Dave Zirin at SFGate:
Penn State scandal symptomatic of football economic monster
[…]
This isn’t about Sandusky. This is about a culture that says the football team must be defended at all costs: a culture where the sexual assault of a 10-year-old is reported to Paterno before the police.
This is what happens when a football program becomes the economic and spiritual heartbeat of an entire section of a state. Nittany Lions football regularly draws 100,000 fans to Happy Valley. They also produce $50 million in pure profit for the university every year and have been listed as the most valuable team in the Big 10 conference.
Another economic report held that every Penn State game pumps $59 million into the local economy: from hotels to kids selling homemade cookies by the side of the road.
It’s no wonder that Paterno is revered. He took a football team and turned it into an economic life raft for a university and a region. When something becomes that valuable, a certain mind-set kicks in. Protect the team above all over concerns. Protect Joe Pa. Protect Nittany Lions football. Protect the brand. In a company town, your first responsibility is to protect the company.
Penn State has never been an “outlaw program.” It’s what every school aspires to become. Think about that. Every school aspires to be the kind of place where football is so valuable that children can become collateral damage.
If the allegations are true, if the school in fact knew this was going on, then the program should be shut down. If the allegations are true, Joe Paterno should be instructed to take his 46 years and 409 wins and leave in disgrace.
It’s tragic that it’s come to this for a legend like Paterno. But it’s even more tragic that protecting his legend mattered more than stopping a child-rapist in their midst. Dumping Paterno is not enough for what has to be seen as a systemic cultural failure by the university.
I am 51 years old. I was in kindergarten when Joe Paterno started coaching. Coaches are teachers and college athletics are supposed to build character, not corrupt it.
It would have been a hopeful sign if Penn State had to forfeit the rest of its games because every single member of the team was too ashamed to wear the uniform. Instead we saw students rioting over a perceived lack of respect shown to Paterno. There is a moral cancer that has metastasized in “Happy Valley.”
Penn State should announce it is forfeiting the remainder of this season’s games and that it is immediately terminating its football program for a minimum of ten years. All the coaches and other personnel associated with the program should be laid-off. The statue of Joe Paterno should be removed and all of the school’s football trophies, award plaques and banners taken down and placed in storage.
Any student currently attending Penn State on a football scholarship should be allowed to finish and graduate per the terms of that agreement. All recruiting offers should be withdrawn.
At most a handful of students might have their chances of making it in the NFL impaired. Boo-fucking-hoo. Penn State does not owe them the opportunity to audition for career in professional football. The ones who would be affected are already on the NFL radar screens anyway.
College is not about football, it is about learning. Terminating the Penn State football program will not punish the students, it will teach them a badly-needed lesson in values and leadership.
If and when the moral cancer that allowed the raping of children to go unreported has been completely purged from the school they can consider playing football again.
The Crawdad Hole 
More likely the lesson will be not to do youth outreach programs. Sandusky was the one who started the Penn State program. I can see where this will be seen as a liability issue and kids will be effectively banned from campus in this capacity.
Before Penn,
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/869007-10-worst-scandals-in-ncaa-history
Interesting to see how those worked out, and no child was harmed.
When the story of these student riots came out, my Facebook friends who support Occupy had a fit and said those students should fight for something useful like Occupy: “income equality.” And my first thought was Occupy’s protests and those students rioting look the same to me.
Neither seems clear about what they’re fighting for. Occupy’s fighting for “income equality”? What the hell is that? Communism? Despite all they owe in student loans I doubt most of them ever learned what communism is. But if “income equality” doesn’t mean communism, what does it mean? And those students, what are they fighting for? A coach’s right to protect a pedophile so the kids can win one for the gripper? Come on.
Remember when protests were about ending wars and equal rights for women and blacks and gays?
“One, two, three, what’re we fightin’ for? Don’t ask me I don’t give a damn. Next stop is Vietnam.”
“Hey, Hey, LBJ! How many babies did you kill today?”
It was How many kids did you kill today?
“Babies” has one too many syllables and doesn’t scan. 😉
When I was there at the protests it was “babies”. And it became an issue later in the protests supporting abortion rights. YMMV
Even worthy protests don’t do much of anything. Myiq has written about how the Vietnam War ended when even the people who hated the protesters could see what was happening there, not because of the protesters. The Tea Party protests were generally derided by the media, but they also used those protests to organize. When 2010 came around, it wasn’t the protesters who changed Congress, it was the people who saw what was going in on in the administration.
It’s not how many people show up to protest that matters, it’s how many show up to vote.
