George Will: Money in College Sports Leads to 'Moral Derangement'
Conservative columnist George Will, one of the nation's biggest sports fans amongst political commentators, came out Sunday with a strong indictment of not only the Penn State University child sex abuse scandal, but also what he believes is the corrupting force of college sports on education.
Speaking on ABC's This Week, Will said, "What we still need to learn is how graphic was the description that the assistant coach gave to Joe Paterno about what he'd seen in the shower because that would tell us the degree of Joe Paterno's culpability."
Paterno is the storied head coach of the football team in question released by the University last week.
Will continued, "When you graft a multi-billion-dollar entertainment industry anomalously on to higher education, you produce a bubble of entitlements and exemptions, and eventually a simple moral derangement."
- Noel Sheppard's blog
- Login to post comments
Comments
Hearing almost nothing BUT
Submitted by motherbelt on Sun, 11/13/2011 - 1:19pm.
Hearing almost nothing BUT this story here in PA over the past week, I have been wondering when the whole system of college football would come under scrutiny for having a part in this. Until football in general (full disclosure: I hate football and always have) is no longer considered our national religion, the problems are going to continue.
From talented athletes being coddled and excused from all kinds of aberrant behavior that would not be tolerated, is anyone really surprised that the administrators of the sports programs at colleges become demi-gods in their domain?
IMO, this was a shameful situation where the good of the athletic program was placed above everything else.
MB
Submitted by Radical1979 on Sun, 11/13/2011 - 1:19pm.
Also in PA, with my in-laws staunchly Penn State. As I said yesterday, my niece put on her facebook status, "Win it for JoePa and the victims". Is that sad or what? Does she really think the victims of Sandusky give a rats behind if PSU wins or loses? If anything, they'd probably wish for a loss given the horrific memories of the place.
She's a freshman in college and should know better. But lets not let a little thing like child abuse/rape get in the way of enjoying the game...
Win it for the victims???
Submitted by motherbelt on Sun, 11/13/2011 - 1:28pm.
Win it for the victims??? That's just bizarre.
A lot of these kids (I'm guessing at her age) have grown up thinking "candlelight vigils" and wearing a ribbon are substantive acts (gee, I wonder where they got that idea?)
I don't even know what to say about some of this crap any more.
MB
Submitted by Radical1979 on Sun, 11/13/2011 - 1:30pm.
I won't bring it up to her, but if it's ever brought up I will ask her how she would feel if this had happened to her 7 year old nephew. Then ask how she would feel if it happened after someone knew the attacker was a pedophile and didn't report him to the police. At some point, these college kids need to become adults, which means to stop thinking only of themselves, and their pleasures.
Joe Paterno is dead to me
Submitted by Dave. on Sun, 11/13/2011 - 1:49pm.
As for his culpability, he had to have known what was going on, as Penn State knew about Sandusky way back in 1995.
There is no way Paterno didn't know what was up.
I don't fault him for not going to the police, as he did not actually see what Sandusky did.
What I do fault him for was allowing Sandusky use of campus facilities after his forced retirement, which he used to continue his assaults on young boys.
Paterno was a hero of mine since I first got into football as a kid, and I think it a sad irony that the man who single-handedly built Penn State's legendary football program had a hand in its destruction.
-Dave
Vote for the American in November
Dave, a lot of the current
Submitted by motherbelt on Sun, 11/13/2011 - 2:41pm.
Dave, a lot of the current PSU students are pi$$ed off.....that Paterno lost his job. After all, part of the PSU "experience" is Joe Paterno and football, and they are now being denied that privilege.
Jonah Goldberg nails it here.
Of course we’re going to riot,” Paul Howard, a 24-year-old aerospace-engineering student at Penn State University, told the New York Times. “What do they expect when they tell us at 10 o’clock that they fired our football coach?”
mb,
Submitted by Dave. on Sun, 11/13/2011 - 4:35pm.
That he did.
I hope when the board of trustees finishes firing everybody involved that they will be run off, as well. The cultural rot at that institution has infected it from top to bottom.
Penn State needs to start over from dead scratch.
I also think that if the story that came out yesterday that Sandusky was recruiting for Penn State as recently as early this year turns out to be true, we are going to see the NCAA get involved.
Penn State needs to reorder its priorities, or have it done for them.
And I feel sorry for the taxpayers in Pennsylvania, because they are going to be taking it in the neck when the lawsuits get rolling.
-Dave
Vote for the American in November
Penn State
Submitted by AdrianVance on Sun, 11/13/2011 - 2:19pm.
