In the dirty culture of college sports, Penn State is the tip of the iceberg

Penn State rioters take to the streets after Joe Paterno is fired.

An assistant coach is benched, but not because he failed to stop the sexual molestation of children after he allegedly saw Jerry Sandusky, a fellow coach, in a shower fondling a 10-year-old boy.

No, assistant coach Mike McQueary is benched because he’s being targeted with death threats because he reported the assault to Joe Paterno, Penn State’s legendary coach.

In the eyes of some frenzied boosters, McQueary is the trouble maker in this story, for breaking up the close-knit football community that sheltered Sandusky from prosecution and Paterno from shame for so many years.

It is, in a word, disgusting.

And it is time, at long last, for university policy makers around the US to acknowledge that the unholy marriage between big-time sports and academic institutions is a disaster.

First, the usual mea culpas.  I love college football.  Adore it.  I spent years as a Missouri Tigers fan so passionate that after one disastrous loss to Nebraska I couldn’t sleep for two days.

But we now know — indeed, we’ve known for a long time — that the system of high-profile college sports is widely corrupt, with the NCAA scrambling constantly to contain the flow of money, favors and influence that contaminates campuses.

That kind of dirty culture is relevant in the Penn State nightmare, because it makes it nearly impossible for schools to deal with crises like the one now facing Penn State.

In almost every program, coaches know things about each other.  They’ve all cut corners.  They’ve all made deals.  Turn in a fellow coach and you open a dangerous can of worms.

You run the risk of angering football gods like Joe Paterno or entangling yourself with the byzantine apparatchiks of the NCAA.

Better to keep silent.  Better to keep it inside the family.

That’s simply how it works in a shadowy world where athletics are ostensibly “amateur,” even though hundreds of millions of dollars change hands every year.

This is also a culture that regularly exploits young men, often poor and African American, denying them pay, respect and even legal and professional representation.  (College athletes are banned from hiring agents to look after their interests.)

Paterno was widely revered.  But he was undeniably part of a network of mostly white male coaches who grew rich, famous and powerful on the labors of thousands of predominately black players who got, well, screwed.

It is simply icing on a very foul cake that Paterno failed to call police when he found out that one of his fellow coaches was suspected of molesting little boys in the sports program’s facilities over a period of years.

For educational institutions that are, in theory, organized around the principle of fairness, equality, and enlightened discourse, continuing to embrace this exploitative, corrupt, hooligan culture is unacceptable.

Most of these programs, it should be pointed out, lose money for their schools.

And as more university presidents are fired or disgraced  because of sports scandals, one would think that a simple desire for self-preservation would spark some fresh thinking.

I’m guessing that moderate reforms won’t be enough anymore.  It won’t be enough to simply punish the Penn State rioters and impose fussy new NCAA rules.

It is time for universities to divest themselves of this industry completely.  Professional football and basketball leagues should create their own minor league programs, comparable to the one that now exists for professional baseball.

Will people like me miss the ceremony, the tradition, and the drama of rooting for our college teams?  Sure.

But just as campuses are cutting ties to this crooked business, we fans need to divest ourselves of an increasingly guilty pleasure.

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27 Comments on “In the dirty culture of college sports, Penn State is the tip of the iceberg”

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  1. dbw says:

    Twenty-five or thirty years ago sports announcer Howard Cosell commented regularly that we were taking sports way too seriously. Over the intervening years it has become more of a big business, even college athletics. Commentator Frank Deford has made the latter point more than once. Thus, the sordid cover up at Penn State.

  2. Pete Klein says:

    I watch a game, pro, college or high school. I watch a game. When I played, I played a game. No big deal. No heroes or roll models. All are only games.
    Money? Sure. No big deal there. Same goes for the Olympics. When they say it’s not about money, it’s about the money.
    What bothers me the most about the Penn State stuff is the “I’m so shocked. This must never happen again,” obligatory response from those in the media and other talking heads. You know it’s coming even before it’s coming. You know they need to prove they are among the good guys who just can’t imagine what has happened. Not in our town, school, county, state and country. Things like this must never happen.
    But it will and again we are expected to be “so shocked.”

  3. Anita says:

    Excellent post, Brian, especially since it contains a solution to the problem. The minor league idea may or may not be original with you, but it would solve lots of problems, and be much more fair to the young players learning how to become professional athletes.

  4. McQueary definitely is a bad guy in this situation, but NOT for the despicable reasons you impute to others. He is so because he saw a colleague in the act of raping a 10 year old and did nothing to try to stop it.

    Big-time basketball and football has been fundamentally corrupted by the influence of money and that’s why it will never change. That’s why this sort of crap can go on but the NCAA is more concerned about trivialities like athletes (who make millions for their ‘not for profit’ schools but go unpaid) receiving free tatoos.

  5. wj says:

    Two things:

    1) Let’s call it what it is: rape.
    Penn State Asst. coach Sandusky isn’t accused of “molestation” or “fondling” – he faces 40 counts of sexual assault. That’s rape.

