The Gods of Football–Part II
My recent post ,Where do Penn State and the NCAA go from here?, stirred up a lot of controversy. My concern over this whole debacle, besides the obvious of molested children, is the fact that it continued because of the elevated stature of football on campus. Penn State is not the only university to hold the coaches and team in such high regard but is the most recent in the news. The Freeh Report stated the culture of reverence for the football program that is ingrained at all levels of the campus community is one of many contributing factors as to why Sandusky was allowed to continue his actions for so long.
When this story broke last year I saw similarities with all big time football schools and Penn State is not the only one to hold its football program in a culture of reverence. The same attitude of hero worship is what led to Ohio State’s downfall. These thoughts led me to write The Gods of Football.
Below are excerpts from The Gods of Football, posted Nov. 22, 2011, in which I analyze this very problem. As I re-read this piece it seems I was almost psychic in my predictions and analysis.
NOTE—the references to Ohio State, its coaches and players refer to what is known as Tattoo-Gate in which players exchanged autographs on school equipment in return for tattoos. This ultimately led to the firing of Coach Jim Tressell, benching of players for many games for their involvement, and strong penalties for the school including loss of all games played for2010-2011 season, and banishment from bowl games for the 2012-13 season plus other punishments. Temple Shoe refers to the nickname of the Ohio State Stadium commonly known as the horseshoe because of its unique shape.
The gods of football
….The lives of the eight young boys have been forever changed, their youth robbed of its innocence, and self-esteem and trust forever damaged (due to Jerry Sandusky). All of this happened at the sports altar in the temple of football. They were used as sacrificial offerings to appease the gods of greed and excess in the name of football. A large and prestigious university (Penn State) may come tumbling down because no one wanted to stand up to the great god of sports and his high priest, Joe Paterno. No one wanted to risk the wrath of the gods and alumni by going to authorities with the ugly truth. Those in charge of the temple—the administrators, coaches, police—all kept their silence.
Exposing the truth would have meant a possible loss of revenue and a black eye for the athletic department. By allowing the cover-up to continue for so long the black eye appears minor compared to the festering ugly wound eating away at the face of the university. And make no mistake, it was a cover-up….
It took the courage of one heroic mother to finally stand up to all the followers of the almighty sports gods and say nothing was as important as her son.
The worship of sports goes all the way back to the ancient Greeks. They believed that their gods loved to see strong, fit and graceful young male bodies. Therefore, one way to gain favor from the gods was to exercise, eat right, and excel in athletic games. They even felt that a loss meant that the gods didn’t like you. Athletic competition was tied to worship of the gods.
Even the word “stadium” has religious significance. It comes from the Greek word “stadion” which was the name of the place built to honor Zeus and was where athletic competitions were held. The legend says that when Heracles completed his twelve labors he built the Olympic stadium as an honor to Zeus. Following its completion, he walked in a straight line for 200 steps and called this distance a “stadion” which was later used as a unit of distance. The term “stadion” or “stade” was later applied to mean a short race or sprint measuring between 180 and 240 meters, or the length of the stadium.
Things haven’t changed much in today’s world. One of the most notable and profitable athletic companies is named after the goddess of strength, speed, and victory—Nike. Not to be outdone, Adida is marketing an athletic shoe that sweeps into wings at the ankle channeling the mythology of the ancient Greeks and Romans in which Hermes and Mercury were said to have wings on their feet.
Outstanding athletes are still viewed as gods in a sort of hero worship. Ohio State will never forget but long suffer the name of Terrell Pryor. He was the beautiful muscular specimen of a quarterback god who was supposed to bring glory to the Temple Shoe. What he brought was greed and shame to the Shoe and its followers. He had risen so high on his pedestal that worshipers paid mucho money for the privilege of his autograph on temple equipment such as shoes, shoulder pads, etc.
