Joe Paterno and Penn State Are Not Alone In Their Guilt

The report issued today by former FBI director Louis Freeh regarding the incidents at Penn State has added a huge amount of very unsettling information to the story of Jerry Sandusky, Joe Paterno, and the cover-up of the worst crime to involve a football program probably ever.  Honestly I’ve watched more coverage than I had any inclination to, and I’ve heard just about anyone that’s watched a football game weigh in on how this effects the legacy of Penn State an Paterno as its coach.  Sadly, in all this discussion, there have been four major issues that have escaped either the cognizance or the journalistic integrity of the hundreds of talking heads getting their 15 minutes.  For the record: I think that immediate reactions, especially in a situation like this, are a large part of the failure of our current media.  We have traded perspective for immediacy, and we have no hope of going back.  Worse yet, Matt Millen will never be called to task for his equivocation of his feelings about Paterno in light of Freeh’s report, and neither will Mark May for his outright condemnation.  Not that they should be challenged on substance, as I understand what each was attempting to impart, but that in the first half-hour after the Freeh report was read, they were willing to appear on camera and try to make substantive comments without fully processing this new information first.  Despite what the oversensitive culture of Americans-Agaisnt-“Ism”s would have you believe, no person can process this type of information at the desired rate, especially those closest to the situation.  Emotion clouds rationality; immediacy is a disease and perspective is the cure.  Sadly, our American society is currently enamored with emotion and immediacy, God help us all.

With that pontificating over, let me address the four aspects of this particular story that are the most difficult or troubling and are receiving the least (if any) discussion.

1) Joe Paterno’s legacy will lack any depth.

From here on out, Paterno will be a snapshot of what could go wrong.  The thousands of young men that he tutored and aided throughout his tenure will be brushed aside so that we can focus on his most massive shortcoming.  To ignore that Paterno utterly failed to attempt to stop Sandusky (if he even believed that his best friend was doing/could do such a thing) would be ludicrous.  But to remember him ONLY as the man who didn’t do enough and covered up his inaction is also to shortchange the amount of good he did.

2) The Paterno Family (Jay especially) could do with a reality check.

Undoubtedly someone, somewhere, is making a boatload of cash to “advise” the Paterno’s on their public image in the wake of this news.  Whoever that person is/those persons are should be euthanized with all deliberate speed.  To “hold the line” and maintain the integrity of JoePa in the face of unquestionable damning evidence is downright stupid.  Jay Paterno actually contended that, “the idea that there was some big concealment is an unfair characterization.”  Obviously Jay Paterno has been gifted either with blissful ignorance or the unmatched inability to process factual information. 

Fact: in 1998 Sandusky was viewed engaging in an inappropriate act with a minor. 

Fact: Joe Paterno did report this information, at least to some degree, to his superiors.[1] 

Fact: for whatever reason, this information did not become public knowledge, nor was it pursed beyond whatever measures JoePa took until the case was brought against Sandusky late last year.

Fact: Sandusky was convicted of 45 counts of sexual assault on a minor.

Thus, if Sandusky was first ‘discovered’ in 1998, but not charged and tried until 2011/2012, then one of two things happened.  Either the report was pursued faithfully and nothing came of it, or the report was buried (or “covered up” or some other synonym) until the first of Sandusky’s accusers came forward, finally blowing the lid off of the whole thing.  Jay Paterno claims that the latter couldn’t have happened, while still admitting the former was not the case either in a hugely equivocating statement that, “It can be argued that Joe Paterno didn’t do enough.”  You’re goddamn right it can.  And it can also be said that the facts show an undeniable concealment of the facts, no matter what Jay Paterno believes.  I don’t begrudge him the difficulty of learning all these horrible things about his father, with whom he worked closely and has recently lost, but at some point reality needs to break through the cloud of emotion and sink in.  Obviously the media would have hounded the Paterno family for comment, and they did a relatively noble thing by trying to get out in front of the report, but whatever advice they’re getting they should do the exact opposite.  Jay’s comments today were the worst move in this storyline since Bob Costas destroyed Jerry Sandusky on national television.

3) Why is no one talking about Joe Paterno’s age?

One of my favorite columnists, Jason Whitlock, has cried conspiracy about this whole thing from the beginning, citing the rather large coincidence that it wasn’t until after Paterno passed Eddie Robinson as the winningest coach in DI history that this story came out.  The conspiracy is a bit too much for me to believe, but there is one point that no one seems to be brining up.  When the Sandusky incident was first brought to Paterno in 1998 Joe Paterno was 72 years old.  The average age of an NCAA football coach in the 1990s?  55.6.[2]  This still puts Paterno at an outlier end of the average age when this all started fourteen years ago.  The fact that no one is willing to question the possibility that Paterno had begun to lose a step as far as his mental faculties are concerned is troubling.  After all, we are dealing with a sport that presents evidence of brain trauma at four times the statistical average.  And Paterno did play football for Brown when he was in college.   I don’t think that it’s too much to posit that the decision made by a 72 year old Paterno regarding the accusations against longtime friend Sandusky could have been far different than the decisions Paterno would have made in Penn State’s 1986 National title season – at age 60.  Moreover, consider how fast our world changes.  How many of us went directly to Twitter for news two years ago?  Football is notoriously monarchical in its discipline, and yes-men last longer than anyone who challenges the status quo.  Don’t believe me?  Wrack your brain for the last relevant and positive thing that Bill Parcells has done.  Nevermind that he has left the cupboard bare at both the Cowboys and Dolphins, he won two Super Bowls!  You know who else won two Super Bowls?  Mike Tomlin.  Tomlin is 31 years Parcells’s junior.  When you think back on this Penn State scandal and all the awful things that happened, remember this:  through it all Joe Paterno was a septuagenarian or older.  Age was, to some degree, a factor.  That is inescapable and should not be ignored.

