Football Uber Alles, Statue of Limitations Dept. 0
Don Giordano has qualms about returning a statue of Joe Paterno (who was a football coach, not a statesman or general or a scholar) to a place of honor on the Penn State University campus. In case you have forgotten, Paterno was revered as an all-around nice guy until it was learned that, upon being informed that one of his friends and long-time associates had been seen molesting a little boy, did as little as he could possibly have done about it.
Old friends and we’re all members of the club and all that, eh, what?
Nevertheless, the Penn State alumni continue to revere JoePa because he embodied their highest value, their most revered goal, the reflection on the Platonic wall of all that is sacred, the highest ideal of honor and integrity: NCAA bowl games.
Here’s a bit from Giordano:
I wonder what Paterno’s reaction would have been if McQueary had told him that he saw Paterno’s grandson in that shower. Would Paterno have merely done the minimum and reported it only to his supervisors?
The second wave of defenders loves to tell me that Joe did all that he could to stop Sandusky. He reported Sandusky to his “superiors.” Who was JoePa’s superior at Penn State?
The third wave of defenders has started the argument that we beat the NCAA and now we’ll put Joe’s statue back because we are a huge alumni group with a lot of power. I wonder what an alum would do if it was his child or grandchild who had been victimized by Sandusky. Would he truly be OK with JoePa’s minimum effort?
