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Penn State will never be confused with Stanford, Northwestern, Princeton or Duke. But among state universities the venerable institution tucked away in the fittingly quaint backdrop of "State College," Pennsylvania Penn State was, until the horrific hours that fell upon Happy Valley ten days ago, the crown jewel of the Keystone State. University systems are interesting; in many states there exists a relatively equal distribution of major colleges sharing a large revenue stream. California, Florida, Ohio, Michigan and Texas exemplify that model. But when it comes to public universities in Pennsylvania, there's Penn State and then there's everyone else.
There has never been a more dehumanizing stain on college athletics than the ghoulish accounts unfolding at Penn State. And as the saga continues to unravel and worsen (as all shocking scandals seem to do), we'll leave the sordid details of a recidivistic football coach to the investigators and reporters. Instead, begging for poetic license ahead of an obvious question, what can we sift from the ashes of a disgraced football machine and it's ignobly dismissed coaching staff?
What lies behind us and what lies before us are small considerations compared to what lies within us. The terrible dark beating of wings enveloping State College warns us all that things are seldom as they appear. Questions emerge, the most searing of which asks "how could this simmer underground for 17 years?" In football iconography Joe Paterno stood in the circle of legends; Stagg, Rockne, Lombardi, Bryant, Hayes, and Schembechler. Penn State's win percentage is a matter of record but across the decades Joe-pa's seemingly boundless philanthropic side gifted millions to the university. Here was a man of exemplary character; someone generations of players and fans could trust and admire. But the standard of work at any job site is defined by the sloppiest piece of work one will accept. 15 years after Jerry Sandusky began allegedly abusing children, absolutely no one did a damn thing about it, leaving us to ask: how is this possible?
We can expect more of the unthinkable to unravel as this once proud athletic paragon staggers and tumbles from its pedestal, lying in pieces like a crumbling ancient fountain. And still we ask: if it can happen at Penn State, is it possible, even probable, somewhere someone who could save the future of a 10-year-old boy or girl instead sits in silence pretending not to know? It has been quoted many times tracing to the dark days of the British Empire: "All that is needed for evil to triumph is for a few good men to do nothing." In that sense, there were no "good men" within the arcane circle of Penn State football.
For most of us there are only commitments and consequences. At least that's all many of us have ever known. Sometimes it paralyzes you in those rare moments of indecision; those moments when you should act, should take it in your own two hands, the important leap of truth and wrong-made-right that could change your life or someone else's.
But you hesitate, and history and events have already washed over you just as it has in State College for the people who should have mattered most. We must watch our habits, they become character. We must watch our character, it becomes our destiny.
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