    2) Every adult who has knowledge and/or evidence of rape is legally (and morally) obligated to report the crime to the police. Every adult who failed to do that in this case (and, really, any other) should face criminal charges.

    I agree that NCAA football needs reform. But tying rape – specifically the anal rape of young children – to this reform seems to me a bit tone deaf.

    First, lynch the bastards responsible for empowering institutionalized sexual assault of children, everywhere, including the Roman Catholic church.

    THEN, we can talk about changing the structure of playing a game for profit.

  6. PNElba says:

    I’m with WJ.

    As for big time college sports. We should disconnect the student from the athlete. Keep college football as a money making enterprise. The players would be paid and would not have to be students. I think it’s more the alumni of big universities that want to keep college sports. It’s easier to brag about a winning sports team than it is about academic and research achievements.

  7. It's Still All Bush's Fault says:

    If Penn State really wanted to show that the University was “more than football”, they would have cancelled the remainder of this season.

    Penn State’s actions to this point are little more than pandering to their critics.

  8. I’m with WJ and Brian MOFYC. McQueary SAW a child being raped, and did nothing. That is shocking. The systematic exploitation of college athletes, many of them black, by coaches and administrators, many of them white, is reprehensible, but it does not offend common decency and excite justified moral outrage like the inactions of McQueary, Paterno and others when it comes to the rape of children. Who comes across a child being raped and does not intervene? Who learns of a child being raped and does nothing? It’s not the corruption of these people that amazes and enrages, it is their monstrousness.

  9. Brian Mann says:

    I quite agree. McQueary should have called the cops, not spoken with his superiors. No question.

    But this crisis at Penn — one of the most revered programs in the NCAA — comes a time when people are asking reasonable questions about the entire system.

    –Brian, NCPR

  10. jeff says:

    This is not about sports it is human behavior and its failure and fear of exposure. It is a family with an image to protect. In the perspective of a corporate cover-up there is a sense of need to protect the house. It is Watergate, it is Enron, it is Jack Abramoff but with victims who could not choose.

    Whether sports should be integrated with college is a different issue.

    More importantly, on the issue of what Paterno is teaching us, we should not be following suit. We each have events that have shaped us and it is hard sometimes to break the bonds and act differently. I saw an article that remarked about a knife fight McQueary McQueary broke up in a cafeteria some years ago but did he not intervene when he saw the coach? Was it that the deference to authority, was he cowed by seeing this renowned coach where he was not when stopping a fight among peers? Is it what makes us subject to bullies? Was it fear for a job as in the case of a janitor who made an earlier discovery. Error in judgement for a 28 year old? Some people are timid, some bold, some wreckless.

    Really what all this throwing stones via anonymous blogs and editorials etc is venting, righteous indignation; but it should be done under a strong light into a mirror with words flashing: “How will you act when xyz happens?” The hard part is we may be ready for x or z but never conceived confronting y or all three together. The monster stops us in our tracks. On 911 some ran out, others ran then stopped to gawk in disbelief trying to absorb what they encountered, some ran back in to help others.

    Someone started Mothers Against Drunk Driving, another the Pink Ribbon Campaign. We each need to evaluate ourselves and steele ourselves to act and if necessary act immediately without becoming a victim ourselves. For this type of abusive activity we each have a challenge to be vigilant and to act when challenged.

  11. Brian M: I understand your point. It’s just there’s a substantive difference between this scandal (which is remarkably similar to that which is afflicting the Catholic Church) and other, more ordinary college sports scandals like academic cheating, gifts from boosters and whether or not the athletes should be paid.

    One is internal and regulatory. The other is criminal. Whether big time college sports reforms its internal workings really has no bearing on whether coaches and administrators should follow the law and common decency.

  12. brian mann says:

    Jeff – My blog is not anonymous and I think righteous indignation is called for here. What’s more, I didn’t just fume, I cited specific changes people should make, both in personal terms and in the larger policy arena.

    On a personal level, people who see crimes being committed particularly against children, should call the cops. Period. Every time.

    On a policy level, I think it’s clear that the culture of collegiate athletics is broken, for the reasons that I cite in my blog post.

    And I do think that bad, corrupt things happen more readily when the cultural context is blighted.

    –Brian, NCPR

  13. jeff says:

    I’m sorry. I wrote more with the thought of the bulk of stuff I have seen- excerpts from tweets, blogs etc. that use pseudonyms. Although even here there is a degree of anonymity. I was not referring to you to be fuming but to the scope of what I have read even to include the rioters. I have wondered how many of them, cultivated like the principle people involved, would act differently. That is not to say they can’t be upset but instead use that vitriolic energy to make some change.

  14. Pete Klein says:

    I hesitate to say some of the things I am tempted to say because I don’t know the facts and hear mostly sound bites and accusations. It is for this reason we have courts and trials.
    What I will complain about is the growing tendency to try and condemn a person in the media without all the facts being known.
    An accusation is made and a lynch mob is immediately formed.

  15. Mervel says:

    What is the message being sent to people who see sexual abuse? I agree this guy should have tried to stop the rape, and lets say what this was, it was not some fondling, the guy was forcing anal intercourse with a 10-12 year old boy. Paterno was told this and simply sent it up the chain.

