The Drubbing

You can debate whether or not Joe Paterno “did enough” by passing reports of child abuse up the chain of command, and you can debate whether or not going after him is worthwhile because of his age. But what is not up for debate is that this is just the most recent occurrence of a long string of avoidable mis-steps by major collegiate athletic programs. Almost all of which have been attempted to be covered up. I hate to think about how many others are still successfully being covered up.

As George Vecsey of the NY Times points out, it’s about more than just skirting academic eligibility requirements. We have a full-blown epidemic on our hands.

King Football is not about just academic scandals and recruiting scandals and now the growing shadow of concussion scandals. (What, you thought aging players now coming down with dementia arrived in the N.F.L. with their brain pans totally intact?)

Just the other day, Jeré Longman wrote in The New York Times about his beloved home state, where L.S.U. has downsized its foreign language program with minimal public reaction, but managed to maintain an undefeated football program.

Lots of Happy Valleys out there. Occasionally a critic like Taylor Branch or a panel calls for reform. At Penn State, it was even worse than prostituting education for the sake of a football powerhouse. The entire old-boy system in that university managed to overlook the possibility that children’s lives were being ruined, within the dangerous cocoon of King Football. We need to look beyond the alleged abuses. We need to look at the system that encouraged people to look the other way.

Really, we need to do something about big-time college sports.

We really do.