1. Paterno.
Joe Paterno had to go. He's getting off, frankly, quite easy. He doesn't deserve it. To get off easy, that is.
Remember, this man, this so-called paragon of virtue, the model for men, the image that every other coach with "integrity" pointed to, couldn't be bothered to protect children - elementary school aged boys - from a predator. This isn't the case of having a small lapse in judgement at the time he supposedly discovered that Jerry Sandusky was raping a young boys in the team's locker room. Read that again, by the way. Sandusky was raping kids. This isn't open for debate. Telling your boss isn't a defense for allowing this to happen, and to continue to happen. How holier-than-thou JoePa could look Sandusky in the eye, or allow in his locker room, or anywhere near his university (because, it was JoePa's university), is simply staggeringly incomprehensible. It would be so if there had only been one "incident."
But that's not the case, either. This wasn't a momentary lapse of judgement. This was a choice that Paterno made for a dozen years, if not longer. Sandusky "retired" from coaching in 1999, after apparently being accused of child molestation in 1998. The top assistant coach in the nation, he was never offered a more senior coaching position, never became a head coach. Because back then, the University and the team (any difference?), and perhaps the broader coaching world, already knew that he was using the university and the team and his "charity" to take advantage of children, to scout them out, to pick his next vulnerable victim. There is no way that Paterno didn't know about this. Yet he still called Sandusky one of his best friends, still honored him and his charitable works that were designed to allow Sandusky to prey on children. Day after day, year after year, Joe Paterno called Sandusky a friend. Day after day, year after year, Joe Paterno knew what Sandusky did, what Sandusky was doing. Day after day, year after year, Joe Paterno did nothing to stop him, to remove him from the campus, or to get Sandusky away from the vulnerable kids that he was abusing. This is a choice made by a man with something rotting in his core, and no amount of good deeds can erase what Joe Paterno allowed to happen under his nose.
Any excuses made for Paterno that he is an old man, or look at all the great things he did - well, they don't cut it. Joe Paterno was capable of coaching one of the top football programs in the nation - or at least of being the face of it. And, he wasn't an 84 year old man when he learned of this. He was no older than 75. And really, he was likely younger than that. This could not have been a surprise. Moreover, the idea that his judgement is worse due to frailty and old age is simply incredible. With age is supposed to come wisdom, I've heard.
Instead of wisdom, Joe Paterno made excuses. His statement that he would retire at the end of the season, and that the Trustees should not spend one more minute thinking about him, may be one of the most galling, self-serving statements I have ever seen, but Paterno clearly believes that he is the Center. Because that's the way it always has been for Joe Paterno. He's a man in a bubble. And, it turns out, a coward.
2. Penn State University.
I don't understand any of what happened at Penn State, why anyone would have covered this up, except that they had to be covering up their prior cover up. The only explanation I can conceive of for ignoring the 2002 locker room rape incident is that the University and the coaching staff feared that their knowledge of Sandusky's prior molestations would come to light. I don't like blind speculation, but nothing else makes any sense.
There's a lot of information flying about right now, and it's hard to determine what is accurate and what is not, but it appears that Sandusky's "predilection" was an open secret. Regardless of how open, it is likely that the Penn State coaching staff had to know Sandusky liked molesting young boys, but were somehow willing to overlook it because he was, in those circles, admired for his coaching and, well, if they didn't see it, it wasn't their business. Which is nonsense, but still. Doing it on campus, in the locker room, that crossed a line, but by then Penn State was already in too deep. They couldn't act then, because by that point, any action would condemn their previous actions (or lack thereof). In for a penny, in for a pound (so to speak).
Every one of those people should go down with Paterno.
3. Hero Worship.
The outcry in support of Joe Paterno by a loud (hopefully) minority is sad and pathetic. I'm struggling with this thought a bit, but I think that if I were an employer, and I was interviewing anyone who was at Penn State at this moment in time, I would Google their name and ensure that the name didn't come up in one of the stories about the riots, or JoePa defenders. Their judgement is so bad as to disqualify them from anything for which I could ever hire them. These kids rioted in support of a man who enabled a predator.
Maybe that's unfair. They're kids, right? It was a sudden response and they didn't have time to think, right?
But I think that that's just nonsense. That's beyond a mere failure of critical thought and judgement. It's a moral failing. Hopefully those kids will come to regret their behavior, but I wouldn't want any of them to ever, ever work for me. They gave in to foolishness and immorality and mob mentality.
Hero worship is like that. It gets rolled up into identity and can blind you to reality, particularly when image and reality, so seemingly in alignment, suddenly don't match up. There's a choice between reality and image, and if your identity is tied into imagery, reality is often doomed. Circle the wagons, our own identities are at stake. If JoePa isn't the awesomest man ever, then what does that make of those who worshiped at his altar?
It seems to me part and parcel with the current Herman Cain scandal and it's accompanying silliness - because it is silly, although that doesn't mean it's not also troubling and dangerous, or that Herman Cain is not a credible (but only because of what it says of the GOP) candidate. I'm not going down that rabbit hole.
But, people choose affiliations, and for many people - the ideologically rigid, the small minded, the paid pundits, the con artists, the gullible - those affiliations are unbreakable. Bill Clinton was a sleaze, of course, for womanizing, but now it turns out that the female accusers of the Hermanator are plants from the "Democrat Machine," are money hungry publicity hounds, and, it also turns out, that there is really no such thing as sexual harassment. It goes the other way, too. I'm not claiming that consistency is the exclusive province of one side of the ideological spectrum.
Consistency and logic unfortunately don't seem have a role when you're talking about identity and affiliation. It's all about defending your cause. So, St. Joe followed the rules, reported what he heard to his superiors, and had no other responsibility whatsoever. And now he's being railroaded. That's the logic of identity, the aura and fanaticism of hero worship. There's a mythology, an almost religious adherence to a narrative of greatness, that is unshakable to its adherents.
4. The NCAA, Sanctions and the U.
One of my initial reactions to this scandal was that - here we have the University of Miami, likely facing dire NCAA sanctions because some kids were getting paid by a booster so that those kid could provide the University with a profitable venture, yet Penn State isn't going to face NCAA consequences for enabling a child rapist. It seems so incredibly unfair. Much of what happened at Miami was wrong, but not criminal (or, where it was, it was within the realm of a technical criminality that is commonplace). Yet Miami will face much harsher consequences from the governing body of the sport than Penn State will face. (Only time will tell what consequence will be imposed by the school or more-level-headed students or alumni or fans. In a just world, the University trustees would dissolve the football program. But that's not the world in which we live.)
I think I'm off that fence, though. Penn State doesn't provide UM with a pass here. At the same time as Penn State was enabling a rapist, UM was allowing someone to pay for prostitutes and abortions. It's hard to believe that the UM coaching staff could have been entirely unaware of what was going on. It's much easier to believe that they chose not to know.
I don't think that this was or is unique to the University of Miami. And I am in no way equating what happened at Penn State to what happened at Miami. There is a disgusting vulgarity to Penn State that is matchless, incomprehensible, vile.
Nevertheless.
I liked Randy Shannon while he was coaching Miami, and had thought he was a class act. He may have not won it all, but he was doing things the right way, right? That's what we were told. Shannon, it was said, was rebuilding Miami's football program with integrity, dignity, increased scholarship, all in the image of Penn State and Joe Paterno.
I don't think the similarities are things UM would now like to acknowledge.
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