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Penn State Football and Moral Crossroads

7/16/2012

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According to Wikipedia a moral imperative is a "principle originating in a person's mind that compels that person to act."  Not to get all philisophical on you, but the irrefutuable article (it is from Wikipedia so you know that you are getting the best possible information) goes on to tie this concept into Immanuel Kant's idea of a categorical imperative, or a "dictate of pure reason, in its practical aspect."  To Kant not following the moral law was seen as self-defeating and contrary to reason.  This concept was the basis for the philisophical idea of conscience, or the voice in our heads that separates right from wrong.  This concept was the basis for the idea that human beings know the difference between what is just and what is not, and that they can and most often do act accordingly.

Now that you all know about the B+ I earned in Philosophy 101, you can go on to challenge this assertion.  There is certainly ample evidence in our culture, our society, our world to do so; to argue that human beings are more guided by money or greed or sex than morals.  But I won't.  I'll argue that human beings of sound mind, while certainly sinners and creatures who often do not live up to their own ethics, know the difference between right and wrong.  There is some gray to be sure, but there's also a whole lot of black and white.  There's a whole lot of moral imperatives that force us to act because our conscience tells us to. 

To ignore them is as grave a sin as there is in this world.  To ignore them is to ignore what makes us human.  To ignore them, is to become what Joe Paterno, Tim Curley, Gary Schultz and Graham Spanier are; men faced with one moral imperative after one, one fact forcing them to be human, and ignoring it for more than a decade.  I'll let God judge these men when there time comes.  For now I'll just shake my head in disappointment and wonder what may have been if they had rose to the occasion and been men of strong morals, unrelenting virtue or unquestionable honor.

The egregious acts of Jerry Sandusky cannot be undone.  The childhoods of his victims cannot be unruined.  The stain on the souls of the men who could have stopped them, and didn't, cannot be bleached away.  Those sad facts cannot be changed no matter how much we hope and pray for the children who were devastated by them.  In this instance, like so many tragic ones before it, we are powerless in the face of destruction.

So what do we do now?  Paterno is dead.  Sandusky is already rotting behind bars.  Curley, Schultz and Spanier could be following him shortly.  Even as we continue to search for justice, even as we continue to hold perpetrators responsible the best way that we know how, we cannot offer relief.  We cannot stop the oppressed from living with the sins of their oppressors.

Penn State can, and hopefully will, step up and offer Sandusky's victims financial restitution, which of course will do nothing for their nightmares.  Hopefully they can also ensure that the victimized receive conseling and professional help. Help and hope that they can move on with their lives, even if their terror can never be washed away.

Some in the media are also suggesting that Penn State, or the NCAA, or both have the power to do more; the power to send a message.  Some in the media are also suggesting that these institutions now face their own moral imperative.  They say "ban Penn State Football" in newspapers and talk radio shows and television programs.  They say that the severity of the crime demands the extremity of a crippling punishment.  They say that devastating an innocent university community, town, and 85 players, is a necessary measure of retribution, a necessary demonstration that proves that we all have our priorities in check.

"Think about the children," they say, as if those who disagree with them don't also have a heart full of condolescenes that can do nothing for the traumatized.  "Extreme measures are needed," they exclaim, as if those who don't see their purpose would be afraid of any measure that would restore innocence to the abused.  "The punishment needs to fit the crime!" they extoll, as if those who don't see a football ban and decades of disgusting failures as eye for an eye also don't recognize the severity of the crime here.

We all know how tragic and terrible the crime here is.  It is by far the worst, most hideous scandal in the history of college sports.  It makes the SMU "pay for play" case look like a teenager swiping a stick of gum from the local Piggly Wiggly.  It makes Reggie Bush's improper benefits look like a jaywalker crossing an empty country road outside the crosswalk at 4:30 in the morning.  It makes Terryl Prior's tattoos look like sketches done by a 5-year-old on his placemate at the Duluth Applebee's. And, worse yet, there is no question that the cult-like worship for Paterno and Penn State football were motivating factors in the cover-up.