4) At what point are we allowed to chastise the NCAA?

That omnipotent, billion-dollar body of regulation that looks out for the well being of its ‘student’-athletes has, thus far, escaped most criticism.  For all the criticism of “lack of institutional control” that pervades every sanction of every other school (Miami, anyone?) isn’t found here, because exactly the opposite has happened.  Penn State was allowed to develop too much institutional control.  My dad pointed out that the whole thing reminded him of the cliché that “absolute power corrupts absolutely”.  I think that’s a rather prescient comment in this case, as the figure of Joe Paterno was so engrained at Penn State that he could do no wrong – and if he did wrong, no one was really going to tell him otherwise.  And it is the NCAA in its entirety, the culture they breed, the way they dispose justice, the way they care only about image and profit, that allowed for Penn State to develop a situation in which football ruled all.  Sadly, and predictably, the NCAA will face exactly zero repercussions from this, because the media and the knee-jerk college football diehards are to busy placing the blame on people no longer in power and a man six months dead.

And while healing is more important than punishment, punishment is still sought.  The answer is definitely not to cancel any or all of a Penn State football season.[3]  The kids, the ‘student’-athletes that the NCAA purportedly looks after had nothing to do with a cover up that happened 14 years ago.  Sadly, though, that is the pattern of the NCAA, to punish the descendants for the guilt of the ancestors.  Regardless of the outcome, things are almost sure to get worse before they get better.

---

[1] We obviously now have confirmation that Joe Paterno basically ran Penn State as far as football goes.  That will be discussed below.

[2] http://www.gobblercountry.com/2011/1/31/1963935/how-old-is-too-old-for-championship-college-football-coaches

[3] If I had my choice, Penn State would be stripped of all victories from 1999-2012, including their 2005 and 2008 conference championships.  All members of the coaching staff/administration that were at fault for allowing the Sandusky case to persist would be banned for life from NCAA employment.  Going forward, schools would face a “two strikes” policy.  The first time they were exposed as having participated in a criminal conspiracy of this magnitude (which is, by the way, FAR different from “improper benefits” or whatever bullshit rules the NCAA dreams up to keep their labor free) they would receive and immediate ten-year ban from conference or national title competition or bowl participation.  The second strike?  An indefinite ban, reviewable only every twenty years by a panel of NCAA personnel and independent arbiters.  It seems harsh, but the current culture favors extended concealment of infractions over admittance of guilt, because as the time gap grows evidence and testimony can become more muddled.  If even the slightest hint of an infraction sets a program back a decade, we can hopefully work toward a better transparency in the future culture of NCAA football.

New College Playoff Thoughts

          With the news a few weeks ago that the NCAA will be implementing a four-team playoff for college football starting with the 2014 season, a number of those who screamed death to the BCS seem to be overjoyed.  For me, the only positive feeling I can associate with the news is excitement.  I am excited in the most literal definition possible: experiencing strong feelings of enthusiasm and eagerness – in this particular case, brought about by the unknown of what this playoff will bring.  Yet I remain apprehensive, perhaps even cynical, because the playoff has just widened the number of teams for debate while healing none of the ills that plagued the BCS-only system.  To allow you to share in my sardonic celebration, let’s take a look at the problems with the system we’re enduring for one more year, and how the four-team playoff will (not) correct these issues.

            The process is fairly simple.  At season’s end, a selection committee of important university people will select the four teams that are to participate in the playoff.  One of the advantages of this is that the selection committee will be limited in their choices.  They will not be able to haphazardly throw in Boise State during an undeserving year[1] just to placate the vocal majority (read: all of the country west of the Mississippi and north of the Mason-Dixon line) who tire of the BCS’s role as a closed group within a closed group from which the champions are decided.  On the SportsCenter immediately following the press conference that announced the new system, ESPN displayed a graphic that showed what the three most likely scenarios would have been for last year’s playoff.  The systems included:

            Straight BCS:  LSU v. Stanford, Alabama v. Oklahoma St.
            Conference Winners[2]:  LSU v. Wisconsin, Oklahoma St. v. Oregon

            “Plus 1” or Mixture:  LSU v. Wisconsin, Alabama v. Oklahoma St.

