Nov 18, 2011

I am writing this on Thursday morning, just a few minutes after reading yet another saddening, maddening story about the Jerry Sandusky scandal at Penn State.

The story in question came from The New York Times, was written by investigative-reporting ace Jo Becker, and basically laid out, in very stark terms, just how and why this colossal mess unfolded, just how and why a suspected predator like Sandusky was allowed prey on vulnerable boys for years and years, just how and why the too-small, too-insular world of State College, Pennsylvania, either refused to act or didn’t know how to act in the face of truly monstrous allegations.

Becker’s piece was remarkably well-written, excruciatingly detailed and unequivocal in its ultimate conclusion: People at Penn State knew. Specifically, people in position power at Penn State knew.

And yet they did nothing. So the damage went unchecked.

In the moments after finishing the story, I allowed myself a minute or two to digest the words, facts and revelations it offered. I tried to process not so much what the story said, but rather what it meant. And I eventually came to the realization that — because of that story specifically and because of where the situation now stands — we have arrived at yet another miserable turn in the ever-winding dialogue surrounding this great tragedy.

I realized, in other words, this: Becker’s story, and the spin-off stories that are sure to come in its wake, may well have spelled the end, either metaphorically or literally, for Penn State football.

Fairly or not, the Penn State football program has arrived at its ultimate crossroads.

***

From the outside, and to outsiders, such a middling concern—the future of a college football program—may seem trivial in light of the current tragedy. And yes, I suppose it is trivial. As more and more facts come out about the scope of the Sandusky catastrophe, and as we learn more about the victims and how those victims were ensared in Sandusky's horrific web, it becomes ever more difficult to allow ourselves to spend even a moment worried about football.

Yet, as Penn Staters, the reality is, we do worry about football. Even in the face of these horrific charges, even as we struggle to understand exactly what was allowed to happen in our midst, and even as we agree with the outsiders that anyone and everyone who had a hand in this mess deserves to pay dearly for their action (or inaction), we do still fret about the future of the program. Because, for better or worse, that football program is a part of us.

Yes, we can unabashedly state the following:

• We love our university.
• We love our football team.
• We love our Autumn Saturdays, and all of what those Autumn Saturdays mean.
• And no, we don’t want to lose any of it.

Selfishly, we hope that the university finds a way forward, that the program survives, that we can hold on to all that we hold so dear about enjoying America’s greatest game at our beloved Happy Valley.

Selfishly, we want the Penn State that we knew and loved to be there tomorrow, and next week, and next season, and next decade.

Selfishly, we want that awful question—“Should Penn State football be allowed to continue?”—to never be asked again.

Selfishly, we want all of this to go away—the questions, the accusations, the sanctimony, the concern both feigned and real—even though we know it can’t.

Nor should it.

***

That fact that we care so deeply and so honestly about our football team at a time when much bigger issues loom does not go over well nationally, of course.

Whether it’s the media, or fans from elsewhere, or politicians, or critics of the game of college football itself, there lies beneath the overall dialogue a somewhat dismissive, mildly disgusted undercurrent. See, the outsiders think we’re sick. Unfeeling. Out of touch.

We’ve been mocked by Jon Stewart and the guys over at South Park. We’ve been excoriated by Charlie Pierce and Gregg Doyel. We’ve had our collective moral compass questioned by Rick Santorum, John Corbett and countless other political opportunists. We’ve been called enablers. We’ve been told that we, as Penn State alumni or fans or friends, are culpable in this mess. We we’ve been told that we are partly to blame. We’ve been told that, because of our mere association with the university itself, we should not complain, no matter what over-the-top punishments may come down from the powers that be.

And you know what?

For the most part, we’ve taken the hits.

We’ve accepted the blame.

We’ve expressed our shame and our anger and our disgust.

We’ve tried our hardest to right an unrightable wrong.

But it’s not been enough. Not nearly enough.

It hasn’t been enough to make the unrightable wrongs vanish from history. It hasn’t been enough to make up for the systematic failings of an institution that we once believed in so deeply. And it hasn’t been enough to satisfy those who, perhaps out of real concern but perhaps out of pure opportunism, will not be happy (relatively speaking, of course, because some of these people can never really be happy) until Penn State football is gone forever. They want the program to suffer, to wither, to die, to be eradicated. And they want everyone associated with it to suffer.

For a while, I held out hope that these people would not get their wish.

For a while, I clung to the somewhat clichéd notion that institutions throughout history have survived worse than this, that Penn State as a university would somehow grow stronger specifically because of these failures, that Penn State football—something that has been loved and cherished and shared by generations—would avoid the unthinkable: The death penalty.

Then I read that New York Times piece. The time was 10:17 a.m., Thursday morning.

By 10:18 a.m., I knew the end, if not exactly “in sight,” had certainly come into the frame.

***

The calls are coming hard and fast now.

The critics and the pundits and professional opinionators, safely ensconced in their towers of judgment hundreds of miles away from the impact zone, have decided that simply punishing Jerry Sandusky it not enough. They have decided that punishing his alleged enablers is not enough. They have decided that the university’s internal investigation is not enough, that the U.S. Department of Education’s investigation is not enough, that the actual criminal investigation is not enough. None of it, according to them, goes far enough, or spreads the blame as far as it must be spread, or punishes the university and its alumni and its faculty and its staff and its students and the people of Central Pennsylvania enough.

