Penn State Scandal: Football will go on without Paterno

Everyone’s mad at someone. Everyone has an opinion on who was right and wrong.

You see Penn State students out flipping over a media truck and screaming against the Board of Trustees. Students angry that the media made it all about JoePa and led to his firing.

But scapegoating the media is not the answer. Scapegoating the Board of Trustees is not either.

The people truly at fault are the ones who created and then allowed this to go on, to become a mess. Jerry Sandusky, Tim Curley, Gary Schultz, Graham Spanier, Mike McQueary, Joe Paterno. You can’t blame one and not the other.

The first three are most at fault: Sandusky, the sickening perpetrator of the molestation of young boys according to a grand jury report and Curley/Schultz, those at the top of the chain of command who chose to ignore it.

Paterno and McQueary fall in the middle. McQueary witnessed a horrifying act and reported it to his superior. Paterno was informed and told his superiors. They did something, maybe not enough.

There was no easy answer to what to do with Paterno. No solution that would come close to pleasing everyone.

Fire him, as the Board of Trustees did, and face a firestorm from the legion of Penn State students and supporters, an avid and extremely passionate base.

Let him coach out the season and get chastised for not doing enough, allowing a man who was a part of a heinous scandal to remain the face of a tattered program.

Truly, step back, and you can see both sides of it. Understand both rationales.

When put in the place of Paterno or McQueary, doing what they did may have seemed like the right thing. Hindsight is 20/20. Many people don’t go above and beyond. Sadly, people don’t always take the ideal, morally perfect action, in many aspects.

The Seattle Times did a feature exposé in 2003 on coaches who prey, many keeping their jobs as teachers and coaches, as administrators didn't address it. It’s years old but still relevant. Those known for molestation and sexual abuse continuing to get hired because they’re successful as coaches.

Winning, along with making money, trump morality.

Breaches of morality mean saving face, usually cleaning house. That’s why Joe Paterno’s gone. The Board of Trustees had to send a message. I don’t know how you legislate morality but apparently the Board of Trustees does.

Lots and lots of muck and mire get covered up. Thinking about how many scandals fester in the seedy world of college athletics is sickening.

The most sickening thing to remember though is the details of that 23-page grand jury report, just the mere thought of Jerry Sandusky even placing his right hand on a child’s left thigh while driving, let alone the much more explicit actions he took.

That’s what this is all about. As we argue about what more could have been done, we must think of what now can be done for the victims. The strength it took for them to speak up years later. Even beginning to understand their psyche is impossible.

It’s now almost trite to say it’s all about the victims. But it is. Kids who had innocence stripped away from them.

Joe Paterno had many joyous moments in his illustrious career as a coach at Penn State. He is neither the perpetrator nor victim.

In that regard, it’s black and white. Sandusky the abuser, the kids who were molested by an old man the victims.

Football will go on without Paterno. It really will.

Look outside the football prism, and please, just don’t ignore the real victims again. Too many who could have changed this story already have.

Penn State scandal disturbing but not surprising

I was going to write a blog today about the BCS and my continued yearly issues with that flawed system. But that will have to wait. Something just didn’t seem right about doing that right now.

Hmm, right and wrong- an interesting concept to delve into this week in college football.

Actually, forget this week, any week in a sport that’s on-field glory is continually marred by off-field seediness that makes your typical afternoon soap look tame.

Scandal after scandal rocks a game that’s supposed to foster tradition, unity and family among its fan bases. Saturdays come and go with hundreds of thousands of people packed into parking lots tailgating, then filling stadiums and screaming their lungs out. It’s rare you go a week without some kind of crazy finish.

Or crazy scandal.

We all now know the latest disturbing scandal, the child sex abuse allegations against former Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky.

But should we really be shocked? Logically, yes. Morally, yes. Knowing what we know about these programs, absolutely not.

This August, New York Times college athletics writer Pete Thamel detailed why college football is more embattled than ever, coming at the heels of the revelation of the U of Miami scandal involving Nevin Shapiro.

Thamel wrote, “the problems of college football seemed to move from the admittedly serious to the plain hard to believe last week with the news that a major donor to the University of Miami had admitted to providing cash payments, prostitutes and lavish gifts to 72 Hurricanes players from 2002 through 2010.”

Miami set a new standard for reprehensible actions within a college athletics program- a standard that lasted three months.

