Thursday, November 10, 2011

Penn State and the infinite sadness

This story from Penn State is a blood diamond. So many facets, so many different angles, all of them uncomfortable to think about.

There's the hold that big-time sports has on our culture. I say this as a fan: The games matter far too much to far too many. Coaches and stars are our secular gods. Nobody in the state of Pennsylvania was as loved or as powerful as Joe Paterno.

There's the idea of sins of omission. Jerry Sandusky, the former assistant coach now charged with molesting boys, is the worst villain here. But several people, including Paterno, could have done more to stop him, and didn't.

There's the part that's personal. Sportswriter Joe Posnanski, one of my best friends, has been at Penn State for the last few months, writing a book on Paterno. Now the work ahead of him is so different than he, or anyone else, could have imagined. (He tweeted this from the scene Wednesday night: "I saw a girl crying tonight. When I asked why she said: 'Because everybody lost.'")

But the longer I roll it around, the more this story keeps circling back to one thing: The impulse to protect institutions, even at the expense of people.

Our nature is to build grand things, and to be drawn to them. Giant banks hold our money, stadiums hold our passion, vast churches hold our mysteries. Part of life is the search for something bigger than ourselves, someplace where we fit. When we find that place -- a job, a team, a school -- we often defend it beyond all reason.

Now imagine if you had built one of those institutions. That's what Joe Paterno did at Penn State. He started as an assistant coach there in 1950 before becoming head coach in 1966. That's 61 years in one place, 45 years as the head man, creating a program known for both high academic standards and wins on the field. For decades, Penn State was the model of what college sports could do for its players and for a campus. Paterno did that.

It's easy to imagine that he would refuse to let anything ruin it.

We might never know what was in Paterno's mind, or the minds of all the other people who had information that Jerry Sandusky had molested a young boy in the locker-room showers. But two facts are daggers to their credibility. Not one of those adults called 911. And not one tried to find out who that boy was, and how to help him.

So often, this is where corruption starts. One mistake. One failure to follow up. One moment of fear that finding the whole truth, and telling it, would destroy this beautiful structure that so many believe in.

Good people do regrettable things all the time. You can rationalize almost anything when you believe there's something more important to protect. This is how police departments rot from the inside, and churches collapse, and banks end up bankrupt.

The thing is, those misguided people trying to save an institution end up being the ones who wreck it.

What if somebody had turned in Jerry Sandusky right away? It would've been a brief, ugly story with a short shelf life. But now Paterno is gone, and the university president has been fired, and people have to wonder what else Penn State might have covered up. Everything that took so long to build is wobbling at the beams.

And none of that is the worst of it.

The worst is this: All the sadness about Paterno, about Penn State, about all the students and alumni and fans who love the school, pales against the sadness of that 10-year-old boy in the shower. Not to mention all the other boys who were victims after the adults at Penn State knew what they knew, and did not do enough.

The story is not over. It will grow and change and we will see angles we hadn't thought of. But it seems to me we can come to one conclusion. No institution is worth what happened to those boys.

25 comments:

Anonymous said...

Agree on all counts. The only victims here were the kids.

Just disagree with the way the media bandwagon has operated thus far. All the right shock and horror, but not all the right blame on all the right people.

This was the failure of a large community of people, only one of whom was the face of an institution.

tarhoosier said...

The whole story for me is that it is so crystal clear here what the mission is of the university (nearly all major universities): the creation and maintenance of a successful, profitable football program.
Miles and Saban make TEN times what the presidents of their universities make. If the president disagreed with either one, who would leave? The president. Trustees blinded by money, legislators angling for good tickets, citizens unaware of the reversal of power, fans uncaring about anything but their beloved blue and white, or whatever. And now all are shocked, SHOCKED, that the institution protects itself first and others take the hindmost.

Anonymous said...

"Because everybody lost."

No, everybody didn't lose. Jerry Sandusky's next victim didn't lose.

Anonymous said...

so many people failed the children in this sad ordeal.