Not only is the football program totally corrupt, but so is the Science program. Dr. Michael Mann of IPCC ClimateGate fame is there. He and Dr. Phil Jones of the East Anglia University Climate Research Unit pretty well brought down the anthropogenic global warming scam when Mann's "trick" was exposed regarding his "hockey stick" Al Gore used to get a Nobel Prize, an Oscar and $500 million!
See The Two Minute Conservative at http://adrianvance.blogspot.com has political analysis, science and humor. Now in the top 2% on Kindle.
The law on reporting abuse is clear. Crystal clear.
Submitted by drsamherman on Sun, 11/13/2011 - 3:19pm.
Every state requires that health care professionals and those in public employ (e.g. a state-sponsored university) immediately report any suspected case of child abuse (molestation, rape, physical assault, battery, endangerment) to authorities. In most states, it specifies who those authorities are. In the case of Pennsylvania, I am not sure but that probably includes the campus police who would then be legally bound to call in other law enforcement as necessary. It appears that everyone involved in this tragedy is somehow at fault, at a minimum.
Breaking this down from the chain of events I have read within the Grand Jury document, it appears that the graduate assistant told Joe Paterno. Joe Paterno told the Athletic Director and the Vice President for Business and Finance. The Athletic Director and Vice President interviewed the graduate assistant but chose to cover up the incident. It appears also that this abuse was systematically enacted by Coach Sandusky from at least 1998 so therefore at least 13 years of failing to report this to law enforcement authorities is noted by all parties involved internal to the university. This includes ex-President Spanier. That none of them followed up with law enforcement external to the university and that the Vice President for Business and Finance and Athletic Director appear to have lied to the grand jury and covered the matter up for such a long period of time suggests again a system-wide willingness to look the other way for over 13 years. The most reprehensible part of this is that all of the parties involved knew Sandusky was a pedophile, yet did NOTHING to stop it but a few administrative moves to cover themselves and to create a facade.
It has been the long-standing view of the psychiatric and mental health communities that rape, molestation and pederasty are not crimes of sex - they are crimes of power and abuse. They are crimes of commission involving action. This is the Sandusky part.
Ignoring a crime, covering it up and sweeping the facts under the rug for whatever excuse is a crime of omission, essentially meaning that an act which could have prevented something did not happen. This is the Penn State University administration part.
I don't care what the students have to say. Joe Paterno and his graduate assistant failed to follow-up and the assaults appeared to have continued. The Athletic Director and Vice President covered it all up and lied to a grand jury per the report, resulting in a charge of perjury and others very likely to happen. The University President sat on his hands and did nothing, essentially ignoring it and failing to follow-up with law enforcement and breaching his duties to his Board of Trustees and to the entire university community. Those who broke the law need to go to jail for a long, long time. Those who enabled this tragedy but did not commit a crime need to lose their jobs in disgrace for inaction. He who committed the crime should be sent to jail and allowed to suffer the usual fate of child molesters in prison. The students need to get the hell over their entitlement mentality and remember that real victims their age or younger were hurt emotionally and physically.
Personally, I find this matter so disgusting that I mentioned this to one of the psychiatrists on the appropriate DSM-V revision committee. That psychiatrist mentioned that the Penn State situation is forcing a massive reconsideration of removing pedophilia and other paraphilias from the new DSM. As a kind lady pointed out, timing is everything and this may be enough to force the APA to listen.
Doc Sam
Submitted by Radical1979 on Sun, 11/13/2011 - 4:28pm.
It's terrible that it took something like this to cause the APA to rethink it's position on pedophilia. I'm praying that it does.
Regardless of what the law said, every day that went by that those within PSU knew Sandusky hadn't been arrested is a day they owe the children who were abused.
Termination From Employment May Not Be Sufficient
Submitted by stratman on Sun, 11/13/2011 - 5:20pm.
Potential criminal negligence was perpetrated on the part of Paterno and University officials. A criminal investigation should transpire and court hearings for any that assisted Sandusky to remain under the radar of the police, district attorney's office and the public at large. If Sandusky continued his abuse after discovery by University officials, including Paterno, then additional charges and punishments should be incurred.
How this sordid affair is handled by the police and legal system will be a watershed moment instructing current and future generations on what is acceptable behavior in our culture. No further evidence of how twisted behavior can become mainstream than the debauchery of Bill Clinton and his infamous defense that oral sex wasn't "sex" due to proscribed definitions agreed upon prior to being questioned. Since that time, generations now believe oral sex is not sex, no big deal, and harmless to their emotional and physical well being.
