The Nittany Turkey

Primarily about Penn State football, this is a tale told by idiots, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

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Say It Ain’t So, Joe!

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You’ve all read the media take on the information recently released by the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas in the case of Pennsylvania Manufacturers’ Association, Penn State’s insurer, with the University. Whether Penn State was negligent in allowing the Sandusky molestations to occur was a central issue.

Sworn testimony by witnesses, if correct, opens old wounds and throws salt in them, revealing that Joe Paterno could have known as early as 1976 that Jerry Sandusky was a child molester, and at that time he had indeed waved the accuser away, stating that he didn’t have time for that kind of stuff, that he had a football season to worry about. Beyond Paterno, names that have never before surfaced in this case came to the fore as potentially having been aware of the Tickle Monster’s pedophilia. Those names include Tom Bradley and Greg Schiano, both of whom are now defensive coordinators at other universities, UCLA and Ohio State, respectively. They both deny everything.

The Penn State Administration has declined comment on the entire affair. President Eric J. Barron sent out a letter stating that there would be no comment whatsoever, stating that it had already been covered by media, and that the University’s overriding concern was for the victims of the Sandusky abuse. What else could he say?

Barron did provide a paragraph of hand-waving defense for Paterno, Schiano, and Bradley:

Although settlements have been reached, it also is important to reiterate that the alleged knowledge of former Penn State employees is not proven, and should not be treated as such. Some individuals deny the claims, and others are unable to defend themselves.

True, Paterno is dead and the others have moved on. It was particularly interesting to this turkey that Bradley, who had stated many times that he was a Pennsylvania boy who would not stray far from the Keystone State, wound up in Los Angeles. His first non-PSU job at WVU I could understand, but UCLA was out of character. Did he accept the UCLA job in the interest of getting out of Dodge or did he merely readjust his life goals when a top-tier opportunity arose?

I don’t consider myself gullible, but I can believe that Paterno swept lots of crap under the rug during his lifetime at Penn State, and it’s no stretch to include that 1976 encounter. Perhaps St. Joe’s halo is a bit tarnished now even among his staunchest and most reverent supporters. Even those who sanctify Joe and his achievements know that “Culture of Football” is an apt moniker for the damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead approach of the Paterno Era. If you’re offended by my saying so, tough shit, but you’re in denial if you think running a football program is all tailgating and cuddly puppies. There’s shit to be shoveled, too, and to succeed, you’ve got to stoke the shit furnace.

Perhaps it was a different age 40 years ago, but although society and its mores have evolved onto some strange paths in that time, one very relevant notion has remained constant. Child molesters were reviled then and they are reviled now. If a kid or a parent came to Paterno with a report of Sandusky molesting a kid in the shower, Paterno should have acted on it. He had a moral and legal obligation to do so. Brushing it aside only speaks to the imperial bearing of the Paterno Administration. President Richard M. Nixon shouldn’t have given Texas the presidential MNC blessing; what he should have done instead is to have awarded the Paterno Administration the Nixonian Medal of Duplicity.

I still believe that many of the ideals of the Paterno Era were real and good — really good: Success with Honor; The Grand Experiment;  superb graduation rate. These were great things. Things to be proud of. Things to live our lives by. I don’t think they were superficial or hypocritical; however, I’m nonetheless personally prepared to believe that in being so driven by the central theme of success of the field, Paterno could have easily brushed off someone making a serious allegation against one of his assistants — just as easily as he typically attempted to circumvent the student disciplinary process at Penn State in order to keep his players on the field. But then again, we ran Vicky Triponey out of town because she dared to suggest that St. Joe engaged in the latter. We believed in Joe’s rectitude, his judgement, his morals — the whole ball of wax. The godlike Joe would never let an incident like this get swept away because he had important football issues — or would he?

It is more than plausible that the anonymous witness making the 1976 allegation is entirely correct. I’m not even slightly incredulous over this possibility. No, I’m outraged that Joe did nothing.

Sort of sheds new light on the famous Paterno deathbed quote, “In retrospect, I could have done more.” Boy, does that ever ring truer than true now!

