On the first Sunday morning of December, 2016, the sports news cycle is full of Penn State football talk. The Nittany Lions surprisingly won the Big Ten championship, and all the buzz is whether they deserve a spot in the College Football Playoff.
Flash back to the first Saturday morning of November, 2011 – only five years ago – when the sports world awoke to a different type of discussion about Penn State football. News was trickling out that Penn State and its (at the time) legendary coach Joe Paterno had been complicit in years and years of child abuse.
So it’s been just about exactly 61 months since the news *first* broke (the story has continued to unfold, more gruesomely and less – let’s just say now it’s “zero”- defensible for anyone involved). Any NCAA punishments and sanctions against Penn State have already been lifted. Penn State has already fought and won battles to have Paterno’s wins – which had been vacated as part of the initial NCAA punishment – reinstated, and a large group of former players is campaigning to have Paterno’s status (which ironically identifies him with three words: coach (true), teacher (eh), humanitarian (bullshit)) placed back near Beaver Stadium. Penn State even actively honored Paterno before a game this season. And, of course, Penn State fans – defiant of any attempts to back off of the university’s unabashed love for the legendary pedophile enabler – proudly chant “We Are…Penn State” without any remorse.
Penn State should make America sick.
Now hear me out. I’m a passionate sports fan in general and a massive fan of a school in the same exact division – the Big Ten East – as Penn State. I understand fandom and fully recognize that had I grown up in Pennsylvania and not in Michigan, it’s overwhelmingly likely that I’d be a big Penn State fan. But I sincerely believe and vehemently hope that I’d be able to compartmentalize fandom and put it in its rightful place when faced with the actually-serious issue of child abuse.
Let me put it this way: I can forgive the sins of omission, but Penn State – both the university and the fan base – is horrifically guilty of sins of commission, and those are gross and unforgivable.
Penn State’s Sins of Omission
Let’s put the issue in direct context. No one currently at Penn State directly contributed to the sexual abuse of dozens of children in the Penn State football facilities. It even seems likely that most Penn State football fans are not even, themselves, active pedophiles! So once you get past Jerry Sandusky, the evil monster himself; Joe Paterno, the man with all the power to stop the abuse *and* knowledge of the abuse; and other actors within the football and university administrations who had direct knowledge of what was going on, the greater Penn State community is mainly only guilty of one thing: putting football on such a high pedestal that it was more important than such egregious and brazen acts of child sexual abuse.
Since 2011 it has become abundantly clear that Penn State football aided and abetted Sandusky’s child abuse. Keep in mind this wasn’t a rogue employee engaging in illicit activities on home, off the clock. Sandusky used Penn State football as a way to recruit his victims and performed these horrific acts in Penn State football facilities, and when Sandusky gave up coaching, Paterno granted him permanent access to those facilities as part of his “foundation” for troubled young boys, the primary recruitment method of his victims. So if you’re part of the Penn State community in 2011, you have to at least think: 1) That’s messed up; 2) We should probably spend less attention on football and think about how our rabid fandom helped – even in small part – make this atrocity possible; and 3) If we’re still proud of our university, let’s redirect our efforts to making sure that Penn State is a leader in child abuse prevention.
Right?
If you lose a friend or family member to cancer, you use your mourning energy to start a foundation in their name to raise money for cancer research. If you lose your license from a DUI or your job from drug issues, you help make amends by trying to educate young people on how to avoid those temptations. So if your school/team is implicated in a massive child abuse scandal, you rally the community behind efforts to rid the world of child abuse.
You shouldn’t be able to turn on a Penn State game or Google “Penn State Football” without hearing about Penn State’s involvement in the fight to end child abuse. A percentage of every ticket sold should go to safe houses for victims; a ribbon-style sticker should be on every player’s shoulder pads or helmet as a reminder that “if you see something, say something;” there should be a moment of silence before every game; booster groups should be raising money and awareness and overall just looking for ways to use the power of 100,000+ people at every game and a massive, passionate fanbase to help address the issue.
But I get it. Child abuse is a nasty topic and no one wants their brand to be forever linked to pedophilia. The school likely wants to distance its reputation so that graduates and alumni don’t wear that stain on their resumes, so that prospective students don’t decline admission because of the stigma, so that athletic recruits don’t avoid State College.
