Joe Paterno, depending on your perspective, was either God’s gift to college football or a pathetic pedophile enabler. The continuum between those two extremes runs the length of a football field. And there is nobody at the 50-yard line; you either revere JoePa or you despise him. Although he has been dead for nearly five years, when it comes to a posthumous life, this guy has been more active than Elvis.
This past Saturday, for example, there was a celebration in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of Paterno’s first game as Penn State University’s head football coach. During that time span, he won a gazillion games and became a beloved legend and prolific rainmaker for the Big Ten school in State College, Pennsylvania. Then, in 2011, his halo took on a sudden tarnish when his longtime assistant, Jerry Sandusky turned out to be a serial child molester. Many of the sexual assaults occurred in the university’s athletic facilities. Although Paterno denied any knowledge of his assistant’s crimes, an investigation by former FBI director Louis French found that he had likely known about the pedophilia and did not report it. Just a few weeks ago, according to the Washington Post, a judge unsealed documents in a civil suit showing that one of Sandusky’s victims told Paterno about his molestation in 1976, and that the head coach told him he didn’t “want to hear about any of that kind of stuff” because there was a football season to worry about. Sandusky was convicted and is serving 30-60 years in prison. Paterno was fired by Penn State in late 2011 and then died from lung cancer in early 2012.
It was against that backdrop that Penn State rolled out “Joe Paterno Day” at the football stadium Saturday afternoon. And everyone went to their corners of outrage. “Why don’t they call it Protect a Pedophile Day?,” messaged one camp. “Paterno is innocent;” said another, “he is vilified only by those who know nothing.” Some placards said, “We Love You Joe!” Others asked “What About The Victims?”
Lauren Davis, a journalism major and opinion editor for the Daily Collegian, Penn State’s student-run newspaper, incurred brutal alumni wrath with her understated editorial suggesting that, under the circumstances, a Paterno tribute was in bad taste. Emails, according to the New York Times, immediately poured into the school newspaper calling Davis a “clueless, treacherous traitor,” an “idiot” and several other names the Times said it could not print. They were from graduates from the 1970s and earlier, all unloading their venom on a journalism student. The message from one man was, “I hope God can forgive you for your actions, I sure as hell can’t.”
So much anger, so much hate, so much divisiveness. We’ve grown accustomed to it in our political campaigns, now we can’t avoid it at a football game. That’s what happens when we chose to live in a black and white world of heroes and villains. The truth is that Joe Paterno is neither. All of our lives are compendiums of choices, good, bad and in between. If JoePa knew about the molestation and said nothing, he made a terrible choice, but it doesn’t mean he didn’t make other choices that were good, that helped develop and shape his student athletes. It does mean, however, as Lauren Davis, the student editor, wrote, that Penn State should not be honoring this guy, treating him like a saint, particularly with the brutal testimony of the victims still haunting the community. The past is over. Sandusky is in prison. Paterno is dead. Let it be. This is not the time for a party.
Speaking of bad choices, those geezer graduates, who verbally abused a journalism student for spouting wisdom that escaped all of them, have hopefully exhausted their quota for the year. But probably not. Psychologist Eric Simons says his research shows that a sports team is an expression of a fan’s sense of self. He says self-esteem rides on the “outcome of the game and the image of the franchise.” That might explain why a bunch of Nittany Lion alumni in their 60s and 70s are insisting that a dead football coach is blameless. If JoePa covered for a pedophile, it’s a personal wound to them. And we thought football was just a game.