Posted on 11/11/2011 8:45:31 PM PST by Colofornian
So this is how it ends, a career that was once glistening and unassailable, collapses under the weight of an unimaginable scandal?
We all, those of us who observed Joe Paterno and his program over many years, felt that it would end badly for him but none of us could have concocted such a horrific denouement.
Maybe he would let his anger get the best of him and he’d physically assault an official or a member of the media. Or maybe he would say something so egregious or ill-considered that he couldn’t undo it. But no one would have, could have, ever foreseen that his demise would be the result of a terrible lack of judgment involving a sordid crime against children. That was unthinkable from a man who by all accounts cherished family and children.
But in the end, not being morally outraged at the alleged misconduct of Jerry Sandusky, once one of his most valued and trusted assistants, caused Paterno’s career to crumble like an ancient building in an earthquake.
It’s way premature to make any statement about what his legacy will be. History will determine that. It’s not premature, however, to say that it will be stained by the revelations of the past week. If you include his 409 wins you also have to include this sordid episode. If you include his philanthropy toward his university you must also recognize his failure to protect young lives from the alleged advances of a predator.
He may not have known what happened prior to 1998 when the first incident involving Sandusky and a child are reported to have occurred but from that moment on he should have been on high alert to the possibility of it happening again.
Maybe he was. Maybe he was and chose to ignore or dismiss the warning signs that had to have been there. We can’t profess to know. What we do know is that by his inaction a man was enabled to listen to whatever demons haunted him and do their bidding.
How could this happen in Happy Valley, the Camelot of college football?
To answer that you have to understand the culture that has prevailed for at least as long as Paterno was in charge of the football program. It was, right up until he was removed from his position Wednesday night, a climate of Kremlin-like secrecy, of tightly-controlled access, of rule by dynamic terror. It was understood that if you wanted to be around his program in a professional aspect, you did so at his pleasure and by his rules.
And that kind of climate is a petri dish for what happened in what must now be called the Sandusky Scandal.
But the toxic climate isn’t confined to the football program at Penn State. It’s pervasive on the campus from the lowest worker in the Office of the Physical Plant to the corner offices in Old Main. It’s all about keeping your mouth shut, doing your job, looking the other way at the various indiscretions and currying favor with those above you in the food chain in order to keep or improve your position. Stray from these guidelines at your own peril.
Of course the ESPN’s of the world don’t care about a carpenter or a secretary. It’s football that draws their cameras and drives their ratings. And when a scandal as salacious as this one is uncovered, it’s hard to find parking spaces for all of the satellite trucks that roll into town.
They can’t conceive of how something like this could take place in such an idyllic setting. That’s because they’ve never been able to peek behind the cloak of secrecy that enshrouds the Football Complex and its occupants.
Perhaps two isolated incidents can help them understand just how controlling Paterno was and how image-conscious the school is.
It was in the preseason of either the 1985 or 1986 season and, as was standard procedure at the time, a call was placed to Paterno after the first week just to get an update on how things were proceeding at that point. Various personnel questions were asked and answered until the final one, which was about the injury situation. “Nothing out of the ordinary, just the usual bumps and bruises,’’ Paterno said.
As came to light only an hour or so later, at the very time he was saying nothing unusual had happened, one of his players was laying in a hospital bed in Hershey, partially paralyzed from a practice collision. By most standards that is not only unusual but newsworthy. Fortunately, the player recovered and went on to finish his career at Penn State.
But were it not for a phone call from the player’s hometown paper, which had been told of the injury by the player’s family, it would have never come to light. For whatever reason, Paterno elected to be less than honest about it.
Flash ahead to 1992. J.T. Morris, a talented running back, wanted to leave Penn State. Paterno refused to sign his release, as he did last winter with Rob Bolden. A call to Morris confirmed that he was at home in Virginia working in a post office waiting for Paterno to release him. “My future is not in my hands now,’’ Morris said. “It lies in a pen on Joe Paterno’s desk.’’
