Penn State: Truth and Consequences

Joe Paterno (Photo credit: seng1011)

Jerry Sandusky, former assistant football coach at Penn State University, is on his way to prison having been convicted of molesting boys in incidents dating back 15 years.  Joe Paterno, who had been PSU's head football coach since the 1960s until he was fired, has been dead for a few months.

Both were named in a report released Thursday by former FBI director Louis Freeh, which pointed the finger at PSU officials--Paterno especially--for covering up and passing the buck on Sandusky's misdeeds.

Now there are calls for Penn State to suspend its football program for a year or two, and to tear down Paterno's statue, which currently sticks out like a sore thumb on its campus.  That big, hulking football stadium which stands as a monument to Paterno even without the statue can just sit idle and grow weeds.

The NCAA, which has the power to strip its member schools of its football programs--something they last did with Southern Methodist University for less heinous crimes back in the 1980s, is considering doing the same thing with Penn State.  But they probably won't, because in college football the NCAA has much less power and influence than it used to have.  Conferences such as the Big Ten (of which Penn State is a member), who recently set up a post-season football playoff without the NCAA's help, run the show now.  And football, along with the television money that comes with it, is what floats the boat on schools' athletic budgets.

Joe Paterno's legacy has taken a major hit in the past few months since the scandal broke.  He's gone from being a legendary coach who won national championships and who graduated most of his players on time, to a world-class manipulator former President Richard Nixon would have been proud of.  Paterno claimed up and down in interviews before his death that he didn't know how to handle Sandusky's preference for young boys, when the Freeh report said he did know and didn't do anything about it.

The report also mentioned that there were janitors who said they witnessed what Sandusky and his young male partner were doing in the locker room showers, but did not report it for fear of losing their jobs.

OK, folks.  Put yourself in the janitors' shoes.  If you had witnessed what they did, what would you have done?

The correct answer, of course, is to report the incident to the police and the proper authorities.  But out here in the real world, you'd be wise to keep your mouth shut.  Say one word about it and you can lose your job, get threatening phone calls, and your family might be harassed.

This is why whistleblowers go into hiding, in spite of new laws that supposedly protect them.  This is why some murder cases go unsolved, because witnesses either have a severe mistrust of law enforcement, or a fear of ending up dead themselves.  In other words:  Don't snitch, if you know what's good for you.

For the victims of Jerry Sandusky, most of whom are grown men now, the damage has already been done.  They must live with this the rest of their lives, whether anyone was brave enough to stop the abuse or not.

The football games will go on at Penn State sooner or later, because people tend to have short memories.  Students and boosters alike will put aside the horrors of young boys being abused while university officials looked the other way, as the pride of the school is put to the test on the football field.  Because that's college football.