Penn State should use its power to address the issue. It should direct some of its proceeds or donations to the school of social work or to grants for psychology research into the causes and treatments for pedophilia. After what the Penn State community did to enable Jerry Sandusky to torture young boys, it owes the world something. But that requires a heck of a lot of pride-swallowing, action, money, and initiative. It’s not overwhelmingly to forgive the sin of omission – Penn State and its community have not directly acted to make amends, and while I disagree I understand.
However…
Penn State’s Sins of Commission
Instead of using that energy to make a positive difference in the world, Penn State has used the last five years to defend Paterno at all turns, resist responsibility, actively ignore the plight of victims, and ultimately just act like spoiled jerks. Instead of rallying its resources and energy around ways to address the issue, it has used that energy to:
-Fight to have Paterno’s wins restored
-Fight to have NCAA restrictions lifted
-Hold rallies to defend Paterno and campaign for the reinstatement of his statue
-Actively honor Paterno before a game during the 2016 season, commemorating his first game as coach 50 years prior
Now, this doesn’t characterize all Penn State fans, of course. But it’s also not an outlier fringe group of a handful of fans. This includes former players still within the public eye, massive groups of fans, petitions with thousands of signatures… And what is disgusting is how active it is: it’s completely understandable to sit back in stunned silence and not do anything. It’s wholly another to look at the facts and allegations of the case and decide to act to promote Paterno and Penn State football over the interests of victims, to look at autumn pastime versus decades of child rape and think “I’d better do something…to defend the football program.”
Because here’s the thing: there is absolutely no easier punishment to take than officially vacating wins. The games still happened! If you want to remember the 1994 undefeated season or the Orange Bowl win over Miami to win the national championship, no one is stopping you. YouTube clips still exist, Wikipedia articles will mention those games and aggregated statistics (maybe with an asterisk), ABC/ESPN producers will still set up your games against Nebraska by mentioning the 1994 season. The only people affected will be 10-year old boys (ahem) looking up football records in the almanac or Guinness Book of World Records. That’s it. You’ve sacrificed nothing, and yet Penn State fans were willing to take action to not even give up that.
I’m a Michigan fan. I loved the Fab Five, which has officially had its 1991-93 wins vacated. And it’s a mild bummer. I still remember those games, talk about how much I loved watching that team…those sanctions were the easiest thing in the world to agree to as a fan. They haven’t changed any of our lives in the slightest. And that was for a recruiting violation…not for child sexual abuse. I couldn’t imagine so desperately wanting to see those wins in an almanac that I’d get off my couch or give up a Tuesday night to defend child rape.
Same for the Paterno statue. At the very least his reputation is “complicated” but there’s a very high likelihood that he was a monster. Compelling evidence exists that he knew about Sandusky’s child abuse for 20+ years and not only kept him around and didn’t say anything but actively gave him fertile recruiting ground with the Second Mile charity. I’m not saying you have to burn your LaVar Arrington jersey or turn off the TV any time Todd Blackledge or Matt Millen is on…but maybe wait a few years for the facts to settle before you go out of your way to actively advocate for a Paterno statue. Because even if he’s more innocent than we think (keep in mind: he’s not 100% innocent and that at least is a fact) he’s not a victim! There are dozens of actual victims, young boys whose lives were ruined or dramatically compromised by the use of Penn State football as a tool to draw them in, earn their trust, and then rape them. The Paterno family can soothe itself with its millions of Penn State Football dollars while it waits for history to decide Joe’s ultimate legacy; the actual victims have to live with..I can’t even think about it or try to put myself in their shoes.
So when heard coach James Franklin calls his team’s win over Ohio State a necessary step in the healing process, he’s being an out-of-touch, arrogant, jerk. There are actual victims who need to heal; Penn State fans need to exercise contrition before anyone should feel sorry for them. And they won’t exercise that contrition. Their actions show that they haven’t learned the lesson at all, that we can’t let football become so big that it overshadows basic human decency. By actively choosing to defend and promote football instead of promoting the needs of child abuse victims, Penn State fans have shown that they’re recommitted to Paterno and the Nittany Lions over child justice and just general decency.
It’s appalling that in the only five years that this has been going on, the ABC/ESPN media machine, the Big Ten, the NCAA, and most gallingly Penn State fans have so quickly made football the sole priority. By actively avoiding responsibility and reconciliation, Penn State football should have earned the forever reputation as Pedophile U. It’s nauseating to see them on TV and even more so to see their fan base so happy to pretend like nothing happened. Which maybe shouldn’t be so surprising…their hero Joe Paterno taught them that.
See Me Squeegee 