Interestingly, David Brooks, on PBS with Mark Shields and Jim Lehrer, is the first person I've heard of the Media talking heads to point out the moral decline and narcissistic tendencies of our culture to avoid involving ourselves to stop such evil behavior such as abuse when we see it in person, and then continue this "bystander" attitude by not reporting the crime to the proper authorities. It would seem this has really touched a nerve in Brooks. Good. It's about time he stops adoring the crease of a man's pants and discuss things of importance. Then again, maybe he recently saw the final episode of Seinfeld and couldn't escape the parallel, even adding a dash of religious-like moral condemnation to the temperament of his comment.
Shields, for his part, failed to see the larger picture that Brooks spoke about. Lehrer's responses were as vacant as his doll-like eyes.
For once, I can agree with David Brooks on the decline...
Submitted by drsamherman on Sun, 11/13/2011 - 7:09pm.
...in moral and spiritual values that were most egregiously exemplified by Penn State students rioting in support of Joe Paterno. Most of the student interviews all pointed out an attitude that they were entitled to have Joe Paterno as their coach as if he were some kind of campus fixture like a building or a piece of equipment. Their anger was so misdirected that I wonder exactly if they are capable of empathy and more than just rhetorical support to the young men so affected by the sexually predatory Sandusky. It is perhaps the saddest possible comment that the rioting students showed little or no concern for the possibility that he may have broken the law, and certainly suborned the cover-up by not following up on the actions of his subordinate coach. Forced retirement or not, it was hardly fitting punishment for suspected pedophilia and child sexual molestation. As you pointed out Strat, his criminal culpability remains to be fully explored in a court of law. A very sad way to end a career, but nonetheless one which Joe Paterno brought upon himself through inaction and denial.
What will really tell the tale is the evidence uncovered in the discovery process used in any potential civil action brought against the university and the individual officials. Penn State has so much explaining to do that I would not wonder if Pennsylvania's state government forces them to make a settlement. If I were the attorneys for the plaintiff(s), I certainly would not accept a settlement but would rather feel compelled to drag every detail out so that any lingering doubt of who was responsible and in what fashion would be firmly established.
You need only treat a few survivors of child sexual molestation to realize how emotionally shattered their lives are, and to minimize this with some glossy language will do nothing. The truth needs to come out, painful as that catharsis will be. Whatever comes of this in a legal sense, it certainly gives us a reason to question why there are those depraved and debauched souls who believe child sexual attraction leading to heinous acts like molestation are somehow to be normalized. You can tell the Penn State rioters had no earthly clue that there are moral absolutes which are not to be questioned. Anything involving a minor is one of them.
excellent drsam*
Submitted by cajun2 on Sun, 11/13/2011 - 7:39pm.
Excellent post and may I just add a simple observation.
The distorted allegiance/loyalty to Penn State and Paterno by the students, the loyalty/allegiance by the administration to the school and Paterno for reputation, power, and influence rather than to protect children is the prime example as to why the majority of child sexual abuse victims do not reveal incidents of assault.
These children know, from all the media coverage, that this uproar is what they feared the most. That during this firestorm, there would be those who would attack the victims or worse, ignore the children's trauma and suffering for their own special interest.
Sandusky will go to prison. Penn State will get a new coach. But these children, some who may be victims because of the conspiracy of silence, will suffer for the rest of their lives.
The sick part is this: nobody came to help the children!
Submitted by Mary Louise Turner on Mon, 11/14/2011 - 11:54am.
Throughout this whole horrible mess, which puts a sick new twist on the "win at all costs" mentality, not one "adult" lifted a finger to protect and defend the helpless victims...Parents, teachers, school administrators (and not just at Penn State), clergy, medical personnel, law enforcement - they all failed. As a result, Jerry Sandusky was free to roam for many years, destroying perhaps dozens of lives in the process. The first crime (in 1995) should have been the last.
The Penn State horror should, and must, force states to change their laws regarding pedophilia and other predatory sex crimes. One change I would like to see is that covering up for any sex crime must be considered a felony (obstruction of justice). Furthermore, there should be no bail for sex felons, especially child predators; Sandusky was freed on bail! What do you think?
Well it so happens the judge
Submitted by Radical1979 on Mon, 11/14/2011 - 11:56am.
has connections with Sandusky.
"... there are moral
Submitted by stratman on Mon, 11/14/2011 - 12:45am.
Precisely.
