Lingering Items--Retribution Edition

Time will be the real arbiter of whether or not the NCAA did the right thing in severely punishing Penn State University, but for those complaining perhaps they missed the meat of NCAA president Mark Emmert’s reasoning.

That Penn State was made an example of is probably beyond question. But of what, exactly? With no sense of irony, Emmert railed against the fact that the culture of winning has become so all consuming that it has created an atmosphere of “too big to fail” programs at some universities.

The phrase “too big to fail” is thrown around a lot these days and I’m not sure that it could ever apply in this context, but the point is still taken. At Penn State as in many places, the wants, needs and desires of the football program came to dominate the entire ethos of the university. When Joe Paterno, as well entrenched of a head coach as there has ever been, could literally impose his will on his own superiors by halting any further investigation into or a reporting of the allegations regarding Jerry Sandusky, it’s pretty clear to any objective observer that the tail is wagging the dog and that’s usually a huge red flag.

It’s easy to understand how it gets to that point and that’s perhaps where the NCAA is still turning a blind eye, particularly in the context of “too big to fail.” Everything the NCAA stands for at the moment is about money and how its two most prominent programs, football as practiced in the Bowl Subdivision and Division I men’s basketball, can generate even more of it. That money is used by the universities as a way of offsetting the costs of running big time programs and other non-revenue generating sports and that money also is used by the NCAA itself to run the rest of its so-called mission.

The athletic budgets at some schools these days runs upwards of $100 million. The bulk of that money goes toward football but it’s also used to run the multitude of other programs that provide great opportunities for student-athletes but serve only as a drag on the budget. Few athletic programs these days are self sustaining so it takes subsidies from the university’s general fund, along with private fundraising, to cover the difference. Those are dollars that can’t be used elsewhere in the university community.

That puts a great deal of pressure on football and basketball. A winning program is critical to a large university because it generates far more money than a losing program. They really are the tide that raises all of the university’s ships.

This really was the basis of Paterno’s “grand experiment” at Penn State and in a larger sense the basis for how the NCAA itself operates. The revenue generating sports serve as a catalyst for everything else that needs to get done and for awhile it worked, at least until it didn’t.

As the program under Paterno’s leadership began to assert its control over the university generally, the construct flipped. Arguably the NCAA never had that solid of bearings in the first place.

In any case, that’s the context in which Penn State’s punishment was handed down. By essentially assuring that Penn State will not be competitively relevant for years, the NCAA really is attempting to change a culture of winning at any cost that the trustees of the university still seem unwilling to change.

The question is when will someone step in to teach the NCAA the same lesson?

Nothing about what the NCAA is doing generally is meant to change this equation. The agreement to go to a half-assed playoff system is about first generating even more money and second finding a new way of splitting that ever-increasing pie. It will only continue the emphasis on winning at every level of what’s an increasingly corrupt enterprise.

Penn State will serve as a cautionary tale for awhile but it will end up being forgotten eventually, sooner rather than later. But as sure as you’re reading this, there’s a handful of programs around the country that are heading in the same direction that caused Penn State to spin out of control. How big is Nick Saban in Alabama? How about Les Miles at LSU? Where will Ohio State get under Urban Meyer? The next time any university makes another compromise in favor of the football program, and its probably happening a dozen times a day across the country, will be another clue that its trustees missed as to why the program ultimately exploded in a wave of some scandal or another.

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Speaking of the Penn State trustees, if they think their job is done because they decided, albeit reluctantly, to take down the statute of Paterno, they are mistaken.

We’ll never know for certain, but had the trustees stepped in and shut down the program at the end of last season and carried it into this season, it seems unlikely that the NCAA would have lopped on additional penalties.

As it was, the NCAA was faced with an incredible situation. The Freeh report revealed in letter and form how the trustees were willing participants in allowing the culture of Penn State to metastasize to the point where they, too, were essentially underlings of Paterno. They voted down reforms in previous years that would have changed the culture of the university if adopted. They cast a blind eye when Paterno insisted on dealing with his player disciplinary issues outside of the university's general population. The president of the Board failed to inform the rest of the Board about the problems bubbling up on the Sandusky front. The trustees as a group acceded to Paterno’s demands for a more lucrative contract even as the controversy was developing. Then as the problems played out the trustees were very reluctant to act. Firing Paterno was the easy part. What they failed to do was take a more firm stance on the program itself.

All of this put the NCAA in a nearly untenable position. Its reaction may have been unprecedented but so too was the situation it faced.

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As it turns out, Paterno isn’t the only one to feel like the Sandusky scandal wasn’t a football scandal. I’ve been fascinated, actually, by the number of head coaches and columnists that have been critical of the NCAA for sticking its nose into a situation where they claim it doesn’t belong.

If the trustees won’t do anything, who then is left?

But you don’t have to answer that question to appreciate that that NCAA had no real alternative and stay true to its ever murkier mission. Even if you take the view that the NCAA only deals with competitive balance issues, this was certainly one of them.

By protecting the football program from the public revelation that its long term assistant head coach was a long term serial pedophile, Penn State and Paterno were able to retain a favorable reputation long after Paterno ceased to be an effective head coach. It helped in recruiting. Put it this way, what parent would knowingly send their son to be coached by someone who was inclined to protect a pedophile at the expense of his victims? Exactly.

Penn State was able to stay competitive because of this cover up and for that, at the very least, it deserved punishment by the NCAA.