Over the past several years the gods (coaches, star athletes, and entire teams) have felt protected behind the veil of worship and have been so empowered that they tempted the fates. However, purgatory and hell will eventually catch up and the golden touch of Midas will turn to rust. Terrell Pryor, high priest Coach Tressel, and other lesser gods were banned from the Temple Shoe—some forever and others for a prescribed period of time to do their penance. The same will happen to the worshipped and their flock in Happy Valley….
Let the games begin again and continue forever—in a clean and honorable way worthy of the one true God. Let us never forget that no one person is bigger than the game, institution, or the temple of football itself. Even though we worship them as gods, they are mere mortals with all the human fragilities that come with it. Let us put the game in perspective and honor the competition, not the personalities involved. Honor the sport and do the right thing on the field and off—no matter the cost. God bless the victims and their families and let us pray no other innocent victims will be sacrificed at the altar of sports.
The Second Child
Below is a reblog of a post titled The Second Child by Rick Lakin posted by permission of the author. There has been a lot in the news lately about the Jerry Sandusky trial and the Freeh Report, which was an attempt by Penn State to understand how this tragedy happened, but The Second Child puts a more human emphasis on the events. After the first child was abused, how and why was the second child endangered?
The Second Child
http://ricklakin.us/wordpress/the-second-child-2/
Published July 13, 2012 | By Rick Lakin
On December 6, 2011, I posted this response to this story by Pat Lalama . It appears that my ideas then were a bit prescient.
I enjoyed your Penn State article. I believe that Jerry Sandusky is toast. At the end of all of this, Sandusky will spend the bulk of his remaining life behind bars. I believe, though, that the real tragedy is the first part of that statement. Jerry Sandusky’s conviction will most probably be the end of this tragedy. After that, on the one hand, you will have a group of men who will live out their lives as wealthy men and on the other, the sons and daughters who will suffer at the hands of those who were hurt by Sandusky as the chain of abuse continues untreated and unbroken.
The real story here is one that will be unreported and yet is an all too common one. This is a case where you find an abuser at the center of a closely knit, financially lucrative, organization that can be characterized as an old-fashioned good old boys club. The question that needs to be answered in order that it will never happen again is not why did Jerry Sandusky abuse 8 or 10 or 20 or hundreds of kids? The real question is how Sandusky was allowed to abuse a second child after it became known that he had abused a first child.
Jerry Sandusky is singularly guilty of abusing every child up to a point but after the first time it was even whispered among the members of the community that some abuse had occurred, the members of the Penn State and Second Mile organizations share the responsibility, liability, and guilt for every instance of abuse that followed.
Natural disasters can seldom be prevented and happen instantaneously. Human tragedies such as Penn State that happen over a long period can and should be prevented. It takes courage, resolve of even the most inconsequential person at the low end of the totem pole and an institutional attitude that everyone is responsible for doing the right thing, that protecting the clients is above protecting the institution and that everyone will listen when anyone steps up and points out the Emperor’s lack of clothing.
The upcoming Jerry Sandusky trial will draw massive ratings, it will cause serious huffing and puffing about the evils of old white men who abuse little children and it will salve the indignant righteousness of the vicious pundits. It will do absolutely nothing to protect a youngster in the future who is put in the hands of another fine, upstanding member of an organization, similar to Second Mile who sacrifices his time and money to provide opportunities to those less fortunate but who is also a serial child abuser.
Unfortunately, then, the 24 hour, scandal-hungry, fact-starved, yellow-tinted media machine will solve the case of the many children in the Penn State scandal but leave unreported and uncorrected the story of the second child.
Where do Penn State and the NCAA go from here?
We haven’t heard the end of the story about Jerry Sandusky and Penn State Football, the worst scandal to ever hit sports. The fallout will continue for years to come and the only redeeming factor will be if we as a society learn from this fiasco.
The Freeh Report came out last week which strongly condemned Paterno and other top officials in the school’s administration for concealing Sandusky’s sexual abuse of children in order to avoid bad publicity for the university and the football program. The Paterno family issued a statement vehemently disagreeing with the report and saying, “Mr. Freeh presented his opinions and interpretations as if they were absolute facts.” The Paterno family contends that the report is merely the opinions of one person. They say that they and their lawyers will conduct their own investigation of the scandal.
