Confronting the Culture of Athletic Amoralism at Penn State and Beyond

The Paterno Statue outside Beaver Stadium (Getty Images)

Penn State, whose main campus in central Pennsylvania is nicknamed “Happy Valley” was anything but happy last week when former FBI Director Louis Freeh released his damning 267 page internal investigation into the University’s mishandling of the Jerry Sandusky child abuse scandal. The report lambasted top school officials, including the University’s now deceased patriarch, football coach Joe Paterno, of being lackadaisical, self serving, and compassionless in their decision to prioritize protecting the University’s nationally lauded football program over protecting Sandusky’s then-growing list of abuse victims. The report, which can be read in its entirety here, also indicates that the football program’s decision to seemingly tolerate Sandusky’s pedophilia turned the campus and Sandusky’s nonprofit youth organization, The Second Mile, into breeding grounds for his heinous crimes.

So, now that Freeh has presented us with an unbiased and soberingly realistic portrait of Coach Paterno and his obedient cabal, one question still remains: What should the football team’s punishment be? Some people have said that they should be banned from playing in any bowl games over the next two seasons, while others have called upon the NCAA to give the Nittany Lions the “Death Penalty”, a rarely implemented sanction in which the NCAA systematically bans a university from competing in a sport for a certain period of time. But there are also those who say that punishing the current team is unnecessary and unfair. After all, the coaches and players on the 2012 squad had nothing to do with the cover-up, so they shouldn’t have to suffer the consequences for something that happened years ago, right?

Wrong.

The Penn State football program should be given the Death Penalty, and for a substantial number of years too. A message needs to be sent to be sent to the athletes, trainers, and coaches that work at Penn State and at all colleges across the country. Because the Jerry Sandusky story is not simply a decades-old tale about child abuse, lies, and demagoguery. No, viewing it solely through the prism of Penn State terribly blurs and narrows a much wider picture. What this story really highlights is an insulated, out of control American athletic culture that solely focuses on raking in money and chalking up W’s, and it needs to be confronted now. The revelation of Penn State’s cover up only happens to be most wildly inappropriate instance of sports trumping all else on many college campuses and professional playing fields across the country.

Sportswriter Gary Smith addressed this frightening trend in the most recent issue of Sports Illustrated. In it, he questions why modern athletes refuse to take stands for important social and political causes, when their predecessors were so active in those areas. He concludes that the rapid growth of college and professional athletics has created a subculture that has isolated itself from the rest of American society. And that subculture doesn’t feel compelled to recognize or interact with anything outside of its revered bubble. Instead, it mechanically marches forward on a regimented schedule, never looking backwards or stopping to get a grasp of life’s bigger picture.

Train. Play. Win. Ca-Ching! 

Train. Play. Win. Ca-Ching! 

Wash, rinse, and repeat.

The “Ca-Ching!” is what really formulates the bubble around big athletics. Sure, the desire to perfect one’s physique and the determination to aggressively compete play a role. But they are generally positive traits, the reasons why many of us are compelled to watch and partake in sports. The money, however, corrupts the morals and priorities of universities and sports clubs across the nation. Take, for example, Penn State, which ranked 18th on Business Insider’s recent list of “The 25 Schools That Spend the Most Money on Their Football Team”. According to their estimates, Penn State spends approximately $19.5 million on its football program each year, and the team earns the University about $73 million in revenue. That leaves them with an annual profit that hovers around $53 million each year. Auburn and Ohio State, which ranked 1 and 2 respectively on the list, spend anywhere from $34-39 million on their football programs annually. But their profits are still dwarfed by the ones pulled in by the Nittany Lions.

Predictably, the leaders and gatekeepers of Penn State’s deeply cherished cash cow became uncontrollably obsessed with defending it from any shame and embarrassment, and the students, employees, and alumni of the university deluded themselves, some right up until last week, into believing that football was the single most important facet of college life, and that their revered leaders were infallible and unchallengeable. This prioritizing of money and sport prevented Sandusky from being brought to justice for a long time. The Freeh report mentions that, on at least one occasion, a university employee caught Sandusky actively abusing a child, but didn’t report it because he thought that speaking negatively about an individual associated with the football program would get him fired from his own job. That alone is indicative of a very disturbing atmosphere that hovers silently over Happy Valley, and it needs to be confronted quickly and without reservation.

But, like I said, this isn’t a Penn State problem. It’s an athletic problem. College and professional sports leagues across the nation have become fixated on profit margins and recruiting prestige. As a result, institutions that once focused on preaching the gospel of teamwork and selflessness have been overthrown by the Nick Sabans and Joe Paternos of the world. These men, who obsess about consolidating their teams’ financial and competitive power, don’t care if basic morals and human decency become collateral casualties of their actions. To them, corruption is OK so long as it benefits the team. Athletes have also played a role in the tarnishing of athletic Americana too. With every passing day, the list of athletes who aren’t overly enamored with themselves and their bank account shrinks. The vanity and egomania that our biggest stars constantly display is a result of the self serving culture that they have sprung up from.

 But coaches and players aren’t solely responsible for the creation of our current dystopian sports realm. We the fans have also played our role in putting sports before life. This is evident anytime you hear a talk radio host directing jabs at a player for missing a game or two due to a birth or death in the family. It is evident when parents verbally and physically brawl at their children’s little league games. And it is evident when scores of fans view a Super Bowl or World Series victory as a reason to unleash anarchy and unrestrained bacchanalia on their city’s streets.

All of these depressing standards and values remained unquestioned for decades. It took dozens of victimized, broken children for people to at least acknowledge that maybe, just maybe, the culture surrounding big athletics had become too amoral and self righteous. A few people have questioned the NCAA’s ability to give Penn State the Death Penalty. That’s because it was designed to punish programs that repeatedly offend athletic policies. They say that Jerry’s Sandusky’s crimes had nothing to do with sports or athletic policies.

It had everything to do with athletic policies, the policies of societal indifference that have been implemented by teams for far too long. And in order to send a message to the numerous teams that have embraced such policies, the Nittany Lions should be forced to take an extended vacation from the gridiron on Saturday afternoons.

It’s a shame that its come to this, but coaches, players, and fans need to make this tragedy a learning experience, rather than just another scandal that just comes and goes.