No punishment handed to Penn State will make these victims whole again.
Pter King's MMQB Column.
Joe, and his statue, had to go.
Last fall, I was critical of the Penn State administration for firing Joe Paterno over the phone, during the crazy week when the board of trustees decided to dump the coach. I thought it was classless, given what Paterno had meant to the university and the football program.
Now, obviously, things have changed. I've thought for years that the Penn State football program, to Joe Paterno, had gotten to be more about Joe than it was about the players. There's no way Paterno was energetic and vital enough in his 80s to coach a Big Ten football team as well as a younger man, yet for years no one could oust him from the job. It was Paterno running the school, doing what he wanted, staying as long as he wanted, and it set the stage for other bad things to happen. Other very bad things.
Like an athletic director who allowed, according to the Louis Freeh report, the investigation into a sex act between Jerry Sandusky and a child to be buried. There can be no arguing how disgusting and disheartening that is. For those reasons, particularly now that the second one is out in the open, it's clear to me the university didn't owe Paterno anything at the end -- other than to take down the statue that would have been a constant reminder of the stain caused by looking the other way while young boys were sexually abused by Jerry Sandusky.
Last year, I asked Penn State student journalist Emily Kaplan to weigh in on her feelings about the case when it was at its peak. I do the same thing this morning, as the university braces for today's reported NCAA sanctions:
For as long as I can remember, my neighboring town has been known for a terrible scandal. It had to do with the football culture. Glen Ridge, N.J., is a well-manicured suburb of New York City, where the streets are lined with majestic shade trees and quaint gaslight lamps. But in 1989, three members of the high school football team sexually assaulted a developmentally disabled young woman. An idyllic community was ripped apart and lives changed forever. Twenty-three years later, Glen Ridge is still, to some, stigmatized by "Our Guys," which became the title of the New York Times best-selling book about the incident and its fallout.
As I prepare for my senior year at Penn State, I can't help but wonder if my school will forever be known for its terrible scandal.
Of course, it had to do with the football culture. Our guys failed, enabling a serial child molester to reign. Penn State's so-called leaders made a mockery of our school's motto, "Success With Honor." Innocent children suffered, and now, as men, they must still cope with the ramifications.
As we move forward, it doesn't matter what statues we take down, or what football games we don't play. Nothing can undo what has been done. So where do we go from here? Our school's in a crisis, but it's not an identity crisis. I think we can identify what allowed this to happen. Mostly, our football culture became, in essence, our university culture. We deified a flawed man and gave him too much power.
It's easy to say this in hindsight. We all fell into the trap, enamored by the brand and the promises. I owned a Joe Paterno bobblehead doll and had a poster of him in my dorm room. We can disassociate from Paterno all we want -- throw out the knick-knacks and take down his statue, which happened Sunday morning -- but what's more important is to disassociate from the culture of secrecy and prioritizing football in unhealthy doses.
We, the 500,000 living alumni and 40,000 students, need to find a way to ensure that money and football and public perception will never again take precedence over doing the right thing. Which will be a challenge. When I heard that some of my peers camped out in tents outside Paterno's statue, "protecting it from vandalism," I wish they had looked at the bigger picture. Who was protecting those children?
For years Penn State built a powerful brand, and did everything to protect it. Now our university, like the town of Glen Ridge, will be long branded by its scandal. But moving ahead, Penn State has a unique opportunity to be known for something more: as leaders in child-abuse education.
I look at a grassroots network of Penn State alumni who founded the ProudPSUforRAINN campaign, urging Penn Staters to donate money to prevent and treat victims of sexual abuse. They reached their goal of raising $500,000 in less than one month. That's a great start. What can we do in six months? One year? Ten years?
These are the people who are Penn State. We, not the football guys, have the opportunity to define our own legacy now
Read more:
Tying up loose ends before heading out on my annual training camp tour - Peter King - SI.com
They will leave the Joe Paterno statue up but they're going to have him look the other way.''
-- @AlbertBrooks, the comedic actor.