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It’s easy to criticize Penn State football coach Joe Paterno regarding former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky, the subject of a grand jury report involving sexual-abuse charges. Mainly because Paterno’s actions — or lack thereof — have left him open to such criticism.
Penn State football coach Joe Paterno.
Inherent in the criticism is the time-honored “what did he know and when did he know it?” issue. Also inherent in this case that alleges Sandusky took sexual advantage of young boys is another question: What did Paterno do?
The answer appears to be not enough. Well, possibly enough for the 84-year-old coach to continue in his job. Prosecutors have said the coaching legend passed along information of a 2002 incident to the school’s athletic director, Tim Curley. But one has to think a person as powerful as Paterno with knowledge of such allegations might have taken steps to ensure Sandusky would face legal consequences quicker than nine years later.
It’s one thing for a coach to turn a blind eye to matters involving his players, recruiting, etc. It’s another to do so for children who cannot defend themselves.
In a statement issued Sunday by his son, Scott, the elder Paterno said:
“It was obvious that the witness was distraught over what he saw, but he at no time related to me the very specific actions contained in the grand jury report. Regardless, it was clear that the witness saw something inappropriate involving Mr. Sandusky. As coach Sandusky was retired from our coaching staff at that time, I referred the matter to university administrators.”
Sandusky, who retired as an assistant coach in 1999, is charged with sexually abusing eight boys over 15 years.
“The fact that someone we thought we knew might have harmed young people to this extent is deeply troubling,” Paterno said. “If this is true we were all fooled, along with scores of professionals trained in such things, and we grieve for the victims and their families. They are in our prayers.”
Curley and Gary Schultz, the school’s senior vice president for finance and business, face perjury charges as well as a charge of failing to report to state and county officials the account the assistant coach told them in 2002.
Curley and Schultz stepped down from the jobs, a Penn State spokesman said early Monday after a university Board of Trustees meeting.
“The board, along with the entire Penn State family, is shocked and saddened by the allegations involving” Sandusky, university board Chairman Steve Garban said in a press release. “Under no circumstances does the university tolerate behavior that would put children at risk, and we are deeply troubled.”
Associate athletic director Mark Sherburne will become interim athletic director “until Curley’s legal situation is resolved,” the release said.
“I understand that people are upset and angry, but let’s be fair and let the legal process unfold,” Paterno said in the statement. “In the meantime, I would ask all Penn Staters to continue to trust in what that name represents, continue to pursue their lives every day with high ideals and not let these events shake their beliefs nor who they are
“If true, the nature and amount of charges made are very shocking to me and all Penn Staters. While I did what I was supposed to with the one charge brought to my attention, like anyone else involved I can’t help but be deeply saddened these matters are alleged to have occurred.”
Paterno comes off sounding a bit sanguine in his statement. Certainly that couldn’t have been his intent. Nonetheless, you have to wonder how he would have felt if he had been one of the alleged victims or a member of the alleged victims’ families.
It is easy to second-guess football coaches for the decisions they make during a game. Those calls are relatively inconseqential in the grand scheme of things. When the second-guessing extends to real-life concerns such as sexual abuse by a former assistant coach of vulnerable children, it is incumbent on a molder of men such as Paterno to make the right call in the first place — even if it might be a distraction from running a football program.