Will the Real Penn State Please Stand Up?

I've heard lots of snide comments about my home town and alma mater over the last several months thanks to the Jerry Sandusky case ("We are...Penn rape" - ah, yes, very classy). One of the most recent had to do with the composition of the jury, drawn from the State College area and by default having lots of ties to Penn State.

Displaying a lack of empathy akin to the one they attribute to senior administrators who apparently shielded Sandusky for years, many have openly opined that the people in and around State College are so blinded by love of Penn State football that a jury composed of locals was almost certain to acquit Sandusky because of his history with the team. Now that this jury has come back with guilty verdicts on all but a few charges, I wonder what those critics will say next. While I'd like to believe they'll rethink that initial assessment, I suspect it's more likely that many will simply double down and suggest that the fact that a few of the charges came back "not guilty" proves their warped point.

Alternatively, the storyline may become that of a jury more concerned with taking revenge on Sandusky for Joe Paterno's downfall than in justice for Sandusky's victims. On one level, of course, the jury's motives are irrelevant as long as justice has been done, but I am sick of hearing these blowhards disparage tens of thousands of people because of the sins of a few. If said blowhards are actually concerned with the truth, the story should be that a jury that many believed would be sympathetic to the defendant heard both sides of the case and concluded that the defendant was a monster. Success with honor, some might say.

We Are...Tone Deaf

As a member of the Penn State faithful, I'd be lying if I claimed I could be totally objective about the trial of Jerry Sandusky and the events that have preceded it over the past several months. Perhaps the one good thing about the trial is that it puts the focus squarely on the figure who seemed to be strangely in the background while the late Joe Paterno was being vilified, the monster who is Jerry Sandusky. In short, I'm not an advocate of blaming the masses for the sins of the few. That said, the e-mail I received from Penn State today, touting the start of a new era in Penn State football, coming on the heels of another day of harrowing testimony in the Sandusky trial makes it hard not to wonder if my alma mater isn't truly as rotten to the core as critics would suggest.

Game Over? (Not At Penn State)

As the Jerry Sandusky case shows, clearly there was a strong current of secrecy at work at Penn State. Some might be inclined to debate whether this strain of insularity in the university as an institution constituted some sort of equal and opposite reaction to the open and friendly nature of the actual residents, but that's simply a distraction from the fact this culture needs to be understood and changed to avoid future tragedies. At the same time, the rush of books on the subject, including the just released Game Over, gives me pause - and not just because I'm an alumnus.

By the authors' own accounts, Game Over was written to a very tight deadline. This all but guaranteed that its publication would precede both Jerry Sandusky's trial and the various investigations into Penn State's conduct related to the charges against him. In short, whatever the claims on the dust-jacket, it can't possibly tell the whole story.

Whatever Joe Paterno did or didn't do (let alone should have done), it's hard to deny that there was a rush to judgment to decide his fate. Like many of the Penn State faithful, what bothered me about Paterno's treatment by the university was not really his dismissal but rather the fact a man who had done so much good for Penn State and the community seemed to get less due process than an accused child molester.

Game Over seems to be riding the same wave of judgment. Even putting aside some cynical musings about what the authors intend to do with the proceeds of this insta-book, I can't shake my instinct that it will not in any way help the pursuit of justice for Sandusky's victims. I hope I'm wrong, but that's the thing about cynicism - expecting the worst seldom makes you look like a fool.

R.I.P. (Rest in Paterno)

What bothers me the most about all that's been said about Joe Paterno and Penn State in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky indictment is not the criticism of Paterno's handling of the matter or the reaction of people around the university to Paterno's firing. Paterno himself has admitted, particularly in the interviews shortly before his death, that he should have done more and it’s obvious that the reactions of some students and other Penn State supporters didn’t show the proper perspective on the real gravity of the situation and the victims. 

 What I find reprehensible, though, is the combination of gutlessness and ignorance that so many commentators have displayed. This is embodied by both the hack writers who only crawled out of the ground to sharpen their hatchets after Paterno was fired and the media blowhards who've gone out of their way to portray Joe Paterno and State College as the second coming of Jim Jones and Jonestown. I expect some of the same culprits to criticize Paterno’s family for suggesting that those wishing to honor his memory make donations to the Pennsylvania Special Olympics and THON (i.e. the world's largest student-run philanthropy) rather than RAINN or other worthy organizations involved in preventing abuse. 

Joe Paterno was a man who tried to do good for as many people as possible. Like any man, he didn’t always succeed, but any rational assessment shows that he succeeded more than he failed. That bit of context is conspicuously absent from the work of writers who lacked the courage to voice their criticisms about things like how he treated NFL scouts until after he was fired. As for my hometown of State College, we all knew that the success of the football team brought our big small-town a lot more national attention than it would have gotten as just a good Midwestern-style university that happened to be in the middle of Pennsylvania.

