Submitted By Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
That ultimate question uttered by Senator Howard Baker encapsulated the Watergate Era as Congress grappled with assessing culpability of President Richard Nixon, who was then at the zenith of his presidency. Now almost forty years later, the nation is again captured by a fall from grace as steep and as fast as Nixon’s. And again that question has to be asked of “America’s Football Coach.”
While I’m certainly no Woodward or Bernstein, it seems my blog post about the expanding scandal has reached some folks in Pennsylvania with knowledge about the inner workings of the institution of Penn State Football and about the characters involved. One reached out to me with disturbing questions and a “theory” that has the distinct ring of truth. Here’s the version:
It’s 1999, and you’ve just been handed the American Football Coaches Association’s Assistant Football Coach of the Year award. The son of hard-working second generation Polish immigrants from Western Pennsylvania’s coal region, you graduated first in your class at Penn State after starting on the football team for three years. You’re coaching at your alma mater in a profession known as much for long hours, low pay, and eating its young as for being carried off the field in victory. Oh, you’ve had your share of shoulder pad rides, too. First, when you held everybody’s All-American (and arguably the finest player to ever play college football), Georgia’s Hershel Walker to 3.2 yeards per carry in the 1982 national title game. Then again in 1987 when your protegés intercepted Heisman Trophy winner, Vinny Testaverde, five times, in one of the sports most improbable victories over the heavily favored bad boy of American athletics, the infamous fatigue-wearing Miami Hurricanes, and in so doing vindicated the Nittany Lions’ hoary motto of “Victory with Honor.”
It’s your dream job and you’re coaching with one of the true legends of the profession. Your mentor is in his mid-70’s and you’ve been proclaimed his heir apparent by everyone who would listen. You’ve been approached by several schools to coach their floundering teams, including the University of Maryland, and even made the perfunctory rounds of interviews at places like the University of Virginia. You’ve produced 10 consensus All-Americans including NFL Hall of Famer, Jack Ham. You’ve been at your job for 20 years, and you’ve gained the respect of colleagues, peers, and the public alike for your charitable work and well-publicized interest in helping disadvantaged kids through a charity you founded. At age 55, you’re making good money — for an assistant coach — but a head coaching job would earn you ten times as much and give your family of six adopted kids and a devoted wife financial security. You’ve even written the definitive book on your area of expertise which you generously entitle, “Developing Linebackers the Penn State Way.” In short, you’re hot in your profession and uniquely poised to either succeed the legend or take one of the plum coaching jobs in America’s football pantheon. You know, the Notre Dames, Michigans, or Southern Cal’s of the world.
With all this professional and financial potential, what do you do? Well you retire, of course. You set yourself on a path of summer football camps, and chicken-dinner speeches with appearance fees earning roughly two-thirds of what you’ve made and orders of magnitude less that what you could make. You throw yourself into charity work from whence you derive some income and you rely on the largesse of a town where you preside as a demigod. But there are rumors.
In 1998, you’ve been investigated for “inappropriate” conduct with a minor. The mother of the child sets you up in sting operation where a detective hiding in a closet overhears you say, ” “I understand. I was wrong. I wish I could get forgiveness. I know I won’t get it from you. I wish I were dead.” Luckily, the DA in charge of the case rules the matter “unfounded,” declines to prosecute, and thankfully later winds up missing after a 60 mile pleasure ride. You’ve dodged a bullet. Yet, you resign just under a year later.
Joe Paterno has claimed ignorance of the 1998 episode, but according to a person who contacted me, that’s highly questionable. State College, Pa is a 40,000 person enclave devoted to Joe Paterno and Penn State — in that order. Hell, there’s a bronze statue of the man in the middle of campus replete with those thick, black glasses; William Penn just gets some pages on the Paterno Library book shelves. Located in the largely unpopulated heart of Pennsylvania, the town was little more than an encampment when Joe Paterno arrived in 1950 with another icon of Pennsylvania’s venerable football coaching priesthood, Rip Engle. Engle, who was paranoid of losing even against vastly inferior teams, inculcated his charge with the notion that a coach must exercise iron-fisted rule over his program, and to borrow a modern bromide, “what happens inside the program, stays inside the program.” Brown University graduate, Joe Paterno was a good student to his football teacher, and when he took over for Engle in 1966 he inherited a strong football program and a town enamored of it.