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Switching gears to the Cleveland Indians, it had to make you tingle just a little to know that the Indians obtained Brent Lillibridge for the stretch run. All it cost them was a minor league pitcher with a stellar record and a reputation for not being able to throw hard. Doug Jones anyone?

And if that didn’t make you tingle then surely you did when general manager Chris Antonetti said that the Indians’ willingness to improve the team right now hinges on the outcome of this week’s Detroit Tigers’ series.

Seriously, the Indians don’t understand the fans’ indifference?

I always thought the Indians were just one weak hitting utility player away from challenging the Tigers and now we’ll be able to test that theory. I also always thought that the Indians were run on a day to day basis without any real long terms plans and now we know that’s true.

It is a rather fascinating circumstance where Antonetti would place so much emphasis on one series as if the rest of the season to this point was meaningless. You almost get the sense that the Indians’ relatively decent first half of the season ended up being Antonetti’s biggest nightmare. But in the overall context, it make sense.

These Indians aren’t built to compete for the long haul and Antonetti isn’t much making progress in that regard. They are built to play .500 ball at best while keeping a meager payroll intact.

The truth that’s revealing itself is that there really isn’t much Antonetti can do anyway. Because of a lousy farm system beget by years of bad drafting, the Indians lack the currency to make a run at anything other than the Lillibridges of the world. On the flip side, the Indians lack any real assets for which someone would pay with the kind of prospects they really need.

That means that the Detroit series is really irrelevant. Still it’s fun to contemplate how Antonetti will react if his next worst nightmare comes true: the Indians sweep the Tigers.

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For the first time since, I think, the Nixon administration the Cleveland Browns enter training camp with all of their draft picks signed. You can thank the rookie salary scale in the most recent collective bargaining agreement for that.

That leads to this week’s question to ponder: what will Browns’ fans do with all the pent up angst usually reserved for wondering when their number one pick will be signed? And since it’s been a few weeks since we had a question to ponder, let me add another, related one: What’s a training camp without the obligatory “I can only coach the players who are here” quote from the head coach?

A Statue to Denial

There is no amount of reality that can change the mind of someone in denial. Committed smokers will ignore every warning to their health until it’s too late. So, too, apparently will the Board of Trustees of Penn State.

Seemingly committed to implementing most (but not, of course, all) of the recommendations of the Freeh report that detailed institutional criminal indifference to the helpless and numerous victims of Jerry Sandusky’s sick obsessions, the Board of Trustees still can’t understand the fuss about a little ol’ statute of culprit and disgraced former head coach Joe Paterno that stands as a beacon of sorts, in not so Happy Valley.

The results of the independent investigation into the whys and wherefores and hows of Sandusky are such that for whatever good intention Penn State’s so-called “Grand Experiment” of balancing athletics and academics once had that experiment is now over and it failed miserably.

Maybe it is impossible to balance big time athletics, especially football, with the academic goals of our biggest colleges. But the answer to that question isn’t borne out by the Penn State mess. Penn State failed because those conducting the experiment, like Paterno, were both arrogant and myopic. So impressed were they with their own theories and high mindedness that they became the very symbols of what they supposedly were guarding against.

And yet, and yet, despite one damning page after another of a report so complete in its discrediting of Penn State, the school’s Board of Trustees still cannot seem to grasp the enormity of the situation or even their own level of culpability.

The statue of Paterno should be the first thing to go. Until it does it stands for what exactly? One of the trustees claims that the statue represents the good Joe did and not the bad as if by fiat he can dictate how others should feel about Paterno.

As long as it does stand it represents denial on a grand scale, its image intended to harken back to a time before the world knew about Sandusky, apparently. There’s no honor in that unless you’re completely delusional, which the trustees apparently are. The report placed significant and equal blame on Paterno and three other top university administrators for failing to “protect against a child sexual predator harming children over a decade.”

Indeed, the report can fairly be read to place even more blame on Paterno then the others for two key reasons. One, he ran the football program with an iron fist and steamrolled any one, including other administrators, for years to keep any problems “in house.” That’s in the report. Second, he knew of the allegations 10 years before they came to light, denied it under oath, and also talked an administrator out of reporting the abuse allegations in favor of dealing with the problem directly with Sandusky, which had the added benefit of not bringing unfavorable publicity to the university. That he wasn’t prosecuted initially was a nod, again, to the power he wielded in a small community.

Because of his intentional indifference to dealing with Sandusky’s criminal creepiness, there were additional victims that suffered repeatedly for years. That makes Paterno directly complicit in the sexual abuse of several children for years. There’s no other way to spin it and no way to sugar coat it. For whatever else he did with his life, this will be Paterno’s lasting legacy. No one needs a statue to remind them of that.

But why rush to judgment? The trustees say they need many more months to pass so that they can reach a decision not informed by emotion. If nothing else, the consistency of the thinking of Penn State remains remarkably in tact. Sandusky was able to victimize several more kids as the result of just that kind of deliberate Penn State think, which is to close your eyes and wish the problem away through the passage of time.

If there was a clear thinking person associated with Penn State at the moment he or she might realize that that kind of thinking really is the best marker for how deeply infected Penn State really is and why just a general housekeeping will never be enough.

Penn State may have world class research facilities and scores of excellent students, but it is all being overseen by a criminal enterprise deluding themselves into thinking they’re a bunch of high minded educators just trying to do their best to get by. They are a bunch of low minded, protectionist goons who seem more intent on preserving their own jobs than in doing any real good for the university they’re charged with overseeing.

