Probably too soon to write about this, but it’s hard not to. You simply can’t have a TV or radio on, or look at a newspaper or news website, without seeing Joe Paterno stalking along the sidelines. In the next few days, weeks, and months the national media and the legal system will be looking under every carpet at Penn State, and my guess is they will find more appalling and surprising things. Some of these discoveries will probably reflect on exactly what Coach Paterno knew, did, and didn’t do about the tragedy and scandal that has brought his long career to an end. Those revelations are yet to come. It is also true that, as of this writing, nobody has actually been convicted of anything. A grand jury has brought multiple counts of pedophilia against former coach Jerry Sandusky. If he did these things, and the indictment details multiple witnesses and lines of evidence that suggest he did, he is the sort of predatory monster one encounters in horror films. I would guess that in the coming months he will either plead guilty or go to trial, and then we will be certain one way or another. All this uncertainty suggests I shouldn’t join all the talking heads out there just yet, if for no other reason than avoiding having to take my foot out of my mouth at some point. What has made me sit down to write is the pervasive sadness and moral complexity of the last few days in State College. I cannot pretend to be dispassionate. I’m an alumnus. I was not a big football fan when I was a student in the 70’s, but I got a solid liberal arts education from Penn State that has served me well ever since. I am proud I went there. As an Italian-American, it’s also hard for me to be dispassionate about Coach Paterno. His reputation for discipline, simplicity, and the straight and narrow reminded me of my own grandfather.
But I’m not an idiot (or at least I don’t think I am). Penn State football has been a multi-million dollar enterprise for decades, with a stadium the size of a battleship and huge television appeal. Paterno was at the helm of this enterprise, and he was the most powerful man at the University. He had a reputation as a straight arrow and a good guy, but enough money and success can manufacture a myth.
I don’t know Coach Paterno, but I have to believe at least some of that myth is grounded in truth. He still lives in the same modest house he lived in back when I was a student, and I and many generations of Penn State students saw him walking across campus to and from practice. When a newspaper published his salary a few years ago, along with those of other University administrators, it turned out he was making around 500 grand a year; pretty nice money, but nothing approaching the millions that other Division 1 coaches were making. He and his wife have pumped 7 figures into the University library and other programs at Penn State. Many former players cite him as one of the most positive influences in their lives, and several have sent their sons to Penn State to be coached by their old mentor.
So if he’s such a paragon of decency, how the hell could this happen? Why didn’t he call the police at the first suspicion that a child was being hurt? Why didn’t his assistant coach call the police? The athletic director? The university president? Why the hell didn’t SOMEBODY call the police?
Answers right now are pure speculation, and God knows there’s enough of that, just turn on the TV and choose your talking jackass. Maybe Coach Paterno will explain himself one day, maybe not. Paterno is said to be a student of the classics. If so, he certainly knows that everyone from Homer to Aeschylus to Shakespeare to Eliot understood the dramatic weight of a great and good person brought down by a flaw of character or a lapse in judgment. That’s why this is all over the news right now.
I am left with a deep and profound melancholy. I’m not sad for Paterno’s or Penn State’s football legacy. Football, lest we forget, is a game. The rape of children is mortal reality. I’m sorry for those kids. I’m sorry for their parents. I’m sorry for the students, faculty and athletes at my alma mater today, none of whom had anything to do with these horrors and all of whom are suffering for it. I’m especially sorry that someone who could have intervened for the good, someone I admired, apparently didn’t do everything he could have and fell from a great height.
