Don't end Penn State football over Sandusky abuse
Chaz Powell, No. 2 of the Penn State Nittany Lions, celebrates his touchdown against the Indiana State Sycamores during a college football game Sept. 3, 2011, at Beaver Stadium in State College, Pa. / Getty Images
(The Nation) Spare me. Spare me the calls to abolish Penn State's football program in the wake of findings by former FBI Chief Louis Freeh that Coach Joe Paterno and other men in power hid the crimes of child rapist/assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky. Spare me the NCAA's ominous warning that they "will determine whether any additional action is necessary on its part at the appropriate time." Spare me the self-righteous rage of sports writers who spent decades burnishing the Paterno legend and now rush to tear it all down.
The two most acute examples of this "Paterno revisionism" are ESPN's Rick Reilly and the Washington Post's Sally Jenkins. Reilly readily admits to being "an idiot", "a stooge", "a sap", and "a fool" for praising Paterno over the course of decades. Jenkins, who is normally nobody's fool, has set a land-speed record for media revisionism. After recording Paterno's last interview, in an article widely criticized for being overly generous to the disgraced coach, Jenkins now says that she realizes she was conned and has seen the light. Jenkins writes that Paterno "wasn't some aging granddad who was deceived, but a canny and unfeeling power broker who put protecting his reputation ahead of protecting children."
I am all for exposing what was fraudulent about Joe Paterno. I am all for calling him out as someone who cared more about his football program than the welfare of endangered children, and have written these very words. I am also in full agreement with Louis Freeh that one of the greatest problems the Sandusky scandal has exposed is "the culture of reverence for the football program that is ingrained at all levels of the campus community." Children were raped in the name of this monstrous "culture of reverence."
But the conclusions I draw from this sobering reality are profoundly different than those of Reilly, Jenkins and many others. As Reilly thundered, his breast aflame with newfound religion, "I hope the NCAA gives Penn State the death penalty it most richly deserves. The worst scandal in college football history deserves the worst penalty the NCAA can give. They gave it to SMU for winning without regard for morals. They should give it to Penn State for the same thing. The only difference is, at Penn State they didn't pay for it with Corvettes. They paid for it with lives. What a chump I was."
I agree with the "chump" part. Reilly was, as he admits, a chump for confusing journalism with the hagiographic profiles he wrote about Paterno for all these years. He's also a chump for thinking that shutting down the football program actually helps one child, deters one rape or addresses the problem of our reverence for the sham amateurism and skewed values created by big time college sports.
Abolishing Penn State football is wrong for a multitude of reasons. Here are merely a few:
- 1. It's an act of collective punishment. The end of football at Penn State would also mean the end of football revenue underwriting the Penn State athletic department. It would mean the end of every athletic scholarship, every women's sports program and every one of the thousands and thousands of jobs produced by this regional economic engine. None of these people were responsible for Sandusky's reign of terror and Joe Paterno's criminal complicity. The argument for collective punishment is always morally repugnant, which gets to point two.
- 2. The only reason to punish so many innocents is to stand with the much-trafficked idea that "all of State College" is somehow complicit in Sandusky's crimes and the attendant cover-ups. Everyone in State College, this argument goes, was the moral equivalent of now infamous assistant coach Mike McQueary: watching a child get raped and doing nothing. By this logic, however, Reilly and Jenkins are accomplices to pedophilia as well. Without their paeans to JoePa, would he have had the stature to cover up Sandusky's crimes? Should Rick Reilly be fired or even prosecuted for his admitted hagiography? Should Sally Jenkins be held culpable for not challenging Paterno's cringe-worthy deathbed lie that he'd "never heard of rape and a man"? Of course not. They may have been willing marks, but they were still conned nevertheless. As good as it might feel to point the finger at every last person with a Happy Valley zip code, or every last person that "Godded-up" Joe Paterno, that's not the same as culpability.
The people to blame for enabling Sandusky, in addition to Paterno, are former Athletic Director Tim Curley, former campus security chief Gary Schultz, former school President Graham Spanier, and the Board of Trustees. Other than Paterno, Curley, Spanier, and Schultz will almost certainly face civil and criminal trials. The school will also suffer -- as it should -- with settlement payments that will cripple it for a generation.
Unlike other college football "scandals" at places like SMU or Ohio State, the criminal and civil courts will extract more than a pound of flesh from Penn State. The NCAA, a cartel devoted to little more than ensuring its own reign over an utterly corrupt status quo, should just step back and let the grown-ups do their job, which leads to point three.
Named one of UTNE Reader's 50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Our World, Dave Zirin is the sports editor for The Nation magazine. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.
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I really don't understand where people who want to smack their wrist are coming from. They should be ashamed for even thinking these crimes should be forgotten quickly.
I mean if this doens't rate what the football program death penalty what could possibly do so?
ALL of those in positions of power FAILED the children that Sandusky raped. ALL OF THEM. This is not an isolated, "Oops, we mistakenly didn't follow the rules" or some other minor issue. This is institutionally accepted and allowed rape of children.
Yes, innocent players who had no controlling role in this diseased institution will end up paying a price, however, EVERY SINGLE TIME that the NCAA punishes a school with anything approaching the death penalty for what the INSTITUTION did causes innocent players to be harmed.
It comes down to which innocents were harmed more? The players OR THE INNOCENT CHILDREN THAT THE INSTITUTION INSURED WOULD BE RAPED BY THIER FAILURE TO ACT PROPERLY?
The "human shield", or "too big to fail" defense is nothing more than condoning such activities.
If you are disadvantaged by the closing of the football program, then sue, et. al., all those who originally caused it, Sandusky, jis "superiors", the staff and board of the school.
The concept of "too big to fail", also means "too big to be responsible for one's acts".
Fail to establish this, and we admit that money is now the new god, determining right from wrong.
Do away with football at Pen; scrutinize it and all athletic programs at all universities. They have become too important to the very being of institutions that are *supposed* to be about education -- not playing ball.
For all of you who don't, stop for a minute and imagine that someone who used to work for your company (but doesn't anymore) did this at your place of work after hours. It got covered up, but you never heard about it. Now you come to find out that they're going to shut your whole company down for it. YOU are out of work because of what? Still sound fair? You're all quick to want the program shut down but how about we punish the people who actually DID something wrong and leave the innocent folks alone.
The extra added civil suits should serve as an example of what happens when someone messes up, they should be held responsible for all consequent losses to the innocent.
Life is more valuable than money, so the least that should happen is that businesses and other entities that do harm should lose all their money, and even the "collateral damage" should share in the dividing of the spoils, with the direct victims receiving priority.
Any less is a signal that such will be tolerated, because of this Western twist on the concept of using human shields.
Time to send a message to collegiate professional sports.
If you cover up stuff like this it will not end well for you or the program.