Paterno, too, demonstrated a remarkable ability to turn over the facts in his mind in a way to avoid facing the reality of a situation that he was ill equipped to handle.

CNN released a letter that Paterno had written shortly before his death addressing the scandal that he helped foster through his wrong-headed protective instincts. Paterno couldn’t have been more definitive or more defiant: the Sandusky scandal wasn’t a football scandal and it wasn’t an academic scandal.

It’s exactly the same kind of thinking as the trustees who oversaw his pathetic reign. If Joe says it’s a certain way then that’s the way it must be.

Wrong, wrong, wrong and wrong again.

That Sandusky was a serial pedophile preying on vulnerable young men isn’t unique to football generally, but it had everything to do with Penn State football. Sandusky used that program as his own personal recruiting tool for vulnerable children. Paterno used his position in that program and with the university to shield Sandusky from further scrutiny. If using the football program and its facilities with the permission and acquiescence of people in charge who should have known better but didn’t to further pedophilia isn’t a football scandal, then what exactly is it?

The NCAA is all about punishing schools and players who use the advantages of athletics to further their own personal and/or economic interests. Maybe our small minds can only grasp what that means when its players getting free tattoos or selling their gear for rent money. But that’s not a sufficient reason nor will it ever be when it involves a school, a program and its leaders deliberately ignoring the most heinous form of human trafficking as a sick, twisted bastard was in their midst getting his jollies fondling children. They did it to preserve the program from embarrassment and to keep the spigot of money turned on full blast without interruption. just so they can avoid embarrassing publicity.

Penn State, as an institution, is infected with a toxic mold and it’s going to take more than a little bleach to get it clean. If the Board of Trustees doesn’t immediately dismantle the Paterno statue as the most immediate step and then follow it up by suspending the football program indefinitely and perhaps forever, it will serve as a reminder that a winning team and the money it generates is more important than honesty, integrity, virtue and, ultimately, just doing the right damn thing.

Lingering Items--Eternal Souls Edition

There's nothing like a redemption story. It's a yarn older than the written word, more beloved then a tale of true love and continues unabated in every form of entertainment today. It's nice to believe in the power of redemption evens when it's mostly just a dramatic device contrived as an efficient if not accurate way to convey complexity either the writer, the reader or both can’t fully understand.

Witness, if you'll excuse the reference, the common theme of LeBron James' capturing of his long sought after NBA Championship. Nearly every sportswriter with a breathless thought has defined the Miami Heat's triumph as the personal triumph of James as if he were a member of the Lost Tribes of Israel who suffered long and hard and made it out of the desert alive.

Some suffering. James is one of the richest athletes on the planet. He lives a life of opulence and privilege borne of his outsized athletic skills. That was true before the playoffs started and remains true today and for the foreseeable future.

But attaining the championship he previously couldn't is more a result of attrition than redemption. It was just James' turn in the barrel. The Heat's path to the finals was clear and easy, relatively speaking. The Oklahoma City Thunder's was harder and longer and their fatigue and inexperience showed in the end.

James already lived his redemption story anyway when he signed his first pro contract. It was the real triumph of overcoming the very long odds of his upbringing. Having long since arrived he long since surrendered any candidacy in the redemption sweepstakes.

Let's all be honest with one another about this. James was always going to win an NBA title at some point. He's the best player on the planet, he still works hard at his craft, and he makes those around him better. It was always just a matter of time. Now or next year or whenever.

The other reason James' championship can never be a redemption story though is far more central to the ultimate narrative. For redemption to work the protagonist has to reclaim his soul. That hasn't happened here because James remains soulless having sold himself for his quest. He's no Jabez Stone and he doesn't have Daniel Webster on retainer even if he was. The devil drives a hard bargain and never renegotiates.

James is a forever man-child perpetually caught up in an adult world he doesn't fully understand. He commands an audience because of fame and fortune but he'll never fully have their respect because children are mostly seen and rarely really heard.

There is no real chance that James will ever fully gain the perspective one needs for real individual growth. Fame and fortune obscure. Look at Michael Jordan. It hasn't yet occurred to him that he is the worst owner/basketball executive in history not named Isiah Thomas. Fame and fortune obscure.

James will go on to win a few maybe several more titles and earn more and more individual accolades. But they will never change the essential nothingness of his being.

It's not really that James stiffed the Cavaliers and did so like a total putz. That was just the gating charge when he entered the land of souls departed. It's that James divested himself of the value system he so richly earned by avoiding all the crap that life threw at him early for the fast track to a phony Promised Land.

Pat Riley, the NBA's Gordon Gekko in looks and outlook, was certainly a far more attractive option then a muddling Danny Ferry. And while Ferry probably did lack the chops to put all the pieces together it's not as if James wasn't complicit in Ferry's difficulty. Let's never forget the long shadow James cast on the Cavs franchise and how his every twitch and quirk set off alarms inside the Q.

The irony is that James isn't lazy. He works on his game in the same way every truly great athlete does. Perfect, to his way of thinking, is never the enemy of good.

And yet James just couldn't abide things not happening for him quickly enough. So he sought a shortcut, a stack decked and if that cost him his soul, so be it.

In certain ways James is like Roger Clemens another rare talent for whom great was never great enough. Clemens used more nefarious means to cheat the system but he was seeking the same kind of edge as James did.

Indeed there are plenty of characters thought the history of sports that sought a similar path. It's as old, too, as a redemption story.

There's no reason to begrudge James his accomplishments because rare is the goal achieved without some compromise. But James will always have to live with the fact that his goals weren't nearly as earned as they could have been.

