Rick Reilly - Mea Culpa
I know this subject has been done and done again, but I think that Rick Reilly offers up a good mea culpa in article form.
The subject of deifying our coaches has been something that bothers me a lot. I worry that by building the false facades of morality, that we open the door to the unspeakable.
I definitely love playing and watching sports. There is really not much more than I enjoy than fall saturdays spent watching Michigan football.
But I've always been uncomfortable with the amount of adulation our society places on athletes and coaches -- no different from CEO's, politicians, entertainers, etc.
Just because someone is good at something like sports or music doesn't make them a good person.
Whenever somebody mentions ringo starr, I think about that family guy clip where he brings a song to the band and they put it on the fridge.
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Pete Best
precisely. I've often wondered why we put so much value in people in these fields. It's not that I don't have respect for prominent people in these positions, but it has to be kept in check.
Fear not! Our almighty Hoke shall smite the evildoers back to the depths from whence they came! Praise be to Hoke!
Are we past the day where a coach gets so powerful, he can dictate his own rules of morality? Where the Program no longer has to do what is ethical -- but, rather, what the Program does is ethical.
Was in Disney World two weeks ago. Lots of scarlet Ohio fans, more than UM, down there - was weird. Saw one really fat, ugly Ohio guy wearing a big white T shirt, with a huge smug picture of Sentaror Vest's smiling face on it, and a lot of words around it about what a great guy he was etc etc. I thought to myself, the Senator was such a good liar, he still has some people in Columbus fooled.
But maybe these aren't the days a coach's power will go unchecked. The media really loves pulling down guys on pedastals. The closer someone in the public's eye gets to sainthood, the more each guy and gal in the media wants to be "the one" to break "the story" and pull him/her down. Point of fact -- Paterno did, eventually, come down from this, due to an intrepid young reporter in State College.
I'd like to think Brady Hoke, if he's here 20 years and wins 10 national titles and only loses the other remaining 9 because he feels sorry for the SEC and wants to avoid a Congressional hearing because all your top linebackers is ours, can't become a Joe Paterno. But power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, and JoePa is the posterchild for that. Can happen to anyone.
I whole-heartidly agree with you. This is exactly why we need to take this horrible tragedy and learn a lesson from it as sports fans. We cannot let our real-world values become skewed because we place such a high priority on winning extra curricular activities. don't get me wrong, I love college football (i'm here, on this blog in the off season as a perfect example), but we should never lose sight of what is really important.
don't get me wrong but i agree that people deify athletes and coaches in general. however, in joe pa's case, it is taken to a whole other level; not just because of the wins but because he was perceived to have run his program the "right way". now, the world finds out that it was complete BS. he turned out to be no different (in fact much much worse) than many others - protect the program at all costs. this is the bigger gut punch. not that a coach was crooked, but it was perhaps the most "sainted" coach ever.
it's like if we found out that george washington was a british spy and we won the revolutionary war anyway, despite his efforts to do otherwise.
it never happened to bo. bo would never have covered up anything, much less child rape.
"bo would never have covered up anything" You don't know that with certainty though. Would we all like to believe, much like Penn State fans, and Ohio State fans circa 2010 that our legendary coach could do no wrong? Absolutely. But to say he would NEVER cover up anything? Highly doubtful in college athletics. By all appearances, Bo was a great man, but I would would have to imagine there were things -- most likely not to the level of what JoePa or Tress covered up -- that got swept under rugs. To believe otherwise is naive.
I would be shocked if Bo and Woody and many other coaches, especially back then, didn't cover up mundane things like tattoos.
This sounds like the ideology people in Happey Valley had/have about Joe Pa.
not too long ago we had a baylor basketball coach try and cover up a murder. and more recently there may have been efforts to cover up an alleged rape of a college co ed by two basketball players (school intentially left out). the truth has yet to surface as to what occurred there.
It would be much more difficult at Michigan or Ohio State or almost any school for this to happen. Penn State's geographic isolation allowed the normal level of college athlete/coach worship to grow into a malignant cult of personality. Besides Penn State, what else is there in State Center? The local media certainly weren't going to do anything to upset the golden goose, and it was almost impossible for outsiders to do anything more than repeat the line that was fed to them over and over. "Success with Honor. The Penn State Way. Joe Pa is a saint." That isolation, coupled with Penn State's exemption from open records law, enabled Sandusky more than anything.
There are frequent occasions when I think that national writers are out-of-touch and have a worse grasp of sports than the sports-watching public.
In this case, I think the writers as a whole are properly outraged, apologetic, and centered in their deservedly intense criticism of Paterno in the light of the recent Freeh report.
I have no idea why the public outrage is not matching the media outrage, but take these ESPN polls as an example of the stubbornly lingering positive impression of Paterno:
- Should Penn State remove the Joe Paterno statue from campus? 47% say "no"
- How do you feel about Penn State's decision to fire Joe Paterno? 28% say "unjustified"
- How do you view Joe Paterno's legacy? Split evenly between "mostly positive", "mixed positive and negative", and "mostly negative"
Surprisingly, Pennsylvania was not more than 10% more pro-Paterno in these polls than the U.S. as a whole. But, I simply do not understand how 2/3 of U.S. sports fans can remain to have some significantly positive feelings about Paterno.
people will continue to hold onto the image that they have of Paterno simply because it would require too much self reflection to change it. imho.
Easier to ignore the truth than accept it.
