That’s where the story begins - with confirmation bias. Before you read the first line of an article, you’ve already made up your mind how you feel about it from the headline. Think back to 30 seconds ago when you read the title of this entry. Remember your gut reaction. Take note of whether it was positive or negative. Now drop it. We’ll start from the beginning and you can evaluate all the pieces to form your own conclusion at the end. Not the other way around.
Full disclosure: I’m a Penn State - University Park graduate of the 2007 class with a degree in engineering. I’ve been to many college football games as a fan of Penn State and as a fan of sports. Naturally, I and countless other Nittany Lions have been inundated with stories about JoePa and everything he’s done for the school. Not football. The school. The football part you can get from the talking heads on College GameDay every fall weekend. Us Penn Staters got the stories about his donations to school departments and campus projects. The stories about his never giving up on struggling kids and his determination to put education ahead of athletics (see: Grand Experiment). We got the story of how he met his wife Sue, an English Lit honors student, in - where else? - the campus library. That last bit might sum it up about JoePa, the Ivy League graduate who wanted to be a lawyer but found a different way to help people. If you walk around University Park, you won’t find the Paterno name on an athletic building or a training facility. You’ll find it on a library.
So when the news first broke about the sexual abuse of children by Sandusky, and that Paterno was somehow involved, devoted fans were quick to defend him from attacks made by outsiders. Joe couldn’t possibly. Joe would never. This wasn’t the Joe we know. Our confirmation bias was in full force, and we came up with every excuse we could think of.
Most other people, however, don’t bleed blue and white. They’ve never heard the stories. To them, they see a football coach and start filling in what they don’t know about Paterno with what they’ve heard about college sports. This guy is just another meathead coach who only cares about football. This guy helped cover up a scandal to protect his money and his job. Penn State’s a football school, this guy is their king, and he will not let anything ruin it all.
But what is evident now is that we were all dealing with incomplete information. The defenders pleaded for more time and more details. Everyone else already had their own conclusions, with plenty of help from a media blizzard that just found the story of the year. After all, it was Paterno’s name on headlines and Paterno’s picture on leading images. What’s a Sandusky again? And if you didn’t have an opinion before, you certainly had one after a stop at ESPN.
After recent testimonies from both Mike McQueary and Joe Paterno himself, we may now have enough information to come to some reasonable conclusions (for the time being). No conspiracy theories. No what-ifs or he-must-haves. If you’ve already decided that what you believe is not going to change, then you might as well head to a different website. But I believe it’s important to clear up any misconceptions now before the next big story hits and everyone and their internet ADD moves on, because all they’ll remember when looking back at this story are those misconceptions.
McQueary never told Paterno that he witnessed rape
In his testimony, McQueary claims he gave the full, detailed account to Tim Curley (PSU athletic director and Paterno’s supervisor) and Gary Schultz (university official who oversees campus police), but that he did not do the same for Joe, "out of respect for Coach Paterno." In his interview with Sally Jenkins, Paterno says that McQueary was not clear about the nature of what he saw Sandusky doing in the showers. Everyone assumed that Joe Paterno was told of a horrific account of rape - the two people involved in that talk have stated this was not the case.
When McQueary met with his father on the night of the incident, his father called Dr. Jonathan Dranov to come to their house for counsel, and Dr. Dranov listened to the story. In Dranov’s grand jury testimony, he said he asked McQueary three times if what he witnessed was sexual and each time McQueary said no. Because of McQueary’s answers, Dranov advised that McQueary go to Paterno and not the police.
Why did Paterno wait a day?
If he was given an ambiguous account of the incident, then what Paterno was supposedly told did not appear serious enough to warrant immediate action, but serious enough to take the time to consider the implications if the story was true.
Why did Paterno not go to the police?
If any of the above is accurate (that Paterno was told a watered-down version of what was witnessed), then there may not have been enough to go on. Having said that, University Park Police has the same powers as any other police district (the campus is big enough that it has its own zip code). Paterno asked his supervisor, Tim Curley, to meet with McQueary. Contact with Curley was absolutely necessary according to protocol, but there was a reason why Gary Schultz, out of all the other PSU officials, was also brought in to the meeting. Campus police reports to Schultz and Schultz had final say on whether or not police action should be taken. Schultz being told the story had a clear purpose - he was there to represent the police.
Why did Paterno not follow up?
Again, if the above testimonies are true, then there was little to follow up, especially if Paterno had only heard about this one incident and was unaware that there were other cases. Paterno notified the proper individuals who had the power to take action if the situation demanded it, and there was no reason for Paterno to suspect that they did not do just that. Paterno was not present for the meeting between McQueary and the university officials.
Paterno had no knowledge of the 1998 incident
When the mother of a victim went to the authorities, the police set up a sting operation to listen in on a conversation between Sandusky and the mother. After the operation, no charges were filed and the Centre County district attorney did not take the matter any further. If the district attorney had decided to take the case to court, then this information would have been made public, but he did not, so nobody outside of the victim’s family and the police knew about it. Not Paterno, not Centre Daily Times, not ESPN.