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Speaking of redemption stories, the Penn State apologists can begin theirs in earnest now that Jerry Sandusky has been convicted on 45 of 48 counts of child abuse. There will come a point this season, maybe the next, when someone isn’t writing about Penn State’s resurgence as a respectable university after if put Sandusky and his sick exploits in the rear view mirror.

Frankly I’m not sure that Penn State can ever be redeemed. Shouldn’t it be scarred for life for its complicity in the long term abuse by one of its more trusted employees? Most certainly each of Sandusky’s victims will be forever scarred so why should Penn State ever get a pass?

For those who always rushed to protect Joe Paterno by claiming he had done what he could to stop Jerry Sandusky, how in anyway has that view been vindicated now that Sandusky is a convict? It hasn’t. If anything that view becomes even more discredited when you consider the mountains of evidence that were stacked against Sandusky and realize that because Paterno hardly lifted a finger to have it stopped, the abuse continued long after it could have been stopped.

In so many ways Paterno was a virtuous soul. He did place great emphasis on academics. He worked hard to build the stature of Penn State. For so many and for so long he supposedly stood for what was right about college athletics.

But Paterno was never the country bumpkin character that he liked to fashion for himself when it was convenient to do so. More than anyone else, Paterno was well aware that all his good non-athletic deeds for the university gave him almost unchecked power on that campus. And Paterno wasn’t afraid to utilize that power when he needed it to ultimately advance the cause of his beloved football team. It’s been thoroughly documented, for example, how Paterno kept his misbehaving players out of the scope of normal university discipline. His greater good was always far more narrow then he'd admit.

So when Paterno supposedly reported the Sandusky allegations up the chain, Paterno had every reason to believe nothing would come of it unless he specifically gave the word to make something of it. That word never came and Sandusky continued in his employ subject only to a whisper campaign while he quietly went about abusing more vulnerable boys.

Penn State doesn’t get another chance. Paterno was complicit and so was the rest of the university administration. If the new administrative crew really wanted to show its worthy of some level of forgiveness then it would start by proving how much more important institutional integrity really is by abolishing the football program completely and take whatever other steps were necessary to reduce the importance of any remaining sports. They’d wash Paterno off the books completely and take down whatever statutes they erected.

It’s nice that Paterno had a positive influence on so many young men. But this isn’t a balancing act. You don’t get to cite those figures as a counterbalance because the unthinkable, unimaginable horror that Sandusky’s crimes visited upon all those victims trumps all.

If you want to understand how sad, how truly pathetic this will all become, just wait until the university finds it completely appropriate to play the victim card for itself. It will pay out millions to settle lawsuits and then use that blood money as some sort of proof that the university community has suffered enough. It hasn’t and it never will because money will never give these victims back what they lost most and it will never erase the insidious way the university and its most important employees allowed such atrocities to continue for years.

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As a follow up to my column last week about Scott Fujita, it’s been interesting that Fujita has gone back underground, perhaps realizing that his mouth is his own worst enemy.

The other interesting thing is to listen to union chief DeMaurice Smith call for a new investigation into the Saints’ bounty case. That makes him an even bigger hypocrite then Fujita, if that’s possible.

Smith didn’t participate in any aspect of the first investigation. In fact, he specifically refused to participate in the investigation and actively encouraged the players to likewise not participate in it. If there was only one side of the story that was heard, all the blame for that goes to Smith.

But Smith has sensed, wrongly but that’s another matter, that public opinion is such that the average fan doesn’t think there was enough evidence to suspend the various coaches, administrators and players. The average fan, I think, doesn’t much care either way. No one’s going to march on NFL headquarters in New York because Jon Vilma’s been suspended.

Smith gave decidedly wrong headed advice to his members on this issue and now is deflecting by trying to put the heat back on Roger Goodell.

The NFL has certainly put together a strong case that the Saints had in place a bounty system and that all that have been suspended deserved to be. There isn’t one particularly smoking gun so much as it’s the evidence’s cumulative weight that matters. That said, there were arguments to make in rebuttal that never got made because of another failed strategy by the union.

Goodell will rule this week and for the most part close the book on this latest NFL scandal. Smith can grouse about the decision because that’s what he’s paid to do but hopefully the players’ whose lives and paychecks were adversely affected will eventually come to realize that those adverse affects were due in some part to the bad advice they got from Smith.

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Since we’re on a litigation theme, this week’s question to ponder: Even though he was acquitted of lying to Congress, does Roger Clemens’ silence since that verdict came down tell us more than a guilty verdict ever could?

The Complications of Life

The death of former Penn State football head coach Joe Paterno is a reminder, if nothing else, of how complicated life really can be.

In most respects, Paterno lived a life worth emulating. In other ways, though, he became a tragic figure with the fatal flaw of not knowing exactly when to say when.

In a tribute broadcast by ESPN, Jeremy Schaap pulled out a revealing Paterno quote to explain why he hung on for as long as he did. Paterno said he wouldn’t retire because of Paul “Bear” Bryant, the long time head coach at Alabama. Mere weeks after retiring from Alabama, Bryant suffered a massive heart attack and died, having lost, apparently the will to live once his coaching days ended.

And so it was with Paterno. He stayed long past his sell date for the most understandably selfish reason of all: he feared his own death. Despite a loving and devoted family, including 5 children and 17 grandchildren; despite a legacy of accomplishment and philanthropy; despite, really, having squeezed as much life into his decaying frame as humanely possible, Paterno refused to retire because the loss of the one thing that sustained him above all others would kill him.

