WE...are Penn State

The very first time I heard of a possible issue involving Jerry Sandusky was October 22nd, 2011.

We were celebrating a special family occasion and many of us gathered at my brother’s house that Saturday evening. Penn State was playing at Northwestern and given the Chicago family connection, plus several other Penn State alums in my family, the game became the featured entertainment for the night.

One of our family members is a Michigan graduate so we’ve given each other a little good natured college football grief over the years. And I thought that’s where we were headed again when he asked me, “what’s up with your defensive coordinator?”

Initially I assumed he meant Tom Bradley but after further discussion I realized he meant Sandusky, who was retired for well over a decade. And this person whose knowledge I’ve come to respect over the years pointedly stated that he had heard Sandusky was under indictment for sexual abuse of children.

That was the first time I heard anything, some 13 years after Sandusky was first investigated for such crimes.

Two weeks to the day later I was at the gym when the news of Sandusky’s arrest, plus those of Tim Curley and Gary Schultz rolled across the ESPN ticker. Within 48 hours I knew with shocking clarity that the Pennsylvania State University would never be the same again.

Let me reiterate for clarity, it took 13 years for me to hear even a rumor of Sandusky’s activities. I spent four years at University Park and I’ve been a proud alumnus since 1995. I have numerous family members and friends who attended that school. I personally know at least 100 people who are connected to the University or Alumni Association. They are connected to thousands more. Given the advent of social media, infinitely more connections are available to people you barely know.

And not one person I know had any idea about Jerry Sandusky's "issues" until at least the spring of 2011.

I will add this, during my four years at Penn State there was never so much as a peep let alone a sordid rumor about Sandusky. Yes I graduated three years before the first chronicled incident but seriously, does anybody think Sandusky woke up one morning in 1998 and realized he was a pedophile? The sad, shocking, vile truth is he’s likely been doing this for far longer than any of us dare imagine.

So with that I wish to clearly state for the record the following; which I believe applies to me and every other Penn State student, alumnus, and employee I know:

• We...did not enable Jerry Sandusky

• We...did not cover up his crimes

• We...did not witness and fail to report the sexual abuse of a child

• We...did not blindly worship Joe Paterno

• We...are not members of a cult

Why do I feel the need to say this? Rest assured it’s not in preparation for my grand jury testimony.

I say this because so many have become so willing to broad brush the entire  University and Penn State community. Apparently to many it’s not sufficient to restrict blame to the perpetrator, those who actively covered or failed to report his heinous actions, or even the Board of Trustees. For the record, that group comprises perhaps 25 to 50 people of the 500,000 plus students, alumni, and employees of Penn State in this world.

Apparently the egregious actions of a select few are sufficient cause for many to blame and defame an entire community of people, the significant majority of whom were completely divorced from this tragedy.

We have, for decades on in, proudly proclaimed “WE ARE PENN STATE” to the world. Such declarations and identifications require that we accept both the good and the bad from our school and our community. It does not require that we bare responsibility for the criminal actions or negligence our supposed leaders, especially when we are in no position to prevent it.

I’m not perfect by any means but rest assured if I witnessed a child being sexually assaulted I would do something about it; no matter who the perpetrator. Rest assured I would not sit ideally by for A DECADE plus while the guy came to my office, worked out in my gym and traveled on flights with me and other co-workers.

I get that the entire Penn State community is going to wear the scarlet letter for the foreseeable future. We are all deemed guilty by association because of the horrific acts of a disgusting serial pedophile and the horrendous choices of others to protect his actions. We cannot escape that, at least not in the short-term. I can live with that as reality for now.

That’s a far different reality from those who paint the entire Penn State community as brain dead cultists who enabled a pedophile due to their blind worship of a demigod head coach. I’ve heard it suggested that we are responsible because of the “culture” we created. I’m curious as to how many who sling such actions have any firsthand knowledge of that “culture” but that’s an argument for another day. For now, simply understand that the “religious fervor” you hear about regarding Penn State football is far more myth than reality.

I’m not trying to play the victim card here. I’m not a victim, none of us are. We all know who the victims are and what they’ve suffered at the hands of this monster. Save your prayers and your tears ONLY for them.

I’m simply reminding the world that there are a good half a million plus people in the Penn State community who truly embody “The Penn State way.” And in spite of what you see in the media or on the Internet, virtually every one of us would have tried to the right thing if we had the misfortune to get directly caught up in this mess. All of us would settle for even one story on the $10 Million our students raise to help cancer victims every year for every ten sanctimonious beat downs from Rick Reilly and Jeremy Schaap.