Yet we live in a culture where the Left genuflect to Roman Polanski despite his crime against a minor and instead villify Conservatives who destest his being given awards all the while the Left's wish to grant him absolution because it's old news, his wife and unborn child were brutally murdered, it was the girls's fault for being there and looking older, Polanski's already paid his debt, or because he's considered a supreme talent with films. Vomit.
There are many different aspects of this story that need to become a national discussion, including the students' hero worship of Joe Paterno, a seemingly good man with a profound flaw of inaction and grossly misplaced protection that may have allowed much more human suffering than need be. These students are by definition still "children" themselves, still sorting out the realities of life before losing the safety net of parents and the cocoon of educational systems. Despite this prolonged childhood and the crippled mentality it may foster, I believe many of the students will eventually understand their grossly misapplied loyalties as the facts of the case are publicized and digested and there is distance from the immense peer pressure that must exist at this time. But these students are acting as enablers of illicit and immoral behavior and should be confronted, such as with a school wide address on why these students and school officials behaved wrong.
Yes stratman*
Submitted by cajun2 on Mon, 11/14/2011 - 12:51am.
Well said. We can only hope that reality and maturity sets in and these "children" do learn from this incident. However, there will be those who will encourage and support them in their ignorance. Just like with all those young people associated with the OWS mess.
Kinda funny
Submitted by ckc1227 on Sun, 11/13/2011 - 3:38pm.
George Will and a few folks in this thread are basically making the same lame argument that the Occupy Wall Street protesters are making.
How This Could Have Been Stopped
Submitted by swhite1951 on Sun, 11/13/2011 - 5:04pm.
The graduate assistant, one Mike McQueary, sees Coach Sandusky in the shower with the boy and notifies the authorities himself. He doesn't call Paterno until after he's notified the police. He is the eyewitness in an ensuing trial and who knows how many other young boys are saved from the clutches of Sandusky.
There's this thing called Root Cause Analysis, and the root cause is the inability of McQueary to accept the moral and ethical responsibility which should have compelled him to stop it there. In addition, when it became evident that nothing was going to be done, he could have then gone to the police.
And yet here we are today, Paterno out as coach and McQueary still employed....for now. He bears much more of the guilt for this because he refused to do the right thing.
Going back to what others have said, if it was your 10 year old son, or 8 year old nephew who was in that shower what would be your opinion of McQueary? As Gov. Corbett said today, he met his "minimum obligation," but not his "moral obiligation that all of us would have."
swhite
Submitted by Radical1979 on Sun, 11/13/2011 - 6:06pm.
How about before McQuery calls the cops he pulls Sandusky off the kid? How on earth did he not do that?! You can't mistake an 11 year old for an adult. The whole thing is disgusting.
If we are applying Joint Commission standards...
Submitted by drsamherman on Sun, 11/13/2011 - 7:19pm.
...this would be considered a systemic-level failure. From start to finish, Penn State failed at every level to do the right thing.
There is a big question drsam*
Submitted by cajun2 on Sun, 11/13/2011 - 7:43pm.
WHY and WHAT has this country and our society done to allow or introduce this kind of systemic failure not just in our colleges but in all aspects of our society???
Because if you do not ask the questions WHY and WHAT, in order to find avenues for correction, then we are doomed to allow it to occur again and again.
I thoroughly agree, Cajun!
Submitted by drsamherman on Sun, 11/13/2011 - 10:13pm.
Unfortunately, in the modern US it takes a heinous case like this one to move anyone to do anything. I have always thought that a huge problem is the hedonistic view of human nature that has been so espoused in public institutions from schools to government to what have you. Nobody wants to ask those questions because the answers will be too painful and politically incorrect. So many people now live by their baser instincts that higher thought exists only as a relic.
I think it's worth revisiting
Submitted by motherbelt on Sun, 11/13/2011 - 11:37pm.
I think it's worth revisiting George Will's take on this, which we have kind of digressed from in this thread: Football, money, and athletic privilege. There is just too much at stake for college football programs from bad publicity, so of course they try to contain it and handle it "in-house."
Sandusky thought he was privileged because of his position; and because of the importance of football, he got protected. And how many innocent boys paid the price for Penn State's football program?
Yes motherbelt*
Submitted by cajun2 on Sun, 11/13/2011 - 11:48pm.
George Will does bring up some interesting points but then so have some posters here at NB. This is not just football mania controlling actions and imposing silence for protection of an institution or system. This kind of activity has been revealed around the world. There is some similarity with the Catholic Church, difficult as it is for me to admit that, but there is also the example of UN personnel sexually abusing children in several African Nations, filming their activities and selling the pornography. Silence among the UN administration that new of this horror for years and took no action. Federal Agencies here in the US as well as the Military has had groups creating pornography, sexual abuse of minors, well known to superiors that took no action.