In the end, we’ll never know if that’s true though we certainly have every reason to believe that his firing and the loss of the only job he ever really knew, coupled with the awful circumstances surrounding it, sapped Paterno of any remaining fight left in his body. His advanced age and broken spirit prevented him from taking on the vestiges of a supposedly mild form of lung cancer, to which he succumbed mere weeks after its diagnosis.

The last interview that Paterno ever gave, with Sally Jenkins of the Washington Post, revealed a man who was seemingly at peace with the conflicts inherent in his legacy. He certainly did not come across as evil. But neither did he come across as any more aware of the truly awfulness of the situation at his beloved university and his role in allowing it to metastasize.

Paterno admitted he didn’t know how to handle the situation and that’s why he went to his bosses. It all sounded reasonable if not conveniently naïve. Paterno really had no bosses, only figureheads that had absolutely no power to control the institution within the institution that Paterno eventually became.

Paterno had long since stopped listening to his bosses anyway about how to handle problems within his football program. As the Sports Illustrated expose details, Paterno worked tirelessly to keep any misbehaving players from being punished within the context of the general university population. Having created a “we take care of our own” culture within the team, it was hardly a surprise really that Paterno’s bosses did nothing about the Jerry Sandusky allegations. If Paterno was punting, which he was, why wouldn’t they? It was, likely to their warped thinking, just a football team matter.

Now that he has passed on, there will be even further re-examining of this tragic situation in the context of the greater good that Paterno accomplished in his life. The construct of the argument advanced is whether one “incident” should wipe out nearly 5 decades of positive contributions.

It doesn’t but not because Paterno’s death demands a re-examination of the judgment rendered just a few months ago. It doesn't because the question as posed is a false one because the answer isn’t one or the other. Paterno, was every bit as complicated and conflicted as the rest of us. Iconic status and coaching achievements don’t give anyone a pass at the more difficult aspects of what we all face on a day to day basis and in the end they didn’t give Paterno a pass either, nor should they.

Running a major college football program, these days or any days, is not a task for the feint of heart or the weak of mind. Paterno could come across paternalistic in the best sense of the word but he also had enough guile to honor his Brooklyn roots well.

He didn’t want the university disciplining his players because that discipline could cost him a victory or two. Far better for him to have the players run laps or whatever other form of antiquated punishment Paterno could conger up then kick them off the team or out of the university. A coach that doesn’t win is an ex-coach.

Paterno saw football glory as a means to a better end for the university as a whole because the riches it brought did indeed enhance the overall educational experience for everyone on campus. And Paterno honored that goal with his time, his talents and his pocketbook.

But let’s not lose sight of the fact that Paterno was using the ends to justify the means. He wasn’t a cheater, like the Jackie Sherills and the Barry Switzers of the world, both of whom Paterno despised. That doesn’t mean though that Paterno didn’t cut his share of corners or manipulate the circumstances with his well earned clout in order to serve some short term needs. He did. That’s life.

Paterno’s story, his rise, his fall from grace, the constant reexamination, is the same really that has played out with Ohio State’s Jim Tressel, if only on a lesser scale and without the tragic ending.

Like Paterno, Tressel had gained a healthy dose of clout within a major university setting as a result of nearly unprecedented success on the football field. That success raised the profile and the bank account of the university. It enabled Tressel to use that clout for much good but he was always more cagey then most wanted to acknowledge. Did Tressel use that clout to achieve some short term gains? Probably, but that shouldn’t surprise.

Tressel’s explanation for his lack of response to the tattoo situation was understandable only in the context of understanding Tressel as the same kind of complex figure as Paterno. He wanted to do right by his players and his program and the university and ultimately hoped it would all sort of work out without any real repercussions.

But Tressel, like Paterno, fell to the forces of convenient outrage that only want to see every issue as a black or white choice until, of course, those same forces are faced with their own complex challenges.

It was never a question whether Tressel was a good man or not. He was. His downfall, just like Paterno’s, was that his god-like image that he helped cultivate ultimately caused those around him to punish him more harshly for his transgressions then if he had just been more upfront about his sure humaneness.

Any sort of tragedy causes a bit of self reflection in everyone else. Ultimately, though, with Paterno as with Tressel, most doing the reflecting will struggle to see the real point. It’s not that either was actually less then the sum of their parts. It’s that both were fully the some of their parts. Life is never paint-by-numbers and it is possible, indeed entirely reasonable, that a person can be both good and bad at the same time.

It was true for Paterno, certainly, and true for Tressel as well. If we're being honest with ourselves, as situations like these call for, then let's all admit, too, that it's also true for the rest of us. And perhaps that is the best lesson for us all to learn.

Lingering Items--Turkey Edition

When all hell broke loose at Ohio State last Spring, it wasn’t surprising that eventually stories would get written that would be less than flattering of former head coach Jim Tressel, even if lightly sourced and highly speculative. He was fair game, after all, because he had admittedly failed to disclose potential violations of NCAA regulations to his boss, athletic director Gene Smith. When he signed an affidavit indicating he was unaware of any potential violations that pretty much made him a piece of raw meat to any writer with a grudge.

Those stories that did get written, like the Sports Illustrated hit job, were lightly sourced and highly speculative but mostly revealed nothing new nor did anything to cause people to re-assess all they ever thought about him. Tressel didn’t get a pass but his reputation didn’t take any more hits.