That did not, however, mean that football was the only thing that mattered there. No one was patrolling the streets of State College or sweeping through the Nittany Mall on Saturday afternoons to ask people why they weren’t at the game. We lived our lives normally, enjoying the accomplishments of the team the same way fans in Pittsburgh and Dallas did for the Steelers and the Cowboys not because someone made us “drink the Kool-Aid” but because that’s what fans do when they’re proud. A lot of that stemmed from Paterno and the honest work he put into making the team and the university better. That’s what I’ll remember about the one sports figure I ever admired, not because someone made me “drink the Kool-Aid” but because that’s what fans do when they’re proud.

Querying McQueary

Let me preface this by saying that I wrote this before hearing the announcement of Paterno's firing by Penn State's board of trustees and that much of what follows relates to allegations rather than material that's been proven in a court of law. On the latter point, since I'm inclined to believe these allegations, I will refer to them here in a way that reflects my belief. To the former point, events in State College in the wake of the announcement suggest that it's going to be a while before the passions surrounding the decision and the terrible events leading up to it die down.

Of the many things that trouble me about the terrible events at Penn State is the fact that so many people are raking Joe Paterno over the coals but making excuses for the actions, or rather lack of actions, by the graduate-assistant whose 2002 report has emerged as such a major part of the scandal. That graduate-assistant, who's been identified as former Nittany Lions player Mike McQueary, is currently an assistant coach at Penn State. McQueary's story, now a matter of public record, is that he witnessed former Penn State Defensive Coordinator Jerry Sandusky raping a young boy but did nothing to stop it. The Grand Jury report that led to the charges in this horrible situation specifically describes McQueary as a credible witness, so it seems reasonable to take this account of his actions at face value and assess them accordingly.

By that standard, McQueary's actions are at least as deserving of criticism as those of any school administrator. McQueary didn't have to get into a physical confrontation with Sandusky, though, one imagines that an athletic 28 year old would be capable of physically conveying his intentions to a man 30 years his senior. He didn't have to lift a finger. He only had to say something then and there to stop that child, the still unidentified "Victim 2", from being hurt further.

Instead, it appears that he opted to walk away while the rape of that boy apparently continued. The idea that McQueary was so shocked that he couldn't do anything is as much a cop-out as any excuses being made for Joe Paterno. You can legitimately argue that Paterno should have done more beyond his initial report to Penn State administrators, and the coach's decision to step down is at least a tacit admission of that.

Perhaps if Paterno had done more, other boys would have been spared from harm. We'll never know for sure. What is known, though, is that by refusing to even open his mouth at the time to stop a child from being raped, Mike McQueary did much less than the minimum of what was called for in the situation.

I Can't Go For That (On 4th & Long)

The combination of watching Penn State defeat Purdue this afternoon and listening to Daryl Hall and John Oates turned out to be an enlightening combination. I've been a fan of both for many years, but it's only today that I realized that Penn State is the football equivalent of Hall and Oates.

Both emerged from Pennsylvania, coming to national prominence in the 70s and achieving their greatest success in the early and mid-80s. Since then, the fortunes of both have ebbed and flowed, neither of them quite able to reclaim their previous heights but still succeeding well enough on their own terms. In the quarter century since their respective peaks, defined by Penn State's last national championship and Hall and Oates' last #1 on the Hot 100, the landscapes in which they play have shifted in ways that ensure that they both represent a type that will never come around again. 

Under the guidance of Joe Paterno, Penn State seems to be just about the last major college football program where the term "student athlete" isn't a joke. Today, college football seems to have enough scandal to fill a tabloid, and the idea of a coach lasting a decade, let alone over four decades, is hard to imagine. For their part, Hall and Oates were the last, perhaps the only, hugely popular act in the post-Motown era to fuse rock and soul styles into a seamless whole. The lack of obvious hang-ups about whether something would be perceived as "white music" or "black music" is reflected in the way their hit I Can't Go for That (No Can Do) went to #1 on the pop, soul and dance charts as well as having been sampled for over a dozen other songs over the past 30 years. 

Even as the Nittany Lions' win today makes them eligible for a post-season bowl game, some think that unsold seats at Beaver Stadium mean that this season will be Paterno's last. Meanwhile, recent live performances show that Hall's voice isn't the same magnificent instrument that helped define the sound of pop music in the 1980s. In no way, though, does that diminish what they achieved during their "glory years" (and since). We've been lucky to have them.    OBLIGATORY DISCLAIMER: Subsequent events have ensured that this piece, written three weeks before Jerry Sandusky's arrest, would be the last time I could write about Paterno and Penn State football with a pure sense of fun. While I obviously feel for Sandusky's victims (use of the term "alleged" purposely avoided), that feeling is something I hope to never lose entirely.