the rix mix

College basketball season is beginning, the baseball hot stove is heating up, & until there are more sordid revelations I have little more to say about Penn State. But here's how I respond to those defending Joe Paterno on the grounds that he did what was legally required [& no more].

I say, terrific, now you've pulled Paterno down to the level of a college coach plausibly denying he knew alumni were providing his players with gold jewelry & hookers.

Sports fans like me scoff at those incidents, & at the hypocrisy of the NCAA, the Bowl Championship Series, the TV contracts, & so-called amateur status. We mock rules that punish  innocent athletes  while  scuzzball athletes & coaches are rewarded with fat pro contracts.  Under the current system we  have no objections to football underwriting women's field hockey. What school & program did we point to as proof that you could  be honest & great in the midst of corruption & cynicism?  Joe  Paterno & Penn State football. A clean program that generated enough money & prestige to construct & fill  the second largest stadium in America.

Paterno didn't build his great program by taking NCAA standards as his benchmarks. He used his own higher standards. Sure, he had some bad apple students on his teams through the years.  But the Paterno quote on the seven-foot statue of Joe Pa outside Beaver Stadium doesn't say,  "I never received an NCAA sanction." It reads:

"They ask me what I'd like written about me when I'm gone. I hope they write I made Penn State a better place, not just that I was a good football coach."

Labels: sports