(This post contains colorful language which I’ve opted not to censor since I think it properly demonstrates my feelings on the matter. JB or anyone else, feel free to edit if you so choose. You have my blessing.)
As many have noted elsewhere, the NCAA handed down their punishment for Penn State today. There has been some very good, thorough, and thoughtful analysis of the punishment (much of it happening right here at the LoOG). And as much as I respect many of the voices I’ve heard weigh in on the topic, I’m increasingly disgusted by what is being said. Or, more accurately, what is not being said.
Let’s start with what appears to be the most divisive part of the punishment: Penn State vacating all wins since 1998, a penalty which oh-so-conveniently knocks Joe Paterno from the top spot of the leaderboard. My two cents on the matter? Why the fuck are we talking about football wins and losses in a situation that involves multiple children being violently sexually assaulted? The fact that the NCAA saw fit to weigh in on football games that were over and done with shows that they don’t get. They’re not even fucking close. And the breath that many of us (myself included!) have wasted on that topic shows that we don’t get it.
Allow me to explain…
Jerry Sandusky did horrible, unspeakable things for which he should spend the rest of his life in jail. I don’t know if child molesters are made or born, but that is what he is and was and I am confident to say he likely would have done what he did whether or not he ever stepped foot on the gridiron.
Joe Paterno, in covering up Sandusky’s heinous crimes, demonstrated a moral blindspot you could drive the Moon through. My question is, do we think that Paterno would have had this blindspot had he not been Saint JoePa, leader of men for the vaunted Penn State Nittany Lions Football Team? My belief is that he wouldn’t. If he was instead, Joseph Paterno, middle manager at Acme Box Co., would he have hesitated to turn in an employee he found raping children in the break room? Fuck no. But for some reason, the moral calculus was different when the thing at risk was the legacy of The Greatest Coach Who Ever Lived and a historically great football franchise* instead of a box company. And THAT is the 9000 pound elephant in the room.
Sometimes we tolerate horrible things in the pursuit of something greater. Sometimes we tolerate the occasional madman shooting up a crowded movie theater because the freedoms we’d sacrifice to guarantee it never happens are a far greater casualty (and these would extend well beyond gun control, if we truly wanted to *guarantee* it). We may not like it, but most of us are willing to make this trade off. Somehow, Joe Paterno and the others involved in the cover up, looked at the situation they were confronted with and said the harm done by reporting Sandusky somehow outweighed the harm done in not.
And many of us are too blame.
How much can we blame men like Paterno for acting as if they are above all else when we’ve spend decade after decade telling him he is above all else? How much can we blame men like the PSU Trustees for putting the football team’s interests ahead of all else when so much of us rabid fans damn near demand that on a regular basis? This absolves none of them of any of the culpability; those men chose to do what they did of their own free will and should bear punishment for it. But it also doesn’t mean that there isn’t a broader context, a broader culture, that this happened in, that so many of us are a part of. And vacated wins, lost scholarships, missed bowl games, and fines will do nothing to change that.
We, as sports fans (those of us who are sports fans… Russ and Mary, you’re off the hook), need to decide if we want to contribute to a culture that makes gods out of mere mortals and leads folks to thinking that something like football is more important than something like child sexual assault. We need not disavow ourselves from sports altogether, but should take a long look in the mirror and think about the proper perspective for sports. And, while we’re at it, it might behoove us to do the same for celebrities, politicians, and everyone else we build up in such ways.
* Something I’ve struggled with from the get go is why folks thought a cover up was necessary? If Joe Paterno and everyone else immediately outed Sandusky the moment they learned of his actions, would anyone look upon them with anything but the utmost respect? Why the felt the need to cover up, I’ll never know. They would have been lauded for doing the right thing had they actually done the right thing.
One thing I’ve noticed being tied together are the two following statements:
A) It’s asinine that they’re taking wins away from Penn.
B) That’s probably the only part of the punishment that the rubes care about.
I’d say that the wins being struck from the books like so many Nikolai Yezhovs (“no politics” “he started it”) is being done precisely because it is the only part of the punishment that many will feel. The stuff pertaining to scholarships or bowl games or other things all entail things that might not have happened anyway. Maybe the new coach would stink on ice and Penn would have a 0-whatever season. Maybe things wouldn’t have worked out. We don’t know.
But to take away something you thought you had? That draws blood… and it might be the only punishment felt by the people who would otherwise hem and haw and say that, at the end of the day, to be sure, all things considered, you have to keep things in perspective, in the final analysis.
I don’t think (B) is particularly true. To the extent that it is true, it’s related to the fact that the rest of the punishment is quite weak.
Will any of the punishments change anything going forward? They *MIGHT* right some wrongs or satiate a blood lust. But will any of them do anything going forward? As easy as it is to say, “Well, of course they will! No one will ever hide a child molester again.” Oh really? Twelves months ago, I’m sure we all would have said the same thing, only replacing the word “again” with the phrase “least of all, Joe Paterno.” If they don’t, then they are even worse than weak. They are pathetic.