There will be some PSU homey cynics who handwave that media speculation is 180 degrees from the reality of St. Joe, whose halo will never be tarnished, by God! Some Paternoists will never believe in the slightest that St. Joe might even be fallible, let alone culpable. Some others will rationalize that it was overblown in 1976, when St. Joe properly dismissed the whole thing. I think these Paternoists make it an issue of faith in spite of the preponderance of evidence. Nothing bad ever happens at Penn State. Yeah, right.

If the sworn testimony is true, Mr. Paterno turned his back on Sandusky’s shower shenanigans for at least 35 years. That would include a lot of years when Sandusky was employed by Paterno and directly reported to him. This strips away one feeble defense, which was that Sandusky didn’t work for Paterno at the time; he was merely given space in the Lasch Building.

These revelations come at an interesting time. The lettermen had just publicly asked the Penn State administration to restore the Paterno statue to its former glorious position.

Fat chance of that happening now!

Bully!

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In a recent interview, alumni elected Penn State trustee Anthony Lubrano called the NCAA collectively a bully, and followed with, “the only way to deal with a bully is head on.” Lubrano is incontrovertibly correct, and he summed up what I have been thinking ever since President Rod Erickson and the Penn State Board of Trustees capitulated to the NCAA’s draconian sanctions.

No fight at all? Erickson and those trustees who support him, an overwhelming majority of the 32-member board, have continued to fall back on the excuse that the alternative to the NCAA sanctions would have been much worse, that the offer of the sanctions was non-negotiable, and that the best thing for the university was to take its lumps and move forward in order to get the Sandusky mess behind us and live for a better day ahead.

But it’s liable to get worse before it gets better. How much worse is anybody’s guess. For it is an uneasy peace when one chooses to appease a bully.

Ask Neville Chamberlain’s ghost. The British Prime Minister thought that it was necessary to appease Hitler to achieve “peace in our time.” At the Munich Conference of 1938, Chamberlain traded part of Czechoslovakia for a promise that the Germans and Brits would go away happy and European life would return to normal with the major threat having been appeased. But a bully will always be a bully. Hitler ignored the non-aggression pact, invading Poland and starting World War II.

If there’s a lesson to be gleaned from this historical snippet it’s that when one shows weakness to a bully, he better have eyes in the back of his head, for there will always be threats lurking in the shadows. Other bullies tend to take notice that there’s a weakling who is ripe for the taking and won’t offer much resistance. A show of bluster is all that is needed to get him to give up his lunch money. If there’s any resistance, give him a black eye and take the money. He won’t fight back.

And so it appears that Penn State has unwittingly, masochistically invited others besides the NCAA to come take its lunch money — lots of it.

Immediately following NCAA President Mark Emmert’s announcement of sanctions against Penn State, the Big Ten Conference jumped into the fray, augmenting the football program’s woes by imposing additional sanctions. Then, the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, the academic accreditation body, declared Penn State “in jeopardy” of losing its accreditation. Lurking in the shadows are the Clery Act investigation by the US Department of Education, perhaps dozens of civil lawsuits from Sandusky’s victims and their families, perjury trials for Tim Curley and Gary Schultz, potential felony prosecution of former President Graham Spanier, and who knows what else? It is easy to be paranoid when the knives continue to rain down. And through it all, the media have been slamming Penn State — because it’s easy.

Accepting the NCAA sanctions without a peep also validated the conclusions of the Freeh report, which Emmert used as the basis for his “deal”. Instead of conducting a proper, NCAA-led investigation, Emmert and his henchmen chose to wave the Freeh report at Erickson to see if he’d cave in. Throw in a couple of threats of rocks thrown through the windows of Old Main, killing off the football program, and assorted other sundry imperilments, and here’s the deal: take it or leave it. An offer you can’t refuse. And by the way, no leaks. Keep your mouth shut. Omerta. Or else!

That opened the door to everyone else to use the strong language of the Freeh report to support their cases against Penn State, against which they could conclude they would receive little resistance.