What I cannot comprehend is how McQueary is coaching this weekend. Here is a guy who is over 6' & 230+lbs, actually see's the crime committed and goes and calls his daddy. He does nothing to stop it.

Why is some of the outrage aimed at him? Why is he still referred to as "the grad assistant" and not named? Why is his picture not platered on every site and newspaper?

Anonymous said...

Why is some of the outrage NOT aimed at him?

Coal Region Voice said...

Read my current blogpost....not a fan but I lost too.

Anonymous said...

Such a tragedy! If that boy had been the son or grandson of Paterno, or any of the PSU staff, Sandusky would have been behind bars long ago. All of these adults were morally negligent at the very least. Then, to allow Sandusky access to PSU facilities is incredible! So many people aware of what happened, turned their heads to it. There is no excuse for it! No institution should be put ahead of our obligation to protect and nurture children. The moral compass at PSU went way off track. It appears this new book will have a very revealing and unsettling final chapter.

Anonymous said...

Penn State Board of Regents has relayed that Dateline's To Catch a Predator Host, Chris Hansen, will assist with weeding out potential coaching candidates during the upcoming coaching search. This move was expected as the school seeks to repair its reputation.

Anonymous said...

I just think it is shameful that The janitor and the grad student aren't the focus of all this media attention.
They should have gone to the police. No one else saw it, so no one else should have gone to the police.
Joe Paterno should not be thefocus of the world's ire, Sandusky the janitor and the grad student should be. But they aren't. What is worse is Paterno is being treated worse by the public and the media (including this oped)than Sandusky.

The reason is it is about money. selling papers. The same people criticizing Paterno and Penn state for only caring about winning... are part on organization that only cares about making money even if it means taking the wrath and putting it on secondary people in this mess.

Richard London said...

Tommy, you said it best when you said the when we find the place "...where we fit... we often defend it beyond all reason"

I started college at Penn State and was always proud of attending school there. Maybe we get too proud of our institutions and forget the people around them.

Anonymous said...

As an educator myself, Paterno was obligated to report this to authorities other than administration. And then to think Sandusky was given access for his "foundation" ignoring suspicions is the horror. Nobody should for real pain and sorrow for anyone other than the innocent children. Accusations can sometimes be false BUT you have a professional as well as moral obligation to follow up.

Margaret Kraft said...

I just have to wonder how many lives have been irreparably harmed by Paterno's 10 years of silence. I disgree with Anonymous (go figure) at 6:38. I'm a college football fan. I have respected Joe Paterno for years--he was one of th good guys. However, I had never heard of Sandusky before this story as I have no association with Penn State. Sandusky (to me) is one of the bad guys. He is a pedophile and child molester. That is a one-sided story. However, Paterno is a legend, and now his legacy is tarnished so severely that is is hard to fathom. His status earned him many things: admiration, love, financial gains. However, status also comes with responsibility. He failed at what might have been his biggest and best chance to be a hero. As someone who once held him in such high esteem, his topple from the pedestal is the bigger story...and I'm not making a single cent off of it.

Anonymous said...

Wow! Another stellar, heart wrenching article by the man who refuses to take the high road of dispassionate objectivity that so many journalist's take, and keeping it real. Indeed, how can anyone stand by and watch the sodomization in a shower of a young boy, and allow the "kings" to reign? Oh, yea, I remember now... Jeffrey Dahmer's young male victim escaped his brutal, bloody killing attempt, running down the street naked, to police officer's for protection - but Dahmer followed and said it was a "gay" thing, and the police released the hysterical young man back into Dahmer's hands. The boy was later killed and beheaded by Jeffrey Dahmer that night. His decapitated head was later found in Dahmer's refrigerator. 95% of males in prison for sexual violence were molested by an older man. It is something they can never recover from. It's horrific enough that many sick men hiding behind the cloth of religion get away with it and ruin so many, many young lives - but it's an entirely different thing when it happens in an open, public, so-called protected environment with witnesses. If not for the outrage of the student protester's her, this too, would have been swept under the rug for the glory of the game, and the people in the institutional structures that support that at all costs. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkhX5W7JoWI

Anonymous said...

