Academia, Criminal law, Justice, Media, Society

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”

  3. Mike, if I had Sandusky as a client, I would plead insanity for myself for taking his case.

    He sounded like a total ass. That interview is going to come back to haunt him. I cannot imagine why his attorney authorized him to give it, and if his attorney was present, why he did not cut Sandusky off when he started to make admissions about showering with the kids and touching them. If I had not heard many similar stories before, I would have been totally shocked as a member of the public.

  4. What’s Sandusky to do?. He needs the “orphan defense”:

    Murder your parents and then throw yourself on the mercy of the court as an orphan.

    As for his lawyer allowing the interview the only way I can figure it out is that they’re going to use an insanity plea.

  6. Mespo:

    what are the rules about hearsay and libel? Like for example if I heard someone who knows someone close to the Penn State story say something like Sandusky was pimping those children to donors of his charity. Is that libel in this purely hypothetical example?

  7. I watched part of that interview and then fast forwarded … when Sandusky had to repeat the question twice, pause … stumble …that was enough for me.

    Incredible but I guess when you’ve gotten away with so much for so long and everyone at the school and in the community has always accepted your excuses as truth because raping kids shouldn’t interfere with football and the money it generates, you figure the rest of the world will too.

  8. It’s an troubling dichotomy in my mind about wanting to see Sandusky put away for good if convicted, and being aghast at some of the tactics of the defense in this case. There’s some interesting lawyer going on. Seems Bob Costas had an interview scheduled with Sandusky defense counsel, Joe Amendola, Esq. Amendola offered to get his client to the phone for part of the interview. Part of the interview went like this:

    Costas asked probing questions in his interview : “Are you sexually attracted to young boys, to underage boys?”

    Sandusky repeated the question, paused briefly, repeated the question again and responded. “Am I sexually attracted to underage boys? Sexually attracted? You know, I enjoy young people. I love to be around them. Um, I, I, but no, I’m not sexually attracted to young boys.”

    Note to Amendola: No mulligans when your client is standing trial for his freedom.

    http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/15/us/pennsylvania-sandusky-case/index.html

  9. Elaine,

    Thank you for posting the two Dave Zirin pieces. Zirin is that rarity in the world of Sports Journalisms hagiographers, he is a real journalist and has shown remarkable insight through the years.

    I admit to being a sports fan, but I have always been bemused at the extremes team supporters go to and the centrality it becomes to their lives. Among many it is accepted that games trump the need to spend weekend time with ones family and loved ones. We have now the concept of “Man Caves” where the guys can be isolated from their families as they watch their favorite teams.

    The attachment many feel for their alma mater’s sports teams is to me obsessive and somewhat distasteful. I have teams I care about and might even watch on TV, providing my wife doesn’t need my company, but her need for my company (she dislikes sports) is more important to me than the game. When my children were growing up being with them on the weekends was more important to me than any game. However, I realize that among sports fans I am in the minority and for many their loved ones must cater to their need to get their game “fix”.

    Given that context of extreme fandom it is easy to realize how a college football coach can be raised to sainthood, as was Paterno. College Sports like pro sports is a lucrative business. It is all about elevating the particular game to the
    level of a world shaking event and its participants to Demi Gods, or Devils. The
    truth is that behind the scenes it is a seamy business rife with exploitation and driven by the profit motive. The typical sportswriter knows her/his job is to glorify the games and its participants. Actually being a journalist is what makes Mr. Zirin so special and worthy of praise.

  10. Elaine M.,

    I agree with you. I think Joe Pas fall from grace was his own ego. FWIW sometimes the sheriff forgets who the inmates are….

  11. Child Rape Cover-Up at Penn State Marks “Greatest Fall From Grace in History of U.S. Sports”
    Democracy Now
    Amy Goodman talks to Dave Zirin

  13. Elaine M.,

    That was very moving….I just wish people such as these could see the destruction that they parade on peoples lives…all because one good man…did not act when the time was right to do so….

