Changing the Past: NCAA’s Solution Continues Penn State’s Problem

Joe ShlabotnikNow that Penn State has received its NCAA punishment for harboring and abetting a convicted child molester in order to save precious millions generated off its football program, the alumni and friends of the once proud school can pick up the pieces and pay for it. Fair is fair. 60 million generated from football (of course, not from their coffers but from fans) and some student scholarships (of course, this won’t hurt the board any – they already passed their ethics courses) and one statue taken down. Now let’s move on.

Wait.

They are blaming a dead guy. In the worst case of grave yard pointing since A Weekend at Bernie’s , the NCAA is letting Joe Paterno take the fall, so they can get one of their profitable money making athletic machines up and running by fall. Penn State University is only too happy to agree with their assessment so that the cameras leave and they can get back to business as usual. And business it is. Let’s remember in 2010-11, only 22 NCAA football teams made a profit. Guess where Penn State was ranked? Top 5. What is the price of a person’s reputation? Nowhere near the cost of the truth.

So they changed a few wins, and the beloved Bear Bryant is back on top and PSU hasn’t won a game since Sandusky retired. What?!!! So all of Sandusky’s wins still count? Why not take all the wins from PSU ever since Paterno’s arrival? Why not just take away football if that was the problem? School will happen. Kids will go. They will become engineers, teachers, and crappy board members one day. We can use the steel frame of the second largest college football stadium in America and build a tower to Joe Paterno and ask him what he thinks. I know what he would say.

“I was just a coach. Who cares what I think? If you are doing the right things, for the right reasons, in the right way, you will be able to sleep at night. Sure, I’ve made mistakes and I don’t care if they take a statue down of me. Who would want to look at an ugly guy from Brooklyn anyway? Penn State is important, not this cranky guy. The work we do every day and how we change to get a little better.”

Only the NCAA could come up with a plan to save a money making machine by changing the past.

So for the sake of argument, let us look back on three historical figures to see what would happen if we wipe them out of history for their wrong doings.    

Richard Nixon

“Although Nixon initially escalated America's involvement in the Vietnam War, he subsequently ended US involvement in 1973. Nixon's visit to the People's Republic of China in 1972 opened diplomatic relations between the two nations, and he initiated détente and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with the Soviet Union the same year. Domestically, his administration generally embraced policies that transferred power from Washington to the states. Among other things, he initiated wars on cancer and drugs, imposed wage and price controls, enforced desegregation of Southern schools and established the Environmental Protection Agency.”

Not a bad presidency, all things considered. But he was disgraced from office because he wanted to win the election really bad. Wipe out free trade, the ending of Vietnam, the EPA, and the beginning of national healthcare reform.

Ben Franklin

“Franklin was a prodigious inventor. Among his many creations were the lightning rod, glass armonica (a glass instrument, not to be confused with the metal harmonica), Franklin stove, bifocal glasses and the flexible urinary catheter. Franklin never patented his inventions; in his autobiography he wrote, "... as we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this we should do freely and generously."”

Now in Puritan times, if you were born on a Sunday, it was a very bad omen. Not because of the child, but Puritans believed you were doing the nasty on the Sabbath 9 months prior, which was a no no. Ben was born on a Sunday. He also had an illegitimate child who was a British sympathizer. For all the good Ben did for Philadelphia and the country, he was a weak man of pride, whose very offspring led New Jersey to the Tory side. Father of a Traitor and a deadbeat dad.

Alexander Hamilton

“As Secretary of the Treasury, Hamilton was the primary author of the economic policies of the George Washington administration, especially the funding of the state debts by the Federal government, the establishment of a national bank, a system of tariffs, and friendly trade relations with Britain. He became the leader of the Federalist Party.”

Now I like my ten-dollar bills, but this guy was a disgrace for multiple affairs and died attempting to take another man’s life. If anyone should be erased from history, it should be Mr. Banking himself. We would not even be in a recession if it was not for his central banking idea of lend, lend, borrow, borrow. But he was the man that built this 3rd world outpost into a Super Power 100 years later.

I don’t know what Joe Paterno knew, but something makes me queasy about changing real events because we are angry with someone or we want an easy way to clean up a mess. PSU deserved the death penalty from the NCAA for two years plus these sanctions for placing football ahead of public safety.

Humanity is a flawed experiment from the start, and we will never meet anyone who is all good or all bad. For us to be determined as good, all you need is 51% good. History reports the facts and what happened; you cannot go back and change events even if it is for the all mighty dollar (Franklins or Hamiltons) or all the gold in China (Nixon).  An institution of higher learning should know that.

