Penn State: Should it lose football for a year?

“Throw the book at Penn State,” said Joe Nocera in The New York Times. Its former assistant football coach, the convicted child rapist Jerry Sandusky, may spend the rest of his life behind bars, but now it’s time for the university that enabled his crimes to pay its own price. Former FBI director Louis Freeh last week released a damning report that concluded that Penn State officials not only knew about repeated molestation allegations against Sandusky, they heartlessly covered them up for more than a decade “in order to avoid the consequences of bad publicity.” As a direct result, Sandusky went right on molesting defenseless children. Among those implicated by Freeh’s report was legendary head coach Joe Paterno, who went to his grave in January insisting he’d heard only one vague allegation against his former assistant, in 2001. Freeh, however, uncovered internal emails and notes that show that Paterno was fully aware of a 1998 molestation allegation against Sandusky, and personally intervened after the now-infamous shower rape in 2001 to stop athletic director Tim Curley from going to the police. The NCAA can respond to these appalling revelations in only one way, said the Chicago Tribune in an editorial. It must impose the so-called “death penalty” on Penn State, and suspend its football program for at least one year.

That would be “vengeance,” not justice, said Dave Zirin in NYTimes.com. Look: Paterno’s reputation has been justly ruined, and his alleged co-conspirators in the university’s hierarchy are going to get what’s coming to them in a court of law. Financial settlements with Sandusky’s many victims may surpass $100 million, and will cripple the university “for a generation.” What good will be served by punishing the 40,000-plus students of the campus in State College, or its blameless new crop of football players and coaches? Consider what’s at stake here, said Andy Staples in SportsIllustrated.com. In the sleepy part of Pennsylvania where the university is located, its football games are major events, drawing more than 100,000 fans from miles around. Shutting down Penn State football, even for a year, would “put thousands out of work and economically cripple the surrounding region.”

But it’s precisely because Penn State football was so important that this cover-up happened, said Betsy Schindler in The Baltimore Sun. Freeh’s report says janitors caught Sandusky performing oral sex on a boy in the showers, but decided not to report it to anyone, because in the words of one janitor, to cross Paterno “would have been like going against the president of the United States.” Since children were sacrificed for the good of football, “the only way to show that one cares more about children now is to sacrifice football.” How is this a close call? said Dejan Kovacevic in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Enabling a child molester’s crimes for 14 years is the worst crime any college athletic program has ever committed—far worse than paying players under the table. “If football mattered too much then, it shouldn’t matter at all now.”

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

As Penn State awaits the NCAA ruling on its punishment, it has its own decision to make, said Ta-Nehisi Coates in The New York Times. Should it keep, or remove, the bronze statue of Paterno outside Beaver Stadium? Pressure is growing “to clean history,” and remove the statue, but I say it should remain—along with a plaque explaining how and why Paterno covered up Sandusky’s monstrous crimes. It might serve as a warning to all those who elevate sports into a religion, and turn coaches into gods.