When linebacker Pete Giftopoulos
intercepted a Vinnie Testeverde pass in the end zone with seconds left in the
1987 Fiesta Bowl sealing the victory and national title for the Penn State
Nittany Lions, I just knew that it was a case of the good guys once again
beating the bad guys. The game was billed as good versus evil and the
participants played their parts with extraordinary authenticity. The suit and
tie wearing Nittany Lions came into the game as seven points underdogs to the thuggish
camouflage wearing University of Miami (Florida) Hurricanes and road off into
the Arizona sunset like the white hat wearing heroes of the serial cowboy
movies from the 1950’s and 60’s. In spite of my deep Southern roots and
partially through my stepmother’s familial connections to the cities of
Altoona, Huntington, and Mount Union, I found myself rooting for the gritty,
soft spoken boys from the steel mill cities of eastern Ohio and western
Pennsylvania. They were like me and were the image of what my parents hoped I
would become. Penn State symbolized the old fashioned values cherished by my
family: simplicity, honesty, integrity, and industriousness. Their purity was
as evident as the dazzling white of their away uniforms. On that early January
evening twenty-five years ago, the good guys were a reflection of their leader,
Joe Paterno, and prevailed over the blight of major college football, “The U”.
Only a handful of people witnessing that triumph of good guys over bad boys had
an inkling of what evil lay beneath the surface of all that was decent and pure
about Penn State football.
Public reaction to the release of the Freeh report has
been swift and with a few notable exceptions has been hailed as a tragic but
exemplary exploration of the horrific systemic failures at the highest reaches
of the Penn State community which allowed a predator to stalk the hallways and
locker rooms of Nittany Lions’ athletics unchecked for decades. The grotesque
details that have emerge from the report highlight the shocking amount of power
that had been accumulated by the football program and its unwillingness to accept and
even hostility towards anything that might cast the program and its leader in
an unflattering light. (I have not given the report the full reading it
deserves since I’m currently on vacation at the beach, but I was moved enough
by the recent attempts by select members of the board of trustees, the former
president, and the Paterno family to discredit the report’s claims to download
it and read the more damning portions.) Even if only ten percent of the Freeh
report is accurate then the Penn State community needs to engage in a period of
serious self examination reflecting on the proper position of athletics in the
educational process of our nation’s young people. In short, the report makes it
abundantly clear that football in Beaver Stadium is the tail that wags the dog
in University Park. That the board of trustees has delayed a decision on
whether to remove the statue of Joe Paterno from the stadium because they
refuse to be bullied by the court of public opinion is just one more indication
of the total lack of perspective displayed by the Penn State community. Their
arguments sound eerily similar to those made by “heritage” groups in my native
South Carolina who vehemently oppose the removal of the confederate battle flag
from the State house grounds in spite of how the symbol is perceived by the
vast majority of people. Some may walk by the statue and see the good done by
Coach Paterno during his tenure, but if even one victim of sexual abuse walks
by and has to relive the horror then the statue must go. That the board cannot
or will not see this is just one more reason the university community needs to
enter into a period of reflection and repentance even if this means
encountering the “death penalty” for its football program.
In
the Reformed Tradition there is an understanding that some sins are communal in
nature. This is why most worshipping communities in the Reformed Tradition
include a communal prayer of confession in their intentional encounters with
God each week. My own faith tradition the Presbyterian Church USA acknowledges that
every individual member of the congregation is not guilty of the sins enumerated
each week, but that each person is touched by the sin committed by those in our
community. We do not all commit sins of commission but by remaining silent we sin
by acts of omission joining with those who have sinned overtly. This calls for
us to actively engage in the process of repentance which is much more than just
confessing the wrong we have done without addressing the underlying cause of
our sinfulness.
The
word we translate as repentance is more accurately rendered in English as “the act
of turning away from”. For the Penn State community to truly repent for the
evil perpetrated in its midst it needs to turn away from the actions that
allowed such horrors to continue unobstructed and unreported. They need to turn
away from the power, prestige, and money of their football program at least for
a little while. They should not wait for the NCAA to decide if it will hand
down the dreaded “death penalty”. They
should voluntarily shut the program down, release the current players from any
obligations to the university and assist them in finding new homes for their
athletic skills, they should honor the contracts they have made with other
athletic programs and with the current coaching staff, and they should set up
programs to assist victims of childhood sexual abuse all while the stadium
remains silent during the autumn football season. That would be an example of
true repentance and may lead to a season of grace and healing which is
desperately needed in Happy Valley.
If Penn State University really wants to redeem its
tarnished image, the board of trustees may want to follow the example of the
University of Chicago who’s Maroons were a major college football power in the
early part of twentieth century and a founding member of the Big Ten conference.
Fearing the influence of the athletic program, the university leadership
abolished the football program in 1939 and withdrew from the Big Ten in 1946.
Lest anyone thinks this be a minor thing, the Maroons were coached by the
legendary Amos Alonzo Stagg and featured Jay Berwanger, the first recipient of
what is now the Heisman trophy. It was painful at the time for them to turn
away from the acclaim and prestige that a successful football program provided, but
sixty-six years later the school is known not for salacious scandal but
academic excellence. It is a beacon of knowledge, truth, and light serving as
an example not only for the nation but the entire world. If Penn State wants to
reform its image, then dying to the old and being born again as something new just
might be in its own best interest.
