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Inactions speak louder than words. And so it was that Penn State’s football team played Nebraska Saturday in State College, Pa. Rather than cancel a contest in the wake of a child-abuse sex scandal that involves former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky and led to the firing of coach Joe Paterno earlier in the week, the game went on.
A photo of Danielle Moinet or one of Joe Paterno? It's no contest.
The Nittany Lions lost 17-14.
Former Penn State players gathered on the sidelines. Nothing quite as heart-warming as having child sexual abuse bring them together, is there?
Nobody sat down in Paterno’s seat on the bus to game. Then again, he didn’t stand up for sexually abused children.
Observed political commentator Jeff Greenfield on Twitter: Moment of silence for the children at Penn State? Why not? Just about everyone who might have saved them was silent for more than a decade.
“I felt today that just maybe the healing process has started to begin,” Tom Bradley, named Paterno’s interim replacement on Thursday, said after the game.
Healing for whom? For the alleged victims of Sandusky? For a university that harbored in its athletic department a person such as Sandusky?
“Personally I felt this was a time to play, but also was time we could recognize and bring national focus to the problem of sexual abuse,” Penn State president Rod Erickson said. “Our players and everyone involved, the way they conducted themselves today, proved that this was the right decision. This was the way to do it.”
The right decision? Really?
Erickson also said he thought the Nittany Lions should be able to go to a bowl game if they are invited. That statement definitely made a statement. Heck, why should the current players have to pay for the alleged sins of their elders?
Here’s why: Because they are part of a football program that seems to have been less concerned about sexually abused boys than it was about focusing on football. Think of it as collateral damage. Far less damage than that inflicted on innocent young boys.
One person who seemed to have the proper perspective also was part of the football postgame media gatherings: Nebraska coach Bo Pelini.
“I will be honest with you” he said. “Going into the game, I didn’t think the game should have been played, for a lot of different reasons.
“I look at my job as a football coach as to educate and to prepare the kids that come into the program for the rest of their life. That’s what we are; we are a university system.
“I thought that this game gave us an opportunity to show that the situation going on is bigger than football. It is bigger than the football game that was just played. It is bigger than the young men that played in the game that would have missed it, had they called it off.
“It’s about education and putting things into perspective what the situation is all about. Hopefully, the fact that both teams sat up and prayed together put that in perspective a little bit.
“It’s about what doing what’s right in society. It’s about doing what’s right and wrong. Trust me, when I tell you, I don’t know the specifics of the situation and I am not judging anybody. But the fact is young kids were hurt and that’s a crime in itself.
“It is a lot bigger than football, the NCAA, the Big Ten and anything else. I think that at least, that’s why I think going in the game shouldn’t have been played.
“But with it being played, kneeling down and praying with both teams coming together was the right thing to do and hopefully that in of itself made a statement.
“I just think it is about the young kids. I got a 12-year old boy. It’s about educating the young kids. I think there were a lot of young kids, all week, with all the things going on and watching ESPN that were really confused for a lot of different reasons.
“There is a lot out there that people do not know and a lot of speculation. It’s not about the adults, football or anything else. It’s about education to the youth. I think that gets lost in whole situation. Whatever comes out of it, hopefully a lot of people learned from it and nothing like that ever happens again.”
“There were times when I felt like here I am telling my team to ignore what’s going on because we have a game to play. But, my main job is to educate and to talk to them about it and put focus on what we know, so these young adults learn from the situation. I think it is a pretty complicated situation for a lot of reasons.”
When Penn State sweeps everyone out of the football program and decides to start over, the Nittany Lions could do far worse in their quest to find a replacement for the coaching legend that was Paterno than Bo Pelini.
Finally, some football fun. It’s the weekly NFL picks by Danielle Moinet, the former Chicago Bliss all-fantasy player of the Lingerie Football League. She makes her selections weekly at turdfergusonblog.com. Her Week 10 picks: San Diego over Oakland (well, that was Thursday and the Raiders won, so she’s not off to the greatest of starts), Carolina over Tennessee, Indianapolis over Jacksonville, New York Giants over San Francisco and Green Bay over Minnesota.