Final Thoughts On A Scandal

TigerBlog spent much of yesterday in the car, listening to considerable discussion of the Louis Free report on the Jerry Sandusky case and Penn State's handling of it.

Specifically, the talk on WFAN - mostly with Joe Benigno and Evan Roberts - was about Joe Paterno and his legacy.

This will be the fourth (and probably last) time that TigerBlog writes about this subject, one that he has used to make the point that such a cover-up would be unlikely at Princeton because the football program, or anything else for that matter, is never going to be bigger than the University itself.

There's a lot to that, knowing that no one individual is ever going to be to Princeton what Paterno was to Penn State - a pseudo-diety who was essentially worshiped and who also had elevated himself to being the most powerful person on the campus.

Ultimately, it was the desire to hold onto that position and what he did to ensure that that would be the case that will be his ultimate  legacy.

TB wrote this after Paterno's death in January:
On the one hand, TB can't imagine a way that Paterno didn't know the exact details or enough of them that he should have put the safety of young boys well above anything else to do with his program.
On the other hand, if Paterno did know all that and didn't do anything to stop it because he valued the brand of Joe Paterno and Penn State football over the safety of little boys, then he's nothing short of evil.

TB couldn't imagine this whole time that Paterno could live with himself for more than a day or two knowing that his actions could be - and ultimately were - hurting children in probably the most heinous way possible.

Surely a man who appeared to be so committed to education and to bettering the lives of young people couldn't permit this to go on, all in the name of avoiding having his own good name dragged through the mud. And yet that's how it was. And so yes, Joe Paterno was an evil man, and TigerBlog doesn't want to hear a thing about the good he did because none of it really matters anymore, given that he allowed this to go on for an additional decade plus.

Think about it.

How many times during those years did Paterno see Sandusky in the Penn State facilities? How many times did he see him with children? What did he think was happening? Was he just hoping it would all go away by itself?

How many conversations did Paterno and Sandusky have with each other from 1998 through the time the scandal broke? What did they talk about? How could Paterno not have exploded from the guilt he had to be feeling about keeping silent, and for what, so he could still coach football at Penn State?

TB would have to guess that there is much more to this than has come out to this point and who knows how much Paterno took with him to the grave?

Has there ever been a more selfish act, or a more self-absorbed, uncaring person? And there's an argument about whether or not to tear down the statue of him? That should have already happened.

As TB listened to Benigno and Roberts, caller after caller mentioned basically what TB just said.

At one point, Benigno said, essentially, that had Paterno done the right thing when he first found out about what was going on, then he would have been looked at as a hero. TB couldn't disagree more.

Had it come out when it first started happening, Paterno would not have been a hero. He would have been the football coach whose defensive coordinator was a child rapist, even if Paterno had made sure that Sandusky was arrested back then.

And it was that fear of being known as that football coach, the one who allowed this to happen on his watch, that drove Paterno to do what he did. And as a result, so many other kids were hurt.

TB doesn't quite understand the call for the NCAA to step in and give the Penn State football program the death penalty.

For starters, basically everyone involved is either in jail for life, dead, fired - and all have been disgraced.

Additionally, what NCAA rules did Penn State violate? Recruiting? Paying players? There's only so much jurisdiction that the NCAA has, and so while it might seem a bit nuts that the Ohio State football players could get pounded for exchanging memorabilia for tattoos while Penn State can get away without NCAA penalties for this, it's how it works.

Lack of institutional control is a fairly broad term to punish Penn State, but ultimately it has to be for a violation of something in the NCAA manual.

And the statements that it'll take decades for Penn State to recover?

Guess what, Penn State has already recovered.

Again, those culpable are being held accountable, and there are still trials and punishments still to come. It would have been interesting to see what would have happened to Paterno had he lived and what criminal charges would have been brought against him.

And there will be the lawsuits by the victims, as there should be. And the University will have to pay out a lot of millions of dollars in the end.

But it'll still be Penn State. Football games will be sold out. University applications will be constant. Alumni donations will be fine.

Do you for a minute believe that come Oct. 27, when it's 17-14 Ohio State in the fourth quarter at Beaver Stadium that anyone there will be thinking about this scandal?

Give Penn State credit for bringing in the former FBI director to produce this report, knowing how critical it would be of the institution. But don't think for a minute that Penn State is doomed.

If anything, it'll be a smarter version of Penn State, hopefully, one that realizes that the football coach is just a guy who coaches the football team and should not be the most powerful person on the campus.

Here was TB's first paragraph from the first time he wrote about this scandal:
TigerBlog wanted to write about the whole Penn State situation, except he wasn't sure that Princeton's athletic blog was the right forum for that.

And again, as he writes his final words on the subject, TB goes back to that, because this is supposed to be a place for happy little stories about Princeton athletics.

Then again, Penn State's football lockerroom was supposed to be about providing great experiences and opportunities for some of the more disadvantaged young people in the area, the chance to see what doors could be opened for them by athletics.

Instead, they were physically and mentally brutalized, all while the people who were supposed to be protecting them turned their backs on them, all in the name of self-preservation, especially Joe Paterno.

Sometimes, the way things are supposed to be done and the way they are done don't quite match up.

Sometimes, the funny stories have to wait for another day.