I was 9 years old when the Penn State Football Team got on a plane to play in the National Championship. All of the PSU players were wearing suites while their opponents, the Miami Hurricanes, wore army fatigues on their flight to the game. As a young athlete, I still remember seeing the image and I’ve never forgotten it. Both teams had players from various ethic backgrounds. The PSU football team looked like student athletes. The Canes, well they looked like what they turned out to be. Recently the “The U” has fallen apart and the NCAA infractions from the 80′s and 90′s are still piling up. With all of the athletes that they’ve placed in the NFL there are 10x the amount of athletes that they’ve failed to have graduate and move on to productive lives. They failed those young men.
On the other hand, Joe Paterno has gone on to win more football games than any other head coach in the history of college football. I fell in love with the fact that the uniforms were as plain as it gets being blue and white. No names, no words, no flash, only numbers. No celebratory act of “saving the world” after making a routine tackle or catch. No smack talk or dancing after scoring a touchdown. A program based on collegiate athletes performing weekly in front of 100,000+ fans acting “as if they’ve been there before”. No NCAA infractions in Joe Pa’s 46 years of coaching in a time period where schools are “buying” national championships. That’s impressive. To me, what’s more impressive is the fact that Joe Pa has graduated 80+% of his players. Sure schools like Notre Dame, Navy, Army, Northwestern graduate between 85-95% but lets face it, they are not good football programs. Sorry ND, I wish that you were good, but you aren’t.
In the Big 10, PSU competes against OSU(63%), Wisconcin(65%), Michigan(72%) and Michigan State(55%). Here are a few SEC numbers: Florida(67%), FSU(64%), Auburn(63%), Alabama(67%), Arkansas(55%), and LSU(67%). These are all 2010 numbers of BSC bowl teams. So much for the SEC focusing on the “student” part of the student athlete. Here are a few “major” teams coming from the non “Big 2 conferences” of the Big 10 and SEC:Utah(62%), Boise State(65%), Pitts(69%), Missouri(71%), WVU(72%), Oregon(54%), TCU(71%). source- https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Ftidesport.org%2FGrad%2520Rates%2F2010-11_APR-GSR_BowlStudy.pdf
The PSU motto is “Success with Honor”. I’m a former athletes that played two sports in college(football in track). I played for the football legend Joe Walton who used collegiate football as platform to become a better person. There’s a lot of Umberger family influence on those feelings but I found two coaches in college that shared them. Bill Hodge was my collegiate track coach. ALL of my football coaches and 99% of my coaches shared that same feeling. Sports paralleled life. Playing football at RMU was probably the biggest growing experience for me as a human being. A friend jokingly has said many times that ”Pittsburgh is the least diverse city in the US”. He’s not far off. Maybe 85% of the RMU’s teammate in the late 1990′s were from outside of the Pittsburgh area. I played with guys from all over New York State and the 5 boroughs of NYC, Maryland, Florida, Arkansas, California, Texas, Philly, Jersey, Boston, etc. They were athletes from all types of races and ethic backgrounds. I learned and grew a lot in the undergraduate years. At the recent RMU home coming I was able to talk with many of my old teammates. They’ve experienced great success in their careers as well as become great parents.
Though I had a blind invincibility as a teenage and young man, as an athlete I would have run through a wall for any one my football coaches from Coach Kalichuk, Coach Rometo, to Joe Walton. Football and Ice Hockey(and maybe Lacrosse) provide a unique environment where teammates literally beat the hell out of each other to play an opponent on the weekends. That creates an unique situation which requires a strong man to hold it all together. It requires a great leader mold males into a winning teams. Joe Pa is one of the best that has ever lived at doing that. He also molded those young males into men. As I grew as a man, I understood what Joe Pa did as a coach and as a father figure for his players. I don’t care about a library. The school has/had over a $1.6 billion endowment. He made winners on the field and off. In college today, a lot of coaches talk out of both side of their mouth with embarrassing graduation rates.
My biggest disappointment is Joe’s inability to act with a “iron fist” when his GA came to him after witnessing one of his coaches raping a young boy in the shower(sorry it’s in the grand jury testimonial). It would’ve taken a great deal of self control on my part to not have taken the law into my own hands. Then again, I’m not the man that Joe Pa is… right? Lets say that violence isn’t the answer, wouldn’t you call the police? This isn’t a secretary or a female athletic trainer coming to you complaining that “Jerry grabbed my butt” when you have to get both sides of the story. I could see a cover up where he got the victim another job somewhere else in the school or at another major college. It’s ethically wrong brushing it under the carpet but it happens everyday. It is covering up for a lifelong friend that crosses the line. We ARE NOT talking about Jerry the “good guy that miss stepped with an adult”. This man has a sickness with multiple claims of molestation against him in a grand jury report. Not media slander.
Joe Pa, who makes up a story about a rape happening in the shower? That has disturbed every normal person that heard the story let alone knowing the fact that it happen on YOUR campus with YOUR coach in YOUR showers in YOUR building! This incident in 2002 was not the first or last occurrence either. I can’t see any leader of men sitting on his butt thinking that one over. Mike McQueary? Really? You weren’t an 18 year old GA who was in over his head. You didn’t witness a coach with a consenting women performing sexual acts in a place where it shouldn’t happen. (That’s uncomfortable.) You witnessed a boy getting raped in a football locker room shower! What were you thinking? Did you really want to work for a football program that allowed this crime again an innocent human being? I guess you did because you become the WR coach not to long after.
Joe Paterno let me down. With the Catholic Church, Tiger Woods, Big Business, Bernie Madoff, terrorism, Kim Kardashian, “manufactured pop music”, fake tans/fake hair/fake nails on fake people, CEO’s lying and cheating, floods, cover ups, government scandals, cheating husbands, earthquakes, tsunamis, and hurricanes being more of the norm instead of the “once in a lifetime” occurrences you were suppose to be “one of the good ones”. Joe Pa, you were suppose to rise above it all and do the right thing. I imagine that you would’ve given this advice to anyone seeking your council.
What disappoints me the most is that I don’t think was about money. It’s easy to look down on someone for being greedy or power hungry. That’s a human weakness. I’m thinking Joe Pa was being loyal to one of his guys. I can almost understand it. I’m as loyal and old school as they come until we start talking rape and murder.
The government doesn’t spend two years building a case on rumors. I’m afraid that we have only seen the being of what’s going to come out. I only hope that EVERYONE gets taken to task for this cover up. That includes the politicians and “big wigs” connected to Second Mile who knew and ailed to take action.
I guess we are all just human. I guess the legend was bigger than the man. Maybe that is or isn’t fair. It ALL came with the job that had a contract that was signed/renewed a few times since 2002. Joe Pa, you built an institution with a coaching streak that’s never been seen before. As a life long athlete and someone who has a lively hood based on improving athletes sports performance, I understand that sport mimics life. It’s not life though. Sorry, a library for a college that has an $1.6 billion (before the scandal) endowment isn’t worth 1 victim let alone 9.