Because this information was private - and had to be private for police reasons - Sandusky’s resignation the following year can’t be linked to it through some conspiracy theory that Paterno knew about the incident. In his interview, Paterno says he told Sandusky that he would never become head coach because he spent too much time with his Second Mile charity and would not be able to provide the attention required of coaching the Nittany Lions. Sandusky then retired from coaching and gave his full attention to the charity.
Paterno was not interested in money
Any claims about Paterno covering up the scandal because he wanted to protect his cash cow shows total ignorance about the man. He made a fraction of what other coaches take home in salary. He turned down numerous high-paying coaching jobs with NFL teams throughout his career. He lived in a modest home with a market value more influenced by his celebrity than the number of bedrooms. He walked to work. He and his wife Sue donated millions to the university, its programs, and its facilities - including the library that bears their name. And even after Penn State fired him, they continued to do so.
Paterno was just a football coach
Why is every other sports hyperbole allowed to be just that, but JoePa being the King of State College somehow gives him actual monarchic powers and omniscience within the bounds of zip code 16801? Paterno certainly had influence among the powers that be, and he definitely had no problem making public display of his iron fist rule with regards to his team and his players. But he was in fact just a football coach. He did not fire himself. In other news, Karl Malone is not an actual mailman.
Supporting Paterno does not mean supporting sexual abuse
But thanks for the false dichotomy.
To indict Paterno of being fully-aware but choosing to look the other way demands too many hypotheticals and assumptions of motives for the points above. Pull up a random article about Joe Paterno’s involvement in the scandal and you’ll likely see something along the lines of "but he had to have known because..." and other non-facts. This is not evidence. What there is actual evidence of is the media’s preference of keeping JoePa away from reprieve after their initial witch hunt when the story first broke. First, note the following excerpt from the Washington Post interview of Joe Paterno:
Quote:
"You know, [McQueary] didn’t want to get specific," Paterno said. "And to be frank with you I don’t know that it would have done any good, because I never heard of, of, rape and a man. So I just did what I thought was best. I talked to people that I thought would be, if there was a problem, that would be following up on it."
Yes, it’s kind of a strange thing for Paterno to say - not having heard of a male raping a male - and it doesn’t help his case at all. But now look at this excerpt from an article by Steve Kallas (http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2012/01/17/kallas-analyzing-the-joe-paterno-interview
) where the author purports to have analyzed the interview:Quote:
McQueary called his father, who told him to come home and tell Joe Paterno the next day. He did, but not in graphic detail ("out of respect for Coach Paterno," according to McQueary’s testimony) and Joe Paterno, the next day, told his superiors (which is what Joe Paterno was required to do under the law). Paterno told Jenkins that "… I never heard of, of rape and a man." He went on to Jenkins, "So I just did what I thought was best. I talked to people that I thought would be, if there was a problem, that would be following up on it."
Did you catch what Kallas did? He purposely took the quote out of context to make it look like Paterno was told of rape and then had a Bill Clinton moment about what the meaning of rape is. If you read the remaining section of the article, Kallas actually spends the rest of the discussion attacking Paterno’s claim about being ignorant of rape as if McQueary actually told him that version of the story! And honestly, if I had not read the Washington Post interview prior to Kallas’ "article," then I would have been heartbroken reading about Joe’s defense. Thankfully, I had, and already knew the truth. Yes, this is what passes for journalism today.
Another telling bit of information is the insistence the media has on shortening another Paterno quotation. In too many articles, I keep seeing callbacks to "I wish I had done more," for example: http://espn.go.com/college-football/story/_/id/7488107/joe-paterno-leaves-legacy-penn-state
and http://espn.go.com/espn/commentary/story/_/page/keown-120124/joe-paterno-tributes-miss-point-generation. Why are journalists refusing to print the whole line? If you recall - as these authors hope you don’t - the actual quotation is "In hindsight, I wish I had done more." I mean, it’s only two more words. It’s not like they change the entire meaning of what JoePa was trying to convey. Oh. Right.On the internet, a straw man argument rarely ends well for the straw man. At the moment, I can’t think of a more incredible case of the actual man also getting burned. Then again, we live in a time when this is actually a question: http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/12/should-the-times-be-a-truth-vigilante
. If the news outlets were not so concerned about being the ones to provide the most expert opinions and being the loudest denouncers of horrible acts in order to strengthen their own perceived moralities, then maybe things would have turned out differently. If we weren’t so quick to resolve the deficiencies of early information with our own eager imaginations, then who knows how the last few months would have played out.But they were, and we did. And instead of giving the Paterno family the time and peace to enjoy their remaining days with their loving patriarch, we gave them an ordeal to endure that no innocent family ever should. And now that it’s too late, JoePa, I am greatly saddened to say that I wish I had done more.
Contact the author: fonz@trollspotting.com