    Yeah it is simply rotten all the way around. However what would have happened if this assistant coach simply walked away and said nothing? He would be head coach today. Going to Paterno was a big step in this place and Paterno screwed him over by not wanting to deal with it. All of these guys knew that Sanduski was a pervert including Jopo.

    But in the US careerism is a very powerful force, people do anything to save their jobs and their ass, including selling their souls.

    All universities face this, including St. Lawrence and Clarkson.

  16. betty says:

    It isn’t just college sports that are broken. It is our society that is morally bankrupt. The Penn State case is only the latest iteration. (see State Police, Politicians, teachers, civic organizations, etc. etc.) Money, power, people being exploited, of course, but thinking it, college sports or any of the other areas where these abuses occurred, can be fixed I can’t wrap my head around.

  17. jeff says:

    The Milgram experiment came to mind and I found it was repeated in 2008 46 years after its first trial. The results were the same.

    It =is an experiment about obedience to authority. And despite 47 years of cultural change an overwhelming number of participants were willing to administer an electrical shock to the “student” because the burden of responsiblility was on the person in the lab coat.

    I came across information about psychologist Philip Zimbardo who is famous for the “Stanford Prison Study”of 1971 where subjects (college students) were given roles as either prisoners or guards with little instruction for either and he watched what developed. There were rules like 2:30 am wakeup and bed check. Prisoners rebelled in 2 days and guards called for extra help.

    In either experiment, due to the environment, people did not behave in the manner or with the morals we or they would have expected. The dark side is there to be released under the right environment environment. Abu Ghraib can happen again. It is Syria right now.

    When the rule is to pass the buck, the authority person knows -that is the scapegoat-someone else higher up has been told. Individual responsibility is removed in the mind of the individual.

    http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2008/12/19/in-repeat-of-milgrams-electric-shock-experiment-people-still-pull-the-lever/

    http://news.stanford.edu/pr/97/970108prisonexp.html

  18. Mervel says:

    The reaction is sure bizarre. Why didn’t the students go burn down this so called not for profit “second mile” that was sanduski’s pipeline for victims?

    This guy makes a good point about how we react to power;

    http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/11/12/my-take-reactions-to-cain-paterno-point-to-a-not-so-christian-nation/?hpt=hp_c2

    What is at stake here is not a simple coaching job, these are million dollar jobs generating tens of millions per year in revenues and huge perks for the coaches, the AD’s at the colleges and so forth.

    Jeff is right. Doing the right thing is very counter cultural and often goes against our basic nature as we have been trained by our society.

  19. stillin says:

    There is a fine line between sports and the real world. Where I live, and teach, Sports in the God in Charge. Try educating anybody about music, art culture and you will run up agains the Sports God. In this country too, Sports is God. Bottom line, it’s more important to more than a few thousand people. that Penn. State not tarnish it’s image, than it is that a small human being is used for another’s sexual pleasure. THAT, is a mortal sin at the soul level. Now, after you’ve done everything you can do to bring light to something that needed to be known, now, watch karma because it is a given.

  20. myown says:

    Mervel, That was a good article. Thanks

  21. George Nagle says:

    Brian Mann is entirely correct. Only if colleges give up big time football and make primary their core values of scholarship and inculcating good social habits will the abuses stop.

    Joe Nocera writes well regarding this: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/12/opinion/nocera-the-institutional-pass.html?_r=1&hp

  22. Mervel says:

    I agree that big time football is a corrupting influence, however the thesis that giving it up will solve the problem does not explain the numerous cover-ups and corruptions on campuses that do not have big time college football.

  23. Mark Wilson says:

    um. . . go stanford.

  24. Mervel says:

    The corruption here is so deep. The legal counsel for the “second mile” organization that Sanduski founded and used for grooming his victims, is also the legal counsel for Penn State.

  25. jeff says:

    One action for New York is to extend the statute of limitations from age 23 which would have exclued most of the people in the Sandusky case by now to a greater age. Pennsylvania had a 30 year old age limit until 2005 when it was raised to age 50. Also under discussion is tincluding a broader group of coaches and educators obligated to report to police as there are loopholes that would have included people in this case if it had happened here.

    Wendell Courtney the counsel Mervel may be referring to was, not is, a counsel for Penn State. Small town. This case finally broke when the district attorney claimed conflict of interest and booted it up to the state level when the current governor was attorney general.

    http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Time-limit-kills-sex-cases-2267615.php

  26. Mervel says:

    I see Sandusky is out totally free tonight.

  27. Mervel says:

    ah okay here we go;

    http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/14/us/pennsylvania-coach-abuse/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

    “After Sandusky was charged this month with 40 counts of sexually abusing children, Judge Leslie Dutchcot freed him on $100,000 bail, against the wishes of prosecutors.

    A biography of Dutchcot posted on the website of the law firm Goodall & Yurchak lists her as a volunteer for Second Mile. It is not clear whether Dutchcot currently has any affiliation with the organization.”

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