Of course, it is the NCAA, not a single university, that is culpable for transforming academic institutions into football factories. The opportunity was ripe for the NCAA to make Penn State a target in order to take the bulls-eye off their own backs. The NCAA must discipline member schools regularly for this reason. We’ll see how unhypocritical they are with the way they handle UNC, but let me not digress.

That Erickson and his good ole boys and girls on the board chose to accept the Freeh report’s conclusions without question is another facilitating factor for the bullies out there. Of course the BoT paid big bucks for the former FBI director’s report, reportedly $6.5 million, so why question it? It was bought and paid for, a ready excuse not to pursue any issues related to its findings. By virtue of the ivory tower’s acceptance of not only the report, but also the bullies’ use of it to justify their punishments, it has essentially become a declaration of guilt: we did it, we did it all, and we’ll pay the price to atone for it, amen.

However, several interested bystanders who have chosen to ignore the machinations in Old Main have found significant flaws in the Freeh report. Its description of the supposedly corrupt football culture at Penn State is certainly subjective, yet it is the cornerstone for the NCAA’s and others’ case against the university. How can a climate in which academic issues had repeatedly caused suspensions of big-name players be described as deficient academically? How could a top football program with a top of the heap graduation rate be described as corrupt. Those Freeh report words appear to be the cart that drags the horse: as if Freeh conducted the investigation with the object being to prove the notion of a corrupt football culture, instead of deriving that from his findings.

Does the board have something to hide? Why are they not questioning these flaws in the Freeh report? Is there a bigger scandal they’re attempting to keep buried beneath the troubled turf of this one? Better that we find out about it sooner than later, before the bullies snatch more lunch money.

It will come out in the wash. It cannot be be swept under the rug. Thanks to inquisitive, cynical trustees like Lubrano, Joel Myers, and Ryan McCombie, along with former Penn State players, the Paterno family, and investigative reporters such as Sara Ganim, the truth will eventually be revealed. When it does, a lot of people in higher places than Old Main will get hurt. But history has shown that the lust for power leads to serious risk taking to cling to power.

Meanwhile, the board will keep trying to back itself into a corner, ostensibly maintaining a “laser focus” on the future. The bullies will keep on bullying, and the sheep will continue to graze while maintaining their laser focus. Don’t be surprised if one day that damn laser starts focusing on them.

Joe’s Statue Must Remain, But…

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We all have been bombarded with pros and cons relating to the removal of the Joe Paterno statue outside the stadium he effectively more than doubled in size through his 60+ year tenure. They come from blogs, the sports press, the guy sitting at the next bar stool, and from your mom when she calls to speak her piece on the matter.

Mark Coomes believes that the statue should remain and so do I.

“… big-time football has no business on college campuses.” —George Will

That Joe was the emperor of the football program at Penn State for at least 40 of those years is not something that anyone in his right mind can contest. Hell, he served as head football coach for 36% of the time Penn State has competed in intercollegiate football, which began in 1887!

Respected Athletic Director Ernie McCoy hired Paterno, then assistant coach, as head coach earning $20,000 per year to succeed Rip Engle in 1966. Paterno worked for McCoy until 1970, when he retired. Joe credited McCoy as “the guy who turned this whole athletic program around.”

Another key retirement in 1970 was President Eric A. “Prexy” Walker. An Englishman by birth and a Harvard electrical engineer by trade, he also held an MBA and a PhD from Harvard. He was a stern administrator who believed firmly in the Penn State culture of the time, that the institution would not graduate illiterate engineers. He lived on campus, in a house that is now part of the Hintz Alumni Center. Behind the house was a pond where in the aftermath of the great 1964 27-0 superdominant victory over Ohio State in Columbus, some “exuberant” students conducted an empirical test of the conjecture that the Volkswagen beetle of that era was so airtight it would float — and this one did. Walker had taken the job in 1956, when Milton S. Eisenhower, brother of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, retired.

Walker was in charge of the university as a whole. He was responsible for the creation of the Milton S. Hershey Medical Center. He was also in charge of McCoy, who was, in turn, in charge of Paterno. The lines of the functional organization were clearly defined in theory and in practice. If they would have remained that way after both Walker and McCoy retired in 1970, one could argue that Paterno would not have had the wherewithal to exceed the presumed authority of a football coach. But let’s drag ourselves back to reality.

