Let’s get this out of the way right now. When I read the stories and allegations about Jerry Sandusky and what went on at the Penn State football facilities (and off it), I am sickened, disgusted, enraged, and unforgiving. That said, what happened is in my opinion, not a sports story anymore and transcends that. The only sports story (in my humble opinion) was how the Penn State football team would respond in their first game without the venerable Joe Paterno, They lost. And it’s time to stop branding this as a “sports story” now.
Yet, some people don’t want to let go. Mike Bianchi of the Orlando Sentinel wrote an article entitled Joe Paterno should have wins stripped so Bobby Bowden can be restored as all-time winningest coach. Really? I kid you not. Here is a portion of what Bianchi had to say:
"It is time for the NCAA to do the right thing and strip away many of Joe Paterno’s victories and restore the great Bobby Bowden as the all-time winningest coach in major-college football history.If you’ll recall, Bowden had 12 victories stripped away by the NCAA for an academic cheating scandal that he was not implicated in at all. In contrast, Paterno has been implicated in ignoring the most despicable, disgusting and deplorable child sex crimes that you can possibly imagine.Paterno apparently first learned of former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky’s alleged sexual abuse of children back in 2002 and for years failed to report the incident to the authorities. By my way of thinking, Paterno should have every victory since 2002 — all 82 of them — taken away. That would leave him with 327 victories — 50 behind Bowden."
And Bianchi is not alone in his opinion. During the student unrest Wednesday night, UK quarterback Morgan Newton sent out a few tweets suggesting that Paterno have wins vacated “for the great Eddie Robinson’s sake”. So like Bianchi in promoting Bowden, Newton is guilty of wanting to see Paterno punished so Eddie Robinson moves up the wins list. Which to me, is trying to promote a selfish agenda in the wake of destroyed lives.
Don’t get me wrong, I like 99.999% of the human populace is outraged and want justice for these actions. Paterno’s nightmare is just beginning. Instead of being ushered out of his coaching career in glory, his era ended in shame, and rightfully so. And Joe Paterno will forever have his name tarnished by this scandal, And instead of retiring in peace, Joe Pa’s remaining years are likely to be spent in court, whether testifying or defending himself in the countless civil suits that are to follow. But to suggest that every single player that played for Paterno over the years have their achievements and wins erased as well is asinine.
Although every moral rule was broken, no NCAA violations were broken or even bent. There were no recruiting violations. There was no grades falsified. There were no illegal benefits. This has nothing to do with the on the field product and more with the moral corruption that exists in a major college and it’s administration. Joe Paterno will always wear the shame of his inaction, but his win total should stand. And to suggest that an organization as corrupt as the NCAA become the “moral police” is a whole nother quagmire.
Just like how Major League Baseball did not take away Pete Rose’s hit mumbers, yet Pete Rose was ostracized for the actions of Pete Rose the manager.
Rick Pitino just celebrated his 600th win this weekend and he did not have any wins negated by his sex scandal. And he should not have.
Mike Leach does not suffer any kind of coaching ban from allegedly locking Adam James up after suffering a concussion, yet he still has his personal reputation tarnished.
Alabama did not have any wins pulled because of hard drinking and hard partying Mike Price. Neither did Kentucky for Billy Gillispie’s transgressions toward his players and off the field behavior. And they should not have.
LSU did not have to adjust their wins total after women’s basketball coach Pokey Chatman revealed she had a sexual affair with one of her players. She resigned under shame, but her wins stood.
And the same logic applies to immoral acts by players as well. The University of Colorado was not put on probation due to the alleded rape by football players in 2004.
Perhaps the only incident where the on field team suffered because of immoral actions was when Duke forfeited games in the wake of the lacrosse sex scandal. But let’s be honest. Despite the fact that Duke Lacrosse was wildly successful, it is not the cash cow that college football and basketball are.
So you can see, college athletics is littered with list sould behaving immoraly and doing very bad off the field things, but in general, the record book is not altered. And so it should not be for Joe Paterno.
Look, I get it though. Everyone wants to “get Paterno” and punish him, but as I mentioned before, Paterno’s punishment will be an immoral scarlet letter he has to wear as he defends himself in court the remainder of his days. And depending on your beliefs, Joe Paterno will have to answer for his actions in a whole different court.
And I realize that this opens a whole different can of worms that I am not going to open up on this site. I have tried to keep politics and religion off this site and will continue to do so, but in the course of researching this story, I came across an excellent article by former Arizona Cardinal Jason Wright entitled “Why Christians ignore Unethical Behavior in College Football” which was written a few months before this scandal broke. It makes an interesting read if you want to go there.