Yes we loved and respected Joe Paterno, probably too much. Understand this however; no matter how much the NCAA and/or media wants to rewrite history, there was no reason not to love and respect him before last November. And while many of us our still struggling terribly to accept his role in this along with the complete reimaging of his legacy that is still a far cry from suggesting we would not have moved heaven and earth to stop Jerry Sandusky if we could have.

I spent a football weekend in Columbus Ohio a few years back. I can assure you from personal experience that Penn State fans are no more devoted or cult like than Ohio State fans. The same repulsive event could have easily happened in Columbus, Ann Arbor, Tuscaloosa, or Austin if those schools had the horrific misfortune of a pedophile on their coaching staff.

I am a card carrying member of the Steeler Nation. I can assure you from personal experience that Penn State fans are no more devoted or cult like than Steeler fans. I would also remind everyone in Pittsburgh that a large portion of the country thinks we are blindly supporting a rapist every Sunday and that the Steeler Nation took a tremendous leap of faith to believe Ben Roethlisberger’s innocence. I doubt we would have made a similar leap if Big Ben was a plumber or an accountant.

Steeler fans, including me, supported Ben in spite of increasingly disturbing tales of his poor public behavior. Is that not as bad or even worse than supporting a man with thousands of testimonials and a six decade track record of mentoring and coaching you people? And for the record, difficult as it is, most Penn State fans are now dealing with the reality of Paterno’s involvement, given that we now have reasonable evidence to support it.

No one person is Penn State, not even Joe Paterno. That certainly includes Graham Spanier, Gary Schultz, Tim Curely, Mike McQueary and anyone else who failed in their obligations. They are the most visible of us and perhaps today the worst of us…but they do not represent who WE are.

WE are Penn State…the hundreds of thousands who try and live the right way every day. I hope those who condemn with too broad a brush will take a second or two to remember that.

From Bad to "Worse" at PSU

Back in November, when the Jerry Sandusky scandal reached its most feverish boiling point, it strained credibility to believe things could get much worse for Penn State. Not when the university, its football program, and its beloved head coach were dead center of perhaps the greatest firestorm in the history of sports.

I knew then that things actually could get worse and expressed as much in this blog. That said, I would be lying if I claimed to have true foresight in to the details of “worse.” It was merely an abstract concept that I allowed myself, primarily as an emotional defense mechanism, to consider if not fully understand.

Well now it’s officially worse.  Much worse.

Over the last 8 months, 60 years of Penn State history has been figuratively obliterated. This morning, the last 14 years of Penn State history were officially obliterated. The scandal is so horrific that the NCAA deemed it insufficient to merely crush the future of Penn State football. They had to rewrite history and annihilate the past as well.

How ironic is it that so many believe Joe Paterno’s actions, or inactions (and those of his co-conspirators) regarding this scandal were motivated primarily to save his pristine legacy. And now that legacy is irrevocably shattered, along with our faith in the man and what he purported to represent. A man who’s passing in January many of us mourned as if he were a beloved member of our family.

The NCAA sanctions are devastating to Penn State’s football program. It very well may set it back a decade or more. Between the official sanctions and the public backlash against the school and program; it’s hard to imagine any football player worth his salt wanting to suit up at Beaver Stadium in the near future.

And just so we are clear on this, I’m fine with that. This is an unprecedented scandal in North American sports and the punishment needs to fit the severity of the crime. Quite frankly, when you consider what our leaders are accused of Penn State got off easy.

A small group of men charged with defending the integrity of our university, have instead been on some level, the instrument of its destruction. That's not to say Penn State as an institution of higher learning is dead. It will ultimately survive in some way, shape, or form. It will simply never be the same. Those men, through their willful ignorance and callous indifference of horrific crimes against children have destroyed something that meant so much too so many.

It’s easy to argue that Penn State University has no business fielding a football team this year. Quite frankly, I’ve come to believe that would be the best course of action, no matter the collateral damage. If you dread the daily public and media scourging of our beloved Alma matter happening right now, imagine what’s going to happen when Bill O’Brien’s boys take the field for what is unquestionably a meaningless season in September.

So no, I will not dispute or complain about the sanctions, they are what they are.  That does not make this any less painful, any less devastating.  The sanctions at this point are more symbolic to the Penn State community; they represent the apex of a scandal the depths and consequences of which we never dared imagine.

I've rarely felt so painfully numb in my entire life.

Understand that for me this has nothing to do with the future of Penn State football. I will be the first to admit that over the last few years, the Nittany Lions have fallen to a lower rung on my sports agenda. There are numerous reasons for this, the details of which are irrelevant to this blog.