Football coaches call their profession a “brotherhood.” Almost exclusively male and established as a true hierarchy, the work is exhausting as every aspect of the opponent must be broken down, scrutinized, and prepared for as if for a sea-borne military invasion. It’s overkill sure, but the adherents love the challenge and, most of all, the camaraderie in pursuit of the challenge. It harkens back to a time of face-painted men pledging their lives around a camp fire to the hunt of some sabre-tooth tiger for the glory of the tribe. It’s machismo pure and simple and most coaches will tell you it’s their life. Oh, they pay dutiful homage to “family and faith” of course, but it’s football that keeps the brotherhood together in almost an exercise of devotion. As I mentioned in the earlier post, it’s a religion in most every sense — ritual, zealotry, ornamental dress, and rigid tenets. Probably the most important tenet is that coaches live out every win and loss together. Like most closed circles of the faithful, they talk, they argue, and they critique their fellows — all the time.
With that background is it really plausible, that in a town as ga-ga over football as State College is, Paterno really didn’t know about Sandusky’s run-in with law enforcement? Is State College immune from the marriage that all authority figures have for one another in most every other small town. You know like when the police chief and the high school football coach meet over coffee to discuss who’s handling security for Friday’s game and whether that trouble-making Jones kid will be there. Or when the mayor runs into the school superintendent and they talk about the kid who bullied the mayor’s little precious. These conversations go on every day in every small town in America — and most big ones, too.
Put those little facts together with the fact that Paterno did not attend Sandusky’s retirement party, and was rarely seen outside of the football facility with Sandusky, and you might wonder what happened to the relationship after 1998. You might wonder why Sandusky quit applying for head coaching jobs. You might even conclude that Coach Paterno nudged his former right-hand man out of his position at age 55, and refused to recommend him for any job at the head of another football program. No, not even at Virginia or Maryland who were desperate for a big name, sure winner and who rarely ever played Penn State. Nobody ever explained why Sandusky didn’t get those jobs despite their stated interest and his brightly burning star. Just the usual, “we have a number of good candidates … blah, blah, blah.” You might conclude that Penn State knew about the transgression with the child and, in exchange for his leaving the Program, cut a deal to grant him and his charity unfettered access to the program and satellite campuses, but no direct role in its operation with young men. That way, you see, there’s no taint. No questions on the propriety of a program that made $51 million for the school last year and funded 26 academic departments — all on the efforts of 18-22 year old-young men. Nope, no questions indeed, except the big one whose answer may be locked away in some ancient personnel files that seem to have the nasty habit of getting lost amid all that moving that goes on within campus departments.
What does a person do who’s banished from the priesthood? How do you react, after a life of high achievement in every sphere, and then are abruptly denied your goal when it is within your grasp? What do you feel, and how do you act on those feelings? Those are the questions that can only be answered by answering the first one I asked.
~Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
AY,
Thanks for the link.
Mark,
Here is the link to the Grand Jury Indictment….
http://www.attorneygeneral.gov/uploadedFiles/Press/Sandusky-Grand-Jury-Presentment.pdf
Mark,
Excellent….well written piece….As Mike S stated it is one of the best if not best posts by a guest blogger written…I will say that it is the best written…Thank you…Are you per chance writing a novel soon…
How much do you want to bet there was a whole lot of trash talk going on at the line of scrimmage today. The Penn State players are going to have to learn to live with it. So are their fans.
This level of success on the football field and revenue generated from it, clearly places Coaches Paterno and Sandusky among the most respected professionals in their field. Such success would not have been possible had he not met or exceeded the highest standards of their profession in operating a football program…
Had Coach Paterno or Coach Sandusky’s conduct of their program been outside the range of accepted practices, it would have been impossible for them to receive so many awards and recognitions, which typically involve intense scrutiny from peers who may or may not agree with his program …
Sex allegations darken once stellar career
By Wayne Drash, CNN
http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/12/us/penn-state-scandal/
Excerpt:
Grooming young boys
The coach’s actions, according to his accusers, followed a pattern. He’d invite them places, pick them up in his car and then, they say, place his hand on their thigh while driving.
At the Penn State football facility, the grand jury alleges, he’d take them to work out and then suggest they shower together, where the touching progressed: soap fights, back rubs and naked bear hugs. It would allegedly lead to more.
