Looks like we all invented Joe Paterno and Happy Valley, turned them into an idyllic magic kingdom, to justify the seedy world of big-time college football.
There had to be one factory with a coach who got it, who walked with the philosophers in his spare time, who was plugged into the moral issues of his time. There had to be one good place. Otherwise, what is the justification of college football? After half a century of covering college sports, I came to think of the vast majority of big-time coaches as talented and maybe even charismatic hucksters, who were warped inside. Their job was to prepare for the next game, the next season. But morally, many of them were like moles, who dig in the earth but never see daylight. With the Freeh report on the child sex-abuse scandal at Penn State emerging on Thursday, it seems clear that Penn State never prepared this sanctified football coach for the one real tough issue of his career. He could not act on evidence there was something wrong with his buddy down the hall. Apparently, Paterno had never even walked through a room where the great common denominators of our time – the Oprahs, the Dr. Phils, the Jerry Springers – were blaring on television about the dark side of life. The coach we needed so badly lived underground. And when confronted with hints and clues and allegations, he was surely not the person to do anything about them. He had a game coming up. He had a practice. He had a recruiting trip. And so did the rest of his university, and the fans who came rolling into the mountains on Saturday, and the sportswriters who idealized the coach. They all had a game. The pressure was on. The state of Pennsylvania and the whole football-loving nation wanted to think of Happy Valley as that good place that also produced linebackers. We had the myth. How many children’s lives were ruined by a blind system of big-time college football that fit our needs?
Brian Savin
7/12/2012 12:15:00 pm
God bless you, George. Amen.
George Vecsey
7/12/2012 01:11:04 pm
thanks, man
Ed Martin
7/12/2012 02:24:18 pm
So sad and so true. While this is the most stomach-turning I have read, there is so much evidence that the leaders of big-time college sports have lost their moral compasses, cheating, ignoring unlawful behavior, renting a player for a year, (Kentucky basketball), and on and on. I am always hopeful the pendulum will swing back in situations like this. We shall see.
bruce picken
7/12/2012 06:14:46 pm
george, as you know i've ranted about the so called stoo dent ath a leets despoiling the major college sports programs for decades. the so called 'builders of men' were too often shown to be so interested in winning they allowed or encouraged all sorts of things to happened. there should not be a soul in university who isn't academically qualified--and that doesn't include credits for wondering around a campus for a 'nature appreciation' credit. 'coach' should be under the strict control of the college president.
George Vecsey
7/13/2012 03:21:21 am
Bruce, we Yanks do it a different way. We make the Paterno figure the focus of the entire university. Generations of kids have gone to Penn State to be near him. Woinder how they feel now. Presidents, chancellors, booster clubs, alumni, students, fans, are all invested in UK basketball or Penn State football or whatever. Weird. GV
bruce picken
7/13/2012 02:42:14 am
just noticed my happen(ed) typo. never used to be a problem. old age, i reckon 7/14/2012 04:45:03 am
George,
George Vecsey
7/15/2012 05:51:56 am
Hansen, thanks for the thoughtful note. Actually, my first column last fall focused on King Football as the site of this (at that point alleged) crime.
Micki Maynard
7/14/2012 05:08:37 am
George, it might be my journalism training, but I have never looked at college football as anything but a big business. It's AAA ball for the NFL plus the biggest weekly rock concert you can imagine plus a built-in fan base that willingly pays for the ability to watch the end result. ADs are CEOs, coaches are presidents, assistants are department heads, players are staff.
George Vecsey
7/15/2012 05:54:49 am
Thanks, I totally agree. In the end, Paterno was part of the problem. He preserved the status quo. A common tale in military (Pat Tillman case), banking (everywhere) and big-time football. GV 7/19/2012 09:37:13 am
The Penn State scandal epitomizes what is wrong with the NCAA in general and BIG-TIME athletic programs in particular. It is my opinion that Penn State should receive the maximum penalties allowed for covering up a sex scandal. Predators of children rightfully set off alarm bells in our society. 1/3/2013 07:04:04 pm
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Measuring Covid Deaths, by David Leonhardt. July 17, 2023. NYT online. The United States has reached a milestone in the long struggle against Covid: The total number of Americans dying each day — from any cause — is no longer historically abnormal…. After three horrific years, in which Covid has killed more than one million Americans and transformed parts of daily life, the virus has turned into an ordinary illness. The progress stems mostly from three factors: First, about three-quarters of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine shot. Second, more than three-quarters of Americans have been infected with Covid, providing natural immunity from future symptoms. (About 97 percent of adults fall into at least one of those first two categories.) Third, post-infection treatments like Paxlovid, which can reduce the severity of symptoms, became widely available last year. “Nearly every death is preventable,” Dr. Ashish Jha, who was until recently President Biden’s top Covid adviser, told me. “We are at a point where almost everybody who’s up to date on their vaccines and gets treated if they have Covid, they rarely end up in the hospital, they almost never die.” That is also true for most high-risk people, Jha pointed out, including older adults — like his parents, who are in their 80s — and people whose immune systems are compromised. “Even for most — not all but most —immuno-compromised people, vaccines are actually still quite effective at preventing against serious illness,” he said. “There has been a lot of bad information out there that somehow if you’re immuno-compromised that vaccines don’t work.” That excess deaths have fallen close to zero helps make this point: If Covid were still a dire threat to large numbers of people, that would show up in the data. One point of confusion, I think, has been the way that many Americans — including we in the media — have talked about the immuno-compromised. They are a more diverse group than casual discussion often imagines. Most immuno-compromised people are at little additional risk from Covid — even people with serious conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or a history of many cancers. A much smaller group, such as people who have received kidney transplants or are undergoing active chemotherapy, face higher risks. Covid’s toll, to be clear, has not fallen to zero. The C.D.C.’s main Covid webpage estimates that about 80 people per day have been dying from the virus in recent weeks, which is equal to about 1 percent of overall daily deaths. The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions. Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine in Massachusetts, told me that “age is clearly the most substantial risk factor.” Covid’s victims are both older and disproportionately unvaccinated. Given the politics of vaccination, the recent victims are also disproportionately Republican and white. Each of these deaths is a tragedy. The deaths that were preventable — because somebody had not received available vaccines and treatments — seem particularly tragic. (Here’s a Times guide to help you think about when to get your next booster shot.) *** From the great Maureen Dowd: As I write this, I’m in a deserted newsroom in The Times’s D.C. office. After working at home for two years during Covid, I was elated to get back, so I could wander around and pick up the latest scoop. But in the last year, there has been only a smattering of people whenever I’m here, with row upon row of empty desks. Sometimes a larger group gets lured in for a meeting with a platter of bagels." --- Dowd writes about the lost world of journalists clustered in newsrooms at all hours, smoking, drinking, gossipping, making phone calls, typing, editing. *** "Putting out the paper," we called it. Much more than nostalgia. ---https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/opinion/journalism-newsroom.html Categories
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