In Which I State The Obvious
Irradiated by LabRat
…Or, what should be the completely and utterly bleeding obvious to anyone with the moral compass imparted to the average five-year-old, but somehow apparently isn’t to some people.
Via Jennifer, apparently some people are upset that the NCAA decided to penalize Penn State’s football program for its role in the Sandusky scandal. These outrageous penalties include stripping the football program of some scholarships, and barring them from bowl games for four years. I regard these sanctions as amounting to some vigorous tickling of the wrist, with perhaps a whispered threat to slap if they continue being naughty, but apparently they are cause for sackcloth and ashes for some.
I suppose I should put my biases up front: I have a very low opinion of college sports programs in general. While I can appreciate the notion of a healthy mind in a healthy body, I think it’s completely ludicrous to set up our higher education institutions as feeder systems for professional sports leagues, or to encourage any student to prioritize sports when there is only a miniscule chance that that will be his or career, and even if he is riotously successful at that career, it will certainly be over well before their working life is. I think it makes about as much sense as tacking a poker league onto CERN, and it would not dampen my spirits in the slightest to see football (and basketball, and baseball) programs in general vanish from the American academic landscape.
That said, even if my heartbeat ran in tune with my alma mater’s sporting fortunes, I’m pretty sure I would not regard football as greater in importance to whether or not small children are raped. Sainted JoPa apparently stressed in a letter before his death that it was “not a football scandal”, on the grounds that whether a football coach rapes children on a recreational basis in no way reflects on the football program, if it happens in their locker rooms and showers and their games are used to lure the children in the first place.
But, according to the independent report, concern for the football program and an utter lack of concern for Sandusky’s victims dominated the discourse between basically all of Penn State’s leadership when discussing the delicate situation that was one of their coaches maybe having child rape as a sideline hobby. It wasn’t that they thought child rape was OK, it was that the possibility simply wasn’t foremost in their minds as compared to the pressing issues that were potential bad publicity for the football program and the much greater issue that was in any way upsetting Joe Paterno, who insisted on treating the football program and the students involved in it as his personal fiefdom, above and outside accountability to normal university rules. If you have lots of free time and no chronic high blood pressure problems, I recommend reading or at least skimming the full report; it’s a meticulously documented and lavishly illustrated ethnography of an institution subverted to the pure purpose of continuing a comfortable existence.
The NCAA apparently considered the possibility of imposing a four year “death penalty” on the Penn State football program, then backed off upon deciding it was too harsh. I disagree. If football has attained an importance within your institution such that the question of whether or not a child or children was raped on your premises by one of your coaches, and the identity of the child, is so uninteresting to you that the possibility only attains importance in the question of liability, you need to take a fucking break from football. This is like asking yourself if you need to step away from alcohol in the wake of driving the Oscar Mayer Weinermobile through the middle of your sister’s wedding after six bottles of Goldschlager; the answer should not be equivocal.
I am pleased Penn State had sufficient self-awareness to tear down Paterno’s statue. I would regard tearing down the stadium as well and salting the earth to be a proportionate response. And I think anyone who regards the ding in reputation the football program took, as well as the short break from bowl games, to be Penn State’s “darkest day” should consider the possibility of aversive therapy until the glory of the game shrinks to something like the level of importance that is the not-being-raped status of any given child.
July 25th, 2012 at 6:00 pm
My biggest issue with the NCAA’s sanctions is that it feeds into the sense of entitlement that led to this sordid mess in the first place. The idea that a voluntary sports association knows the best way to penalize Penn State for its actions is laughable. The NCAA’s job is to sit down, shut up, and solemnly follow whatever instructions and sanctions the judicial process requires it to follow. Its job is not to attempt to short circuit the judicial process in an attempt to look like it’s “doing something” while giving Penn State an opportunity to “atone”.
To be blunt, the NCAA’s opinions and sanctions against Penn State are as germane to the issues at stake as the adjustments the NYC Little League had to make after 9/11.
July 25th, 2012 at 6:15 pm
LR Thank you. I’ve been shouting at the radio every time a PENstate anybody complains about the sanctions or ‘poor’ JP’s reputation. I too have a deep bias against college sports. And David, as a result, I will take ANYTHING that gives Pen State trouble over their conduct over the rapes.
July 25th, 2012 at 7:11 pm
David Colborne:
The NCAA is a voluntary organization. As such they can voluntarily decide that allowing a pederast to use their program as pogue-bait is unacceptable, and employ any sanction they please.
As far as I am concerned, and fans or alumni that feel the NCAA are being too harsh can die in a fire repeatedly, sometime after the parents of the victims finish stomping their gonads into the pavement until they are about the size of footballs.
I’m glad we had this little talk.
July 25th, 2012 at 7:45 pm
I enjoy watching college football, although I think the system as a whole is horribly broken (and the NCAA is in large part responsible for that brokenness). I also think that the NCAA’s partial sanctions against Penn State are too little, too late, and more window-dressing than anything else — and like Sparrowkin I’ll take what I can get. To a large extent the NCAA controls the money that makes collij fuhboh such a huge deal for the schools involved, and bowl games are big budget lines. That makes it very much appropriate for them to get involved, particularly if they recognize that they’ve been part of the problem that led to the institutional arrogance of Div 1 football programmes.
