Misdirection Plays, Suffer the Children Dept. 5
At the Guardian, Dave Zirin argues that the NCAA sanctions against Penn State are a gross abuse of power. A snippet:
As rotten and corrupt as big-time college sports are, Zirin may have a point. It’s certainly worth thinking about.
More to the point, in my opinion, is this: Penn State’s cover up of a serial pederast was not about football, though the worship of football made the cover-up easier.
It was about powerful persons protecting other powerful persons because they were all members of the same club. A football team, a board of directors, a religious hierachy–all clubs with their insiders who consider their fellows to be better than everyone else because, after all, they would not be insiders otherwise, now, would they?
The NCAA sanctions will encourage persons to think that the issue has somehow been dealt with, so they can enjoy their NFL and college football games, drink their beers, and buy their overpriced branded swag without thinking of the rot on the sidelines, in the locker rooms, and in front offices.
And persons will think that the NCAA sanctions somehow address the rot and avert their eyes from the the amoral corruption of rich Insiders’ Clubs throughout business, politics, religion, and, yes, sports, because
July 24, 2012 at 11:34 am
Opinions vary. I was right there with the crowd during the glory years. Suppression by power has been at the root of all graft and criminal conduct in too many levels of US society so I’m not particularly sorry to see the Cult of PSU obliterated. I do have some sympathy for young people who will now have to suffer consequences.
http://dickdestiny.com/blog1/2012/07/23/joepa-and-penn-state-destroyed/
July 24, 2012 at 12:57 pm
I don’t know. I’ve no love for the NCAA, but presumably they exist to make sure that the student athlete experience includes *both* student and athlete. If PSU wasnt a part of Division I, they would have never had the chance to build that moneymaking machine that is PSU football. Zirin wants to make the case that the NCAA ruling didn’t result in either justice or a cleaning house at PSU. Which strikes me as the wrong thing for anyone to expect from the NCAA.
Which isn’t to say that the NCAA doesn’t have its problems. The Taylor Branch indictment of the NCAA that was in The Atlantic earlier is the best bill of particulars on just how far they’ve gotten from their mission. But I think that the NCAA sanction was less about PSU than it was about telling the rest of the NCAA members to get their act together.
July 24, 2012 at 2:50 pm
Frankly, I think the NCAA sanctions on PSU were less about sending a message to anyone to get his or her act together than they were about the NCAA trying to save face.
As regards Paterno, I used to think he was one of the good guys. I remember his first bowl game (with Kansas or KSU, I think, right around 1970). PSU was behind by one in the last minute and Paterno had them go for a two-point conversion (can’t remember whether they made it and too lazy to look it up). When a reporter asked why, he said someting like, “Ties are not fun; this game is supposed to be fun.”
That was before he was a certified member of the Insiders’ Club.
July 24, 2012 at 3:31 pm
Yeah, they made it. ’70 Gator Bowl, I think. Oh, I’m not someone who thinks the NCAA thought has any virtue. However, it has smashed the Cult of PSU. Plus, I bet the destruction of school football money will effect a lot more things than they’ve yet tallied at the school. Whether it leads to the disassembly of any other like Cults, I’m not holding my breath.
July 24, 2012 at 3:53 pm
I tend to agree about PSU having cultish aspects.
I used to know a lot of PSU alums when I lived in upper Delaware.
They seemed to think that the Nittany Valley was The Only Place on Earth.
Virginia Tech fans are sort of like that about Blacksburg, though the football cult is not quite as strong because the football record is not as consistent.
The two places have a lot in common–isolated land-grant college towns with little or no other industry stuck way up in the hills, an environment in which it could be easy to groom Stepford fans.