Not Any Lions: Some Thoughts on the State of Penn State Football

I would not say that I am a fan of Penn State football, but growing up I did develop a bit of an affinity toward them because one of my brothers somehow became a fan, and they seemed like a good “outside” rooting interest when you’re smack dab in the middle of Ohio State-Michigan country and you don’t want to root for either of those teams.  This, of course, comes with a few caveats.  First, Penn State only really became a good rooting interest along those lines when they joined in Big Ten conference in the early 1990s.  Second, I really most pulled for Northwestern among Big Ten teams as I grew up, because they were so horrible in the 1980s and that made them worthy of my rooting interest.  And third, once I went to Michigan State for my Master’s degree in the mid-1990s, the Spartans became my rooting interest within the Big Ten.  Still, in football, behind Michigan State and sometimes Northwestern, I have tended to root for Penn State for the past decade and a half within Big Ten football.

Given the well-documented events that came to light last fall in regard to Penn State football, my rooting interest has largely evaporated.  And, given additional evidence that has come to light within a recent CNN report on email exchanges among principal administrators in the case, I’m thinking that more is needed than simply not rooting for Penn State football.  Namely, I’m leaning heavily toward thinking that the football program at Penn State University should be shut down.  That shutdown should occur for at least a couple of seasons, and it perhaps could go on longer.  I’m thinking it should be set from the beginning as indefinite, and it should occur until such time as the university has thoroughly and sufficiently created a structure for the program that would prevent similar kinds of abuses from occurring.  To be thorough and sufficient enough, the new structure would need to include significant measures to ensure that the football program does not attain the kinds of cultural and organizational power that would appear to have been a significant contributing factor to the situation that allowed Jerry Sandusky to remain involved with the football program and the university.

Now, I know that there are concerns about penalizing current players, coaches, and other individuals (including, I suppose, fans) who were not individually involved in this situation.  Indeed, such concerns have held me from reaching my current opinion for some time.  However, I see those as problematic concerns that, like too many other phenomena in the contemporary United States, place too much emphasis on individual action and individual pathology and not enough emphasis on deeper cultural and organizational structures that induce individual actions.  Indeed, the very emphasis on the individual and not the cultural and organizational appears to have been a significant part of the problem created by PSU administrators Graham Spanier, Tim Curley, and Gary Schultz in their reaction to concerns about Sandusky’s behavior in 2001.  As the CNN report notes, they saw the “humane” path as one in which they confronted only Sandusky about the situation and sought to allow him to work individually on correcting his behavior.  This would appear to place too much emphasis on individual action without addressing the organizational and cultural elements of Penn State football that might have helped encourage and sustain Sandusky’s individual action.  Those elements include authority given to head coach Joe Paterno toward determining the course of action taken, as it appears by the email exchange in the CNN report that Paterno’s reluctance to involve anyone outside of Penn State’s athletics administration in the matter may have significantly influenced the actions taken (or, more to the point, actions not taken).

While sanctions against these individuals have an important place in addressing this situation, I don’t think that speaks enough to the kinds of organizational and cultural power structures that would allow a football program to elicit that kind of power – particularly the kind of power to convince the university president to subvert state law about reporting the 2001 incident by handling the situation internally.  There are increasingly persuasive arguments recently that football may not even have a place at colleges and universities, but perhaps it does still have a place.  However, even if it does, that place should not be anywhere near as high as it appears to be not only at Penn State, but at numerous higher education institutions across the country.  I believe more is needed to address this, and I think a good start is by shutting down the football program at Penn State University for a minimum of a couple of years and then indefinitely after that until such time as the university demonstrates that football has been accorded a more appropriate place within the university structure.

As part of this proposal, current players, coaches, and staff affiliated with the football program and not directly involved in the Sandusky situation would be given the opportunity to transfer or seek employment at alternative institutions while foregoing any typical sanctions that they would face for doing so.  Given that that’s not a particularly practical consideration with the 2012 college football season only two months away, Penn State would be allowed to play its regular-season schedule this season.  They would be excluded from any postseason opportunities, but at least playing this season would give current players, coaches, and staff in the program a much more equitable opportunity to seek alternatives.  That could occur at the conclusion of the season, and with the program barred from any postseason opportunities, they could all begin that search early within the transferring and hiring cycles.  The program would then shut down at the end of the 2012 season—again, for at least a couple of years and indefinitely after that until Penn State University demonstrated to some independent entity that the university had sufficiently made arrangements for a more appropriate place for the program within the university structure.

Ideally, the university would make this move itself and seek help from other agencies in soliciting an outside entity to make a future determination about reinstatement of the program.  If the university won’t do it, then the government of the state of Pennsylvania and the NCAA are other possible sources for the decision, preferably in that order, I think.  Whatever the case, I’m very much coming to the conclusion that this kind of action is warranted.  At the very least, if I continue to watch college football (and, feeling a tension similar to that recently expressed by Abe Khan on the Agon, I’m seriously considering not watching college football at all any more), I will most certainly not watch or pay particular attention to games that involve Penn State.