On the Long Road to Acceptance...

Imagine that you are a fly on the wall somewhere in the vast NBC complex and you overhear this conversation.

Producer: Alright, who has an idea for next week’s show?

Writer: I think I have something. We have a true living legend of a football coach – the guy’s been coaching for more than half a century. The suspect is one of his assistant coaches and he’s also a former player. He uses his position to set up a foundation for kids and he runs youth football camps and that’s where he selects his victims.

Producer: Not bad, not bad. Do we open with a murder? Is he killing these kids too?

Writer: No, I had a better idea. A graduate student who is an assistant to the team walks in on the coach having sex with a young boy in the locker room shower.

Next week on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit…

It’s not a bad episode is it? The coach comes out and tries to deny and eventually tries to defend himself and all the while, Detective Elliot Stabler (played magnificently by Christopher Meloni) does his very best to not beat the snot out of the suspect with his bare hands. Do me a favor and keep this scenario in mind for a few minutes.

There’s only one problem…

GRIEF

Everyone in the country knows that one of the bigger jokes is the NCAA. On one hand they trumpet the virtues of the student-athlete who cares about getting his degree and is learning valuable lessons on his way through college by playing sports. On the other hand, there is Division I (Bowl Subdivision) football and Division I Men’s Basketball. When I look at water polo or field hockey or rugby or underwater basket-weaving (a very competitive sport, so they say) I can think about the student-athlete without gagging.

When I look at Division I Football (Bowl Subdivision) and Men’s Basketball, I can’t help but think that I can add up the GPA’s of the entire teams on both hands. There are always exceptions – for instance, if I remember my facts correctly, the presumptive top pick in next year’s NFL draft has a GPA over 3.5… from Stanford. So what exactly am I getting at with all of this?

When it comes to big-time college football and basketball, the players are not there to get a degree or to spend four years in college. They are there to enhance their draft stock and hopefully play professionally in their sport. The sad truth of the matter is that everyone exploits these kids for their freakish ability to jump high or to throw a football fifty yards downfield while four three hundred pound behemoths try to rip his head off. Yes, I said EVERYONE.

Fans exploit the players to the extent that they want to watch the event.

Universities exploit them by selling tickets to said events.

The NCAA exploits them by negotiating ridiculously lucrative television contracts to air the biggest events.

The coaches exploit them (perhaps worst of all) because they are the coach’s meal ticket. If a coach recruits good players, the team does well. If the team does well, the coach either gets a raise or gets offered a job at another university with greater pay and responsibility.

So again, I’ll ask, where is this heading? It’s heading towards recruiting violations and the illusion of the amateur athlete and how the former is making a complete mockery out of the latter. I can think of four huge programs that are either under investigation or were recently for awful recruiting violations in the last ten years and all of them have either played for or won a BCS National Championship… and I thought about it for about thirty seconds.

I don’t think that college athletes should be paid. A number of them get some form of scholarship and if you went down to the college students on Wall Street, I’ll bet that they would value that a bit higher than the players who receive them do. I don’t like recruiting rules but they are the rules and if you break them, you should be punished. When it comes to texting a player too much, I can live with that. You lose a scholarship this year, don’t do it again. When it comes to supposedly offering a guy’s family $180,000 to convince him to come and play for your university, that’s way too far. I don’t think college titles should be bought (at least not in that fashion). They should be earned by the coach taking the time to go out around the country and meet the guys and convince them to come to State University. Alas, it goes on despite the efforts of the NCAA’s enforcement staff.

Years ago, when I was young and naïve, I denied that anything like this could possibly happen.

As I got older and watched the news of it happening on Sportscenter, I got angry at the coaches that so flagrantly broke the rules.

As I saw the unfathomable proliferation of these practices throughout college athletics, I softened my stance on paying players (maybe it would reduce a lot of these problems after all).

When I heard people actually articulate the details of paying players, I got depressed when I realized that it could and would never happen.

And finally, at some point last season, when the presumptive (and eventual) Heisman Trophy winner was leading a team towards the BCS National Championship Game (which he won) I gave up and accepted that this was the way big time college sports was always going to be. There were always going to be rule breakers and people would always put up with them. After all, if it actually happened, why should Auburn University care about the $180,000 they supposedly paid the Newton family when they went 14-0 and won the national title? How much extra money did they make during that season?

As you can see, when it comes to the awful corruption that is rampant in college sports, I went through the five stages of grief. I firmly believe that I went through all the stages and came out the other side and accepted it so easily because after all, these players are making million upon millions of dollars for the universities and the NCAA so why should they not get a little on the side for themselves? After all, it’s not like they’re hurting anyone…

JERRY SANDUSKY

As much as it pains me to write this, the idea for an episode of NBC’s Law & Order: SVU about a serial child molester is not fiction. At this point I must point out that nothing has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt yet so there is not yet a perpetrator, just a defendant.

Jerry Sandusky played football at Penn State under coach Joe Paterno and later returned to the team and was an assistant coach there for just over three decades. During that time he founded an organization that that reached underprivileged children through different programs and camps and it is here, prosecutors allege, that he selected his victims.

In paperwork filed with the Centre County District Magistrate Judge’s office at the end of last week, Jerry Sandusky is accused of 40 counts of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse of someone under 16, aggravated indecent assault, indecent assault of someone under 16, indecent assault of someone under 13, and corruption of minors. These crimes were allegedly committed against eight different boys from 1996 to 2005. The details are still coming in but if you’re wondering what some of the details of the alleged offenses are, you can find the Grand Jury Report here – http://assets.espn.go.com/photo/2011/1107/espn_e_Sandusky-Grand-Jury-Presentment.pdf

In this report you will find that a graduate assistant testifies that he walked into the locker room and witnessed Sandusky having sex with a boy he described as being about ten years old in the showers. According to testimony, he called his father and asked what he should do. The next day he went to head coach Joe Paterno and told him what he witnessed. Paterno then contacted his boss, athletic director Tim Curley, and told him of what the graduate assistant had told him.

