Penn State rioters take to the streets after Joe Paterno is fired.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
It is, in a word, disgusting.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
First, the usual mea culpas.\u00a0 I love college football.\u00a0 Adore it.\u00a0 I spent years as a Missouri Tigers fan so passionate that after one disastrous loss to Nebraska I couldn’t sleep for two days.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
In almost every program, coaches know things about each other.\u00a0 They’ve all cut corners.\u00a0 They’ve all made deals.\u00a0 Turn in a fellow coach and you open a dangerous can of worms.<\/p>\n
You run the risk of angering football gods like Joe Paterno or entangling yourself with the byzantine apparatchiks of the NCAA.<\/p>\n
Better to keep silent.\u00a0 Better to keep it inside the family.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 (College athletes are banned from hiring agents to look after their interests.)<\/p>\n
Paterno was widely revered.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Most of these programs, it should be pointed out, lose money for their schools.<\/p>\n
And as more university presidents are fired or disgraced\u00a0 because of sports scandals, one would think that a simple desire for self-preservation would spark some fresh thinking.<\/p>\n
I’m guessing that moderate reforms won’t be enough anymore.\u00a0 It won’t be enough to simply punish the Penn State rioters and impose fussy new NCAA rules.<\/p>\n
It is time for universities to divest themselves of this industry completely.\u00a0 Professional football and basketball leagues should create their own minor league programs, comparable to the one that now exists for professional baseball.<\/p>\n
Will people like me miss the ceremony, the tradition, and the drama of rooting for our college teams?\u00a0 Sure.<\/p>\n
But just as campuses are cutting ties to this crooked business, we fans need to divest ourselves of an increasingly guilty pleasure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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