This all means that Penn State or the NCAA could "send a message."  The new administration could turn out the lights on Beaver Stadium for a year or 5 or 20.  The suits in Indianapolis could show the world that this scandal is way more serious than their other comparatively meaningless violations by throwing the rule book at Nittany Lion football. We could all sleep better at night knowing that someone somewhere has the intestinal fortitude to show the big, sleazy world of college sports that some things are just more important. 

Better yet Penn State could close its doors completely.  After all this was a failure of an entire institution of higher learning whose own president, the man entrusted with its very well-being, didn't have the guts to show anything but "callous disregard" for the victims.  Certainly as long as otherwise innocent students are allowed to learn chemistry and economics in Happy Valley, we are not showing the victims that they we are taking their suffering seriously enough. 

Then we can shut down the Philadelphia Archdiocese and Boy Scouts of America for a few years to show that people who did nothing wrong shouldn't be attending mass or camp outs until those institutions are punished for their transgressions as well.  Then, when everyone who should be punished is and all our messages are sent, the thousands of victims of sexual abuse these organizations are at least partially responsible for will be able to sleep better at night along with us. 

Or they won't.

This scandal is shameful and saddening.  The fact that it could have been stopped long before it was is nothing short of tragic.  Once again, we cannot even begin to explain the kind of sorrow and sympathy we have for the victims.  The fact that the men who were supposed to be giving them a voice fell silent to protect a football team is warped and reprehensible.

We can try to illustrate that to the world by shuttering the Penn State football program.  We can run and hide and be sad and quiet and feel better about our moral priorities.

Or we can at least try to show the victims that we have learned our lesson.  We cannot take away their pain.  We cannot alleviate their suffering.  But, we can do our best to make sure it never happens again.

The football program is meant to promote and support the mission of a University; not to become it.  Penn State forgot that when it mattered most.  And unfortunately, it was the innocent who suffered for it.

The university can send a hollow message to show its sorry.  Or it can change its culture to show that this is something that will never happen again.  Football can exist at Penn State, it just has to exist the right way.

You say that Penn Sate has a moral imperative to shut its football program down.  I say they have a moral imperative not to.  You say they have a moral imperative towards punishment.  I say they have a moral imperative towards rehabilitation.  You say they have a moral imperative to wipe the slate clean and prevent themselves from showing progress. I say they have a moral imperative to show us all how football can and should be done on college campus.

Penn State can run and hide and cast off its football program, pretending that the sports absence will solve all its problems.  Or it can become a beacon for hope; the rare big-time program who competes the right way.  The rare big-time program who has a sense of perspective.

After all football itself was never the culprit to begin with. The real culprits were the people who let it become one.

You say that Penn State should just close its eyes, and hope that once they open them this will never happen again.

I say that Penn State shows us all the way to change by, from now on, doing football better than anyone else.

The crime cannot be undone.  The pain can never be taken away.  One September or another football will return to Happy Valley, and the victims will still be living with their torture.

Hollow messages will not change that.  Perhaps nothing will.

A transformed football program at Penn State however, one that lives the virtue it extolls, could at least show the world that a lesson has been learned.  It could at least show Nick Saban or Urban Meyer or Lane Kiffin or anyone else that if, God forbid, this ever happens to them that they better be ready to stand up and speak out, or they will get left behind.

Because some things are more important than football. 

