Time to protect victims, not Paterno
This is what typically happens in such a story as the one staining Penn State football today: The focus is wrongly pointed toward someone other than the victims.
It becomes more about an 84-year-old head coach and how covering up charges of sex abuse by his longtime assistant might forever tarnish a legend’s legacy.
The intent of many becomes to protect the guy who a campus library is named for more than those who might have been abused as children, to worry about the one whose program brings the university and neighboring community tens of millions of dollars annually, instead of those whose lives were destroyed as kids.
My take: To hell with Joe Paterno and all of those lining up to somehow try to preserve his good name. To hell with legacies and number of wins and wanting to somehow insulate all the good of 46 years from the horror of this moment. You can’t separate the two, and to suggest as much is idiotic.
The end for Paterno is apparently near, as university officials are reportedly planning as gracious an exit as possible for the man who coached Penn State to national championships in 1982 and ’86.
Again, the focus is misplaced.
Jerry Sandusky will have his day in court, and we will learn about a 15-year period during which the former Penn State defensive guru is said to have abused eight boys. It could be more. A ninth victim came forward Tuesday. Fifteen years is a long time. I’m guessing the number soon reaches double digits.
Cam Newton and alleged payments at Auburn is a scandal. Reggie Bush running wild in the Southern California backfield and a home for his family in San Diego is a scandal. Miami and booster Nevin Shapiro is a scandal.
An assistant coach having sex with 10-year-olds in a locker room shower isn’t a scandal. It is criminal and has been followed by a pathetic conspiracy to shelter one of their own.
It is reprehensible in every way.
A good friend tweeted on Tuesday that this is a time when men of conscience should be falling on their swords. I would think that impossible in the Penn State case, given how many have tripped over one another running from any sort of blame. There isn’t a Brutus among them.
I am constantly amazed how those of supposedly superior knowledge prove to be cowardly and ignorant in these times. There might not be a more overvalued position of presumed intellect than a university president.
To paint the entire fraternity with a similar brush is unfair, but too often we forget these are men and women who usually rise through the academic ranks quickly, professors who show a few more leadership skills than the next person.
These are not CEOs of global companies. They aren’t as profound as most assume. These are mostly insulated folks lacking the social and practical skills needed when having to respond to controversial matters. More often than not, I have been disappointed when meeting them, expecting more and receiving less.
Ohio State’s football program finds itself in hot water with the NCAA, and the university president jokes he hopes the head coach doesn’t fire him. Two university officials at Penn State are charged with perjury and failure to report to authorities what they knew of the sex abuse allegations, and the first response from school president Graham Spanier is about his "unconditional support," of those men.
Spanier then cancels Paterno’s weekly news conference, where the coach apparently was willing to take and answer questions on Tuesday regarding Sandusky and why he didn’t alert law enforcement when first learning of the alleged acts years ago.
Why then, didn’t Spanier face the cameras?
Where is the responsibility, the leadership, the repentance?
Spanier needs to go. Paterno needs to go. Anyone with an ounce of involvement in not treating the allegations around Sandusky with the utmost seriousness and immediately notifying the proper authorities needs to go.
And then maybe, once the halls are clear of those powerful and yet spineless men who knew so much and did so little, the focus of this tragic tale can return to those who deserve the most sympathy.
It’s not some football coach with a library named for him or some university president who failed to act and whose school was, incredibly so, still allowing Sandusky access to the weight room as recently as last week.
Sooner or later, someone needs to ask a question that has been lost in all this worry over a coaching legacy:
What about the victims?
Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ed Graney can be reached at egraney@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4618. He can be heard from 3 to 5 p.m. Tuesday and Thursday on "Monsters of the Midday," Fox Sports Radio 920 AM. Follow him on Twitter: @edgraney.