For me, it’s far more about the past. It’s about the systematic destruction of our history; a history that binds so many of us together. It’s about taking something that was a tremendous source of pride in our lives and turning it to a nationwide source of scorn and ridicule. It’s about my hesitating every time somebody asks me where I went to college, a question I once answered with unwavering pride. It’s about learning that even a grown adult of nearly 40 years can still have his faith in others shattered.

More than that, it’s about a betrayal of trust and confidence that on some level I don’t think any of us will ever get over.

Penn State fans have been myopically accused by faceless critics of cult-like worship of Joe Paterno. I categorically reject that assertion, at least for the majority. We simply wanted to believe in an ideal, in a better way and the person we thought embodied it. No matter that it’s a national punch line today, we truly believed in “success with honor.”

We believed this in combination with our deep seeded love for the school and for the experience that so many of us rightfully claim as the best four years of our lives.

We took the greatest emotional risk there is in life; we vested ourselves in another human being. And we did so purely on faith given that most of us never truly knew this man we committed so much of ourselves to.

That is why the removal of the Paterno statue is so painful. It represents final tangible act crystalizing the magnitude of this betrayal; just as the vacating of his past victories reflects the symbolic death of his legacy. I would hope those outside the community could forgive us if after 45 collective years we’ve struggled to come fully to grips with the categorical reimaging of his legacy and persona in 10 days?

But we are not the victims here, not even close. It seems hollow to keep repeating this but it must be said; the children are the only true victims. They and only they deserve your thoughts, prayers and support. We are merely collateral damage; of which there is plenty more to come. Our pain is real; but it pales in comparison to the children that were physically and emotionally assaulted.

If anything, this horrific betrayal has allowed me some modicum of perspective on how Sandusky’s victims must feel. If it’s this painful for us; when the ultimate costs are purely intangible; imagine their horror. Imagine what it must be like as a young child to have a trusted adult authority figure betray your confidence and quite literally steal your innocence. Imagine the emotional agony of learning years later that others could have prevented it and choose not to.

On second thought, don’t.

Make no mistake, our lives will go on. Regardless of how we feel today this will ultimately be just be a sad part of our past; something to mourn and move beyond. Will Jerry Sandusky’s victims ever truly get beyond what happened to them? Could even the best of us forgive a betrayal of that magnitude?

No matter how devastated we are today, we must never forget that.

We can’t change the past but we can affect the future. We can make sure that something like this never happens again. We can demand unwavering vigilance from our new leaders; we can require that they protect that which is most sacred in this world. Most assuredly that is not the Penn State football team.

We can accept that as much as we would prefer otherwise, Penn State University has taught us another invaluable lesson in life. It has reminded us with stunning clarity what is truly important in this world.

In the long run we can rise beyond this and show the world what the Penn State way really is. It’s about hundreds of thousands of people living and doing right every day; not about five people who failed miserably in their obligations to protect.

In the short-term, the entire Penn State community wears the scarlet letter from the unspeakable crimes of a pedophile and the failures of his enablers. That means enduring the non-stop barrage of criticism; some wholly justified; some nothing more than sanctimonious blood lust. It means getting up every day fearing the next unimaginable element. It means, impossible as it is to fathom, that things may very well get even worse.

We Cannot Defend the Indefensible

On January 17, 2012, I wrote the following in this blog regarding Joe Paterno:

For now, I’ve made peace with the following short-term compromise. I accept that a decent human being made a terrible mistake. I do not believe he did so with direct intention or malice but that is irrelevant in consideration of the consequences.

I will accept that this is undeniably part of his legacy and that he must answer for his action or worse yet inaction. At the same time, I refuse to directly offset six decades of good; 60 years of giving more of himself than most of us could ever imagine by one awful decision. Not when he neither witnessed nor perpetrated the crime. I still maintain that Jerry Sandusky is the ultimate criminal and demon in this situation; a fact that far too many have willfully forgotten.

That’s my compromise, at least as of today. It’s flawed, biased, perhaps even irrational. I’m in no position to deny that. I’m far too close to this situation emotionally to remain objective.

My position however remains very much fluid. And what frightens me most after Paterno’s statements is that I can now conceive only of my perspective getting worse, not better. Paterno has officially set the “best case scenario” boundary for him and quite frankly it’s not all that great. Given his failing health and the magnitude of the scandal, it’s possible he will offer no greater defense.

 The worst case scenario remains very much in play; he participated in a carefully orchestrated cover up to protect Penn State or his football program. When or if that is proven to be correct, the compromise I described above will be irrevocably destroyed, as will the entirety of Paterno’s legacy. At that point all those involved will be indefensible on any level. I cling to the hope, however thin that no such conspiracy exists; for the good of both Paterno and Penn State as a whole.