The scary thing is we offered our job to him before Bo.
I'd like to think that our top brass at the school would handle this better, but that's naive. You never know how people will react in these situations until they're placed in them.
I think the reason something like this is much less likely to happen at Michigan is that Michigan's reputation is not built on the success of its football program, its based on the strength of its academics. With Penn State it's the other way around.
When the shit hits the fan, everyone knows you have to clean it up. Like it or not, there was a culture in place at Michigan that allowed the Fab Five issues and the recent NCAA issues to take place. Sure, they handled the aftermath well, but you can say that about a lot of places that have problems. Penn State is handling the aftermath fairly well if you ask me. So to laud Michigan's culture as something that makes us scum bag proof just isn't true.
I don't know if you're equating the right parts of each situation. The initial "crime" in Michigan's case was the payments to players/stetching (for their respective violations). Whereas the crime (actual, legal terrible, terrible crime) in PSU's case were the multiple rapes. The next step (the step to which I believe you're referring to), Michigan's brass report and take their medicine. In PSU's case, they covered it up even more. Add on top of that the nature of the situation and, I have to believe that there aught to be some serious consideration to eliminating their program. Let's think about this for a minute. The program at the school became so out of control that they were able to strongarm the president of the university into covering up a series of rapes. If SMU's violations and LOIC warrented shutting down the progam, I'd say that the situation at Penn St. most certainly does too. For at least a year, if not even longer.
"Michigan's reputation is not built on the success of its football program, its based on the strength of its academics." RichRod would beg to differ. Academics has very, very little to do with the likeihood of this happening elsewhere if any at all.
Its less likely to happen elsewhere because it takes an uber powerful public figure with a spotless record to sway his superiors and terrify his subordinates into going against his wishes. JoePa's shadow of influence turned people that should make rational decisions into irrational and illogical puppets. The fact that the whole thing is very similar to the problem with child molestation in the Catholic church is not a coincidence. Lots of people in both cases had opportunites to do something, but how do you go against a deified figure?
I agree that it takes a powerful public figure in order to orchestrate something like the Penn State coverup, but I believe the only individual at any university who can be both sufficiently powerful and a public enough figure is the football (or possibly basketball) coach. I believe that the administration at an academics first institution would not risk its reputation protecting the football team.
And do you really think there's any informed individual out there (including Rich Rod) who thinks Michigan is not an academics first institution?
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What an idiot I was.
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What a stooge I was.
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What a sap I was.
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What a chump I was.
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What a tool I was.
Joe Paterno, SI Sportsman of the Year, by Rick Reilly.
I think it's very interesting that a PSU professor would be the one to break the news, back in 1986, that Paterno would "do anything to win." What information would that professor have to offer? Did he teach some of PSU's players?
I always thought it didn't quite square up that a big NFL feeder school like PSU, which recruited plenty of marginal student-athletes, always had this sky-high graduation rate. Could it be that JoePa, who seemed to lord over the whole school, was bullying professors to give players passing grades?
I doubt JoePa was directly bullying professors over grades, but pressure doesn't need to be that overt to be successful. More likely (and what I have first hand knowledge of at another Big Ten instituion (neither PSU nor UM) is that the football players have their own academic advisors and tutors, and they steer the players into certain programs and certain sections. The tutors and advisors know which faculty members and sections to put students in and which to avoid, even to the point of transferring failing students from one section to another.
There are other ways of finagling the system too. I remember in the late 80s a top basketball player at OSU was ineligible after the fall semester, meaning he would have to sit out the spring semester, but lo and behold, he somehow took courses (some he re-took) over Christmas break and became eligible. The way it was done then is, if I'm not mistaken, something that the NCAA no longer allows.
I doubt JoePa was directly bullying professors over grades, but pressure doesn't need to be that overt to be successful. More likely (and what I have first hand knowledge of at another Big Ten instituion (neither PSU nor UM) is that the football players have their own academic advisors and tutors, and they steer the players into certain programs and certain sections. The tutors and advisors know which faculty members and sections to put students in and which to avoid, even to the point of transferring failing students from one section to another.
There are other ways of finagling the system too. I remember in the late 80s a top basketball player at OSU was ineligible after the fall semester, meaning he would have to sit out the spring semester, but lo and behold, he somehow took courses (some he re-took) over Christmas break and became eligible. The way it was done then is, if I'm not mistaken, something that the NCAA no longer allows.
"Could've tried a simple "I'm sorry." But he didn't. Instead, he just lied deeper. Right to her face. Right to all of our faces."
A part of the tragedy is that Paterno, in the end, honestly didn't feel that there was anything to be sorry about, from the sound of it. He seemed to believe that he was what the media, fans and university had made him over the course of years, and that he was - for all intents and purposes - Penn State football and that it's image was worth the terrible ruination of lives these victims had experienced at the hands of his ex-defensive coordinator. He seemed to think that these were acceptable losses, if you will, if it meant that Penn State football could continue as normal, whatever "normal" was in State College.
When the reputation of a man and his program is placed in higher esteem by a school than the well-being of children, then it certainly does provide a somber insight into what things can look like if you allow the culture around the sport to deindividuate people so much that basic humanity becomes secondary to the success of the enterprise, if you will. It seems like, in the end, that unreality was simply more palatable to Paterno than the reality of the situation.
The Cult lives on. PSU fans have apparently made a film called "The Joe We Know." Here's its website:
dead on as usual Reilly...