This might not go over well in Korea or editorial boards around America, but can we lay off Penn State for a minute? Please folks, take a deep breath before somebody calls for the entire school to be bulldozed. We’re all disgusted by the sexual-abuse scandal, but the torches and pitchforks are getting out of control.
Major newspapers, websites want the season cancelled. Joe Scarborough, normally a voice of reason, called for the football program to be shut down for a year on his MSNBC show.
The Korea Times has even weighed in, saying the NCAA should immediately hit Penn State with the death penalty. It somehow resisted the temptation to call Joe Paterno the Kim Jong-il of college football.
The main thing all that would accomplish is punishing a whole lot of innocent people. Which brings up the obvious qualifier:
The agonies of Jerry Sandusky’s alleged victims far outweigh whatever is inflicted on players, fans and alumni. But that 99 percent has been caught in a hell created by far less than 1 percent of Penn State people.
The school has become an international symbol for shame. A degree is suddenly a ticket for ridicule.
People whose hearts belonged to Penn State two weeks ago are suddenly ashamed to be associated with it. Cheering for their team is now seen as cheering child molestation.
Presidential candidate Rick Santorum is a Penn State graduate. He said fellow alumni and strangershave been engaging in “group therapy” since the scandal broke.
“They just want to talk about it because they are so hurt by it,” he said while campaigning in Iowa. “It is so personal. You feel betrayed that something like this could happen.”
The initial outrage sparked a student riot. Now even the knuckleheads are attending candlelight vigils.
Santorum says the Nittany Lions should bypass a bowl this year. That makes sense considering bowls are supposed to be celebrations, and nobody feels like celebrating. Bypassing next season is another matter.
High-minded folks think it will send the proverbial right message. They see Paterno as a mere fall guy for a corrupt system. They say it’s too early to move on.
They should realize Penn State can’t move on. There are years of criminal and civil trials ahead. Every time Sandusky takes the stand it will remind people from San Jose to Seoul that Linebacker U. was allegedly Pedophile U.
The people who let it become that have already faced justice. Penn State’s Board of Trustees has fired the president and football coach.
The athletic director and overseer of campus police have been arrested. The grad assistant who supposedly walked away from a horrid shower scene is a national pariah. If there are other guilty parties, they will hopefully be held accountable.
Critics think everybody at Penn State is accountable. By supporting the football team they supported the monster that allowed a Sandusky to roam free. There’s no doubt officials wanted to protect the athletic program, but they reacted like most in child-molestation cases. They went into denial and damage control.
We’ve seen it thousands of times in churches and boardrooms. Not that I expect the critics to buy that excuse.
“Clearly the PSU program is totally out of control and has been for well over a decade,” said an editorial on Diverse Issues in Higher Education website.
Actually, Penn State is one of four schools to never have a major NCAA violation. It won’t this time, either. The NCAA manual may be 10,000 pages thick, but nowhere in there is a rule against assistant football coaches showering with 10-year-old boys.
That’s because such things are patently obvious. The Sandusky cover-up didn’t spring from our football culture, it came from our culture.
Slapping Penn Sate with the death penalty is not going to make the next pedophile think twice before taking a boy into the training room. It won’t make colleagues less likely to turn away.
It also won’t make the next Nevin Shapiro any less likely to throw a party for recruits on his yacht.
What is the reformers’ plan to get things under control? Take money out of football? Pay players? Make them all have 1600 SAT scores?
None of that would have controlled a Sandusky.
Then there is the matter of money. Penn State football generated $72.7 million last year, with a $53.2 million profit. In ivory towers, that is proof business had encroached on academic purity.
In the real world, that pays for baseball, track, lacrosse, swimming, gymnastics, hockey, tennis and women’s fencing.
Should all those athletes go down the drain for a couple of years?
We rail at the injustice when the NCAA imposes sanctions on schools like USC. Reggie Bush and Pete Carroll are making NFL millions, while the innocent players left behind are penalized.
In this case, the (alleged) bad guys are not getting away. Yet we still want to hammer the innocent athletes left behind? We’re OK that everything Penn State has been irrevocably tainted?
Once more for emphasis:
Whatever pain players, students and fans endure is nothing compared to what Sandusky allegedly inflicted. But all this righteous outrage is only producing more victims.
There have already been far too many of those at Penn State.
Poster Comment:
I concur.