The Many Layers of the Penn State Scandal

The arrest of former defensive coordinator of the Penn State football program, Jerry Sandusky, and the alleged charges brought against him by a federal grand jury has produced shockwaves that have rippled throughout the country. Beyond the implications of these crimes, there is also an underlying story about the state of major college sports in this country. This entity has been under fire for years and it is a system fraught with corruption, deceit, and general dishonesty.

For many years, the scandals in major college football mostly had to do with violations of amateurism. It has been players taking money from boosters, receiving gifts, skimping and or cheating on their educational obligations, coaches violating the many rules of recruiting, and these types of things. In an ultra competitive structure with millions of dollars at stake, this has never come as too big of a shock. Major college football programs are revenue-generating machines for their schools and communities. Whenever there’s this much money at stake, there’s bound to be individuals bending or breaking the rules.

State College, PA and the Penn State football program is just one of dozens of schools/communities where there has been a culture cultivated around football for decades. This is a recurring and self-reproducing giant. It is pretty clear that the success of Penn State is thanks in large part to Joe Paterno because he created a distinct and attractive culture in State College not just for football, but for the institution of higher education. So how far outside of this realm does this scandal exist?

We can’t be certain that the idea of Penn State being “separate” from the rest of the “nonsense” of the vast majority of major college sports didn’t play a role here. Paterno’s so-called “Grand Experiment” was a novel idea, but if we consider it economic terms, it reads more as an excellent marketing technique. With so much of the market relying on “dirty” tactics, why not separate yourself by being the model of integrity? This has clearly been part of the attraction of Penn State. But it’s not as if the 2002 incident – when a graduate assistant (Mike McQueary) witnessed Jerry Sandusky performing anal sex on a 10 year old boy in the showers of the football complex (allegedly) – would have completely ruined the notion of Penn State’s honorable credo.

The aftershock of these revelations has not so much been about Sandusky, but rather about the handling (or lack thereof) of this incident in 2002. According to the grand jury report, McQueary went to Paterno to tell him what he saw, in turn, Paterno alerted two school officials, the athletic director Tim Curley and the vice-president of business and finance Gary Schultz. In turn, they notified the President of Penn State, Graham Spanier. Curley and Schultz have been indicted on perjury charges. The report reveals that McQueary also explained what he saw when called into a meeting with these two men. Here’s a moment where things could have gone differently.

No one is saying going public at this moment would have been good. It would have been a major story and huge shock to the community. Penn State might have suffered in some ways, but not too greatly. Eventually, people just move on. You can’t tell me that doing that would have been worse than what’s happening now. In 2002, at least Paterno and school officials would have been able to say, “Look, we didn’t know this was going on. It’s awful, you think you know someone blah blah blah.” Of course, it also would have saved the other children Sandusky allegedly abused after 2002.

In the end, there’s no evidence to suggest that Curely, Schultz, Paterno, Spanier, and McQueary swept this under the rug to protect the Penn State financial monster and its squeaky clean image. But it happened for AT LEAST one of these reasons, if not all or a combination of two. 1.) Somehow, their own jobs were at stake. 2.) Their personal relationship with Sandusky prevented them from being able to face the awful truth. 3.) They felt part of their job at Penn State was to protect the economic and political well being of the school.

So what about Paterno and McQueary? Many people feel that beyond legal obligations, they should have taken the steps to alert the police out of a moral obligation. The tricky part about this is that everyone has a different definition of what they’re obliged to do morally. But isn’t child abuse (especially of a sexual nature) supposed to be one of those universal things we all agree on? Of course. But how many of us have been forced to confront someone we’ve known for over 30 years about this?

Regardless of that, didn’t all of the scandals with the Catholic church teach us how easy it is for people to just shut it out? Pretend like they never heard it, never saw it? It sounds incredulous, which is why the public is so upset, but so many of us have never had to deal with that situation. Shouldn’t the fact that the vast majority of people who have kept quiet about it for a long time matter more? These are tough questions that do not have easy answers.

