Joe Paterno's Sad Reckoning

The events at Penn State University this weekend have been so shocking and distressing to me that I must write something, and I apologize to my readers outside the United States and ask for their patience.

This weekend a grand jury in Pennsylvania indicted a retired defensive coordinator of the Penn State University football team, charging him with performing pedophilic acts with young boys for more than a decade under the noses of the University staff and administration.

If the allegations are true, the shock will ripple throughout Penn State University and far away into the corridors of amateur football and sports all over America.

A few facts :

Joe Paterno is the coach of the Penn State football team and has been for 50 years. He has won more games than any other coach of American university football ever, and he is the emblem of honesty and integrity. His care for the young men in the Penn State football program is legendary for its concern for the well-being of the boys who play football at Penn State. His system of caring for his players has made Penn State University one of the places parents most would like to see their sons play football. I hasten to add that none of the children allegedly abused was a football team member.

Joe Paterno is not a subject of inquiry in the scandal that is breaking over Penn State University’s head, but he was, according to the grand jury report, once told by a young football assistant trainer that he had seen abuse taking place in the shower area between the man now indicted and a young boy. Paterno told his supervisor in the University and promptly forgot about it, one presumes. The abuse allegedly went on for seven more years and included a group of young boys.

For Europeans, it might be compared to finding out that a pedophile was hidden in the ranks of Sir Alex Ferguson’s staff and abused the young boys who naturally gather around soccer teams.

I really don’t know what to think or say about this horrible affair. I feel revulsion for the entire University, which apparently thought that it had no duty to report the incidents to the police, but rather could handle them itself, and without even bothering to learn the names of all of the boys who might have been abused. The Washington Post today published a commentary that concludes that we should all now realize that even in university sports, it’s the money and status that counts, and not the life of one small boy.

We knew that many players at other schools were paid and given trips and cars, and that this was illegal under the rules that govern university sports in the United States, but I, for one, believed that Joe Paterno and Penn State were the shining city on the hill that proved that good could win the day in university sports, given the right environment.   

And, I’m from Pennsylvania, which makes the hurt even more profound. I feel genuine sorrow for Joe Paterno, and perhaps we will find after all is said and one, that nothing happened.

But Joe Paterno’s halo is gone forever. And, so is the dream we all had that with the right coach and the right support from a university administration, and with the love of sports for its own sake that is what university sports is ideally all about, that somehow, amateur sports could be something special and pure. The dream is over.