This is where the waters get a bit muddied. If you read the testimony presented by Mike McQueary (the graduate assistant), Joe Paterno, Tim Curley, Gary Schultz (Vice President for Finance and Business at Penn State), and Graham Spanier (President of Penn State University), it appears at best that the three men in the middle of this chain of communication (Paterno, Curley, and Schultz) were guilty of simple misrepresentation or misunderstand of the story being presented to them. At worst, it was an attempt to sweep the whole incident under the rug and cover the whole thing up to protect a man that had given 36 years of his life to the football team.

President Spanier testified that he was told a story of “Jerry Sandusky… and a younger child and that they were horsing around in the shower”. How we got there from McQueary saying he thought anal sex was involved is more than a mystery; it’s potentially criminal. I should note at this point that both Curley and Schultz are now facing perjury charges because of what they said to the Grand Jury.

So what is the point of my telling you this sordid tale and what is the tie to recruiting violations? It’s the culture of “we can do whatever we want”. This particular event involving McQueary allegedly took place nine years ago. NINE YEARS! Sandusky was more or less given an emeritus position with the football team since his retirement in 1999 and has had virtually unfettered access to Penn State athletic facilities since then. Can anyone explain why?

So now, my feelings on the entire corrupt system have gone into reverse big time – all the way from acceptance to blinding rage. Even if we put aside the Pennsylvania state law that requires all instances of possible child abuse to be reported to certain state agencies, how were the police never contacted? How and why did “anal sex” become “horsing around” when the matter came before the university president?

One potentially devastating answer to those questions swings back to what I was talking about earlier: college football is a huge business and when you look at these events through the lens of what the PR hit will do to your bottom line, all of a sudden there is a tremendous motive to make sure this never sees the light of day. Every time the Nittany Lions play at home, they fill their stadium (which seats an estimated 107,000) to capacity and those people all buy their fill of concessions and beer. Now imagine that number goes down 5% because of this news. Now imagine they are eligible for a BCS at-large bid but no BCS bowl wants to select them because they don’t want the bad publicity. Now they are playing in the Gator Bowl instead of the Orange Bowl with its $15 million payout. I hope that this isn’t the reason why this issue was never given the due attention is required but it is simply too big of a motive to just dismiss.

FALLOUT

The last thing to be determined in this case is what is the fallout going to look like for all parties involved? Given the charges levied against Sandusky, if he is found guilty on half of them, it’s entirely possible that he won’t ever be a free man again and if he did indeed violate the trust of these children, he deserves far worse than he will get.

According to the Grand Jury Report, McQueary was found credible and Curley and Schultz were not. If they are found guilty, they should go to prison. I don’t know what the penalties are for perjury in the state of Pennsylvania but I know that they should be severe.

McQueary is a wildcard and he has already inspired some conspiracy theories of his own. For instance, why did he go from a graduate assistant to a position coach within the Penn State football community? Did it have anything to do with the fact that he called his father and then Joe Paterno instead of the far more natural instinct to dial 9-1-1? I know that that is a serious accusation and I have no evidence whatsoever of his any wrongdoing on McQueary’s part. I simply find it strange that a grown man (he was 28 at the time) would call his father and then the head coach instead of the police when he sees a 58 year old molesting a 10 year old. Whether it was happening or not is beside the point; according to his testimony, that’s what he thought was happening.

Lastly, we come to Joe Paterno. He coached his first game for Penn State in 1966 and if I had my way, he coached his last game for them three days ago. The district attorney has already said that Paterno has not been indicted and everyone attached to Paterno has been quick to say that he fulfilled his legal requirement by notifying his superior, the athletic director. Morally, I find his behavior in this matter to be reprehensible. What he should have done is call the athletic director and notify him of the report that Paterno had just received and that he was calling the police to report the alleged offense. The fact that he took no steps that have come to light as of yet other than to notify his boss and he also allowed Sandusky to keep his access to Penn State’s athletic facilities (he was reportedly in the football facilities as recently as last week) is nothing short of absurd and for his whole role in this, Joe Paterno should be ashamed.

So what do I think should happen? I think the university should clean house and make an example of the man that has won more than 400 games, three Big Ten titles, and two national championships. The university needs to come out with the message that this behavior was unacceptable and the fact that it took nine years for this issue to be properly dealt with is worse. It’s despicable how one of the “good guys” could let this go on right underneath his nose.

COACHES AND POWER

The last issue I’d like to address is an issue that has reared its ugly head twice in the last year. When it came to light that Ohio State coach Jim Tressel had indeed known about the violations long before the NCAA found out about them and had lied about his knowledge, the obvious question posed to university president E Gordon Gee was if he would be firing Jim Tressel. His response?

“No, are you kidding me? Let me be very clear. I’m just hoping the coach doesn’t dismiss me.”

When this scandal at Penn State started to take off, the same implication was made by journalists and analysts alike; Joe Paterno wouldn’t be fired because he’s Joe Paterno and he’s bigger than anyone else at Penn State.

I understand that I just compared a situation where players got tattoos in exchange for memorabilia and one where an assistant coach molested young boys on university property but the problem I’m bringing up is the same in both cases. The coach has so much power that it is explicitly stated that he can do the firing if he wants to. Universities are so desperate for a good football team that they are more willing to appease a coach with questionable morals rather than upset the fan base that pays the bills.

At least when Woody Hayes assaulted a player on the field of play, he was fired within 24 hours. Joe Paterno was supposedly privy to knowledge about something far, far worse.

Nine years later, he’s still employed.