When contacted for comment on Morris’ comments, Paterno dismissed them, saying he and J.T. would talk. A short time later the phone on my desk rang and it was Budd Thalman, Penn State’s sports information director at the time. He was asking about the conversation with Morris, wanting to know what J.T. had said. And when he was told that I wouldn’t divulge specifics, only saying that it wasn’t complimentary to Paterno and the football program, his response was classic Penn State: “I just worry that it (the story) will hurt the (football) program.’’
God forbid that would happen. But that’s the attitude that prevails at Penn State: Protect the image at all costs and if the truth has to be whitewashed to hide it, well, break out the buckets and brushes.
And that’s how this current debacle was allowed to take root and grow. Any word of it leaking out would damage the pristine image. So one after another, five adult males dismissed it as inconsequential, doing the bare minimum to even acknowledge it, then passing it up the chain of command and getting back to the business of cultivating and polishing the image. So at the risk of an unsightly blemish on the program, young lives were permanently altered in terrible ways.
Now Penn State’s precious image and reputation have suffered the very thing it tried so hard to avoid — national exposure as a place where an assistant football coach allegedly was enabled to prey on and victimize young boys and men who could have stopped it looked away.
And now, for the first time in a long time, that is an image that is accurate.
Ron Bracken is former sports editor of the Centre Daily Times.
You heard it here first.
Not a slam-dunk, I don't think. The Pulitzer committee doesn't go out of the way to bestow favor on those who inconvenience the homosexual march to oblivion.
Still, you may be right, and I hope you are.
Lancey,
I appreciate your objectivity when this has been pure turmoil for grads like you.
I don’t envy being in your situation — or those 40,000 students part of the university.
The article mentioned “five men”. Does that include McQueary’s (sp) dad who knew about the ten year old boy in the shower?
I saw on espn tonight that McQueary told his players “I’m done.”
Carrot Top has told his players “I’m done.” He should be and his dad should be questioned, too. You’d think eventually his dad would ask his son “What ever happened about that incident with the coach and the ten year old?”
I agree with you but allow me to take this in another parallel direction.
None of us are unaware of what abortion is. Many of us are aware of exactly where the abortion clinics are.
Fortunately there are 2/3rds less abortion clinics in this country than say, about 20 years ago...thanks to God, in part, operating thru the pro-life movement...
But I bring this up not so much to digress so that we talk about abortion victims the rest of the thread...but simply as a reminder -- including myself -- to watch my/our sense of smugness here.
It's easy to say that if we knew about "doctors" (abortionists) dismembering very small boys and girls, that we wouldn't think about our careers but do everything we could peaceably to intervene so that these pre-borns wouldn't have to suffer...but, really...do we as a people?
I don't think so. With the same fingers we rightfully point with indignation @ Michael McQueary...those fingers could also be ones God points at us for failing to protect the womb...which is STILL the most dangerous place to be alive on this planet.
Now I know there's a HUGE difference 'tween rescuing a child being raped vs. trying to rescue a pre-born child, but even if we speak generically of this...are we willing as a nation to start putting our young children ahead of our careers?
Think about it. Meditate upon it.
I would think that would be McQueary, Paterno, Schultz, Curley & Spanier. They all knew. They all had Penn State paychecks. They all compromised children because they all made a covenant with the spirit of child rape.
We all need to ask ourselves: Where have any of us made a covenant with spirits we otherwise militate against?
In the interest of protecting ourselves, our paychecks, our career goals, our reputation, have any of us, for example, made a "covenant" with the spirit of death? (The spirit who oversees the abortion industry)
Where perhaps have we "gone along" with the abortion industry so as to not rock any boats or ruffled feathers?
Guess what? The father of former Penn State quarterback McQueary was as much an enabler of the predatory homosexual pedophile Sandusky as anybody else who knew what Sandusky was and looked the other way for a decade or more. The father didn't one night hear a shocking and sordid eyewitness account of a legendary coach engaging in violent gay pedophilia in the team showers from his anguished son and then forget all about it. He has probably thought about it every day of his life. ALL of them are enablers. It simply boggles my mind that not ONE adult stepped up and pressed the cops to confront Sandusky. Not one.
/bile spit
Yeah, Paterno made his own bed in this thing. Good bye, Joe Pa. It's been real.
Real illusory.
Very good question...and one I haven't seen anybody else raise yet.
It's not as if they didn't go "way back" together.