And I don’t even know if the rubes care about the wins. In ten years, are people going to bemoan the fact that PSU didn’t really “win” all those games they won? Are fans going to forget the memories of the great victories? And did anyone really use all time wins when debating the greatness of a coach? The wins will be forgotten just as easily as the money.
My problem with the punishments is the motivation: Emmert said (paraphrase) that they are not intended to be merely punitive but to change Penn State’s culture as well.
First, if they are punitive, they’re targeting the wrong people. Only a handful of individuals engaged in this cover up – it certainly wasn’t institution wide the way, say, boosterism can overrun a program – and none of those people is affected by the imposed sanctions (while lots of innocent individuals will). Second, I don’t think the NCAA has a rightful role in trying to change a culture which isn’t institution wide, isn’t within their official jurisdiction (since none of the objectionable behavior relates to on-field student athletic issues), and for which there is already a mechanism of enforcement (civil and criminal courts).
This just seems like the NCAA overreaching, to me. And trying to justify it’s own existence. I think the proper response to this is the courts. Sandusky is in jail. Curley, Spanier, JoPa (if he were alive), some others, will probably end up there or paying huge civil penalties. The University will be on the hook for many many millions in damages, both in direct and indirect. I just don’t see that vacating wins or stripping them of scholarships accomplishes anything over and above what pursuing normal legal channels will achieve, especially wrt changing “institutional culture”.
A change in institutional culture MUST come from within. PSU will change, truly change, if and when it wants to. And not a moment sooner.
Really? Outside forces, if strong enough can’t have a big impact on institutional culture? Sure, the way they do so is by persuading people on the inside to change the culture, but the push in those cases still comes from the outside.
What everyone’s missing in the vacated wins is the effects it has on Penn State in the future. Everyone’s looking at it as being about the past, but what it really means is hat Penn State can say about itself in the future, about hat claims it can mske, what trophies it has (not what trophies it can display, but which it will actually posses). Was part of the reason to tarnish Joe Pa’s legacy? Fine, it deserves to be tarnished. But it still constrains Pu’s future publications and claims. That’s why it’s worth doing, even if superficially it seems too minor an issue compared to the child abuse that led to it.
Let’s face it. The NCAA can’t really punish the individuals responsible in the way they deserve, as that’s reserved for the justice system. So they did what they could in fact do.
Outside forces can be a factor. They might well change actions. But I don’t think they can change minds. Maybe they can make it such that certain folks with certain mindsets are chased out. But I don’t know that any punishment is going to make folks who thought football was more important than child sexual assault suddenly think differently.
Vacating wins isn’t an injustice. It might well serve an important purpose as you offer here. I just think that seeing an ESPN scroll with an updated list of All-Time Winningest Coaches makes me want to puke.
So they did what they could in fact do.
They went way outside what they’re authorized to do, and what precedent and they’re own rules have established that the can do, in doing what they did.
Stillwater,
I think that’s incorrect as a factual matter. The NCAA has quite a bit of leeway with its member institutions (which all joined voluntarily, and which can leave*), and PSU signed a consent agreement. I’m open to evidence that the NCAAA went beyond its authority, but I’m dubious.
*The real significance of the recent realignments in college football is that Big 10 and SEC could, acting in tandem, destroy the NCAA by walking away from it.
If the US government handed out a punishment without being able to cite any specific laws that were broken, without a trial of any kind, you’d flip your lid.
As you say, the NCAA is a voluntary organization, and that’s a lot different from a government, but there are more than zero parallels. The NCAA seized a very large amount of power with barely a nod toward anything textual, and then it used that power to hammer a bunch of 20-year-olds who haven’t done anything wrong. It’s at least a little suspect.
You know, any time the NCAA sanctions a program it punishes kids who didn’t do anything wrong, because it’s never all of them that are involved. So by your logic, the NCAA can’t do any effective sanctions against programs.
I think the way the NCAA sanctions programs could be improved, sure. It could start by working out enforcement mechanisms that target the people who were actually involved – “show cause” orders for coaches seem like a pretty good way to make that work, as do more timely punishments (which, of course, are not always possible).
Two of the things that keeps most NCAA punishments at least generally tied to the violations they punish are (a) a clear directive from the stated rules and bylaws, and (b) a conceptual tie between a school committing a football offense and the NCAA handing out a football punishment. In this case, (a) is murky at best and (b) does not exist.
I guess I’m not clear on why it has to be so narrowly circumscribed as you’re suggesting.
I’d give you a few reasons.
1. Let’s call this the “moral” argument. Punishing innocent people for the transgressions of others is, at least in a prima facie sense, unjust. There are nuances to this (is affirmative action a form of punishment or restitution?, etc), but in this case it’s fairly clear that these are punishments rather than reparations to victims, and they are inflicted on people who were not part of the crimes in the first place. At the very least, it’s extremely hard to justify a bowl ban for a class of players (and their coaches) when none of those people were in any way responsible for the crimes committed. Perhaps the fine portion of the sanctions clears the moral hurdle, though.
