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Penn State, Paterno, and Coaching 101

The College declared a moratorium on salt and pepper shaker thieves.  If the students would bring the shakers back to the cafeteria, no one would ask any questions.

"Why," I asked the students in my ethics class, do students steal salt and pepper shakers from the cafeteria.  They cost almost nothing!  Why not just buy some for your dorm rooms?"

"That's not the point!", they told me.  "The College is ripping us off on tuition and books and housing and parking and instruction.  We are just getting even."

At Penn State University, one of their coaches apparently molested children, for years.  He was reported, but it appears nothing was ever done about it.  He is retired now, running a children's sports camp, or some such thing.  Finally, it became public.  Joe Paterno was fired from the head coaching job, apparently for doing almost nothing about it, and so was the University President.

"Well, you see the problem!" one of those sports analysts in an expensive suit said.  "The universities are ripping off athletes.  They should be paying them!"

Try to think your way through that analysis!  Coaches are raping children because the athletes are only getting free tuition, board and room, and salt and pepper shakers.

In the first place, at a most elemental, human level, the young coach who saw a child being raped should have kicked the shit out of the rapist, right there in the shower room, and dragged his bare ass out to the curb and waited for the police.  Then he should have reported it, properly, plainly, whether or not he was afraid for his job.  Instead, he waited until the next day, and told his boss, allegedly.

Apparently, nobody ever said anything publicly, or did anything, privately.  Papa Joe Paterno kept the offender on his staff.  The rapist retired years later, to run his boys club.

Our colleges and universities have become captives to football and basketball programs.  They pay their coaches--in some cases--millions of dollars a year to build winning records.  And losing records.  Everyone cannot win.  The 900 pound gorilla that is college football and basketball tells the university president and faculty to shut up and sit down; that what they are doing is more important than math and music and little boys.

Of course most athletic programs do not abuse children sexually!  Of course most football and basketball coaches do hire criminals!  And neither do most Catholic bishops condone child abuse.  The Catholic Church and college athletics is not about child abuse.  But both of them are about testosterone.  Both of them are about hierarchy, and power, and control.

Universities and major sports are too entwined for a simple separation.  But Penn State, and a hundred other universities, make it clear that something has gone horribly wrong.

The students at Penn State who are laying flowers at Joe Paterno's doorstep have stolen salt and pepper shakers in their dorm rooms.

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