There has always been a certain hauteur about Penn State, always the feeling that those associated with the school had a high opinion of themselves.
Success with honor was their slogan. Joe Paterno was their football coach, and as the story goes, he walked on the water of college sports cesspool. His approach to things was known as the Grant Experimenti.e., winning with players who actually went to class.
Paterno himself once said, in a remark he believed to be off the record, that he did not want to retire and leave college football to the Sherrills and Switzers of the sportas in, Jackie and Barry, then the coaches at Pitt and Oklahoma, respectively. Both tended to operate in, shall we say, the gray areas of the NCAA rulebook.
Not Joe. Joe was believed to be better than everybody else. So was his school, and his team. When the Nittany Lions beat Miami in the Fiesta Bowl in January 1987 for the last of his two national championships, it was hailed as a victory for good over evil.
And as recently as last fall, you could walk into a bookstore in downtown State College and find a T-shirt mocking former Ohio State coach Jim Tressel, after it was found that some of his players exchanged memorabilia for tattoos and other benefits.
But Penn State doesnt get to look down its nose at anybody anymore.
It is now quite clear, after Thursdays release of the results of an internal investigation by former FBI director Louis J. Freeh, that the place was not only no better than anywhere else but also, in one gigantic way, was much worse.
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The top leadersincluding Paterno -- let kids get raped, and didnt care.
Oh, they cared how the school might look, if word were to ever leak out. They cared a lot about that. But they didnt care about the kids, didnt care that a serial pedophile, former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky, was in their midst.
If that doesnt infuriate youif that doesnt make you look beyond the Paterno myth (which appears very mythical now)you are beyond hope.
They let kids get raped. There was, according to Freeh, a total and consistent disregard by the most senior leaders at Penn State for the safety and welfare of Sanduskys child victims. Freeh was referring to Paterno, who died at 85 on Jan. 22, as well as former university president Graham Spanier, former vice president Gary Schultz and former athletic director Tim Curley.
You can see that thats infinitely worse than some coach giving a recruit a Range Rover, right?
There had been an effort on the part of the school to distance itself from Sandusky, after the allegations came to light last Novemberallegations that resulted in his conviction on 45 counts of child sexual abuse last month.
Spaniers successor, Rodney Erickson, told alums in January that it was not a Penn State scandal. Paterno, in a letter he wrote shortly before his death (a letter that conveniently found its way into circulation Wednesday) said it was not a football scandal.
In reality, it is both. Leaders of the university and the football program failed. They looked the other way while some heinous acts against kids occurred. There is no escaping their complicity in Sanduskys actions.
As for the schools Board of Trustees, Freehs report notes that it did not perform its oversight duties, had a complacent attitude and failed to inquire reasonably and demand detailed information from Spanier about Sanduskys misdeeds.
The report also said the Board poorly handled Paternos firing last Nov. 9. The dismissal came via telephone, after an emissaryassistant AD Fran Ganter, a former PSU player and assistantdelivered a note to Paternos home, asking him to call Board leaders.
But when asked during a news conference Thursday if he believed Paternos firing had been unjust, Freeh said he did not.
The facts are the facts, Freeh told reporters at another point. He was an integral part of the act to conceal.
During his news conference Freeh honed in on two incidents, both of which are covered at length in his report. The first is Sanduskys assault of a young boynever identifiedin the shower room of the Lasch Building, Penn States football facility, in February 2001. The incident was witnessed by Mike McQueary, then a graduate assistant and later an assistant coach.
McQueary went to Paterno the next day. The report, quoting Paternos interview with the Washington Posts Sally Jenkins shortly before his death, noted that the coach told McQueary, You did what you had to do. Its my job now to figure out what we want to do.
Freeh told reporters Thursday that that was a very telling and very important and critical statement.
Equally telling in Freehs mind was the fact that a janitor did not report another incident involving Sandusky and a young boy in a shower room of the Lasch Building, in 2000, out of fear of losing his job. The janitor did mention it to a co-worker, but neither approached his superiors.
They were afraid to take on the football program, Freeh told reporters Thursday.If thats the culture on the bottom, God help the culture on the top.
The Paterno family issued a statement Thursday saying that the reports conclusion that the late coach protected Sandusky to avoid bad publicity is simply not realistic. The statement also said Sandusky was a great deceiversomething that had been noted in a statement the family released Tuesday as well -- and that the family has maintained from the beginning that Joe Paterno did not know the former assistant was a child predator.
But in an interesting twist, the statement did say Paterno had knowledge of incidents involving Sandusky in 1998 and 01.
In conclusion the statement notes that it could be argued that Paterno should have pushed his superiors to see that they were doing their jobs. It could also be argued that Joe Paterno, the man whose statue has stood outside Beaver Stadium since 2001, had no superiors.
What is inarguable is that no one will ever look at Penn State in quite the same way. Doesnt matter how many football games the Lions win, or how often their fans chant, We are
The place is no better than anywhere else.
And in one very significant way, it is considerably worse.