2. Let’s call this the “jurisdiction” argument. The NCAA has a specific job to do, and it’s not about policing wrongdoing qua wrongdoing. It’s about amateur sports, and those two words give them their jurisdiction. That is, for something to be punishable by the NCAA it should either imperil amateurism (paying players, for instance) or imperil sports (performance enhancing drugs, paying off the referees, etc). In this case, those things haven’t happened. Sandusky’s actions were criminal – evil, even – and Paterno’s cover up was horrifying. But it didn’t interfere with the amateur nature of Penn State football, nor did it translate into on-field advantages. The NCAA has no jurisdiction over this. The fact that they can’t cite any specific bylaws that were violated is not helping their case. Penn State didn’t break any NCAA rules, even if they managed to break most of the rest of the criminal and moral rules we can think of.
3. The weakest argument, but one that I think we should still think about, is the practical one. What is the point of all this? What is it going to do? Is it going to prevent this from happening again? What were the chances of this happening again anyway, and how is the threat of scholarship losses going to compare to the threat of massive social opprobrium like the kind Penn State is experiencing? What this looks like is a serious case of either CYA or, as Spencer Hall put it, “stabbing the corpse and demanding we applaud your bravery”. Either way, it’s just dumb. It doesn’t make the world a better place, and it screws over a bunch of kids. How is that justice?
Ryan,
1. Again, in the context of college athletics, taking this seriously means never being able to effectively punish a program. And the real reason for that is that in the normal scandal, although not necessarily this one (although perhaps here, too), the guilty party that the NCAA truly has no jurisdiction over is the booster base. The only way to hurt them is to hurt the program. I suppose if you got outraged over USC’s bowl ban, you’re at least consistent, but if you think that was an appropriate sanction-as I do-then you’ve already rebutted this argument.
2. You say they don’t have jurisdiction. I’m not sure as an empirical matter that you’re correct. They have jurisdiction over college athletics, and his scandal-the coverup-wasa direct consequence of college athletics. Normativelybyou may think they shouldn’t have jurisdiction, but empirically my best guess (subject to evidence-based revision) is that they do.
3. Most people who commit crims of passion aren’t going to repeat them, and aren’t deterred by punishment others have received.. So punishing them doesn’t serve a preventive purpose. I guess we should shake our fingers at them and then leave them alone. That’s how your logic travels. I don’t like the destination, so I’m not inclined to agree with that direction of travel. Anyway, I think it does actually serve a preventative function. If only those directly involved in the coverup are punished, college presidents and atletic urectirs are given an incentive to make sure they don’t know anything about what’s going on. Why create incentives for constructing plausible deniability? The incentive should be to make sure ADs and presidents have a tight enough grip that the program doesn’t become it’s own universe and a law unto itself. Will this sanction prevent future problems? One, we’ll never know, because you never know about a problem that didn’t occur. Two, that’s the wrong question because it places to much on this one sanction. The proper question is whether the NCAA taking a firm approach predictably has a tendency to reduce the frequency of these types of problems, and whether a predictable tendency to not take a firm approach has the effect of increasing the frequency. I don’t get why everybody is looking at the in isolation, as though it’s a total one-off situation, instead of seeing it as nested in a larger sequence of events. It’s not the child molestation that’s being sanctioned, but the conspiracy to cover up illegal activity, which could easily be repeated, in relation to a variety of crimes. Look, for example, at the cases of alleged rape at University of Colorado, or the attempt to cover up murder at Baylor. If you’re viewing his case in isolation, you’re looking at it in exactly the wrong way, IMO.
A great perspective, Kazzy.
You know, it’s an odd thing.
I look at what has happened to Paterno’s legacy, and still feel a sense of tragedy. This was, given his actions, unavoidable. In a more just world, he would have been alive to see his name dragged through the mud.
So it’s a torrent of mixed feelings. You’re absolutely right that the deification of Paterno likely played a role here. According to something TVD cited, it appears that the others were ready to go forward and he talked him out of it. Nothing less than St. Joe would have been able to do that. I mean, I’d like to think my alma mater would tell Paterno to go to hell, but I know they would tell our current coach to do so. Our current coach is well-liked, but he’s not a saint.
This is where the pageantry of it all, which is one of my favorite aspects of collegiate sports, can really get the best of us. We want the heroes, and the villains, and it’s all great. Until it leads to things like this.
I first suspected what Paterno & the rest of ’em feared so much was the possibility of lawsuit. But that fear would’ve led to Sandusky actually being kicked out at least, not them just rolling over and going back to sleep over it. So, hell if I know.
(those of us who are sports fans… Russ and Mary, you’re off the hook)
Oh, thank God. I don’t know if I’m capable of wanting to elevate sports stars to godlike status any less than I already do.
Well, you still need to insist that you absolutely do not condone child rape every 4.5 hours. But otherwise, yea, you’re good.
How often do you want children to be …
OK, probably going too far.
You’re a wicked man for even thinking that.