An opinion piece that appeared at the onset of the Jerry Sandusky-Joe
Paterno scandal in the New York Times repeatedly referred to the Penn
State students who had rallied in support of Paterno the day after he
was let go of his post as Head Coach as "scholars." It was unclear to
me if the word "scholar" was being used in earnestness or mockery.
Much of the coverage of the scandal has justifiably concentrated on
Sandusky's actions themselves -- he now stands accused of molesting
and/or raping some eight boys -- and on the lack of accountability
displayed by Paterno, who did not call the police when he first
learned of these crimes -- as he was legally bound to. To me, the
greater issue is the oversize influence of college sports -- especially
football -- on institutions that are meant to be -- first and foremost --
academic. I wonder if any of students who rallied behind a coach who
didn't report the rape of young children to the authorities or who
would participate in the type of hooliganism caught on tape (drunken
destruction of cars and university property) deserves the moniker
"scholar."
While the rest of the world speeds ahead of us academically on the
secondary level and countries like China concentrate on creating their
own MIT's and Stanfords, our best state universities have created a
fratty, patriarchal sports culture that is often antithetical to
good citizenship and to the very basis of the academy -- finding the
moral good in the world and training the leaders of tomorrow in
different fields. Given a culture that spends so much time and money
on its football program, what type of an education are Penn State kids
really receiving? Instead of drinking beer and watching young
football players beat each other's brains out, maybe shouldn't these
"scholars" be in their dorms learning a foreign language or studying
organic chemistry equations?
Certainly, the college experience is meant to include more than
academics. Meeting people from different backgrounds and parts of the
world; participating in extracurricular activities such as theater and
sports are all valuable aspects of one's undergraduate experience. But
at large state campuses especially, sports have become outsize and
professionalized. Football programs such as Penn State's make a
mockery of the educational process that the football players
themselves should be receiving and twists out of shape the
education -- moral, ethical or otherwise -- that the remaining "scholars"
on campus receive. How else can one explain over a thousand Penn
State students supporting a football coach who, whether we like it of
not, aided and abetted an alleged pedophile who was raping underage children on
campus, by not reporting his abuses directly to the police?
Current big name college football programs, as others have noted,
recruit players with lofty promises of the NFL and untold riches: for
a few the dream comes true. For the majority, for those who are
injured and never make it to the NFL, post-graduate life is often one
full of depression and failure: dashed hopes made worse by the fact
that these players were routinely excused from taking the same courses
and studying to the same degree as their colleagues who did not
participate in sports. Worse yet, many of these players, as we now
know, experience concussions and other brain injuries which lead to
their premature deaths. Steroid use, also deleterious to their livers
and overall health, is rampant. Does anyone care about this abusive
aspect of college football?
As with the children (allegedly) raped by Sandusky, it would seem that
the welfare of the players should be everyone's first concern. But as
with the patriarchy established over centuries in the Catholic
church, the well-being of our children has taken a back seat: programs
such as Penn State football make so much money for the University that
no one is willing to speak out against them. It is time to bring this
mockery to an end: professional sports -- for this is what programs like
Penn State are in essence -- do not belong on at the college level.
Intramural sports, friendly competition between colleges, is more than
enough to keep any scholar-athlete happy -- fencers, tennis players, and
athletes competing in many other sports manage to balance academics
and sports without the worry of turning pro and the entire debasing
process that robs young men of an education and exposes them to the
abuses that we have seen. It seems that certain all-male environments
which give unlimited power to those in charge inevitably lead to the
type of physical and sexual abuse that Sandusky inflicted on these
young children, whether it is in the church or in high-level sports.
It is high time we put an end to or radically reform environments that
aid and abet such behavior.
As for Joe Paterno and Jerry Sandusky themselves, I would suggest
the same thing that I would for the Catholic priests caught in recent
sex abuse scandals: send them to jail for the rest of their lives.
There, they can meditate on the true gravity of their actions. There,
they may also learn what it feels like to be molested and sodomized
against their will.