For reasons both logical and illogical, [Penn State’s] coach has long been obsessed about sheltering his Nittany Lions team, as if it were a wartime army.
Practices are closed to the media. Assistant coaches are off-limits. Reporters have virtually no access to players. Information – think of [Joe] Paterno’s long-secret salary – is locked away.
A decade ago, for example, when The Inquirer did a lengthy series on the growing influence of money in college sports, Penn State jealously guarded information – such as the dollar amount of its contract with Nike – that other schools, schools with less-upright reputations, readily made available.
Now, unsettling as the implications might be for Penn State’s loyal followers, outsiders will want to know what else has been hidden from public view over the years.
There will be speculation that perhaps the reason Paterno’s program never ran afoul of the NCAA was because the NCAA couldn’t cross the moat. What else went on …?
To live in a university-sports village, to be one of its faithful flock, is to realize that what Coach does is best for you and best for the team, and not ever to question Coach. Coach leads the wartime army. It’s always wartime. In wartime ways of life that seem strange in times of peace become routine. Loose lips sink ships!
November 6th, 2011 at 10:48AM
This particular story is a textbook study in cognitive dissonance. Joe “Paternal” Paterno has been everyone’s ideal picture of a football coach. Now it turns out to be likely that Our Joe must have been protecting funny Uncle Jerry… We shall see now who among the believers is able to form the obvious inferences and who is not.
November 6th, 2011 at 12:45PM
MattF: From what I gather of the Penn St attitude toward Paterno, the canonization will proceed as planned.
October 11th, 2012 at 3:00AM
[…] football programs refuse to discuss – or only very selectively discuss – their budgets (Penn State, before it was forced by circumstance to disclose all sorts of things to the world, was notoriously […]