Same as the Catholic Church. And Tommy, when we as a nation go kill innocents in Iraq and you don't say anything, you are are the same as joe Paterno.

Anonymous said...

Same as the Catholic Church. And Tommy, when we go kill innocents in Iraq and you don't say anything, you are are the same as joe Paterno.

institutions are always a lie.

Anonymous said...

Margaret I don't get what you don't agree with me (6:38) about. Sandusky is the pedofile he should be getting all the attention and wrath. 90% or more is focused on Paterno who is not even a witness nevermind pedofile. If they want to focus attention on somenone who didn't report two kids being raped, that would be the two witnesses. Joe Paterno is twice removed from this mess and he reported it to the senior administration. He doesn't deserve to be the focus of all this media judgement. If people want to judge him that is their business. The issue I have is the media is taking the focus off of bigger fish and a pedofile

Anonymous said...

You are idiots.

Paterno is paid to coach football. He reported an incident immed to the AD. Thats the chain of command.

You are giving a football coach way to much power here and this shows your ignorance. Coaches are just paid indians not chiefs.

Could it be because he an old white guy? Are racists who hate old whte men destroying Paterno?

Yet they make some known drop out criminal felon cheat local pro quarterback a god who happens to be black?

Liberals are all alike. Racists and haters.

Anonymous said...

The CO should contact the Orange County Rape Crisis Center for information on assaults by UNC athlethes and UNC's coverups.

Lynne Stevenson said...

The Catholic Church, the Boy Scouts, and now Penn State. The list of good old boy organizations covering up crimes goes on to infinity. All of the powers that be who chose to look the other way should be charged as accomplices because they were fully aware of what was happening and did nothing about it.

I am a childhood survivor of multiple rapes. All my life I have had the feeling that something was not normal and that I was somehow different from other people my age. Too bad DSS and all of the other child protection agencies were not in place back in the 1960s when I needed them to protect me.

This hits way too close to home for me. I am surprised that some irrate parent hasn't taken the law into their own hands and stopped Sandusky permanently. I know if my son had been one of his victims, I would have taken care of him myself.

Lynne Stevenson said...

The Catholic Church, the Boy Scouts, and now Penn State. The list of good old boy organizations covering up crimes goes on to infinity. All of the powers that be who chose to look the other way should be charged as accomplices because they were fully aware of what was happening and did nothing about it.

I am a childhood survivor of multiple rapes. All my life I have had the feeling that something was not normal and that I was somehow different from other people my age. Too bad DSS and all of the other child protection agencies were not in place back in the 1960s when I needed them to protect me.

This hits way too close to home for me. I am surprised that some irrate parent hasn't taken the law into their own hands and stopped Sandusky permanently. I know if my son had been one of his victims, I would have taken care of him myself.

Anonymous said...

"Penn State and the infinite sadness" .... Smashing Pumpkins reference?!!

Anonymous said...

Tommy, you and so many other writers have framed this story around Joe Paterno as though he was the one who committed these acts against these teens. We still haven't read the background on Jerry Sandusky. Is he married? Does he have children? These and many more questions are not being answered because of the focus of this story is on Paterno. Media hype will divert attention away from the basis for this story.

Anonymous said...

I believe that when Sandusky retired at the relatively young age of 55 (and you all know that 55 is an early retirement age in his vocation) that everyone around him knew what he was doing. He is the worst type of pedophile. Paterno has a great deal of responsibility for allowing this to continue and for allowing him continued access to Penn State facilities. The former attorney general, now Governor of PA has nailed it in his public statements.

Anonymous said...

We are all generally smart enough to distinguish the football coach's awful behavior and the former President and all his minions denial and stupidity and all the other idiots involved from the students and staff not at all involved with football other than to be loyal enthusiastic fans, of a team that betrayed them.

Anonymous said...

I try to find some good in everything, but it's tough here. I hope this story gives some closure and allows for some healing for the victims. And maybe just maybe it prevents some future abuse.