After a year of NCAA violations ripping through some of the nation’s preeminent college football programs, the latest scandal involving the Penn State football program takes the disgust over what happened at Ohio State and Miami to a completely different level. Penn State didn’t just violate NCAA bylaws (in fact, they probably didn’t violate those at all), they violated our nation’s laws and more importantly, the laws of human morality.
It is troubling enough that a Division I defensive coordinator would use his position of power to allgedly take advantage of young boys and satisfy his pedophilic desires, but it is perhaps more troubling that those around the program would ignore this man’s transgressions in the hope of continuing to win football games.
For nearly a decade.
Yes, nearly 10 years passed from the time an unsuspecting graduate assistant first witnessed former Nittany Lion defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky sexually assaulting a young boy in the team’s shower area and reported his frightening observation to program superiors, specifically to head coach Joe Paterno.
Over those ten years, Sandusky was able to walk the face of the earth in freedom, freedom to continue ruining the lives of young children whose traumatic experiences would no doubt haunt them for as long as they live.
Why?
Because allegations like this, concerning a person, Sandusky, tapped by many at one point to be the likely successor to the legendary Paterno, would spell disaster for the Nittany Lion program and would tarnish the legacy of the great JoePa.
Because allegations like this would hurt recruiting and make it difficult for Penn State to continue fielding a team that could compete at the highest level on a national stage.
Because allegations like this threatened to take Penn State back to the pre-Paterno days during which State College was simply a cloistered town in central Pennsylvania that just happened to house a state university.
It is sickening just having to imagine how this thought process played itself out, how despite these allegations making their way to the desk of Penn State President Graham Spainer’s desk, the only result was Sandusky’s ban on use of PSU football facilities.
No police report. No further investigation.
Perhaps even more sickening is the reality that Penn State probably is not the only program in today’s landscape of college football that would choose the same path of immorality in order to save their program. College football has become too much of a money-maker, too much of a measuring stick of the viability of major research universities that despite the sickening nature of what went on, I do not think it is crazy to conclude that other programs out there would choose the same course of inaction.
Football has become larger than life and that is a dangerous reality that we as Americans must reevaluate.
It is sad that we have to hear comments such as “Well, Tuscaloosa was destroyed and people died, but at least Bryant-Denny Stadium was spared from damage.” And yes, I did not pull that out of thin air, someone actually said that on the set of “College Gameday” Saturday.
It is sickening that despite the evidence showing how NFL players across the board are dying at a significantly younger age than the general population, it is more important that we keep the game hard-hitting and exciting.
And it is sickening that a university would think for even a second to hide away the transgressions of one of its own in order to maintain the football program’s ability to recruit at a high level.
What has happened at Penn State will forever tarnish one of the game’s great personalities in Joe Paterno. Whether or not Paterno is fired (which he should be, but likely won’t), JoePa will now be remembered for allowing this abuse to occur under his watch, perhaps even more so than for his Division 1-record 409 wins.
But one can only hope that this incident gives rise to a national rethinking of the role football plays in our society. One can only hope that other programs don’t simply shrug this incident off as an isolated event because while the actual disgrace is confined to State College, the principles that led to it are prevalent throughout college athletics.
Football is just a game. The spectacle with which games are conducted may seem to some as “larger than life,” but the reality is that nothing overshadows the importance of life itself.
Nothing.
Not even football.
What is your take on the PSU scandal? Let Max know at max.sternberg@yahoo.com.
