On Monday, the NCAA brought down its “hammer” on the Penn State football program, which not only effects the university’s reputation but damages the local economy—adding more innocent victims to the ones Jerry Sandusky already abused. NCAA President Mark Emmert used the the Freeh report as the justification of its actions, since it was more “thorough” than anything the NCAA could have accomplished, this raises the question of whether the NCAA would have exacted the same harsh penalties without the cooperation of the university and with lesser evidence. Before I attempt to explain my opinion on the “appropriateness” of the penalties, let’s first rehash what is in the report. My view of it, as I noted before, is that it is more long-winded, repetitive and redundant than informative; outside of opinion and conjecture, most of the evidence against then-President Graham Spanier, Vice President Gary Schultz, Athletic Director Timothy Curley and football coach Joe Paterno is contained in emails no more than two or three out of 260+ pages. What exactly was said behind closed doors may never be known, but in its place, commentators and the public have been allowed to insert their own narratives.
Much of what is to be gleaned comes from the benefit of hindsight; the question of what exactly the four principle targets of the report knew of Jerry Sandusky’s activities at the time is still not clear. One thing that is clear is that in the original 1998 incident, the Penn State administrators intimately involved in the case were justifiably loath to make public what was then understood to be inappropriate “horseplay” by a nationally-respected coach without due process; they allowed local law enforcement, prosecutors and the Department of Public Welfare to pursue their inquiry—and that is what they were legally obligated to do. Pious paladins might claim they would have done something differently in their place, but I rather doubt it. If the police and prosecutors who found nothing “criminal” in Sandusky’s actions at that time were “pressured” by the university, this is not indicated in the report.
(For some reason I am reminded of the Mary Kay Letourneau case, who despite being found guilty of statutory rape of one of her sixth-grade students, was sentenced to a probation before being jailed for violating the conditions of her release, after being caught in flagrante in a car with the same youth. Now married, she and her former victim (and now husband) are such “celebrities” that people on the street ask them for autographs. So where is the line between right and wrong? Or is that a matter of social acceptability and circumstance? Letourneau herself certainly feels no shame or sense of moral offense in what she had done, the explanation of which I’m sure can be found somewhere in the DSM manual.)
For the Penn State Four, the 2001 Sandusky accusation was a different story. Unlike the 1998 incident, it was kept “in-house,” with no effort, other than speaking with the Second Mile executive director, who decided that the matter was a “non-incident.” This again points to the imperfect details possessed by administrators. It seems that the Spanier, Schultz, Curley and Paterno were under the impression that it was sufficiently conveyed to Sandusky that the fear of God was placed in him, and that he would cease and desist. But it was only a matter of time when they would become “vulnerable for not having reported it.” These people were not “evil” intentioned; they thought they could solve the problem “in-house” with as little collateral damage as possible. The hoped that they could contain the damage by forcing Sandusky to “behave.”
I’m not trying to “justify” their actions, I’m trying to understand why they acted as they did. Bill Clinton survived at least one extramarital scandal, a sexual assault accusation, oral sex with a White House intern, and a rape accusation that was kept under wraps during the impeachment process. His reputation is higher than it has ever been, but could he have survived a pedophile accusation, especially if his targets were young males? In hindsight the Penn State Four took what was clearly the wrong tact; they should have cut ties with Sandusky, and left him to the devices of the law. But would the fallout have been different? Maybe, maybe not.
But this is matter of the actions of individuals, not of a program. The next question, then, is whether Penn State authorities acted to “protect” the football program. There is no evidence in the Freeh report that supports the conclusion that they were doing something other than protecting an individual, not the program. That Sandusky’s actions would reflect badly because of his connection to the football program is a given, but they could not have conceived that this case something other than a situation that involved individuals (of course, the NCAA has a habit of punishing programs instead of individuals, especially athletes who are long out of their control). As an individual, Sandusky had been for 30 years a respected member of the community, who ran a charitable organization that helped troubled young males. It was incomprehensible for “normal” men to believe that could be a “cover” to satisfy the pedophiliac whims of a man over 50 years of age, his victims particularly vulnerable to his deviant tendencies; with girls, maybe; with boys it was difficult to believe in a society where there is still unease with associations of homosexual tendencies.
Would self-reporting Sandusky have harmed the football program? Probably, because of the way the media treats cases in which sex is involved; the media has no sense of proportion in such cases—even mass murder is considered less severely. I consider the media and its reputation as much guilty as the Penn State Four in the way the Sandusky case was played out. University knew how out-of-control the media would act, and their own actions were as much about giving an unrepentant man given too many chances to rid the demons inside himself as about fear of media reaction. Sandusky was associated with the football program, but he was still just one man whose actions occurred outside the functions of the program; this is clear by the fact that no football player has ever come forward with any knowledge of Sandusky’s activities. But the media cannot be trusted in making such distinctions, and clearly the NCAA acted with this in mind.
Despite blame to go around, the majority opinion is that the NCAA’s sanction of a $60 million fine, the banning of bowl appearances, the reduction of athletic scholarships from 25 to 15, and vacating of all the teams’ victories from 1998 is “appropriate.” I refuse to join the pious dissemblers. Suffice it to say that given a country where banksters can gamble with common peoples’ money, practically bringing a nation’s economy to its knees—and then be “punished” by being given a few billion or trillion dollars to tide them over with no apparent reciprocity, let alone change their ways—there seems to be no sense of balance in this country, especially when you throw sex into the equation. The hypocrisy begins with Emmert, who admitted that the NCAA decided not to seek the “death penalty” because it wouldn’t have been able to make its “point”—meaning if it fined the university, it would have to be through the general fund and not the football program, which it didn’t have the power to do, and thus it couldn’t make a public display of “sensitivity” to the issue of pedophilia. Emmert also revealed hypocrisy when he refused to address the issue of the former Penn State president’s role in the affair, who was a friend of his; apparently his firing was sufficient punishment.
One claim on the local ESPN affiliate I heard supposed that players have no idea how “big” football programs are, and why they should accept such harsh penalties as “fair.” This is nonsensical in context; the more pertinent question is what right does anyone have to expect Penn State football players to know how “big” this scandal is when there has been no evidence presented that players were aware of Sandusky’s activities? Why are not Penn State football players are as much the victims of Sandusky’s actions as the children involved? Another local commentator thought the NCAA sanctions “fantastic” but didn’t go “far enough.” Sentiments like this reveal a political dimension that has no place in due process. We should ask the Duke Lacrosse players if the NCAA has any understanding of what is “appropriate” when it comes to protecting athletes from unjust actions. The NCAA allowed the players to be publically demonized and humiliated by a false accusation, and never once intimated that they let them down. Instead, what we have seen is that the NCAA has rules for exploiting athletes and limiting their rights; there is nothing about protecting athletes from exploitation or denial of due process, as is the case in the Penn State penalties.
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