Some accusers described a basement room in Sandusky’s house where they stayed overnight. He’d lie down and tickle them, rub their backs, and blow on their stomachs, they said. One alleged victim, now 24, told the grand jury he “would roll over on his stomach to prevent Sandusky from touching his genitals.”
If any of the boys tried to avoid him, the coach would stalk them by calling dozens of times and by visiting their homes, according to the grand jury report.
He’d try to regain their favor by buying them gifts: shoes, electronics, clothes, anything a kid might want.
The boy who traveled to the Alamo Bowl with Sandusky is 27 now. He told the grand jury his first uncomfortable contact with the coach occurred in 1996 or 1997 while they were swimming. It was as if the coach were testing to see how the boy “would respond to even the smallest physical contact,” he testified. He said he was 12 or 13 when he was “singled out by Sandusky.”
The boy would become a “fixture in the Sandusky household,” traveling with him to games and charity events, according to the grand jury. Sandusky listed the boy as family, along with his wife, for the Alamo Bowl trip.
By then, the alleged victim testified he had been sexually assaulted repeatedly by Sandusky over two years — on campus, in football facilities, and at the resort where the football team stayed before home games.
He said Sandusky told him he could be a walk-on at Penn State one day.
This level of success in proposing research, and obtaining funding to conduct it, clearly places Dr. Mann among the most respected scientists in his field. Such success would not have been possible had he not met or exceeded the highest standards of his profession for proposing research…
Had Dr. Mann’s conduct of his research been outside the range of accepted practices, it would have been impossible for him to receive so many awards and recognitions, which typically involve intense scrutiny from scientists who may or may not agree with his scientific conclusions…
Clearly, Dr. Mann’s reporting of his research has been successful and judged to be outstanding by his peers. This would have been impossible had his activities in reporting his work been outside of accepted practices in his field.
Joe Paterno’s Troubling Attitude Toward Sex Charges
by Nick Summers
Nov 12, 2011 1:18 AM EST
Joe Paterno’s fall from grace came as a shock, but only to those who missed signs of ethical decay in his football regime. Nick Summers on Paterno’s troubling view of abuse charges.
The Daily Beast
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/11/12/joe-paterno-s-troubling-attitude-toward-sex-charges.html
Excerpt:
Four years after Penn State head coach Joe Paterno was told that his longtime defensive coordinator had allegedly sexually abused a child in the team showers, it appeared that the legendary coach still did not think that sexual assault was such a big deal.
In 2006, on the eve of the Orange Bowl, Paterno had this to say about a Florida State linebacker named A. J. Nicholson who had been accused of sexually assaulting a woman: “There’s so many people gravitating to these kids. He may not have even known what he was getting into, Nicholson. They knock on the door; somebody may knock on the door; a cute girl knocks on the door. What do you do?”
Paterno continued to a group of reporters: “Geez. I hope—thank God they don’t knock on my door, because I’d refer them to a couple of other rooms.”
After Paterno’s comments became public, the National Organization for Women called for his resignation.
“I’m not going to say anything about it,” Paterno told ESPN a few days later. “Most people know me. I am what I am.”
Paterno earned much of his lustrous reputation for insisting on high standards of discipline from his players—benching them for skipping class or earning poor grades. He was fired this week after the publication of a grand-jury report described how he did not go to the police in 2002, after a graduate assistant in the football program told him what he saw in the team showers: Jerry Sandusky, Paterno’s former defensive coach, sexually abusing a 10-year-old boy. Sandusky has been charged with preying on young boys over a 15-year period.
To many, Paterno’s fall from grace has come as a sudden and stunning shock. But in recent years, the football regime over which he presided like a god had begun to show signs of ethical decay. A search of media and court records by the Daily Beast reveals a program at Penn State marred by allegations of sexual aggression. At times those incidents met with apparent indulgence by Paterno and college authorities. Paterno’s failure to report Sandusky’s alleged assault was not the only time the head coach appeared to have an ambiguous approach toward members of his program accused of sexual misconduct.
In late 2002, Penn State cornerback Anwar Phillips was accused by a classmate of sexual assault, and the university suspended him for two semesters. But before his suspension began, the Nittany Lions were to play Auburn in the middle of January in the Capital One Bowl. Paterno put Phillips in uniform.
Mike S.
