Penn State and College Football

The Penn State sex abuse debacle keeps getting worse. Like a Shakespearean tragedy, the swiftness of the demise of Joe Paterno football and the magical Penn State story is staggering. While things looked great on the surface, underneath the veneer it was rotting away with a secret few could comprehend, or chose not to.

We all operate within the box of our life experience which sets the parameters by which we react to things. If events don’t fit in the box of understanding and experience, folks tend to ignore them because to them it is irrelevant or unbelievable. It couldn’t happen here. Only when the truth hits them on the head like a hammer do they experience an “ah-ha” moment, and the gravity of the situation finally breaks through.

Knowledge of this event had been festering since 1998, at least on current available information. Jerry Sandusky retiring from Penn State as he was investigated by a grand jury is too coincidental for university officials and his close friend and confidant Joe Paterno NOT to have known. Even then, Sandusky was made a professor emeritus, and was allowed full access to Penn State facilities and football program. He made road trips with the team and his boys. The Drudge Report even stated he was recruiting for Penn State as late as this past year…even after new allegations arose in 2002 about which Joe Paterno had full knowledge.

The press has missed the focus. Paterno did what he was supposed to do, he notified his superiors in 2002 of the allegations of the molestation in the shower. The press is focused on the point that Paterno didn’t follow up and call the police under some sort of moral obligation. I am focused on the fact that apparently there was still some kind of ongoing relationship between Sandusky, Paterno and school even after the 2002 allegations. What were they thinking?

Then there is the suspicious disappearance of the county prosecutor…the smell of smoke and the presence of ashes in his car…his computer found at the bottom of a river with the hard drive removed. Rumors are swirling that Sandusky’s foundation was acting as a clearinghouse for pedophiles looking for boys…big money pedophiles. Could some of those people also have been big money contributors to Penn State? Murder is lurking in the background.

This is a mess. Meanwhile, the NCAA is continuing to hound Ohio State taking away 5 scholarships because an alumnus gave some football players $200.00 each for walking around money…so they could afford to buy a lousy pizza. Does the NCAA have its head in the sand?

It’s time for Congress to investigate the operation of the NCAA, and examine what has become a business as big if not bigger than the NFL. It needs to look at its tax exemptions, and set regulations as to how this entity can operate. It needs to standardize procedures for sex abuse allegations so that a situation at Penn State, which followed the letter of the law, does not happen again violating the spirit of the law. And this is important, it’s not clear whether Penn State actually violated any NCAA rules.

Big money breeds corruption. If the NCAA can’t regulate itself and the use of slave labor from football players which generates millions upon millions dollars for the schools and the NCAA itself, the government will have to. If the NCAA can't differentiate moral equivilency between tatoos and child molestation, it has to be done for it. Penn State players praying in the middle of the field before a football game for the “victims” just doesn’t cut it.

It’s time for someone to figure just what is going on here.