"Have you no sense of decency, sir?"

With every bit of breaking news about NCAA sanctions against the Penn State football program, it becomes evident that football is a lot more important than the young boys who were raped by a football coach. Joe Paterno's fault was that, when the facts became known, he did not rise above the level of football to deal with it. He, and several administrators, kept it "in house" in order not to tarnish "the program". And, at Penn State, as at lots of other universities, there was no level above the football program. It was the most important thing.

One can sympathize with the students who play football at Penn State, insofar as they did not rape those kids: Jerry Sandusky did. But playing at Penn State gave those students--insofar as they were students, and not just let's-pretend students, picking up credits for swimming and illiterate papers--a pretty good shot at professional football careers. Temporarily crippling the football program, which is what the NCAA did, does hurt them, just as Joe Paterno's coverup helped them. They cannot have it just one way.

Penn State's coverup of the sex scandal by its coach necessarily brings to mind the coverup of the sex scandals of the Catholic Church. At another level, it makes sense, because big-time sports has become a kind of religion. "We are Penn State!" "We are born-again Christians!" "We are true believers, worshippers, winners!"

Football might be Penn State, but if it is, it is a damned shame. "Touchdown Jesus" at Notre Dame is an unintended clue to what has happened almost everywhere. Sports has gotten bigger than the University itself. Sports is a kind of mindless religion. The "mindless" part might make the transition easier. Big-time coaches are paid more than big-time University presidents: that ought to be a clue.

Too many of those photos of Penn State students reacting in dismay at the punishment handed out by the NCAA suggest that somebody has forgotten how many little boys were violated, humiliated, raped, and sometimes ruined. One could say similar things about priests who are pedophiles.

It isn't about football. It is about human decency, or the lack of it. It is what happens when football becomes more important than a university. It is what happens when preserving the priesthood becomes more important than human decency.

Joseph Welch got it right in the Army-McCarthy hearings. Thus the title to this blog entry.

Comments

Caliche Busters and Government Work

When I was young and both stronger and smarter than I am now, I put my might and brain to work doing nothing useful, unless it might be thought that hand/foot/eye coordination might come in handy. Those were skills to be learned and practiced. I found an iron bar our grandfather had shaped in his blacksmith shop. He took old car, truck, or wagon axles, and made tools from them for digging post holes. He sharpened one end to a tip, and the other to a blade. Washington State, like many places, had a hard layer of soil, probably created by water and limestone, or some such materials, that made digging holes a miserable chore. The bar chipped through the natural concrete so that a shovel could take it up. I found Grandpa's iron bar, and since I was young and dumb and strong--or so I thought--decided to punch a hole down to hardpan and ultimate truth. I knew how to do that. Raise the bar vertically with both hands, and then slam in straight down. On the second try, aimi

The Sea is Rising

Let us just step back: two hundred and fifty years ago, or so, the ships of England and Spain had drifted onto a whole new continent, as they saw it, from far north to a savagely cold south; pole to pole, as if there were such things. Millions of people already lived here, some of them still hunters and gatherers; some of them very wealthy, indeed! Gold and silver stolen from the southern Americas funded Spanish and English dreams. There was land, lots of land, under starry skies above, rich land, and oil and coal and iron ore. The whole western world learned how to build industries not on simple muscle power, but on steam and oil. We farmed, too, of course. All we needed was cheap labor--slave labor from Africa, mostly, so the ships came with slave labor. Chinese labor built railroad beds where there had been rock cliffs. Europeans, long used to killing each other for good, religious reasons, brought their religious savagery with them. Even when all they wanted to do w

SmokeSound

Search This Blog