And it's not as if JoePa would have had to even go out of his way to ask, given the frequent appearances JS made on campus.
Of course, the practical aspect of considering this is: Would any of us really expect the double-life JS to "come clean" to such a query from JoePa?
Doubt it.
In this sense, we don't know if Joe ever confronted JS or not...but you know what...
If I was a civil attorney in litigation with JoePa and with Penn State...and he was being depositioned...guess what question I'd ask him:
"Mr. Paterno: How often did you see Jerry Sandusky on campus between March of 2002 and say, the year 2008? Mr. Paterno: Did you ever any of those times query Mr. Sandusky along the lines of...'Jerry, I heard something very disturbing...'??"
When have you ever read in a situation like this that only a single pervert was involved?
Thanks for the link.
I hope that this Camelot analogy does not catch on.
Aside from the crimes alleged, this entire article is nonsense when it tries to connect its own worded “climate of secrecy” to these crimes.
Every college football program or college itself is run along the same lines. - at least the programs that I have been personally involved with.
Tenure is the shining example of this, not a sex crime - unless you believe that all institutions of higher learning are incubators for child sex assaults.
Total BS.
Your response did not mentions McQueary’s dad. Talking about making a pact with the devil. His son would lose his job if he pushed it. And he didn’t want that.
I imagine we’ve all looked the other way on different things. But I doubt very few people would look the other way if they saw a grown man sodomizing a ten year old.
I will tell you that even elementary schools look the other way. I know a woman whose ten year old son had been molested by her ex husband (who was sitting in prison at the time). A teacher discovered the kid messing with a 6 year old in the bathroom. Through counciling, and a few other incidents, she was beginnng to realize that her son had become a perp. She went to the school and turned in her own son. The school’s response? “Oh, they’re just kids experimenting.” She tried to explain just how bad this was and asked the school to at least notify the six year old’s parents. Nothing was done.
Nothing is worse than when childrens lifes are sacrificed...they cannot protect themsleves...we are called to do so and suppose to be the adults..."in the room".
This is why our nation continues on the skids....children are not protected any longer...nor are they safe even from their own parents ..who abort them, beat them, drop them off, and discard them as if they are nothing at all...and the bystandards who refuse to step in. It's endless in this day.
The 21st century: China emulates our economic strength and the US emulates China's lack of societal morality.
I really do feel sorry for the raped kids ...
This investigation (not to mention the 1998 investigation and various other Sandusky episodes) has been in the public domain for a long time. Maybe the kids didn't know about it before the were recruited but betcha they knew after they got there.
I am sure that there were probably some in State College.
From the Victim #1's mother's public statement this week we found out that she went to the high school (her son had by this time been molested by Sandusky for years) to find out why the school was letting Sandusky out of class to go on trips with him.
And what did the school officials do when the son then broke down and told them about Sandusky?
The urged the mother to carefully consider the consequences of reporting this to the authorities!
This was in 2008! Fortunately the mother immediately took her son out of school and went directly to child services.
It's sickening. Imagine how the mother feels seeing the reports that that school (Central Mountain High in Lock Haven, PA) is being reported as turning Sandusky in and stopping his raping!
The school let Sandusky pull the boy out of class without parental knowledge or consent and then tried to cover their butts!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Central Mountain High School, Lock Haven PA
did you see the following in the article you posted?! :
Among those who testified was the mother of Sandusky’s youngest adopted son, a boy he met through The Second Mile, took in as a foster child and later legally adopted as an adult.
Matt Sandusky’s mother, Debra Long, told The Patriot-News that she had raised concerns about the behavior of her son and Sandusky once her son went to live with the Sandusky family in 1995.
“We tried to stop it back then,” Long said. “We were dragging it to the court system all the time and we couldn’t prevent it. It upsets me, because these kids didn’t need to go through this.”
I read all of it. The Penn State fans that support the power that knew about this need to get real. The University is now a center-piece of childhood rape that ripples from the top down. I think it is a shame.
I could just imagine Gen. Neyland, Bear Bryant, Knute Rockne or even Lou Holtz, being made aware. Joe Paterno is a disgrace and his legacy is shot. Sorry Penn State Fans
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