That won’t happen for Joe Paterno. The grievous nature of his misconduct is so insidious that in large measure it truly does undo a lifetime of other good work. It’s not just that Paterno failed at protecting innocent children from a creepy alleged pedophile, it’s also that Paterno actually used that lifetime of other good work as a club to bang over the heads of his bosses whenever they tried to rein him in.

The Wall Street Journal, in an article that appeared Tuesday, left no doubt as to exactly why Paterno did deserve to take the fall he did. Paterno may have had a supervisor but it was in name only. The story left no doubt that Paterno had an unrelenting grip on the administration at Penn State for years. It also left no doubt as to how exactly Paterno could become so blinded by the power that he yielded that he would look the other way when his friend and assistant, Jerry Sandusky, was engaging in very suspicious and odd behavior.

The best part of the story? It’s not lightly sourced or highly speculative. It is established not through whispery shadowy figures looking for their 15 minutes of fame but instead by the official records Penn State was forced to keep as a public institution.

A series of email exchanges and other incidents surrounding Paterno’s vaunted program tells the story very clearly of the man who really ruled Penn State and how in other contexts Paterno was willing to misuse his power to further not the interest of the school at large but those of his team and players and, ultimately, himself.

The WSJ article, written by Reed Albergotti, describes clashes that Paterno repeatedly had with the Penn State standards and conduct officer over the increasingly large number of disciplinary infractions committed by his players, things like campus fights and drunk driving, and how in each instance Paterno was able to keep his players from being subjected to the same standards as the general student population.

An old school type, Paterno was of the firm mind that athletes were different and could be dealt with separately and behind the closed doors of the locker room. He never did accept subjecting his players to the same rules as the rest of the student population.

In one particularly damning confrontation (though, frankly, it’s all pretty damning) Paterno forced the hand of university president Graham Spanier by giving him an ultimatum: fire the standards and conduct officer, Dr. Vicky Triponey, or forego any fund raising by Paterno. This was no idle threat. Paterno raised hundreds of millions of dollars for the university over his long tenure and he was telling Spanier that the spigot would stop unless Spanier fired another university employee that had dared to cross ol’ JoePa.

This ultimatum came out of an incident involving a player that Triponey had suspended, Dan Connor, for making harassing phone calls to a retired assistant coach. Despite the suspension, Paterno told Connor to suit up anyway. Triponey told Connor that if he did he faced expulsion. That’s when Paterno made his ultimatum, which prompted a visit from Spanier to Triponey at her home.

Spanier told Triponey that if forced to choose, he would choose Triponey over Paterno in the squabble but Spanier also made it quite clear to her that he didn’t want to be forced to make that choice. Given the not-so-subtle message, Triponey relented and significantly reduced Connor’s suspension.

That was somewhat of a prelude to another ugly confrontation, the one that ultimately pushed Triponey to quit her efforts to wade through the cesspool that Paterno created.

In 2007 6 players were charged with forcing their way into a campus apartment and beating up several students, one severely. Triponey’s department took over the inquiry and was thwarted in her efforts to investigate by the players who essentially refused to talk to her. When Triponey complained about the stonewalling to Paterno and suggested he have his players cooperate, Paterno refused, telling her that the players shouldn’t be expected to cooperate with the school’s disciplinary process because to do so would pit player against player thus impacting the team dynamic.

Stop and consider for a moment how seriously twisted Paterno’s thinking had to be to make that case. Publicly he espoused a “do the right thing” approach. That’s always easy when things are quiet. But “do the right thing” only works if you follow it when times are tough. Here, Paterno deliberately kept his players from cooperating in a university investigation into allegations that they beat up other university students.

Ultimately and not surprisingly the players suffered very little in the way of discipline for the ugly incident and Paterno cleared his conscience by imposing his own discipline—having the whole team pick up trash after football games. Very old school. Very stupid.

Once Paterno was able to rid the university of a pest like Triponey, her replacement was far more compliant, agreeing with Paterno and making a recommendation to the university that only Paterno should have the right to discipline his players.

In large measure, this all starts to answer the question of why Paterno, Spanier and the rest of the administration would be so tone deaf when it came to the accusations against Sandusky. In large measure it was because the university had long since abdicated any authority over anything Paterno touched. Is it really hard to imagine Paterno stonewalling a real investigation into Sandusky, especially when you consider that Paterno waited a day after he found out before he told his boss?

Meanwhile and despite all public statements to the contrary, it’s now more clear than ever that Paterno had little interest or regard for anything outside of his football program. His fundraising activities, while prolific and greatly benefiting the university generally, intentionally became the sword he’d use to cut down any resistance in his path. It’s kind of sick, kind of twisted but ultimately is why football programs like this get so out of whack.

Ultimately, for all the good that money brought, it was stained and what’s even more important, the university knew it. Spanier and the university’s board of trustees created a monster in Paterno and then recoiled at any attempts to control their creation. In truth they couldn’t anyway. His ego run amok and his values long since compromised, he was a runaway train for years and it was only a matter of time before he either died or crashed, the university administration apparently ambivalent as to which would occur first. Unfortunately, the well-being of several young boys became collateral damage.

**
So the Indians are on the verge of signing Grady Sizemore. Surprise, surprise. What I’m looking forward to is exactly how Sizemore and his agent spin the lack of interest Sizemore clearly failed to generate on the free agent market.

The anticipated incentive-laden one year deal is essentially the same kind of deal that the Indians have been giving the injured and lame for years on the if-come. It’s mostly little risk because if the player does perform the Indians benefit for a year and the player benefits by pricing himself out of a market the size of Cleveland. Rarely, though, do these actually work out.