Abetted by success on the football field, Joe Paterno began a successful, systematic consolidation of power. Having been named AFCA Coach of the Year in 1968, he was quite the desirable commodity in both college and pro football. The Steelers hired Chuck Noll after Paterno turned them down in 1969. The New York Giants offered Paterno the head coaching job several times in the 1970s and 1980s. The University of Michigan contacted Paterno for its head coaching vacancy that would eventually be filled by Bo Schembechler. Finally, Joe wrestled with a 1972 offer by the New England Patriots. He accepted it, but three weeks later reneged on his commitment. From that moment on, Joe was the Anointed One at Penn State.

Joe served a stint as both Athletic Director and Head Football Coach, and was succeeded by his friend, publicist Jim Tarman, who along with Paterno was impetus for the successful marketing of the program. Penn State was transformed from an eastern independent power to a fledgling Big Ten institution during Tarman’s tenure as AD.

The team also grabbed two national championships during the 1980s and was widely respected as a powerhouse, with Joe Paterno’s image inextricably associated with Penn State University. The first two years in the Big Ten were a continuation of the successes of the 1980s. The Rose Bowl team of 1994 was looked upon as one of the best offensive teams ever to walk onto a college football field. Indeed, were it not for Nebraska’s victory in the 1995 Orange Bowl, Penn State would have captured another national championship for that undefeated campaign. But from there, things went downhill.

Fast forward to 2011. Joe’s reputation had suffered over a decade and a half of largely mediocre, forgettable teams. Recruiting was suffering, and although “The Dark Years” had presumably passed by 2011, Penn State had settled into a role as a Big Ten mid-pack player. However, Paterno had maintained his ever strengthening iron grip on the program, even in the presence of declining teams and declining health. He was a stubborn old guy, yes, but he was an indelible presence during six decades. He cannot be erased.

Now, the Freeh Report has been issued, and it implicated Paterno in the University’s failures associated with enabling the sexual predator Jerry Sandusky to perpetrate his crimes on the Penn State campus. You all know the story by now. That brings us to the statue issue.

When his (should I capitalize the “H”?) statue was erected he publicly declared his opposition to it, but we never knew when to believe Joe’s humble veneer or view it as merely his public persona. Nevertheless it was erected — not a great idea for any currently tenured head coach, if at all, for precisely the reasons that it is being presently considered for demolition. Most of those calling for its demise fit into two categories: 1) Penn State haters who are happy to know that PSU’s arrogantly projected “Success with Honor” dictum was phony , and 2) self-righteous moralists who actually think getting rid of Paterno’s image will erase the whole sordid Sandusky affair from everyone’s memory.

Just today, the bronze effigy has been aerially threatened by a banner towed by a small airplane. It read “TAKE THE STATUE DOWN OR WE WILL.” Just who the hell “we” are is presently unknown. I would imagine that aerial sign companies in the Central Pennsylvania area will be grilled about it. This malicious threat comes in the wake of the BoT issuing its statement to the effect that any decisions about the statue would be delayed indefinitely.

Yesterday, student leaders removed Paterno’s name from their game week tent encampment, which was formerly called Paternoville. It will henceforth be named Nittanyville. Also, Nike removed Paterno’s name from its child care building in Beaverton, OR, and Brown University, Joe’s alma mater, renamed a scholarship formerly named for the late coach. Thus, the Depaternoization cleansing program (called Paternowashing by CBS Sports) continues apace.

That fits well into our present cowardly culture, in which we’re in constant denial of societal problems. We can no longer confront issues head on without fear of offending someone. If we confront feelings about homosexuality, we’re automatically branded as “homophobes” (a made up word); if we confront racial issues, we’re automatically racists (why aren’t we negrophobes or blancophobes? — oh yeah, I guess it’s a bad connotation to fear other races); and, in general, we try our damnedest to shield ourselves and our children from unpleasant revelations about the darker side of human nature (no racial pun intended). But the Sandusky crimes can never be swept under a rug, lest it happen again.