Unfortunately child sexual abuse is so prevalent and the cover ups that go along with it, that if you shut down the athletics dept at Penn state, you’d also have to shut down the Catholic church and congress, too. I hate to sound like a cynic, but Penn state is the norm. There are dozens of cases like that just in my state alone.
I can live with shutting down Penn State, The Catholic Church AND Congress. Sounds like a trifecta! 🙂
Could the Penn State scandal be as insidious and rampant as the Boys Town pedophile prostitution scandal? I’d like the authorities to go after the Johns if the prostitution side of the Penn state scandal is true.
The Franklin Case (i.e Boys Town)
Links to Washington Times & other articles concerning child sex ring at the WH in mid-1980s:
http://www.voxfux.com/features…
Conspiracy of Silence (banned documentary, 1hr)
Gannon-Gate
http://insider-magazine.org/Gannongate.htm
Forgot the link to The Franklin Case (Boys Town):
The Franklin Case
Joe Paterno has done more to help young people than all the sports writers , who are condeming him, combined. His football program has always displayed the highest standards. He is a good human being.
After reading the Grand Jury testimony, it is clear that Mr Paterno only had hearsay information and he immediately followed protocol for such information. JoePa had already gotten rid of Sandusky from the school football program years before this hearsay information came to him.
How can someone who has only second hand information go to the cops? When asked what he witnessed he could only say what he heard second hand. Accusing someone of this type of crime falsely can have severe repercussions, and without first hand information it was not on Mr Paterno to go to cops.
He did what he was supposed to do. He reported it to the people in charge of protecting the youth.
His higher ups are the ones who failed the victims, not Joe Paterno..
Why isn’t the janitor and the assistant and the grad student …who actually witnessed the abuse being held to the same standard?
I know why. because the sanctimonious would rather tear down someone famous and respected. It’s much more interesting and better for their own pathetic lives to come off as brave and righteous.
Destroying this good man is just wrong.
Take your wrath out on the man who deserves it…the abuser.
I’ve read the grand jury testimony and I disagree. There are A LOT of questions about what he knew and when he knew it, and he appears to continue to be protected by the powerful in that state. And some of your facts are inaccurate. Sandusky had access to Penn State grounds and services well after this had come to light in 1998 and he had retired and had his keys taken away in 2002. He also continued to have access to boys via the Second Mile program, of which Paterno was a board member (and I believe still is, or was as if last week). Paterno knew at that point and let that continue. He was listed as Professor Emeritus on the Penn State website and in campus literature until last weekend.
Paterno might have satisfied the letter of the law–and that’s BIG might–be he is a moral failure.
That would be Sandusky who was still listed as Professor Emeritus.
Teachers are mandatory reporters for any kind of child abuse. Even if the information is secondhand, a teacher has a moral, legal, and ethical requirement to make sure that the legal authorities are informed. It’s not enough to pass the buck to someone else. I don’t give a rat’s ass about what other good things Paterno might have done. He stood by while more children were in danger from his pedophile buddy. He gets held to a higher standard because his weight behind the accusation would have spurred others into action if he had followed through. But they all deserve to be strung by their testicles in the town square. And the young people rioting should be forced to watch
Actually, mandated reporting rules vary considerably from state to state. In some cases secondhand information is not an appropriate source. I can’t speak to what the rules are in Pennsylvania.
The rules for mandatory reporting in PA:
“Reasonable cause to suspect, on the basis of the reporter’s medical, professional or other training and experience, that a child under the care, supervision, guidance or training of that person or of an agency,
institution, organization or other entity with which that person is
affiliated is a victim of child abuse, including child abuse by an
individual who is not a perpetrator.”
Unless the person who gave him the information has a reputation for pathological lying, I would think that a coach in Paterno’s position had a legal requirement to report. And if he was in doubt about whether he needed to report the sexual abuse, he should have erred on the side of the child.
For some reason the Franklin Scandal link is not posting (http://www.youtube.come/watch?v…):
[see link above]
Oh my, how did the Franklin Case scandal go under the radar so quickly?
If and when the moral cancer that allowed the raping of children to go unreported has been completely purged from the school they can consider playing football again.
(No, it’s not unconnected. Don’t kid yourselves.)
Nebraska beat Penn State 17-14
Armando will be devastated. He predicted that Penn State would “unnerve” Nebraska by playing so well.
I’m sure Jeralyn was cheering for them too.
I didn’t watch the game, I just caught the score.
Okay, that was both sick and funny, myiq.
Penn State? You mean State Penn?
It gets even worse: I read a report about one of the victim’s mothers today and Sandusky was picking the boy up at school and taking him home–no one at the school bothered to contact the mother and ask her if this was permitted. She had no idea. WTF?