The lack of interest in Sizemore isn’t surprising. He was good early, regressed and then has been hurt the last several years. His legacy will be of potential unfulfilled. The injuries mostly did him in but in truth even when healthy his skills were not improving.

Though Sizemore is more or less a fan favorite, the real problem with the impending deal is that it is simply a band-aid, a way of avoiding making decisions about the club’s future without Sizemore. By cutting him loose initially when he rejected a restructuring of his contract, the Indians more or less said that it was time to move on. Now they aren’t so sure.

It’s that kind of indecision that really keeps the franchise from fully progressing. There’s an argument of course that the team has other important decisions to make so avoiding one in the outfield for another year may make some sense. Perhaps. But the forceful counter is that every time they make a decision like this it keeps them from developing a longer term solution, which is what they ultimately will need.

In the long run the Indians would be far better off by being more definitive in their approach. Having decided that Sizemore’s talent no longer matched his financial ambitions, the Indians should have been content to merely move forward and stop inhibiting the progress of whoever it is they had tentatively decided would fill in the gap.

**
One of my favorite things to do after each Browns game is to listen to a couple of the radio call-in shows to gauge fan reaction where every loss is greeted with the gloom of a coming apocalypse and every victory is treated as one step closer to the playoffs.

For those not so inclined, let’s just say that there’s a fair amount of the fan base (assuming these callers represent the diversity of the fan base) that was already willing to pull the plug on Pat Shurmur after the loss to the Rams. While I expected similar irrationality after the Browns’ win over the Jaguars on Sunday, I was a bit surprised at its depth.

For many callers, the victory got them reassessing the Browns’ 4-6 record to the point where they concluded that this team really should be 6-4 if it had any breaks and in playoff contention. After all there was the 4th quarter melt down in the first loss. Then there was the heartbreaking loss to the Rams. And hey, when you think about it, there were only two games in which they really weren’t competitive—Tennessee and Houston.

Oy vey. Lest anyone get too excited, let’s concede for the moment that theoretically a few of their games could have gone a different way. Now let’s visit the reality as to why they didn’t.

Simply put, this team isn’t good enough to overcome even simple false start penalties. Even in those so-called tough losses, the Browns weren’t exactly lighting it up on offense nor were they losing to really good teams. This Browns team has struggled against every manner of competition in its fight for respectability. The fact that it only capitulated against two teams shouldn’t be used to deflect what your eyes are otherwise telling you.

If there is one positive about this team at this moment, it is in the simple fact that the basic structure of a real franchise is now in place. What’s missing of course is what makes the difference between bad and good teams—players. There just are too many people starting on the Browns that would be relegated to special teams almost anywhere else. When those starters get hurt they are replaced by players that would struggle to remain on most teams’ practice squads.

As much as we’d all like to believe it, this Browns team, as presently constructed, isn’t a good one just hoping to break out. It’s a bad one just hoping to hang on. There’s some reason for optimism for the future but let’s never delude ourselves into thinking that the playoffs are just one or two players away. It’s that kind of myopia that has for years put the franchise in the box from which it can’t seem to escape.

**

LeBron James and his other self-absorbed buddies are going on a 4-city basketball tour starting in Akron. Unless the tickets are free, it strikes me as a waste of time and money but it does lead to this week’s question to ponder: What’s a better value, LeBron’s Tour or the annual holiday visit of the Harlem Globetrotters?

Paterno State University

***UPDATE***
Last night, the Paterno State University Board of Trustees fired Joe Paterno. Not surprisingly, he was shocked by the decision, thus confirming what we've known for years. You don't have to be much of a cynic to wonder whether the Board's action came after Paterno (with their implicit approval) floated the trial balloon of a year-end retirement only to see the adverse reaction to it. Unable to sustain an unsustainable position, the Board had to take the action that Paterno was reluctant to take himself. Two points. First, let's not ever try to pain Paterno as a sympathetic figure. This scandal doesn't erase all the other good in his life but neither does that good erase his morally bankrupt conduct in this case. If there is even one additional abuse victim once Paterno knew about Sandusky's alleged conduct (and by all accounts there were), then Paterno and many others are complicit in that abuse and should pay a heavy price. Second, at some point soon you can bet that the Big Ten Commission Jim Delaney and the NCAA will add some unintentional humor into this by announcing that neither Paterno nor Penn State violated any NCAA rules. That will be the final confirmation, really, of the NCAA's irrelevance in really being a force for something positive in the lives of young men and women. And if that brings about the downfall of the NCAA as well, then so much the better.


Original column starts now...

Whether Penn State football head coach Joe Paterno wins or loses against Nebraska on Saturday, the last home game he’ll apparently ever coach, won’t matter. The scoreboard when it’s over will still read, “Paterno State University 1, Abuse Victims 0.”

In what can only be described as the most tone deaf answer yet to the burgeoning child abuse scandal that is rocking not just the Penn State football program but also the entire university, Paterno is being given the opportunity to retire at season’s end. If the Penn State administration or Board of Trustees understood how depraved this situation really is and how absolutely vile they have been in their reaction to it, Paterno’s retirement would have started this past Monday.

As it is, Paterno will be given the opportunity to say goodbye to the fans, the students and all of the Penn State sympathizers. In the process more then a few people will infer that Paterno too is a victim in all this. They’ll talk about his record, his good works and how all of that is being forgotten in another rush to judgment. Don’t believe it for a moment. Paterno as victim surely turns this tragic tale on its head.