The Freeh Report
The Freeh Report is hardly the opinion of just one person. It was spearheaded by former FBI Director Louis Freeh in which he and the Special Investigative Counsel conducted over 430 interviews and analyzed over 3.5 million pieces of electronic data and documents. Sports fans, university officials and others may try to put their own spin on the report but nothing can erase the shocking findings stated in the very beginning of the report:
“The most saddening finding by the Special Investigative Counsel is the total and consistent disregard by the most senior leaders at Penn State for the safety and welfare of Sandusky’s child victims….there was no ‘attempt to investigate, to identify Victim 2, or to protect that child or any others from similar conduct except as related to preventing its re-occurrence on University property.’”
The report goes on to name those most senior leaders as four of the most powerful people at The Pennsylvania State University—President Graham B. Spanier, Senior Vice President-Finance and Business Gary C. Schultz, Athletic Director Timothy M. Curley, and Head Football Coach Joseph V. Paterno. The report condemns them by saying they failed to protect against a child sexual predator harming children for over a decade.
What happened in plain English
Let’s not gloss over this statement. In everyday language a member of the university’s faculty was raping young boys on university grounds and at university events and the four in-the-know had known about it since at least 1998 when the first incident was reported to them. As you read through the Freeh Report the one recurring theme with the university officials was how were they going to handle this “humanely” for Sandusky? The university police even interviewed him in the Lasch Building so as not to put him “on the defensive.” In other words, they didn’t want to make him feel uncomfortable or intimidated. Did anyone ever think about how the young victims were feeling?
After the ’98 incident Sandusky raped at least two more victims before being caught by student assistant McQueary while raping a third boy in the showers February 2001. How many others might there have been between those times that we don’t know about? Do those “top officials” named in the report understand they could have prevented additional attacks and preserved the innocence of other young boys?
A year after the ’98 incident Sandusky was allowed to retire “not as a child molester but as a valued member of the Penn State football legacy”. According to the Freeh Report this visibility at Penn State allowed him to “groom his victims”. The report says, “school leaders empowered Sandusky to attract potential victims to the campus and football events by allowing him to have continued, unrestricted and unsupervised access to campus and to affiliate with the football program. These actions provided Sandusky with the very currency that enabled him to attract his victims.”
NCAA response—nothing off the table
Throughout this whole event the NCAA has been strangely quiet. The airwaves have been full of people speculating whether or not the NCAA will levy any punishments including the dreaded “death penalty”. Finally Tavis Smiley invited Mark Emmert, president of the NCAA, to his PBS show to ask where they stand. Emmert’s answer was very revealing when he said “nothing is off the table.” That means they could be eligible for the death penalty or even worse—banishment from the NCAA. (See A Fate Worse Than Death http://www.athleticscholarships.net/2012/07/16/fate-worse-than-death.htm) . This means that Penn State would lose all rights and privileges of being a member of the NCAA which effectively means an indefinite death penalty for the entire athletic department.
Southern Methodist University (SMU) is the only school to have suffered the death penalty for its football program and some say it took 20 years for them to come back.
Following the Freeh Report NCAA Vice President of Communications Bob Williams issued a statement referring to four key questions outlined in a Nov. 17, 2011 letter to Penn State that still need to be answered pertaining to “compliance with institutional control and ethics policies.”
NCAA letter to Penn State Nov. 17, 2011
I have heard some armchair experts on sports-talk radio say the NCAA won’t do anything because it is out of the realm of their jurisdiction. However, Mark Emmert stated in his Nov. 17, 2011 letter to Penn State President Rodney Erickson:
“Under Article 2.4, the NCAA Constitution requires that “for intercollegiate athletics to promote the character development of participants, to enhance the integrity of higher education and to promote civility in society, student-athletes, coaches, and all others associated with these athletics programs and events should adhere to such fundamental values as respect, fairness, civility, honesty, and responsibility. These values should be manifest not only in athletics participation, but also in the broad spectrum of activities affecting the athletics program.