July 25th, 2012 at 8:23 pm
Kristopher: I don’t want to be misunderstood. I have no problem with Penn State and its football program getting punished. Frankly, I think the idea that paying players under the table earned a more serious punishment from the NCAA (SMU’s ‘death penalty’) than what Penn State received is ridiculous. However, I stand by the statement that the attitude that put Penn State in this position - football uber alles - is only being reinforced by the NCAA poking its nose on this. What everyone at Penn State needs is a healthy dose of perspective. They need a forceful reminder that there is more life than football, and they need someone as far away from the athletic money machine as possible to deliver that message. As things currently stand, the NCAA weighing in on this is about as useless and self-serving as some attention-whoring judge issuing a warrant against the Aurora shooter because of an unpaid parking ticket. This is far more about Penn State and the NCAA covering their collective asses and “taking action” than justice.
Personally, I would love to see an attorney general somewhere issue an injunction against the NCAA for obstructing justice, issue a sternly worded press release that there are more important issues at stake than athletics, and then file a suit with the goal of sending the campus into receivership. If you were a student or a member of the faculty or administration there, you may not have known what Sandusky was up to, but you sure as shit enabled it with your hero worship. That campus should be shut down, razed, and then turned into the ugliest parking garage architecturally possible, as a monument to what happens to institutions that reflexively defend themselves at the cost of small children.
July 25th, 2012 at 8:46 pm
Well said! And I vote for a year for year death penalty… So 1998 to 2012 would be um…14 of them!!!
July 26th, 2012 at 12:07 am
David-I might, to be honest, be happier if they simply focused on the stuff a University is expected to focus on-education. Considering some of the rampant and curable stupidity levels they operate at, this might be pennance in itself.-Also they have a fairly good history program with grad students who probably worry where their next year of classes will come from, so again…focusing on the actual, um, horrors, studying would be a stiff penalty for UPen undergrads and admin alike..
July 26th, 2012 at 4:09 am
I’m thinking those that find the penalties too harsh would have a different opinion if their son was one of the victims. If it was my kid, I wouldn’t be satisfied until Penn State was razed, the ground was salted and those that attended were banned from society.
There’s no way that this wasn’t common knowledge and hundreds turned their heads. Even the rumor of such a thing would demand an investigation.
July 26th, 2012 at 5:08 am
I totally agree. I’ve put up my own response, and cited yours, at:
http://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2012/07/the-penn-state-scandal.html
July 26th, 2012 at 7:33 am
The NCAA is still a voluntary private organization, David.
The government has no business intervening, no matter how butt-hurt you get.
If they had banned that university forever from the NCAA, I would have supported that, and the university would just have to form its own little pedophile-friendly league if they wanted to play football … although attracting athletes might be kinda tough.
I suppose they could recruit kids in the shower room, and keep them in the program as they grow up … but it will be tough to find anyone that wants to play football with them.
July 26th, 2012 at 10:30 am
For a counterpoint, here’s a legitimate complaint about the (specifics of the) NCAA’s sanctions:
NCAA to the taxpayers of Pennsylvania: Drop dead
Excerpt:
So… the football programme fucked up, and yet the football programme is being shielded by the sanctioning body. I suppose it’s entirely coincidental that the NCAA makes a lot of money from D1 football, and none at all from (say) chemistry labs.
July 26th, 2012 at 11:11 am
Yeah, that’s some extra fucked up right there…
July 26th, 2012 at 12:47 pm
Peter and Jess-I would love to see the sports facilities razed in favor of a conservation/wetland habitat.
July 26th, 2012 at 1:11 pm
Bluntobject:
They are fining a university. It ain’t their problem that the university is government funded.
You may have a valid argument, however, for having the PA legislature step in, and forbid the university from spending educational dollars on the NCAA’s demands, and force them to divert funds from a circus event like football, and into actual education.
This might make the Alumni even more butthurt, but I’m OK with it.
July 26th, 2012 at 9:38 pm
Kristopher:
I agree entirely. NCAA is, as you say, a private institution — and if private institutions want to engage in jaw-dropping asshattery I have no business stopping them.
I will cheerfully complain, however, that the NCAA is exempting the proximate guilty party (the football programme) from its fines.
July 26th, 2012 at 9:47 pm
They need to be seen as doing something, but don’t want to harm their income stream.
They may be acting just as reluctantly as the Sandusky and Patterno’s bosses.
Which is just sad.
July 27th, 2012 at 2:49 pm
As a formerly-proud Penn Stater, my atonement is living the rest of my life having strangers assume that I approve, enable, and probably even enjoy the buggering of young boys.
Anger is a sin; humility is a virtue. Thus do I accept the rotten produce flung at me and mine. Still, please do take a moment to remember those of us who’ve had to turn our diplomas to the wall.
July 27th, 2012 at 9:53 pm
Alumni are blameless unless they’re among the boneheads weeping for the football program as the real victim in all this.
All of my ire is reserved for said program, and for those in university leadership who felt their real jobs were protecting it.
July 28th, 2012 at 7:28 pm
I don’t think I’ve ever commented here before . I am a dedicated lurker , but in my opinion the riots after this was initially announced were completely disgraceful and told me all I needed to know about Penn State and it’s football program (revenue source ) So sorry for anyone that took pride in their degree , I have nothing but contempt for this university attached to a football program .
July 28th, 2012 at 7:44 pm
A-Fucking-Men.
football. child rape. football. child rape. football. child rape.
really? the ethical disparity should be visible from andromeda.