If the latest reports are true, there are at least 20 victims of the most horrific child abuse imaginable, any number of whom could potentially have escaped the abuse if Paterno had acted with any sort of moral center, who now will never escape their own personal hells. Paterno on the other hand can retire quietly, richly, and with the gratitude of a fan base that will wonder why he had to be forced out.

Paterno State University 1, Abuse Victims 0.

That’s the real scoreboard by which Paterno has chosen to be remembered. The same lack of compassion that caused Paterno to make a perfunctory, late report to a campus administrator about something “inappropriate” (his unfortunate words) involving former defensive coordinator and lifelong Paterno friend, Jerry Sandusky, is the same lack of compassion being exhibited by Paterno now. It’s sad, really, where we as a society cannot fully embrace the real victims of abuse and yet will give a pass to Paterno’s own despicable conduct in this whole thing.

Make no mistake about it. Allowing Paterno, the 84-year old coach whose contract expires at the end of the season anyway, to retire at season’s end rather then cutting ties now is only slightly less of a despicable reaction then if Paterno had been allowed to coach still another year. Yes, it’s that bad.

You can’t expect drunken college students to understand the human tragedy of this situation, which is why they showed up en masse at Paterno’s house on Tuesday evening to cheer him on. But we all should have expected better from Paterno then and now and yet again he’s failed to do the right thing.

If Paterno really did have a moral compass that he could consult, it would have immediately told him that the only response was an immediate resignation and a pledge to never stop raising funds for those innocent victims of Sandusky’s conduct. But hey the Nittany Lions are 12th ranked at the moment and have 3 games left in a season that could result in them playing in the first ever Big Ten Championship. There are priorities and when the season ends they'll still be abuse victims so what's the rush to start the healing?

He did give a minor shout out of sorts to the abuse victims when his student supporters visited him Tuesday evening, but most of his words were reserved for himself and assuring his supporters that he is indeed doing fine. Nice to know. I wonder how that poor child who allegedly was being sodomized in 2002 was feeling right about the time he discovered that students were clapping out their support for the man that did little to stop the abuser from striking again or paying a price.

I’d like to think that at some point soon Paterno will come to his senses and realize that a year end resignation is such a worthless and disrespectful response that he’ll change his mind and turn over the reigns immediately. But I won’t hold my breath.

Paterno couldn’t do the right thing in 2002, when he wasn’t nearly as senile as he apparently is now, so why should we expect him to act in a more dignified manner now? He couldn’t comprehend then how truly despicable the allegations against his buddy Sandusky were then so why should he understand how awful it is for him to remain in his current position is now?

A year end resignation and the eternal gratitude of Penn State Nation seems just a little too good for what Paterno really deserves. If the there was any justice, Paterno’s statute on the campus would be taken down, his office cleaned out, and he be shipped off to wherever codgers like him go to contemplate why they ultimately did little to prevent more kids from becoming Sandusky victims.

The only real hope for righting this ship is for the Penn State Board of Trustees to step in the breach at this moment and say, “not so fast, Joe.” But they are no more in charge of the university then the worthless figurehead who calls himself president at the moment. It’s Paterno’s college and he’s going to be allowed to do any damn thing he wants. Besides they were likely complicit in arranging this soft landing for Paterno, viewing it as a win/win situation for everyone; everyone that is within the Penn State family.

Paterno State University 1, Abuse Victims 0.

The scandal at Penn State, both the actual tragedy and the unbelievably awful reaction by the adults in charge, then and now, makes this far and away the biggest scandal in NCAA football, ever. It’s the worst kind of reality show and the issues it highlights go so far beyond what takes place between the lines on Saturday that it’s almost unfair to think of it as merely a football scandal. Indeed it’s a human tragedy made all the worse, if that's even possible, because it took place at an institution of higher learning and moral upbringing and was facilitated by trusted figures who, when push came to shove, chose the wrong priority to serve.

Reading the grand jury transcripts and the charges levied against Sandusky are stunning in their import. Whether you have children or not, only the absolute worst among us cannot help but be struck for how awful all of this must been for the victims. If the allegations are true, then Sandusky was worse than a garden variety sick bastard child pornographer. Sandusky’s alleged crimes involve unthinkable pedophilia of a kind so depraved that it’s actually hard to believe that it could exist in a civilized society.

What is it about the human condition that brings people to such unspeakable acts? And what of the underlying psychology of it all?

You don’t have to be a psychologist to understand that the abuse Sandusky allegedly heaped on some of his victims, taking place as it did in public places, was not so much a brazen act of defiance as it was a sign that Sandusky wanted to be caught. And he was, at least twice from what the reports indicate. Yet, it was to no avail and by all accounts the abuse continued because those trusted to do the right thing, like Paterno, didn’t.

Maybe Paterno couldn’t comprehend the human tragedy, either, and that’s why he made only the slightest of gestures to stop it all. In one sense it’s easy to understand how that can happen. But in the larger sense, if someone in Paterno’s role doesn’t do the right thing, who would? That’s why this whole thing is where it’s at today.

Paterno has hung around the Penn State program probably decades past his expiration date from a purely coaching standpoint. But the fact that he did hang around for so long doesn’t just suggest but demands that he go to greater lengths then anyone at Penn State to ensure that its moral compass never get questioned.

Well, surprise, surprise. Paterno didn’t do the right thing then and didn’t do the right thing now. At least he’s consistent. I guess stress does bring out the true character of a person.