You can follow James Dugan on facebook and on Twitter @jamesduganlb. Purchase his new book through Amazon What Baseball Teaches: A Poetic Odyssey into 2008 Season of the World Champions Philadelphia Phillies    

Comments

[Patrick Edmonds]

You raise a lot of issues here, many of which are valid points. It's good to point out the hypocrisy of the NCAA. You're right that there motivations were far more based on finances than any sense of justice. The fact that they didn't perform their own investigation speaks to the lack of fidelity and the poor manner of how this whole scandal has been handled. And I agree that the elimination of wins doesn't make any sense at all, especially considering that Sandusky's wins still do count. The most recent report is that Emmert forced Penn State to agree to the sanctions or face a four year death penalty.
Also, Penn State seriously mishandled the statue issue. That should have been a school matter, with the community, students, and alumni involved. There should have been an open hearing of some kind. The fact that they rushed on this to attempt to appease the NCAA is pathetic and again speaks to larger problems of leadership at Penn State.
However, I don't know how you can write, "I don’t know what Joe Paterno knew". There's a very thorough, 200+ page document dedicated to what he and other Penn State officials knew. In addition to that, he admitted himself that he was told and he didn't "know" what to do. However, this isn't true, because the report indicates that Paterno had many discussions and meetings about exactly what to do, which eventually was nothing.
I'm sorry, but Paterno gravely failed, and the longer that people try to deny that and rationalize what he did or why he did or didn't do it, will only make this worse.

[James Dugan]

There were no emails from Joe Paterno. He was not the leader of the university or the board of trustees or the lawyers responsible for protecting the school from scandal. The Freeh report assumes that Paterno was involved and I agree wholeheartedly that he choose the university, the football program, and his reputation over public safety and truth. He choose Penn State, which is consistent with his character and the systematic cultural flaw causing this problem. I just don't think you should change the past or allow football to happen if that was the root of the problem. What prevents it from happening again if it is just a slap on the wrist and a defamed icon? The problem did not die with Joe Paterno, but it is clearly how the NCAA and PSU wants us to think.
Thanks for your reply.

[Patrick Edmonds]

There were no emails from Joe Paterno because he, like the program, was being protected. Curly directly states meeting with Paterno concerning how to handle the situation, and that after this meeting, he changed his mind and decided not to report it. McQuery reported what he saw to Paterno, and Paterno claimed that he did the bare minimum (as if this is a valid excuse), and reported it to his superiors. He was directly involved in the discussions in 1998, knowing full well that there was an investigation (three years prior to McQuery telling him), and he did nothing. This is irrefutable. You now have two accounts of illicit conduct by Sandusky, one from a police report and the other from a trusted eye witness, both of which Paterno heard. Why would he report it to the same people who decided to do nothing in 1998? It makes no sense, unless he was explicitly trying to protect the program and himself. This is not "old school" as some have tried to defend. It is a consciously nefarious act. Worse yet, Paterno continued to see Sandusky, even after all this, granting him access to an office and the athletic buildings where so many crimes took place. The truth is, if Schultz and Curly are facing criminal charges, then Spanier and Paterno (if he was still alive) should as well. Why do so many alumni refuse to accept that he failed? This culture of ignoring this blatant failure is why the nation has turned on Penn State and why people are so infuriated at the images and video of 19 and 20 yr. olds crying when they announced that a football team wouldn't be playing in a Bowl games and a statue of a man who failed to uphold his own standards of decency and morality was taken down. How many of these students cried when they read the report that specifies exactly what Sandusky did and that their fearless leaders allowed it to continue? Probably zero!
You mentioned Nixon, and part of what made his scandal far worse was his continued denial of it, similar to Pete Rose. I think if Paterno was still alive, he would have accepted and admitted his failures at this point, but I wonder if the Penn State faithful would accept even his own admission of wrongdoing.

[Leum]

I admired Joe Paterno, and I still do. He made a huge mistake by not exposing the predator in his organization, and his legacy is forever tainted. He knew what was going on and turned a blind eye.

It may seem like piling on -- what the NCAA did. But then, that's another conversation all together. On that matter, until there is an authority that can review the infractions committee and their actions, we will continue to be disappointed by that organization.

Overall -- well considered and written, JD.

[James Dugan]

I appreciate the comments, Leum and Edmonds. I must admit, I am not a huge fan of college football but I am of Joe Paterno and his total committment to the uinversity in form of funding and creating place. There is incredible pride of being a Penn Stater because it represents a shared culture, place, and family tradition that many universities and college graduates do not comprehend. The frustration you find with the alumni, Edmonds, is a collective shame for believing so deeply in something so superficial. I am a Catholic. I did not stop being a Catholic after the church hierarchy continued to protect molesters and then let a middle man take the fall. There is disappointment in Paterno's actions or inaction, but the police knew in 1998 and did nothing. The University, which is a small network similar to the Archdiocese, knew and comtinued to pay Sandusky. Not Joe Paterno. He didn't write checks. He was a football coach and that is all I ever saw him as. He was a good football coach who protected his players, school, and culture with a strong arm. He showed respect to people and he came the soccer games when we would get about 7 fans. I think part of why I wrote the piece is that you can not throw out all the good in something or someone, just because of some bad. That is dualism. That is dangerous. As dangerous as creating a culture that can not do wrong and is above the law because we lose sight of our goodness.
I did read the Freeh report last night. Man, emails are everywhere -- the amount of information on people is everywhere. I was more upset at how easily it was available. You really can't be underhanded in the computer age.