…it is clear that deceitful and dishonest behavior can be found to be unethical conduct. Surely, the spirit of this bylaw also constrains behavior that endangers young people…Bylaw 11.1.2.1 goes on to state that “it shall be the responsibility of an institution’s head coach to promote an atmosphere for compliance within the program….Under this same bylaw governing the conduct and employment of athletics personnel, it makes clear that “institutional staff members found in violation of NCAA regulations shall be subject to disciplinary or corrective action….
Lastly,
…Bylaw 19.01.2 affirmatively states that ‘individuals employed by or associated with member institutions for the administration, the conduct or the coaching of intercollegiate athletics are, in the final analysis, teachers of young people…their own moral values must be so certain and positive that those younger and more pliable will be influenced by a fine example.’”
The death penalty
In my opinion what happened at Penn State is the ultimate tragedy. It is much worse than Ohio State’s Tattoo-gate or any other scandal in which the NCAA has levied punishment. If they do not give Penn State the death penalty or an equivalent punishment then they will have lost their credibility and there is no hope for maintaining high moral grounds for college athletics in the future. Worse, the NCAA will be just as guilty as Penn State officials in turning a blind eye on the event.
What happened is not OK
Then we as a society and sports fans everywhere will not have learned from this horrible event. It is not OK to put coaches and outstanding athletes on pedestals and worship them as gods. It is not OK to allow athletics to become so powerful as to run the university. It is not OK to allow a crime to be overlooked because of the money its department is bringing into the institution. It is not OK for athletics to take precedence over academics. And finally, it is not OK to rape.
The gods of football
Disgusting, nauseating, horrendous, and criminal—these are just a few words to describe what has happened at Penn State; but there aren’t enough words in the English language to adequately describe the horrible events and sexual abuse cover-up that have occurred over the last 15 or so years.
Jerry Sandusky, former Penn State defensive coordinator, has been arrested and charged with 40 counts of sexual abuse of young boys over a 15 year period. Those are the “known” facts but there is speculation that the abuses may go as far back as the 1970’s. There are eight identified victims but there may be many more discovered as the case continues. Fallout from the case so far has cost the school president, Graham Spanier, and the legendary football coach, Joe Paterno, their jobs. Athletic Director Tim Curley is on administrative leave and Vice President Gary Schultz, who was in charge of the university’s police department, has stepped down. Schultz and Curley are also charged with lying to the grand jury and failure to report to the police.
Penn State Football
The lives of the eight young boys have been forever changed, their youth robbed of its innocence, and self-esteem and trust forever damaged. All of this happened at the sports altar in the temple of football. They were used as sacrificial offerings to appease the gods of greed and excess in the name of football. A large and prestigious university may come tumbling down because no one wanted to stand up to the great god of sports and his high priest, Joe Paterno. No one wanted to risk the wrath of the gods and alumni by going to authorities with the ugly truth. Those in charge of the temple—the administrators, coaches, police—all kept their silence.
Exposing the truth would have meant a possible loss of revenue and a black eye for the athletic department. By allowing the cover-up to continue for so long the black eye appears minor compared to the festering ugly wound eating away at the face of the university. And make no mistake, it was a cover-up. One quick read of the official grand jury indictment shows that so many odd things had been happening over the years that everyone had to know what was occurring. Sandusky openly traveled with the young boys to team and other events, the boys stayed with him and attended team breakfasts and meetings, and he was seen late at night with the young boys in the locker rooms and showers.
There were whispers and rumors about the football program for years among the sports circles. Sandusky, who was JoePa’s heir apparent, suddenly retired, at the young age of 55 in 1999, even though he had just won the assistant coach of the year award. At his retirement party Paterno made a quick appearance, said a few words and quickly left. All of this for someone who had reportedly been his good friend and many considered would someday follow in Paterno’s footsteps. The first abuses that we know of occurred five years earlier. Could there be a connection here?