Neither can Paterno. Erasing his presence from the campus and the world will only serve to enhance his legendary status, given enough time. Time heals all wounds. Muhammad Ali, formerly Cassius Clay, was vilified for his outspoken nature, his draft dodging, and the myth of tossing his Olympic medal off a bridge in Louisville. Yeah, he had a big mouth. Many people considered him a criminal. However, now, in his old age, he is regarded as an elder statesman of sports and revered by society. It always seems to work that way. Even O.J. Simpson, currently in jail, possibly for a lesser crime than the capital felony many believe he perpetrated, has records that remain indelibly inscribed in record books.

Paterno deserves a spot in the annals of the history of Penn State. We need to get out of this denial thing and confront the differences, mistakes, and personal foibles that make us human. Joe Paterno was a human being, albeit a powerful one, but he was not a god, and was flawed as are all human beings. Furthermore, his track record of accomplishments will not be erased. It is doubtful whether the record book will ever even have an asterisk to satisfy the whiners who think the records should go away — swept under the rug with the rest of the unseemly Sandusky affair.

Let us recognize that Joseph Vincent Paterno was neither all good nor all bad. If the Freeh Report was correct, he made some very serious mistakes. However, he also won two national championships, produced a helluva lot of good men, and generously donated his personal money to the University, particularly the library. We need to recognize these successes, which accompanied by the assumption that he could do what he wanted, even with crimes occurring in his midst, make for a complete picture of a powerful figure who dominated the campus for over 40 years.

You whine, “it’s just football — football should not have such influence over academe,” to which I respond that it just happens to be the way it is, not just at Penn State, but also at just about every university with an NCAA Division I football team. Football stimulates alumni to contribute funds, making it an inextricable part of those schools. So, once again, confront the reality of today’s big universities. Don’t hang that whole thing on Joe.

Where money and power are involved, corruption will exist. It can take many forms, recruiting violations, payments to so-called student athletes, inordinate influence by boosters, etc. Silence is an important and expected concept relating to the corrupt system. What happens in the university stays in the university. Breeches of omerta are discouraged with only slightly smaller disincentives than would be employed by the Mafia.

It’s all part of major universities, not just Penn State. This is not to exonerate Penn State or mitigate its egregious failures, but to describe a corrupt culture that needs to be outed. The statue needs to serve as an omnipresent reminder of how we (yes, we) have allowed the cart to be expected to draw the horse. Give me any university and a team of investigators; I’ll guarantee that I find plenty of transgressions, both ethical and legal.

Anyone who believes the fairy tale that Penn State — or any of its peers — is squeaky clean is in straight-on, head-up-the-ass denial. “Say it isn’t so, Joe!” I worked in one such institution for 13 years. You’ve read some of my allusions to offenses that were swept under the rug there. It was not uncommon there for a head coach to visit an instructor to “request” that a grade be changed to keep a player academically eligible. “Student” athletes, indeed!

On ABC’s “This Week”, conservative panelist George Will addressed the same point with respect to the Penn State scandal:

“We have grafted a multi-billion dollar entertainment industry onto higher education. It is inherently discordant with the mission of the university; it is inherently corrupting; and you’re going to get [here] and elsewhere different forms of corruption, but always forms of corruption because big-time football has no business on college campuses.”

Will this corrupt culture ever be changed? That appears to be about as likely as the United States’ national politics to be transmogrified out of its two-party dynamic. However, any chances of permanently fixing the problem will completely evaporate if we succeed in burying its unpleasant taste under gallons of politically correct molasses.

So, I will once again propose that the statue should not be removed, but that it should be moved to a new “Joe Paterno Era” room in the All Sports Museum that will commemorate Paterno’s successes as well as his failures. While some will object, perhaps proposing an empty elevator shaft or a septic tank, the purpose of remembering and avoiding a repetition of the sins of the past will be well served into the future, by memorializing the good and bad of Joe’s larger than life 60+ year presence on the Penn State campus. The story needs to be told to future generations.

 

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