You don't show that by quietly slinking off into the darkness.  You show it by exposing yourselves in the light of Saturday afternoon.  You show it by changing; by setting an example and teaching the young men in your charge how to be ready to face the moral imperatives that may one day be extended to them.
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Joe Pa: The Man and The Mystique

7/13/2012

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"Here's a guy who makes a terrible mistake, one of the most terrible in the history of college athletics.  I'm afraid that will be his legacy.  When people talk about Joe Paterno in the future, it will all come back to this."
-Bobby Bowden
By now we've all read the report former FBI chief investigator David Freeh conducted on the sexual abuse scandal at Penn State.  We've had 24 hours or so to digest the information.  We all, being of sound mind and reason, have come to one logical and--at this point--almost irrefutable conclusion: it is a damning document.  It is the murderer of one of the great legacies in the history of sport.  Joe Paterno's statue may still stand outside of Beaver Stadium, but the one we have all erected for the legendary mentor in our hearts and minds has been lassoed, pulled down and destroyed in the street.  At the very least it is almost completely covered in pigeon shit.

I won't bore you with the an in-depth analysis of the details that we have already discovered.  We know that Joe Pa knew about the Sandusky incident in 1998.  That fact alone means that, even if the coach always believed in his defensive coordinator and friend's innocence, he lied to a grand jury.  That fact alone means that the 2001 conversation the coach had with Mike McQueary should have set off a field full of red flags in his conscience.  That fact alone means that the coach allowing Sandusky to use his football facility for the next decade makes him a co-conspirator to some of the most heinous crimes that have ever come to our attention.  That fact alone makes Paterno someone who would cover up the most serious of transgressions to protect the image of his program, his university, himself.

In the end that leaves the Joe Paterno believers, of which I was once among the most vehement, with one question and one question only: what makes a man the person that he is?  Is it 60-years of faithful service, 60-years of steadfast dedication to a cause, 60-years of life changing leadership? Or is it one disgraceful act that begot another that begot another that eventually made Joe Paterno, at the very, very least, a knowful bystander in one of the most disgusting manifestations of human sickness the world of sports has ever seen?  Is it six plus decades of molding young men's character, or is it a pattern of what Freeh calls "callous disregard" that kept even younger men from ever being able to fully realize their's?  How can we rectify what we know about Joe Paterno the teacher, the mentor, the coach with what we now know about Joe Paterno the allower of sin and life ruining abuse?

I am not sure that we can.  To say Paterno's resume is marred would be an understatement.  To say Paterno's statue carries subtext and disturbing symbolism would be an underexaggeration.  To say that Paterno the man we all knew is forever buried, both literally and figuratively, is a statement that we can all deny or agree with without ever really knowing what the truth is.

Because--outside of the victims and their families, who have earned the prayers and heartfelt condolences from a shocked nation--the truth lies with a group of men who knew Paterno best; who put their faith in the coach and were often rewarded for it by becoming better sons, fathers and husbands.  The truth lies with the men who got to see behind person behind the image.

Right now no one can tell Joe Paterno's former players how to feel.  Some believe they were deceived.  Some are appauled and saddened.  Some are loyal defenders who, while certainly not just forgiving their disgraced leader, still can remember the man they once knew in State College. 

For now, we all realize that, when Joe Paterno was faced with the greatest challenge of his lifetime, the greatest test of his character, he failed miserably.  We all understand that our image of Joe Paterno as the morally forthright guide for the virtue of college athletics is a sham.

We all know that, on the occasion that it mattered most, Joe Paterno lied.  He lied to the justice system.  He lied to the people he should have been protecting.  He almost certainly lied to himself.

Joe Paterno is a liar, but does that make Joe Paterno the man a lie?  I don't know.  I am not the man to condemn or champion him.

The answer lies in the soul of a man currently buried underneath the Earth, and the people who knew him best. The answer lies in the heart and minds of the men whom he shaped into Penn State football players. 

Time will continue to tick.  Facts will continue to come out.  We will all gain some perspective and be better able to judge the man's legacy in a year, or two or 15.  But we will never know the man who was a sinner and a saint; a foundation for principle and a betrayer of the very ideals that he championed.  Only a select few did.  Only a select few will know, one way or another, what we never can.

We all know that their coach is dead. We all know what we will bring up first when discussing his life.

Only they will know if the rest of the story is really worth telling or not. 
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