“JoePa probably is a nice man who became too attached to the adulation to want anything to tarnish his image and due to the adulation he had the hubris to believe he could get away with it.”
He may be a nice man–but is he a good man? A good man wouldn’t try to get away with anything so abhorrent.
Watched the Penn State – Nebraska game for a while today and tuned out happily at halftime with Nebraska leading 17 to 0. Final score was 17 -14. I must admit I wanted PS to lose, before the game started, but one of the announcers said that there was talk that if PS won, the team would take the game-ball to Joe Paterno’s, house to present it to him. Hearing that stirred my anger and I would have liked to have seen the team destroyed. Now I have close friends whose children went to PS and who have supported the school through the years. When I spoke to them last they had mixed feelings. To me that is understandable knowing what an icon of seeming decency Paterno had become through the years. He literally created PS as a major school through his success in creating their football program.
Humans, myself included, must realize about others, what we know most about ourselves and that is that no one deserves idolization, because we all are flawed. This isn’t about anything like Original Sin, but is because we are not all that different from other predatory animals, except perhaps more skillful. To be recognized among humanity as a great person requires gobs of ego and with an overweening ego comes hubris.JoePa probably is a nice man who became too attached to the adulation to want anything to tarnish his image and due to the adulation he had the hubris to believe he could get away with it.
Scandal Exacts Toll on Second Mile Donations
By KRIS MAHER, ANN ZIMMERMAN and JOHN W. MILLER
Wall Street Journal
11/12/11
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203537304577032451854683634.html
Excerpt:
The charity associated with the Pennsylvania State University sex-abuse scandal, Second Mile, is coming under fire from donors and state lawmakers.
A major donor is pulling back support, and a state senator is calling for the charity’s chief executive to step down as well as raising questions about consulting fees paid to the founder, who is accused of sexually abusing eight boys over a 15-year period.
Between 2001 and 2008, Second Mile paid Jerry Sandusky nearly half a million dollars in consulting fees, according to federal filings. During that time, the Pennsylvania attorney general has alleged, Mr. Sandusky used the nonprofit’s programs, such as an overnight camp at Penn State, to meet boys whom he then allegedly molested. A lawyer for Mr. Sandusky has said his client is innocent.
State Sen. Wayne Fontana, a Democrat from Pittsburgh, said Friday that Second Mile CEO John Raykovitz should resign. “There has to be some consequences,” he said. “In this case, stepping down is the easy consequence.” Mr. Fontana said Second Mile, started by Mr. Sandusky in 1977 to help troubled boys, should have ended its relationship with the former Penn State football defensive coordinator when it first learned of allegations, rather than continuing to pay him. Mr. Raykovitz could not be reached for comment.
“If they knew or even suspected his alleged activities then they should have terminated their association with him,” he said.According to a grand jury report, Mr. Raykovitz was told of inappropriate conduct between Mr. Sandusky and a youth in a Penn State shower in 2002. Mr. Raykowitz is one of two employees at the Second Mile earning more than $100,000—the other being his wife, Katherine Genovese, who is executive vice president.
Mark’s post captures the gist of it. This is the sort of thing that happens in insular large organizations. I’ve known several examples from my academic contacts, my work in the military and people I’ve known who’ve worked in industry. My guess is that Sandusky was given a year to find another job and allowed to keep his pension. The assumption was that he’s go elsewhere and not stay in State College. I’ve known people who’ve been given similar soft landings but have failed to take the hint. I’m guessing that Sandusky could have gone to a smaller school in PA where his coaching credentials would be taken at face value. It’s not unusual for coaches to retire but continue in some capacity at another institution. Perhaps Paterno was unwilling to write a letter and that got notices, although I suspect a lot of places wouldn’t have bothered to ask for a reference.
