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Down In the Valley I: Penn State – What Did They Know and When Did They Know it

Submitted By Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger

Who Are Penn State?

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

190 thoughts on “Down In the Valley I: Penn State – What Did They Know and When Did They Know it”

  2. Mike S.,

    Thanks for responding to my question. I may not be as liberal as you think. I lived a much more conservative lifestyle in my early adulthood than you. I married my high school sweetheart and didn’t do drugs. In fact, I still live what some might consider a “conservative” life. That said, I believe I have a progressive viewpoint. I think one can be progressive and not be bound to any particular ideology or party. I am neither devoted to nor a militant supporter of the Democratic party. I have been very disappointed in President Obama and in many of the Democrats serving in Washington. I contributed to Obama’s campaign in 2008. I don’t intend to do so in 2012. I will, however, contribute to the campaign of Elizabeth Warren and do everything I can to help her get elected to the Senate.

    My reason for asking the question:

    Puzzling wrote:
    “The vast majority of guest posts here are monotone, partisan attack pieces that buy right into the false debate our political duopoly has constructed. JT’s weekday pieces and topic selection stand apart from the self-congratulatory echo chamber the guest posters have created for themselves after hours. This Esposito piece is one of too few exceptions.”

    You responded to puzzling by saying that I was more partisan than you. I admit that it didn’t sit well with me. It seemed to me that you were echoing what puzzling had said–in regard to me. I think that the words progressive and partisan have very different meanings. I wanted to make sure that I understood what you were attempting to say about me.

  5. “I am less partisan than Elaine…”

    I’d like to know what you meant by that comment.

    Elaine I simply meant that you were more a progressive than I am. It was not meant as a critique, or a put down, merely an observation which was part of a point I was making that the guest bloggers are not heterogeneous in belief. I apologize for upsetting you even in a small way, since I have great respect for what you bring to the blog. Your research skills have continually supplied us all with valuable/voluminous information.

  7. Mespo,

    Women’s Rights Group Filed Rape Lawsuit Against Penn State In ’02
    Suit Filed Against University At Same Time Of Sandusky Investigation
    WTAE, 11/10/11
    http://www.wtae.com/r/29740682/detail.html

    Excerpt:

    PITTSBURGH — Team 4’s Jim Parsons reported Thursday night that a women’s rights group filed a lawsuit against Penn State University on behalf of an alleged rape victim at the same time the university was investigating allegations against former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky.

    “The thought that the very week that we filed our complaint in the Jane Doe case a child was being raped in the showers is shocking and horrifying to me,” said Sue Frietsche, of the Women’s Law Project.

    According to a grand jury report, it was the first week of March 2002 when a Penn State graduate assistant saw Jerry Sandusky allegedly sexually assaulting a 10-year-old boy.

    The Women’s Law Project sued Penn State on behalf of a former female student who went to police in 1999 to say that she was raped by two university wrestlers, identified as Jean Celestin and Nate Parker.

    The female student also said the two men began stalking her.

    “They followed her. They called her names. They publicized her name. They tortured her. And the school’s response was a slap on the wrist,” said Frietsche.

    The university allowed the two men to remain in school and as members of the wresting team under scholarships.

    Both men were charged. Parker was acquitted, but a jury found Celestin guilty and he was sentenced to six months in jail after receiving letters of support from university administrators.

    Nine years later, the Women’s Law Project said it sees a link between their case and the current sex abuse allegations at the university.

  8. Mespo,
    The unreported rape or the rapes that the schools brush off are rising and they seem to involve athletes. Notre Dame has had some issues as of late.

  11. and don’t forget about the $541,184 grant from the stimulus package and the 1.9 million million dollar grant from the National Science Foundation.

  12. Penn State scandal prompts anger, reflection
    After shocker at school, should sports ever be king?
    November 13, 2011|By Peter Schworm
    Boston Globe
    http://articles.boston.com/2011-11-13/news/30395024_1_college-sports-college-athletics-joe-paterno

    Excerpt:
    Authorities have condemned Penn State for failing to report suspected abuse by Jerry Sandusky, a former assistant coach under Paterno who is charged with sexually abusing eight boys over a 15-year span. University employees were told of at least two instances but did not alert police, authorities say. Paterno was told of one, and informed his superiors – but he did not press the matter further.

    Education specialists predict that the alleged failures at Penn State will prompt college administrators to analyze their sexual misconduct policies and reemphasize reporting requirements.

    “Every college and university in the country will be very carefully reviewing their policies around sexual misconduct and reporting of sexual crimes,’’ said Terry Hartle, senior vice president at the American Council on Education, an influential group that represents college presidents.

    Hartle and others stopped short of blaming the scandal on the football culture at Penn State, where Paterno was a titanic figure, winning more games than any other major-college coach.

    “For all the issues involving intercollegiate athletics, and I’m the first to say there are plenty, I think this is more the setting than the cause,’’ Hartle said.

    But others saw a broader context at work, and said the university’s inaction was a clear attempt to protect the well-crafted – and highly lucrative – brand of Penn State football.

    “This happened because Penn State decided it was going to put football above all the cherished values of higher education,’’ said Allen Sack, a professor of management at the University of New Haven and prominent critic of major college sports. “In this instance, the entire university bowed to football.’’

    At the top levels, college sports are a huge source of revenue, and even at smaller schools, major sports are often seen as a way to generate alumni support and boost their profile with nationally televised appearances.

    Last year, the NCAA signed a 14-year, $10.8 billion television deal for the wildly popular men’s basketball tournament.

