Penn State Football Deserves Life in Prison
You could be talking on the phone with a buddy, eating dinner with your family, or just sitting in your room thinking.
Whatever the situation, if Jerry Sandusky is mentioned, the obvious correlations are “evil monster,” “child-molestor,” and “I hope he goes to hell.”
This is as true today as it was when reports of his heinous behavior first appeared. The world has now learned, according to the Freeh investigation, that Penn State hero Joe Paterno did something nearly as evil as Sandusky did—he made no move to stop it and, worse, covered it up.
Most people’s natural reaction is to assign blame and dispute about whether crime was worse (or if both were equally bad): Paterno’s cover-up or Sandusky’s real rape. But, truly, what good does blaming do?
Call Sandusky whatever you want. Say Joe Paterno is a five-letter term beginning with the letter p for covering things up. Send your venomous insults to both of them, as well as Graham Spanier, Tim Curley, and Gary Schultz. Make up the most heinous things that you believe should happen to everyone involved.
So, where does it leave you?
Paterno is no longer alive, Schultz, Spanier, and Curley have lost their positions and will almost certainly struggle to find new ones, and Sandusky will spend the rest of his life in prison. Hopefully, in jail, the tables will be turned on him, and we’ll find out how much he enjoys it. But, aside from that, we can’t really “get” him.
Clearly, something else must be done.
As former FBI director Louis Freeh pointed out, this was a textbook example of the power of a football program overtaking the power of ethics. You and I believe that trying to stop the rape of a child, or at least contacting the police and telling them everything you know, is more important than protecting the job of a defensive coordinator.
I’m 18 years old, and I don’t have kids. But I know that defensive coordinators are a dime a dozen in the cutthroat world in college football, and even if the man called a better game than Nick Saban, I would not think twice about replacing him with a guy who gave up a hundred yards per game more and did not molest small children.
The problem is, Paterno didn’t think that way. Apparently, he needed hindsight to wish he had done more. Really? That’s funny, I just need the moral compass of a normal human being.
Not only he did he cover it up, so did anybody else even remotely associated with Penn State football. The reason? They were too scared. It all goes down the line as follows:
-The janitor that heard one of the rapes refused to tell Paterno because “it would get him fired”.
-The receivers coach Mike Mcqueary, who witnessed one of the rapes, told Paterno and then did nothing when told it would be handled and never was.
-The supreme leaders of Penn State (Schultz, Spanier and Curley) covered up the evidence for fear that it would bring a bad reputation on PSU football (as if the worldwide perception of Happy Valley is any better now).
-Paterno, who elevated the program to the grandeur that the leaders feared it would destroy, fundamentally agreed with them and contributed to the cover-up.
Do you see a pattern here, people?
Everyone involved was so frightened of tarnishing Nittany Lions football’s gleaming reputation that they thought it was more vital to tolerate child rape than to risk lowering it down a notch and informing the authorities.
The worst part about this whole mess isn’t that Sandusky raped these little boys or that Paterno & co. covered it up. No, what’s even worse than both of these sad facts is the sick way in which Sandusky was able to get to them in the first place.
He used his stature as Penn State’s defensive coordinator to build a children’s charity to secure children’s trust in him. Then, he invited them into the dark, quiet football complex for a tour, showed them the showers…and, well, you know the rest.
That’s what disgusts me the most, that he used the football program’s prestige to start the foundation that would grant him access to children.
So to all Penn State fans, I’m sorry, but for that very reason, your program needs to be banished from the face of the earth for a long time.
My biggest beef with the Nittany Lions before the molestation allegations surfaced was that they simply stood on the opposite sideline as my Florida Gators in the Outback Bowl two years ago. Before that terrible November day when the story first broke, I had absolutely nothing—I repeat, nothing—against PSU football.
As fans, you’ve done nothing wrong, and I truly feel for you. But nothing compares to how I feel for the victims and their families.
See? My priorities are as follows: victims, then football program, and believe me, you will be hard pressed to find someone more devoted with the game than I am. But the fact that these people put their football program ahead of the victims’ lives, or, in Sandusky’s case, utilized the football program as a launching platform to molest them, implies that Penn State football must go.
The other sports can stay. But for your own sake, Penn State, please, change your logo, change your colors, maybe even change your team name. I wouldn’t even disagree if you wanted to knock down your football stadium and rebuild it a few miles away.
You, as a university, need to undergo a complete overhaul—not the half-baked overhaul you administered by firing Paterno.
It doesn’t help the victims. That’s the least they and their families want.
You need to do something to show them that you truly regret what happened and that, in the future, no ruined life of a small child will be put before the welfare of your football program. It won’t undo the rapes, but that’s about as good as we, as stunned and disgusted US citizens, can hope for: an honest apology.
Ten, maybe fifteen years later, after the awful memories of the details of the molestations and the ensuing cover-up have faded, come back and maybe you can try again.
The current players should transfer to other D1 schools. It’s not their faults at all, and they should not be punished. Surely they would find places on other teams; if Penn State wanted them then most other BCS schools would find a place for them.
I understand that they should not be punished for the wrongdoings of others, but unfortunately, that’s how college football works. Florida won SEC Championships in 1984 and 1990, but because of mistakes made by previous coaches, both titles were revoked. Alabama vacated all their wins from 2005 through 2007. Ohio State can’t go to a bowl game because of actions by a former coach and former players. USC couldn’t go to bowl games for two years because of what a player did five years earlier.
Should we take back those punishments? Should we hand the Gators two more SEC Championship trophies? Should we give Alabama their wins back? No, that’s not how it works, and I’m as big a Gator fan as there is on this planet. It may not be fair, but that’s how it is.
The bottom line is, the simple thought that a football program—no matter how powerful—could be put before the destruction of small children’s lives in a list of importance, or even worse, used to get to rape children means that Penn State football should be gone for a good amount of time. There’s no lesser punishment that comes close to fitting the crime, not when SMU and Southwest Louisiana lost their football and basketball programs respectively for academic fraud. Failure to banish the PSU football program suggests that cheating on an entrance exam is worse than raping little boys and then covering it up, and after that, doing it all over again.
Hopefully, if PSU does get the death penalty, it will serve as a warning and an example to all sports teams at any level and will fulfill the only realistic wishes of the victims and their parents—that the safety and peace of mind of children comes first and that nothing like this ever happens again.
Leave a Reply