Much has been made here of coaching, athletics, etc., but similar things happen in regular academia. A once prominent figure in my subfield recently was sentenced to prison after misappropriating funds. Investigation of this apparently began after he had broken off an affair with a colleague. he had a long history of sexually harassing female undergraduates and had bounced from university to university. Along the way, he had held positions at two of the most prestigious institutions in our field. In fact he went from being kicked out of one of these places, moving to a third tier institution, and then to a first tier one. The third tier place canned him for misappropriating funds–the same thing that landed him in jail but on a smaller scale. This was not a “nice person”. He interviewed at one department where he was found to be so obnoxious that they took him to the airport the better part of a day early and cut short the interview. His rep followed him, but he still found jobs and finished his career at a credible university in a highly responsible administrative position.Essentially, it was like the Catholic Church, except this was a relatively liberal minded discipline and a series of similarly liberal minded places. In discussing this man’s case with colleagues recently, it became evident that people knew of other academics in our field who had pretty much done the same things and been accorded the same lack of discipline along the way. Like this man, they had done notable, but hardly earth shattering work. In other words, they weren’t in a professional class analogous to Sandusky.. We should take no comfort from Sandusky being part of a world that is easy to criticize. Core areas of academia do the same thing to abusers.
tweet of the day from twitter.com/PatriotNews
“Most of the #PennState crowd wearing blue in support of sex abuse victims”
OR, they’re wearing blue because it’s one of the school colors
queue Simpsons reference
Lisa: That’s specious reasoning, Dad.
Homer: Thank you, dear.
Sandusky, Penn State case timeline
http://espn.go.com/college-football/story/_/id/7212054/key-dates-penn-state-nittany-lions-sex-abuse-case
Bron,
I was a teacher for many years. I try to never let lies or misinformation go unanswered. Bdaman is helping me to prove that he’s been wrong about the Climategate story. If you call that brilliance…so be it.
😉
lol
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PmMFaVzbzc
Carl, um, Bron, being that you also think Rand, Rothbard and von Mises are brilliant when they are demonstrably not, it’s important to keep your assessment of Bdaman’s brilliance in context because equally so, it is demonstrably not so either. Neither of you boys had sense to realize that trying to thread jack with your AGW denier nonsense on a thread about adults abusing children was going to backfire horribly so careful not to hurt your arm patting yourselves on the back. Timing, forum and audience are crucial to both comedy and propaganda. Thanks for providing much inadvertent comedy in your failure as propagandists. I know it wasn’t on purpose, but funny is where you find it.
P.S. Bdaman’s nonsense may not be a big deal, but it certainly isn’t a Baby Ruth either.
Bron: He is brilliant.
brilliance is not a trait that’s generally considered necessary for shitting in the pool, which, at least as far as I can have seen, is the troll’s raison d’être
oh goody, is this the thread where the house troll cherry picks data in order to support his masters claim that climate scientists cherry pick data?
so amusing
Elaine:
now you really are hijacking the thread. 🙂
See how adroitly Bdaman suckered you into posting. He is brilliant.
All I did was write one small sentence.
“Climategate” Scientists Cleared of Wrongdoing – Again
By Alex Knapp | Forbes – Wed, Aug 24, 2011
http://news.yahoo.com/climategate-scientists-cleared-wrongdoing-again-035209228.html
Once again, Dr. Michael Mann and other climate scientists have been investigated by a third party to see if there was any wrongdoing in the “Climategate” scandal. And once again, they were cleared of any wrongdoing. They had been previously cleared by an International Panel of Scientists last year, by a panel at Penn State, and have been cleared by various other agencies as well. This time, the investigation was conducted by the National Science Foundation, and you can read the report in full here. Like the other investigations, the NSF found no evidence of falsifying data, manipulation of data, or destruction of data by Dr. Michael Mann or any of the climate research scientists based at the University of East Anglia.
As the Atlantic’s James Fallows notes, this is an important story to highlight:
I go out of my way to mention this for several reasons. First, because a serious scientist has been vilified, without basis, mainly because his work bears on current politics. “Oh, never mind” clearance from charges rarely gets as much publicity as the original charges themselves. The fact that every scientific body examining Mann’s behavior has exonerated him deserves publicity and emphasis.
I quite agree. It’s one thing to disagree with someone’s methods, data, or conclusion. It’s quite another to bear false witness against someone because they’re reached a conclusion you disagree with – or because you simply refuse to believe the data. As the NSF report notes:
The research in question was originally completed over 10 years ago. Although the Subject’s data is still available and still the focus of significant critical examination, no direct evidence has been presented that indicates the Subject fabricated the raw data he used for his research or falsified his results.
The bottom line is that there is simply no evidence that Michael Mann or any of the other scientists at East Anglia have lied or falsified data. As Phil Plait succinctly put it, “all the outrage, all the claims of fraud and fakery, were just — haha — hot air.”
*****
Mann was cleared by three different “third parties”–not be his own university.