The kind of event that has occurred at Penn State has happened many times before even within larger organizations. The evil that inspires this kind of silence and complicity for power, money or influence, is evident throughout our society, not just in football.
That behavior is what is the "cause" of this kind of callous, self serving actions, to take place. That is also what we need to bring to the forefront, openly discuss, and find out why our boundaries of behavior have been so eroded that we no longer see children as victims, children as vulnerable and require our protection first.
Even one molested boy was too high a price.
Submitted by drsamherman on Mon, 11/14/2011 - 10:45pm.
No human field of endeavor is worth cashiering our moral values for the sake of convenience or expedience. Penn State was all too willing to look the other way while Sandusky sexually molested and raped boys because their football franchise would have been endangered. This is a complete failure in so many ways that one could go on listing them for weeks in smaller print than electronically legible.
At the core, Penn State is a rotten, diseased institution that requires reorganization of itself physically, spiritually and certainly morally. When a moral compass goes that far adrift, there is no other choice but to consider scuttling the ship and building a new one.
The whole JoePa mystique we now know was built on a house of moral corruption, denial and appalling indifference. If the governor of Pennsylvania or the board of trustees of Penn State do not take serious action, there will be even more long lasting damage. For one, the football coaching staff needs to go, as does most of the administration and the leaders of the board of trustees for failing in their duty to oversee and manage the affairs within their purview to assure the university community that it will never, ever happen again.
"All that is needed for evil to prevail..is for
Submitted by greggy on Mon, 11/14/2011 - 6:38am.
good men to do nothing".
Look at all the tragedies that could have been prevented in this country over the last many years, if people in a position to do so had acted when they should have and had done what they should have done.
Most people who understand the events leading up to 9/11 (and I'm not talking about conspiracy theorists) know that if information had been properly and effectively shared between various agencies, and if political correctness hadn't prevented a proper investigation and inspection of Zaccarious Moussawi's computer, that 9/11 might have been prevented altogether or at least reduced in scope.
A number of people knew that Major Nidal Hassan had become radicalized, was possibly unstable, and yet they did not act, mostly out of political correctness - and a horrible tragedy ensued at Ft Hood.
It was either the shoe bomber, or the underwear bomber, whose own father reported him as a threat to US intelligence or law enforcement agencies - yet he was let on the plane anyway and apparently not subjected to a thorough search.
Multiple persons from educators to law enforcement knew that Jared Loughner was dangerous and possibly unstable, and laws were on the books in Arizona that facilitated proper actions being taken - and yet, proper actions were not taken.
Now in the Penn State mess, a number of persons knew going back as long as 15 years ago that this creep Sandusky was a pedophile, and no one calls the police? And he goes on doing it for many years after he should have been stopped cold?
In each of these instances mentioned, evil prevailed because supposedly decent people either did nothing, or did very little to stop it. In each of these instances mentioned, people and the institutions they belonged to, failed systematically to act, and to prevent preventable tragedies in which innocents were harmed, with great consequence.
Thru a combination of incompetence, ineffectiveness, political correctness, self-interest, and cowardice, people and institutions appear to be failing to serve the public good as it should be and must be served, at an alarming rate.
In what world does a man see a child being raped in the showers, and not call the police? In what world is a man told of this happening, and he doesn't call the police either? This is just totally beyond my ability to comprehend.
Well, having just now read and reflected upon the comments on
Submitted by Jer on Mon, 11/14/2011 - 7:14am.
this thread, I must say there are some really exceptional posts about an enormously troubling topic--frankly, all of them eloquent and powerful--from top to bottom.
Jer
Very Simple Solution
Submitted by happi on Mon, 11/14/2011 - 1:14pm.
There's a very simple solution to the problems caused by big-time college sports - football and basketball. Haven't you noticed that you rarely hear about scandals with college baseball? Why is that? Because anyone who wants to play baseball but isn't interested in education has an alternative called the minor leagues. We need minor leagues for football and basketball. Now how do you make that come about? I'm not sure. Perhaps someone else might have a good suggestion for that.
D-leagues (Now if the NBA and NBPA got a clue...)
Submitted by Unsane on Tue, 11/15/2011 - 10:25am.
IMO, we are getting minor league basketball, slowly but surely - the D-leagues.
"CONSUMED DEMOCRACY RETURNS A SOCIALIST REGIME" - Slayer, "Fictional Reality", from Divine Intervention (1994)