(UPDATE: This was written several hours before news emerged that Penn State removed the state of Joe Paterno this morning. Bravo to the Penn State administration for doing the right thing. I decided to post this without a rewrite. While it’s mainly about the statue, it’s also about recognizing the risks of deifying football coaches. I hope this will be the beginning of the healing process for the Penn State community, but more than that I hope it will be taken as an opportunity to reevaluate the importance of sports in our society.)
Franco Harris read “most of” the Freeh Report (the stuff about the massive, program and university-wide cover up must have been in the last chapter) and has come to this conclusion: “there was no cover up.” Even, for the sake of argument, assuming the existence of a cover up, Harris “feel[s] even more strongly about Joe and about his non-involvement in any type of cover-up.”…. Harris went on to describe Paterno as a victim in all of this, unwittingly summing up the knock against Paterno while defending him.
I’m not conversant with the totality of the deluge of disturbing minutiae in the Jerry Sandusky/Penn State saga, but what needs to happen next is clear. Penn State needs to take down the statue of, and memorial to, former football coach Joe Paterno outside Beaver Stadium. Despite the willingness of many famous alumni to completely ignore the contents of the Freeh Report, the facts seem difficult to dispute, though former Nittany Lion and NFL star Franco Harris is willing to do exactly that.
For over a decade, Paterno was an active participant in conspiring to shield Jerry Sandusky’s sexual perversions from discovery. Desiring to protect the football program (and it’s cash cow status) and the reputation of the university, Paterno and his superiors failed to protect the children who came under their care. Paterno, University President Graham Spanier, Athletic Director Tim Curley, and Vice President Gary Shultz knew that they had a monster in their midst. They also knew the damage that would be done by allowing Sandusky’s crimes to come to light…and so they did nothing. Their willful neglect of the reality transpiring on their watch allowed Sandusky to continue molesting children with impunity for a decade. That’s not the sort of thing a saint and icon does.
Yes, Joe Paterno won a boatload of football games and a national championship or two during his 61 years at Penn State. To that, all I would say is “So what??” What Paterno should be, and ultimately will be, known for is for failing to do the right thing. Joe Paterno, a man alleged to be of devout faith, steadfast character, and rock-solid morals, was in fact a fraud, a fallible mortal more concerned with money and winning football games than with protecting children from the monster who preyed on the innocence of children.
My purpose isn’t to pass judgment on Paterno; his actions (or lack of same) more than speak for themselves. My objection lies with those who continue to revere JoePa and treat his legacy as if he was some sort of football deity. What those folks are choosing to ignore is the reality that Paterno harbored a child molester for a decade. For those who think that JoePa should be forgiven for this (and his statue should remain), I have but one question: What if one of those children buggered by Jerry Sandusky in a PSU shower had been your son? Don’t you think you’d be first in line when it came time to castrate Sandusky? Of course you would; and you’d have every right to feel that way. Why, then, are you so willing to overlook Paterno’s conspiring to condone and protect Sandusky’s sexual victimization of young boys? Is it because you care more about football than the well-being of children? Besides, it’s not as if your son was one of Sandusky’s victims, right??
The long and short of the matter is that the Penn State community needs to do the right thing by Sandusky’s victims. The now-disgusting statue of, and memorial to, Paterno needs to be dismantled. Yesterday. Unless the Penn State community wants to be viewed as collectively celebrating the moral equivalent of a child molester, the university should excise and any all trace of Joe Paterno. Then they need to honestly face and admit to the reality that they spent years deifying a moral reprobate. Then, and only then, will the Penn State community be fully able to move forward and rebuild the university’s previously excellent reputation.
A very wise man once told me that one screw-up will erase 20 “attaboys.” In Paterno’s case, a decade of covering up for a monster completely obliterates 61 years of service to Penn State and excellence on the football field. Paterno deserves to be remembered, but only if his legacy is conjoined with Jerry Sandusky’s legacy of preying on children.
It’s well past time to the right thing.