Our society has a difficult time dealing with deviant sexual behavior. It is so foreign to the average person that it is nearly impossible to remove emotion from the equation when dealing with it. The fact that gay marriage is somehow an “issue” in our society reveals our ineptitude to reconcile these feelings. Someday, the fact that large portions of this society resisted, often fiercely, equal rights for gays will be looked upon with the same scorn and disgust as things like slavery and the Jim Crow era. Now, to be clear, homosexuality is not deviant. I think this is just a good way to point out how emotional these conversations are, rather than reasonable.

The central issue here is not about two males having sex either, it’s about sex between an adult and a child. Consent is something protected by law. No one questions that abusing a child in this way is some of the worst kind humanly conceivable. If Sandusky is found guilty, he obviously deserves to go to jail. But Joe Paterno and the graduate assistant don’t need to be lumped into this. Yesterday, my good friend said, “JoePa is from the 1800s, Sam. He doesn’t know what ‘anal sex’ means.” Now, this is just a joke, but it hits on something relevant. Beyond the track record of silence in child sexual abuse cases, Paterno is certainly from a generation where you don’t talk about sex.

There are multiple layers to this story beyond football, beyond protecting a school’s economic and political integrity. At its most basic level, this is simply a horrific story (allegedly) about Jerry Sandusky. As Richard Deitsch of Sports Illustrated pointed out on Twitter yesterday, “Lost in the fervor of Penn State story is how courageous it is for alleged victims to reveal themselves as adults. True courage.” The iconization of people like Sandusky, of Penn State in general can not be discounted, but I believe personal will has the most to due with this. The nature of these acts is so shocking on its own. In a different alleged incident, a member of the janitorial staff witnessed Sandusky performing oral sex on a young boy, also in the showers of the football complex. In the grand jury report, he is quoted as saying that he “fought in the [Korean] war….seen people with their guts blowed out, arms dismemebered….I just witnessed something in there I’ll never forget.”

Maybe Paterno and McQueary should have done more, should have gone farther with what they knew. Silence on their part, though, is not uncommon to these cases. Shock has peculiar effects on the body. It can make people forget because thinking about it is too painful. In the other incident, the janitor could hardly contain himself and was so worked up, his co-workers feared he was about to have a heart attack. In other words, this is heavy stuff. So it’s difficult for anyone who has never been faced with such situations to pass much judgment.

In a different way, though, the inaction on the part of Tim Curley, Gary Schultz, and Graham Spanier represents inherent flaws in the system of major college sports. It might be that we’re far enough down this road that there’s no turning back. There’s so much money, so many people, so many communities that revolve around these schools and their teams that it’s not just going to go away. We’re rapidly approaching the time when these student athletes are going to be paid for their services, however directly or indirectly. The nature of the Penn State scandal has several layers of its own. But in a way, it also goes to show that as long as the investment in these teams remains as large as it is, there will be people covering things up. And sooner or later, for better or for worse, these things come out.

*If you would like to read the grand jury report, you can find it here. But beware, it's pretty shocking stuff.

** This article from April shows that rumors abounded for quite some time. Mark Madden asks good questions here, lending some credence to the idea that Penn State officials knew about the 1998 incident. Terrible. It should be noted that Schultz alluded to the 1998 incident in his grand jury testimony. The reason I focus on the 2002 incident is because A) it was much, much worse B) as Madden points out, Sandusky retired in 1999. It seems that he was asked to retire and that if he did so, Penn State would keep these allegations under the rug, and Sandusky's reputation intact. The problem with all of this - as if it weren't already reprehensible - is that Sandusky maintained an office, parking space, and keys to facilities at the school. This is commonplace, but unfortunately, these locations are also where Sandusky chose to corner his victims, particularly the 2002 incident.

*** For all you conspiracy theorists out there, here's an article that will get the imagination spinning.

**** It should come as no surprise that President Graham Spanier and head coach Joe Paterno have been fired tonight, effective immediately. Earlier in the day, a story broke about Paterno retiring at the end of the season. It turns out, after all this time, that the living legend of State College, PA will not dictate the terms of his departure.

***** Emma linked this SI article that outlines some of the charges Paterno and possibly McQueary could face as the investigation and trial unfolds. Also, it is pretty clear that McQueary (currently wide receivers coach and recruiting coordinator) was in fact the graduate assistant from the 2002 incident, and I have made changes to the article as such.