If you read the report by former FBI director Louis Freeh about Penn State’s complicity in the Jerry Sandusky sex abuse scandal, the only thing missing is the following:
It would be obscene to play football at Happy Valley this fall.
Such a move would be at least a step toward long-term recognition of the damage done by the Penn State administration and fallen icon Joe Paterno. But such a move is unlikely, for the same reasons that allowed such horrifying acts to take place under the cover of Penn State football.
There’s too much money at stake.
Tickets have already been sold for the 2012 season. A new coach, Bill O’ Brien, has already been hired. Spring practices were held in preparation of the upcoming season. Penn State should have the courage to stop all of that in its tracks and keep its University Park silent this fall, instead of having cheers roar from more than 100,000 fans on Saturday afternoons.
This is way beyond the NCAA’s pay grade. It goes beyond tattoos and pocket money cash payments to students, so don’t expect the college sports watchdog to step in with a penalty befitting the institutional crime. The death sentence in college sports died with SMU more than 20 years ago.
Someone with a code of honor is going to have to make the statement that no, this can’t be business as usual. No matter what the cost, someone has to stand up and declare that they won’t be part of this obscenity.
Someone on the 2012 Penn State football schedule has to say they will have nothing to do with football at that school this season.
It’s a bold move with repercussions that will be financially damaging at the very least.
But the alternative is that anyone who steps on the football field to play Penn State this fall — and profits from it — will be part of the obscenity.
That may fly for most schools, but there is one Penn State opponent that should cancel its game against the Nittany Lions because its program stands for something beyond college football.
The Naval Academy should cancel it’s Sept. 15 game against Penn State at Beaver Stadium.
The game is scheduled as “Military Appreciation Day,” but the military and what the Naval Academy stands for should not be tarnished by participation in a game against a football program — and Joe Paterno was that football program — that, according to the Freeh report, “failed to take any steps for 14 years to protect the children who Sandusky victimized.”
The Naval Academy, with its code of honor that declares, “Midshipmen are persons of integrity,” should stand for what is right and show the integrity that Penn State has yet to show and refuse to be part of the obscenity.
Examiner columnist Thom Loverro is the co-host of “The Sports Fix” from noon to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday on ESPN980 and espn980.com. Contact him at [email protected].