  14. The World Joe Paterno Made
    Dave Zirin on November 14, 2011
    The Nation
    http://www.thenation.com/blog/164587/world-joe-paterno-made

    Meet John Matko. John Matko is a 34-year-old Penn State class of 2000 alumnus, distraught by the recent revelations that Coach Joe Paterno and those in charge at his alma mater allegedly shielded a serial child rapist, assistant Jerry Sandusky. He was livid that students chose to riot on campus this week in defense of their legendary coach. He was disgusted that the Board of Trustees decided to go ahead as planned with Saturday’s Nebraska game just days after the revelations became public. John Matko felt angry and was compelled to act. He stood outside Saturday’s Penn State–Nebraska game in Happy Valley and held up two signs. One read, “Put abused kids first.” The other said, “Don’t be fooled, they all knew. Tom Bradley, everyone must go.” (Tom Bradley is the interim head coach.)

    The response to Matko gives lie to the media portrayal of last Saturday’s game. We were told the atmosphere was “somber”, “sad” and “heart-rending”, as “the focus returned to the children.” The crowd was swathed in blue, because, we were told, that is the color of child abuse awareness (also the Penn State colors). The team linked arms emerging from the tunnel. They dropped to a knee with their Nebraska opponents at midfield before the game. Once again, broadcasters told us, “the players were paying tribute to the victims of child abuse.” We were told all of this, and I wish to God it was true.

    I don’t doubt the emotions in Happy Valley are genuine. I don’t doubt the searing shock and pain that must be coursing through campus. But this is the pain of self-pity not reflection. It’s the pain of the exposed not the penitent. Let’s go back to John Matko. Matko stood with his signs behind a pair of sunglasses. He wasn’t soapboxing, or preaching: just bearing silent witness. It was an admirable act, but no one bought him a beer. Instead, beer was poured on his head. His midsection was slapped with an open hand. Expletives were rained upon him. His signs were also kicked to the ground and stomped.

    As the Washington Times wrote, “Abuse flew at Matko from young and old, students and alumni, men and women. No one intervened. No one spoke out against the abuse.”

    One disapproving student said, “Not now, man. This is about the football players.”

    And with those nine words, we see the truth about Saturday’s enterprise. It was about the football program, not the children. It was morbid theater where people were mourning the death of a jock culture that somewhere along the line, mutated into malignancy. It’s a malignancy that deprioritized rape victims in the name of big-time football.

    The signs of this malignancy did not emerge overnight. Looking backward, there are moments that speak of the scandals to come. In 2003, less than one year after Paterno was told that Sandusky was raping children, he allowed a player accused of rape to suit up and play in a bowl game. Widespread criticism of this move was ignored. In 2006, Penn State’s Orange Bowl opponent Florida State, sent home linebacker A.J. Nicholson, after accusations of sexual assault. Paterno’s response, in light of recent events, is jaw-dropping. He said, “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? Geez. I hope—thank God they don’t knock on my door because I’d refer them to a couple of other rooms.” Joanne Tosti-Vasey, president of Pennsylvania’s National Organization for Women in Pennsylvania, was not amused. With chilling unintentional prescience, Tosti-Vasey responded, “Allegations of sexual assault should never be taken lightly. Making light of sexual assault sends the message that rape is something to be expected and accepted.” They called for Paterno’s resignation and short of that, asked to dialogue with Paterno and the team. Neither Paterno nor anyone in the power at Penn State accepted the invitation.

    This is the world Joe Pa made. It’s a world where libraries, buildings and statues bear his name. It’s a world where the school endowment now stands at over $1 billion dollars. It’s a company town where moral posturing acted as a substitute for actual morality. In such an atmosphere, seeing the players and fans gather to bow their heads and mourn Saturday wasn’t “touching” or “somber” or anything of the sort. It was just sad. It was sad because they still don’t get it.

    One PSU student, named Emily wrote the following to si.com’s Peter King,

    Truth is, if not for Paterno’s philanthropy and moral code (until his fatal lapse of judgment), I and thousands of others wouldn’t be here right now. If not for Paterno…Pennsylvania State might still be an agriculture school and State College might be lucky if there were a Wal-Mart within a 30-mile radius. Paterno made a huge mistake, but that doesn’t mean he’s not a good man.