No, they have decided instead that the only way that Penn State can make this right—the only way that Penn State can show that it really cares about those victims—is to eliminate its football program altogether; by extension, the only way that anyone associated with Penn State can gain pardon from this tragedy is to agree that the only way that Penn State can make this right is to eliminate its football program altogether. We are not to ask questions. We are not to protest. We are not allowed to fight fire with facts. If you speak up for Penn State football—and the countless people who count on Penn State football for their education, or their livelihood, or simply their much-needed escape from the drudgery of the day to day—then you are culpable.

It sounds ridiculous and it is ridiculous. But it’s the reality of where we stand.

Shades of grey are not being considered here. The wave of popular opinion has crashed ashore. The great American cultural behemoth has spoken. And it has been decided, by a great many who know not exactly of what they speak, that the death penalty must be levied.

They want Beaver Stadium shuttered. They want the program wiped off the map. They want everything about Penn State football—its history, its tradition, everything it claimed to stand for and all the good it has ever done—eradicated, if not forever, than at least long enough to render it meaningless, to weaken it to the point where it would not be Penn State football at all.

Some say a year without football would be enough. Others say a drop to Division II or III is in order. Others, of course, demand nothing less than the permanent removal of the program.

Now, I’ll be honest: In some sense, I understand these people. I understand their hurt and frustration and anger. I understand the impulse they feel—the impulse that tells them, “Horrible things have happened, Penn State let it happen, and Penn State must suffer.” And I understand that, for some of these people, these feelings are very personal, very real, and very sincere.

But that doesn’t mean they’re right.

***

Decisions made in anger rarely hold up to history. Decisions made in the heat of the moment rarely prove themselves wise. And decisions fueled by raging public opinion are rarely ultimately judged to be right and proper and just.

But the fact is, our collective human nature trends toward the mob mentality. And so such decisions often get made.

I do not doubt that those who believe that Penn State’s entire football program must suffer for the actions of the very few—and yes, it should be pointed out that those actually involved number in the “very few”—sincerely feel that such a course of action is justified.

But I also know those folks do not fully understand the scope of what they propose. I know they do not fully understand that, by abolishing this program, either for a year or two years or forever, that they would be doing nothing less than robbing an entire generation of student-athletes (snicker if you must, and I know some of you already have, but yes, there is a such a thing) the opportunity to live out their dream. I know they do not fully understand that, by abolishing this program, they would cost dozens if not hundreds if not thousands of people their jobs and their livelihoods. I know they do not fully understand that, by abolishing this program, they would rip the very hearts out of at least four generations worth of Penn State fans and families.

And, sadly, I know that even if they were presented with these truths—even if they could gain a mere sliver understanding about the inevitable fallout of what they propose—that they would stand their ground anyway. Their minds are made up; anyone and everyone Penn State is to blame, they say, and anyone and everyone Penn State must pay.

***

This is the state of public debate in 21st Century America: post-modern, lightning-fast, content-overloaded, racing-forward, processing data without actually processing data, fumbling toward the future with an ever-dwindling grasp of the past.

There is no news cycle. There is only a series of moments—moments in which the latest public villain, or villains, are tried and convicted as quickly as possible.

And, no, justice is not really what we seek.

Nor do we seek truth, or fairness, or the proper and measured response to tragedy.

What we seek as a culture is precisely what nations and cultures have been seeking for centuries upon centuries when confronted with tragedy: We seek somebody or something to blame, and we don’t care whether that somebody or something should actually be blamed or not.

Justice always loses in the face of anger. It always loses in the face of convenience. It always loses in the face of opportunism, and politics, and expediency, and the predetermined, culturally processed feelings of those who would rather destroy than fully understand.

Make no mistake: Penn State football’s “culture” is not to blame for what happened to those children. Penn State alumni are not to blame, either. Nor are the players who are living out their dreams, or the families who support them, or those hard-working folks who make up the vast infrastructure that has supported this program for decades.

But the fact that these people and these things are not at all to blame does not really matter. Because the awful facts are out there—stark, horrible, true—about how a small handful of men at Penn State acted, or did not act, in the face of unfolding tragedy.

These men were draped, both literally and figuratively, in the colors of blue and white. Those are the colors that collectively stain us here in the uncertain new today. And those are the colors, too, that have marked us as targets for those who seek not justice, but vengeance.

Fairly or not, we may well suffer their wrath. In fact, I now believe that to be a very distinct possibility.

If you, like I, have built your autumns of the past around Penn State football, if you have counted on the comfort of those Happy Valley Saturdays for your escape from reality, if you had hoped to enjoy a lifetime’s worth those glorious college football afternoons both for yourself and for your children, well, the time has come to accept a new reality—a reality in which those Saturdays, those memories, those wonderful afternoons, may no longer be there.

Perhaps literally, perhaps metaphorically, Penn State football teeters on extinction. The program that you know today, or at the very least, the program that you knew of two weeks back, is very likely gone, and very likely gone forever.

You did nothing wrong. But others did. And now, well, now you’ll pay the price.

So my advice is simple.

Make alternate plans. Find something else to do, somebody else to root for, a new sport to follow, or a new way to spend your Saturdays.

Because your autumns very well may never be the same again.

***

[Editor's Note: We here at TCFA are proud to support the #ProudPSUforRAINN campaign, which over the past week has raised more than $420,000 for victims of child abuse. You can learn more about the campaign by clicking here.]