Disturbing, disgusting, sickening are all adjectives that came to my mind when hearing about the actions of Sandusky and inaction of Penn State folks in the know.

Shocking was not one of them. Maybe like kids who are supposedly desensitized to violence by being plastered with it in TV shows, movies and video games, I have just been  desensitized to the shock factor of these scandals.

By no means am I saying this is not shockingly wrong. It is. It's difficult to read, hear and process what was done to these kids and how it took more than nine years to come to light.


But knowing what I do of those in power in college athletics from past examples is why I’m not surprised at the inaction.

In his article Thamel also wrote, “College football has never been more prosperous, with five of the major college sports conferences recently signing billion-dollar broadcast deals.”

There’s your answer to why this is not surprising. Higher-ups in college programs are raking in tons of money. They will do everything to ensure that continues. It’s why the BCS won’t be changed, realignment is ongoing and indiscretion will go unreported.

Money trumps morality.

Tradition and winning reign supreme over common sense and propriety.

It’s a sad reality. One that doesn’t seem like it’s going to change any time soon, no matter how deep the depravity. 

Miami Scandal Aftermath: What's real in sports anymore?

Ohio State, USC, Miami, Oregon, Boise State…it’s a list of college football’s most lauded- and now most wanted- of the past decade. Today, it’s not just the U or those involved that will be suffering (though they surely will). It’s fans that want something in which to believe who are the real losers.
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When we were kids, we believed in Santa Claus and the tooth fairy. We looked forward to Christmas morning like no other and forced those loose teeth out in hopes of some fairy mysteriously putting money on our pillow. I mean, these other-worldly figures who could not be seen at risk of their elimination were showering us with gifts and money- who wouldn’t want to believe in them?

It’s a willing suspension of disbelief.  Not really looking beneath the surface and enjoying it for what it is. No introspection or investigation into what really makes the wheels turn.

That’s what sports used to be. We grow up as kids watching athletes who we think are superheroes, marvels who perform incredible feats with what seems like great ease. We watch heart stopping games between teams playing their hearts out, become invested in results that we have no control over, besides of course what color jersey or pair of underwear we don on a given gameday. But we don’t really think about it.

We believe in our teams and players and coaches, take great pleasure in their triumph and disappointment in their defeat. Thousands of us gather in arenas and stadiums like they’re cathedrals for catharsis earned by yelling the loudest, rooting the most passionately. “It can’t be my team that’s breaking the rules.”

But no major sport entity is remotely clean. NBA conference finals games being fixed, Super Bowl champions cheating, record-breaking sluggers juicing and college programs breaking the rules- where does it stop?

What’s real in sports anymore? Or was it ever real to begin with?

Cheating has been prevalent in sports for ages. There have been the 1919 Black Sox, doctored balls, corked bats and point shaving. Maybe it was never real to begin with and we just didn’t know any better, like with Santa and the tooth fairy.

Unlike wins or records, however, the memories legends create when we don’t know the truth can’t be taken away. There’s no erasing the rollercoaster of emotions felt through the Ohio St/Miami Fiesta Bowl title game. You can’t strip me of the joy and pure, unadulterated excitement that flowed through my 10-year-old veins watching Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa bash balls further than should be humanly possible in the summer of ’98.

But you can make it difficult to ever have those feelings again, at least as intensely. It’s hard not to get hooked in again by sports. It’s like an ex you know is an idiot, who screwed you over but you still love.

We won’t stop watching. We won’t stop caring. But at some point, we might stop caring quite as much. And if that means less money in the pockets of owners and stakeholders then there may finally be some cause for concern.

Trust me, I’m not jumping off the bandwagon. I’m already in too deep. But do others have this same tolerance level? Will the future generation of sports fans ever truly believe what they’re seeing on the field or court is authentic?

I really do wonder.

And it’s sad really. For many, sports represent an escape from the stresses and hardships of everyday life. Yet really, time and time again, they reflect the most negative aspects of society- lying, cheating, greed- to a tee. What at face value takes us away from our problems has an underbelly seedier than the whole boardwalk empire.

Pushing the boundaries to get ahead has always been part of competitive games. It just seems like it has spread further, with higher stakes lately.

Will it change?

Probably not anytime soon.  But then again Santa’s not coming down the chimney nor is the tooth fairy fluttering into my bedroom anytime soon either.