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Today, I posted the following on Bob Smizik's internet blog:

From the beginning...and as recently as last week, I have pleaded with everyone to be patient and let all the facts come out. I hoped those facts might make things better than they appear, but frequently conceded they would likely make things look far worse.

Prior to today I did not believe we were in possession of nearly enough facts to make any conclusions as it relates to a cover-up. We had a grand jury transcript, and little else to PROVE a cover up. People could make educated inferences but nothing more.

I took some criticism for that stance in this forum but I do not regret it. I staunchly believe that before you publically condemn people for involvement in a vile cover-up of sexual abuse; before you annihilate their reputations and legacies there must be reasonable proof of their actions. Prior to today, I do not believe we had sufficient and complete information to make such conclusions.

This is especially the case for a man with a 60 year track record of teaching and mentoring young men. I argued that man deserved and in fact demanded the presumption of innocence as he had earned benefit of the doubt.

As of today, that benefit of the doubt is gone. A neutral investigation has provided substantial evidence of a heinous cover-up. I cannot defend the indefensible nor will I try. Today is a terrible day for all of those who believed or wanted to believe Paterno, Penn State, or those involved.

 It will take a long time to come to grips with the full ramifications of this. And PSU is in no position to argue any sanctions brought against this football program.

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I’m not sure what else there is to say.

As stated above, I do not regret my position. I was never willfully ignorant of the issue or the potential consequences. I made the decision to support something and somebody I believed in until there were definitive facts to the contrary. Of course this was a biased an emotional decision. It was also based on my own experience and thousands of testimonials from those who knew Joe Paterno that he was a good and decent person. I choose to believe that over media speculation and public blood lust.

I also wanted desperately to believe Joe Paterno. I wanted to believe, no matter how horrific the scandal that somehow, someway, he was above it all. Even with the release of the horrifying Freeh report today, I probably on some level still do. And I’m sure I’m not alone in these conflicted feelings.

Because we love Penn State; because Joe Paterno meant so much to us we will probably on some subconscious level continue to give him benefit of the doubt. We will compartmentalize our anger for his actions and inactions a decade ago, separating that from our belief that he was at heart, a decent person. We will never truly look at him with the same scorn or contempt that most outside the Penn State community now do. When you are as emotionally invested in a person or an ideal as we are, completely and honestly facing the harsh truth can be a daunting task. Perhaps some of us never truly will.

Notwithstanding the horrors of this scandal and his apparent involvement in it, I grieve for Joe Paterno’s soul today.

That said, there are times in life when it’s okay for your heart to overrule your brain...and this is not one of them. No matter our preconceived biases, we must now confront reality. Excepting some shocking revelation to the contrary, that reality is that Joe Paterno was part of an orchestrated cover-up of sexual abuse of children. That act is indefensible, on any level.

If you find yourself doubting that at any time, go back and read the testimony of the children who were abused by Jerry Sandusky. And then understand that several powerful and intelligent people made the decision not to intervene in any way to stop it. I maintain that Sandusky is the ultimate criminal here; a depraved and cowardly human being who tortured his victims right to his final moment of freedom. Regardless, as of today I’m no longer able to fully separate his actions from those who failed in their obligation to stop him.

Six months ago, I stated that I could understand, if not forgive a crime of omission. I could understand how a man put in an impossibly difficult situation, related to acts he neither perpetrated nor witnessed, might erroneously choose to divorce himself from the issue. If that were the extent of his failings it would indicate only that like all of us, Joe Paterno was a flawed human being.

I cannot, under any circumstances understand or forgive anyone who puts the welfare of a university or its football program over the lives of young children. The act is heinous beyond my ability to reconcile. All those involved must be held accountable to the fullest extent possible. Such an outrage must never occur again.

If there is any positive in today’s horrific news, it is this; Penn State can now officially begin the healing process. Whether that process includes football or not is now fully irrelevant. We are in no position to argue any sanctions against the program, even the dreaded death penalty. To be perfectly honest, I’m not sure I will ever fully embrace Penn State football again, though I’m far too conflicted emotionally to state that as a certainty.

All I know for certain at this moment is this; I feel like we were living a lie our entire lives. I feel like six decades of our history has been summarily obliterated.

I reiterate one final point from my January blog; a point that seems even more poignant today. There is nothing worth compromising your ethics or integrity. There are often daunting short-term consequences for standing firmly behind your principles. Such consequences pail compared to the long-term price of ignoring them.

Indeed they do.