington Puts A Beatdown On Jay Paterno For Campaign Against James Franklin

Lost in the shuffle this week was the 20-minute beatdown former Penn State two-time All-American LaVar Arrington put on PSU trustee Jay Paterno over a facilities upgrade 'no' vote that Arrington thinks has shenanigans written all over it.

University trustees recently voted 27-6 in favor of a plan to invest $48.3 million into facility upgrades, but there was a suspicious 'no' vote from Paterno, who said the school has spent enough on upgrades.

Arrington, who played for Jay's father, wasn't having it.

“It was a deflection by Jay Paterno, and I didn’t like it. It was a power play by Jay Paterno, and I didn’t like it,” Arrington said on Fox Sports' 'Up On Game: Bonus Content' podcast. “Because you know what? Right now, we have a coach who saved our program basically. He saved our program, and we’re basically saying we’re not giving him anymore resources to be able to try to build the program.

"But if you were the head coach, which you tried to be the head coach, you would want all of the resources possible for you to have success so that you could build that program and keep your job and try to rebuild the brand and the legacy that was built there by your dad.

"I feel like this was the start of a campaign to create cracks to actually, possibly, get James Franklin out of coaching at Penn State, and I didn’t like it. I don’t fool with it. I don’t think his reasoning was sound and I had a problem with it.”

The university will move forward with the investment of the $48.3 million, but Jay Paterno told fellow trustees the school has just spent too much money on this football program.

"Now we are being asked to borrow and allocate $48 million to make additions to a football building that has already undergone $36 million in renovations that included the desired recruiting updates — a new lobby, locker room, player lounge and academic support center," Jay Paterno said about these upgrades. "And by the time the next phase is done, we will have spent $105 million on this building. Some have advocated spending even more.

"At the same time, we have students sleeping in the at night, we have students who are hungry. We battle to make Penn State more affordable. We have a moral obligation to do that. How do we look the people we are asking to make sacrifices in the eye and then borrow and spend this money?"

Keep in mind Jay once sued the school for firing him after the Jerry Sandusky scandal. By 2017, Paterno was voted into a trustee role at the school where he spent 17 years as an assistant, mostly at the quarterback position, under his father. Minus some sort stints getting his feet wet in the coaching industry, Jay's been tied to this school his entire life via the football program.

While the $105 million referenced by Paterno is serious money to invest into facilities, alumni like Arrington and his old linebacking corps buddy Brandon Short, who's a school trustee, see the $48 million as what it's going to take to keep pace with Ohio State and will provide James Franklin with the shiny toy that will be used to seal the deal with recruits who will also be making visits to Columbus.

The new guard got their money while the old guard, led by Jay, will have to figure out a new way to chisel away at a program that's 60-28 under Franklin. With the new investment made by the school, things aren't looking good if Jay's masterplan is to run Franklin out of town.