More than a decade … not an hour, a day or even a week.
For some 14 years, the most powerful officials at Penn State University — including storied coach Joe Paterno — with impunity, using the prestige of the school’s football team to victimize more boys.
Our revulsion for Jerry Sandusky, now a convicted molester, is matched only by accusations in released Thursday that the school’s top echelon cared more about damage to the school’s reputation than they did about the boys Sandusky preyed upon.
Such behavior is not only disgusting, but criminal. We are among those who look forward to of those who failed to report what they knew to police.
That, of course, is not the only venue for appropriate punishment. The , lawsuits are expected to be filed and the university will have to explain itself to its alumni and donors.
We’ve long had misgivings about how big-time football programs distort athletics and academics in higher education, and this reprehensible episode only adds to those concerns.
An independent investigation, conducted by former FBI director Louis Freeh, describes how Hall of Fame coach Paterno, university president Graham Spanier, athletic director Tim Curley and vice president Gary Schultz “failed to protect against a child sexual predator harming children for over a decade.”
They knew about instances of alleged abuse on the part of Sandusky. But they didn’t tell the board of trustees or police, , a former defensive coach, to continue molesting children.
To this day, admirers celebrate Paterno’s character, but JoePa cataclysmically failed in one of the greatest tests put before him.
He chose to protect the reputation of his football program and university over his moral and legal duty to protect young boys from a monstrous serial predator. And the institution let him do it.
Paterno was a giant among the “heroes” roaming the nation’s gridirons, emphasizing integrity along with wins. He created a culture where his was the biggest voice in the room, arguably the only voice.
And because of the prestige that comes with a legendary program and a larger-than-life coach, university officials deferred to him.
That is evident in a passage from the that said university officials had outlined a plan to report an incident of Sandusky abuse, but that went by the wayside “after giving it more thought and talking it over with Joe,” according to an e-mail from Curley, the athletic director.
The realization that a football program meant more to these people than protecting disadvantaged children — that’s who Sandusky was preying upon — is stomach-turning.
As we’ve said, the reverberations of the case will play out in several investigations and court cases.
We hope it will also prompt university officials around the country to think seriously about what can happen when an institution of higher learning worships big-time sports above all else.