Obviously this would have its detractors and complaints about who should be “first in” or “last out” would fill the airwaves until the games were played (and then the results would be retroactively applied as proof of the original argument).  As a Badger alum, I’m far from impartial, but that seems to me to be a fair pool.  If you told me that the national title playoff in 2011 was going to be comprised of four of LSU, Alabama, Oklahoma St., Stanford, Oregon, and Wisconsin, I would have found no problem with it.  Would the Badgers getting left out have been a cause for sadness?  Sure.  Aside from LSU being skipped, however, I see no other combination of those six teams that would have been bothersome to me.

            While the field will be truly narrowed, and any selection for the most part justifiable, teams will wait to hear their name called while, just like in basketball, having no idea what the true criteria are.  This will be especially nerve wracking for every team that fails to go undefeated, as their pass to the playoff will be qualified with ideas like, “they played a tougher schedule” or “their loss counted against them less because it was on the road”, etc., etc., ad nauseam.  And this lack of selection transparency is the cause of most of the complaints that arise around college football’s championship.  In professional sports, there is a distinct hierarchy of considerations that each team is aware of at all times throughout the season and that is used to determine each league’s playoff teams.  Granted, it can sometimes come down to something as unoriginal as a coin toss, but at least said coin toss is transparent.   But this is privilege of professional sports because the pros play a balanced schedule, in the sense that each team has an allotted percentage of their games played against division, conference, and interconference rivals.  This is not the case in college sports and the result is that the games must be considered instead on a “quality” scale.[3]  Because there are about one-third as many games in college football as in college basketball, and because team winning percentages in college football will have to hover around .850 to even sniff the playoff (no conference tourneys for you sub-.500 teams here), college football teams are not afforded the discussions of both quality wins and quality losses.  Again, transparency fails, as we have absolutely no idea whether wins or losses actually count for more when comparing teams with similar records.

            Take last year for instance.  Four teams – Alabama, Oklahoma State, Stanford, and Boise State – finished the season 11-1.[4]    Boise State, who lost at home to a mediocre TCU team, ranked the lowest of the four teams.  Stanford got walloped at home by number seven Oregon, losing 53-30.  Oklahoma State, amidst the tragedy of the plane crash that claimed the lives of their women’s head basketball coach and an assistant, lost a two-overtime battle against Iowa State in Ames.  And Alabama, as I’m sure you all know, played arguably the most boring game of football involving an SEC team last year, losing at home to the top-ranked LSU Tigers 9-6 in overtime.  If we are to induce anything from these games, then, it is that the BCS formulas seem to imply that road losses are far less harmful than home losses…unless you lose to the number one team in the country.  And if we are to understand that losing is more acceptable if you do it on the road and against better teams (and thus the “quality” of the loss matters more), then the number is the only important thing in the win column. 

How do I make these inductive claims, you ask?  Well, because if the opposite were true, and win “quality” was considered when the number of losses were equal, no rational person could have ever put Alabama in the title game ahead of the Cowboys.  Alabama’s pure numbers are equal, if not better than Oklahoma State’s in a number of places, but the qualification process proves them to be against far weaker overall competition.  This is especially true as the Tide played one game against the FCS Southern Conference’s Georgia Southern Eagles.  In said game – in Tuscaloosa by the way – the Tide gave up the most points all season (21 when they were averaging 7.1 per game up to that point).  For a conference that brags continually about earning its right in the title game, the SEC sure goes out of its way to take on at least one cupcake every season.  In 2011, every one of the teams had at least one FCS opponent, and Alabama, Auburn, Florida, Mississippi State, and South Carolina managed to fit that game into the last four of the season.  Meanwhile, Oklahoma State and Stanford both played all twelve of their regular season games against Division I/FBS competition.  Better numbers against better teams makes for a no-brainer in my opinion.

Whether you favor the BCS system and its ‘every game matters’ approach, or the plus-one format (or plus-n format, depending upon the number of teams that will eventually be participating in the playoff) and its ability to provide redemption after one loss – but probably not more than that, understand that this is likely the best situation for the college football postseason that we’re going to have for years to come.  The overlordship of the NCAA is enough to prove that the NCAA is a model is broken all the way to its root.  So, being as greedy and selfish as I am usually, I’m glad to see the NCAA deliver a playoff format that is going to make more of the games actually matter.  My ill-advised bet that the Wolverines would win a National Title before the Badgers won a Rose Bowl may either land me some cash…or my Badgers a National Title.  49 days until college football, ladies and gents, let’s enjoy the hell out of it.

(PS: Look for the college football preview, coming soon!)

---

[1] I’m not against Boise State getting their chance, but so far they haven’t been much more than a twinkle in a mid-major lover’s eye.  Their chances to go undefeated the last two years – and as a result shake up the national title talk – have been squelched in heartbreaking fashion both times, resulting in consecutive trips to the less-than-prestigious pre-Christmas spectacle that is the Las Vegas Bowl.

[2] I did not research, nor do I know offhand, how they determine the top four conferences, but my educated (and probably correct) guess is a combination of that conference’s teams’ winning percentage and the overall strength of schedule those teams faced.

[3] I will pontificate in a later post about the stupidity of the method of “quality” figuring, which is very much the fault of college basketball mid-majors.

[4] The Houston Cougars went 12-1 but got trounced by Southern Miss in their conference championship game, effectively ending any BCS hopes or consideraitions.