    Bullshit. Emily’s words ring as false as the apologists for the Vatican, Wall Street, the military command at Abu Ghraib and any industry deemed “too big to fail.” The same moral code that Emily praises absolutely cannot be the same moral code that covers up child rape. To do so is to make the very notion of morality meaningless. Emily’s gratitiude that her school isn’t “30 miles from the nearest Wal-Mart” can’t justify defending Paterno. To do so, makes you complicit in the crimes and the cover-up. It also ensures that such a thing could happen again.

    On Saturday, while Matko endured the physical and verbal rage of the PSU faithful, hundreds gathered around the Paterno statue outside the stadium, laying down flowers and gifts. The pain might run deeply in Happy Valley, but the cancer runs deeper. To really move forward, the malignancy must be removed. Fire everyone. Shut down Happy Valley football for a year. Rebuild a healthier culture. Do whatever you have to do to make sure that the world Joe Paterno made has seen its last day.

  15. Now this shit is getting crazy…..

    Big Ten removes Joe Paterno’s name from trophy

    Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany said Penn State coach Joe Paterno’s name has been removed from the conference’s championship trophy, CBSSports.com reported.

    According to the Big Ten, the decision was made after the past week of turmoil at Penn State that included the grand jury investigation into charges of sexual abuse by former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky as well as the Board of Trustees’ firing of Paterno.

    “We believe that it would be inappropriate to keep Joe Paterno’s name on the trophy at this time,” Delany said. “The trophy and its namesake are intended to be celebratory and aspirational, not controversial. We believe that it’s important to keep the focus on the players and the teams that will be competing in the inaugural championship game.”

    The trophy, which will now be called the Stagg Championship Trophy after Amos Alonzo Stagg, will be given to the winner of the Big Ten’s first championship game Dec. 3 in Indianapolis.

    Read more: http://aol.sportingnews.com/ncaa-football/story/2011-11-14/big-ten-removes-joe-paternos-name-from-trophy?icid=maing-grid7%7Cmain5%7Cdl3%7Csec3_lnk2%7C112529#ixzz1dmnXwcIF

    Great-grandson of Amos Alonzo Stagg supports removal of Joe Paterno’s name on Big Ten trophy

    Robert Stagg, the great-grandson of Amos Alonzo Stagg, said he was notified by the Big Ten on Monday that Joe Paterno’s name has been removed from the conference championship trophy.

    The trophy had been named in honor of Paterno and Stagg and will be awarded to the winner of the Big Ten championship game Dec. 3 in Indianapolis. Amos Alonzo Stagg was an innovator who won 319 games in 57 years, most at the University of Chicago, which was once part of the Big Ten.

    http://www.freep.com/article/20111115/SPORTS07/111115004/Great-grandson-Amos-Alonzo-Stagg-supports-removal-Joe-Paterno-s-name-Big-Ten-trophy

  16. Perhaps a word in defense of the folks who “didn’t tell” is warranted here. I want to give you a template for a story I have seen 257 times in the last 18 years:

    Child is sexually abused by a man who is beloved and revered in the community;

    Other person who is neither abuser nor abused witnesses it or is told by the child about it;

    This other person DOES report it as such a person SHOULD;

    The authorities to whom it is reported tell the reporter that it did not happen;

    The reporter insists that it did happen;

    The child is then “GIVEN” to the alleged abuser because he says he loves the child and the reporter is so discredited that the child is considered to NEED to be in the CARE and CONTROL of the wrongly accused alleged abuser.

    THIS PLAYS OUT EVERY DAY IN OUR COURTS. So why do we blame people for not reporting suspected, or even WITNESSED, abuse?

  18. Ex-Coach Denies Charges Amid New Accusations
    New York Times, 11/14/11
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/15/sports/ncaafootball/jack-raykovitz-chief-of-second-mile-resigns-amid-penn-state-scandal.html

    Excerpt:
    STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — Close to 10 additional suspected victims have come forward to the authorities since the arrest of the former Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky on Nov. 5 on 40 counts of sexually abusing young boys, according to people close to the investigation. The police are working to confirm the new allegations.

  20. There is one hell of a lot of money at risk here … the spin is going to require massive doses of meclizine.

Comments are closed.