    With that incentive, colleges have spent escalating sums to field top teams. In its report “Restoring the Balance,’’ the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics found that from 2005 to 2008 athletic spending rose much more than academic spending. In many major conferences, universities spent between six and 10 times more on athletes than non-athletes.

  13. Charity chief resigns amid Penn State scandal
    USA Today
    http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2011-11-14/penn-state-second-mile-resign/51196106/1

    Excerpt:
    The head of a charity at the center of the Penn State sexual abuse scandal resigned Sunday, the organization announced today.

    Second Mile CEO Jack Raykovitz is the latest person to be ousted in the aftermath of charges by a Pennsylvania grand jury that former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky used his position at the charity to molest at least eight young boys over 15 years. Last week, Penn State fired its president and legendary football coach Joe Paterno.

    Raykovitz’s resignation came as Second Mile’s board said it had hired an outside law firm. The firm will investigate how Second Mile responded to previous reports that Sandusky had abused boys he met through the charity.

    Second Mile’s board said in a statement posted on its website Monday that the investigation will “assess our internal policies, procedures and processes; and make recommendations regarding the organization’s future operations.”

    The board said the review should be done by December. Board members could not be reached Monday morning.

    Raykovitz said in a statement on Second Mile’s website that he hopes “that my resignation brings with it the beginning of that restoration of faith in the community of volunteers and staff that, along with the children and families we serve, are The Second Mile.”

  16. Elaine,

    There has been, from the beginning, a campaign, small but persistent, against the blog owner’s use of Guest Bloggers. Puzzling’s half-truths are not surprising. Accuracy is of little importance to certain individuals once they adorn themselves with war feathers. They strut, they preen, they talk trash.

    Throw a little cold water on ’em and move on. 😉

  18. Elaine M, thanks for the posting. I’d like to add to it although I don’t have time to gather the links. At a conference of the mid-Atlantic Region of the US Public Health Service in, oh, I’d say, about 1997 or so, one of the presenters (she had been a US PHS doctor for 20+ years) gave the assembled crowd (mostly providers) some pointers on which patients to do a “rule out child abuse in history” on. She said: “Three or more symptoms in two or more systems, unexplained symptoms left untreated, a cluster of illnesses coming at an age when they are not expected, or any other persistent mystery in the chart.”

    Most of the providers I spoke with would offer, at the times when we gathered for meals or for chit chat during the three-day conference, various cases they had that illustrated these points. The variety was astounding. In each case, however, when some psychological, psychiatric or concerted medical/psychological approach was instituted, progress resulted. One doctor (New York practice but originally Puerto Rican) observed that the patients needed permission to consider their abuse history as part of their medical history before any other steps could be taken. The result of the conference was that most providers decided to add questions about child abuse and early experiences to their “initial patient questionnaires.”

    The fact that this is not routinely taught in med school is, in my opinion, a part of our general social cover-up. Parents and teachers (and others who deal with children) should actually realize that child abuse is a for of toxin; if there were social and professional recognition of this, we might find that cover-ups were harder and protective policies were easier to institute.

  19. Jerry Sandusky’s daughter-in-law gets restraining order to keep Penn State ‘paedophile’ away from grandchildren
    – Jill Jones, ex-wife of Matt Sandusky, went to court after hearing charges
    – Her two girls and one boy are forbidden from staying at grandparents’ home
    – Sandusky’s wife tried to convince Ms Jones that there would be no danger
    – Jon Sandusky, director of personnel at Cleveland Browns, has gone on leave
    By LAURIE WHITWELL
    11/14/11
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2061216/Jerry-Sanduskys-ex-daughter-law-gets-restraining-order-Penn-State-paedophile-grandkids.html

    Excerpt:
    Jerry Sandusky’s former daughter-in-law has obtained a legal order barring the ex-Penn State coach from seeing three of his grandchildren.

    Jill Jones, who was once married to Matt Sandusky, went to court to stop the accused paedophile from having access to their two daughters, aged nine and seven, and one son, aged five, according to documents.

    A Grand Jury indictment alleges Sandusky, 67, sexually abused eight boys, some as young as seven, over a 15-year period. He denies the allegations.

    After hearing the horrific charges on November 5, Ms Jones urged her ex-husband to keep the children away from their grandfather, The Daily reported.

    Later that day Sandusky’s wife Dorothy sent Ms Jones a text message informing her that Matt had taken the children to her State College, Pennsylvania home, but that Sandusky was not present.

    Mrs Sandusky also phoned Ms Jones to try to persuade her that the children would be safe around her husband, the documents said, according to The Daily.

    Ms Jones was unwavering, though, and successfully obtained a restraining order forbidding the children from sleeping over at their grandparents’ home and banning Sandusky from seeing them unsupervised.

    Although there is no record that Ms Jones ever accused her ex-father-in-law of abusing her children, there is a ‘fundamental disagreement over the validity of the charges against Jerry Sandusky and the risk he poses to children,’ the court documents said, according to The Daily.

  20. Penn State Scandal: Victim Begins Civil Case as Investigation Widens
    By KEVIN DOLAK
    Nov. 14 ,2011
    http://abcnews.go.com/US/penn-state-scandal-victim-hires-lawyer-civil-case/story?id=14946622#.TsEn8RyKQRg

    Excerpt:
    As the investigation of the child sexual assault charges leveled at former Penn State football coach Jerry Sandusky widens, at least one alleged victim has now hired an attorney to explore a civil lawsuit.

    Pennsylvania attorney Ben Andreozzi told ABC News he has been retained by one of Sandusky’s alleged victims to explore a civil lawsuit against not only against the former coach, but anyone who may have not reported the alleged attacks against his client. That could include a number of officials and staff at Penn State University and The Second Mile charity which Sandusky founded and helped run.

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