Other rumors say that the abuses began as early as the 1970’s. Coincidentally, Sandusky’s charity, The Second Mile, was founded in 1977. Is there another connection here? Sandusky chose his victims from this non-profit organization that was designed to provide guidance and develop self-confidence for troubled young people. It appears some of these young people emerged from the program even more troubled than when they entered. It took the courage of one heroic mother to finally stand up to all the followers of the almighty sports gods and say nothing was as important as her son.
The Greeks and their athletic gods
The worship of sports goes all the way back to the ancient Greeks. They believed that their gods loved to see strong, fit and graceful young male bodies. Therefore, one way to gain favor from the gods was to exercise, eat right, and excel in athletic games. They even felt that a loss meant that the gods didn’t like you. Athletic competition was tied to worship of the gods.
Even the word “stadium” has religious significance. It comes from the Greek word “stadion” which was the name of the place built to honor Zeus and was where athletic competitions were held. The legend says that when Heracles completed his twelve labors he built the Olympic stadium as an honor to Zeus. Following its completion, he walked in a straight line for 200 steps and called this distance a “stadion” which was later used as a unit of distance. The term “stadion” or “stade” was later applied to mean a short race or sprint measuring between 180 and 240 meters, or the length of the stadium.
Today’s gods
Things haven’t changed much in today’s world. One of the most notable and profitable athletic companies is named after the goddess of strength, speed, and victory—Nike. Not to be outdone, Adidas is marketing an athletic shoe that sweeps into wings at the ankle channeling the mythology of the ancient Greeks and Romans in which Hermes and Mercury were said to have wings on their feet.
Outstanding athletes are still viewed as gods in a sort of hero-worship. Ohio State will never forget but long suffer the name of Terrell Pryor. He was the beautiful muscular specimen of a quarterback god who was supposed to bring glory to the Temple Shoe. What he brought was greed and shame to the Shoe and its followers. He had risen so high on his pedestal that worshipers paid mucho money for the privilege of his autograph on temple equipment such as shoes, shoulder pads, etc.
Over the past several years the gods (coaches, star athletes, and entire teams) have felt protected behind the veil of worship and have been so empowered that they tempted the fates. However, purgatory and hell will eventually catch up and the golden touch of Midas will turn to rust. Terrell Pryor, high priest Coach Tressel, and other lesser gods were banned from the Temple Shoe—some forever and others for a prescribed period of time to do their penance. The same will happen to the worshipped and their flock in Happy Valley.
This past weekend gods and fans of Temple Shoe and Happy Valley Temple gathered to test their powers. Ohio State and Penn State met at midfield, shook hands and took a short time to honor the victims and respect the game before entering their colossal battle. Karen S. Days, president of the Center for Family Safety and Healing based at Nationwide Children’s Hospital said “We wanted to make sure the victims felt honored. It also was a sign to Penn State that we support you.”
Putting the games into perspective
Let the games begin again and continue forever—in a clean and honorable way worthy of the one true God. Let us never forget that no one person is bigger than the game, institution, or the temple of football itself. Even though we worship them as gods, they are mere mortals with all the human frailties that come with it. Let us put the game in perspective and honor the competition, not the personalities involved. Honor the sport and do the right thing on the field and off—no matter the cost. God bless the victims and their families and let us pray no other innocent victims will be sacrificed at the altar of sports.
Related articles
- Sandusky Scandal: Joe Paterno Says He’s Shocked, Saddened By Sex Abuse Charges Rocking Penn State (huffingtonpost.com)
- You: Jerry Sandusky Scandal: The 5 Key Figures in the Penn State Scandal (bleacherreport.com)
- Sandusky Rape Victim Bullied At School For Turning His Molester In (outsidethebeltway.com)
- Ben McGrath: Joe Paterno, Jerry Sandusky, and Penn State’s reactions. (newyorker.com)
- Ex-FBI boss Freeh to lead Penn State abuse probe (cbsnews.com)
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