Our Opinion: Cautionary tale for all schools big on sports

In a sense, the scandal that has rocked Penn State University ? culminating with the release last week of a devastating report by former FBI Director Louis Freeh ? might be considered a perfect storm that formed only because of conditions unique to that school and its storied football program.

In Jerry Sandusky, you have a monster who also happened to be genius regarding football defense. He leveraged his football success and Penn State football connections to indulge his pedophilia. In the Nittany Lions football program, you have a team with a legendary reputation for success both on the field and in the classroom. The football program, in fact, had become the identity of the university. And that status came from one source: Joe Paterno. No other major college sports coach had his combination of longevity, success and respect.

Let?s face it: Had this happened at any number of large, football-crazy universities in the country, the story probably would have unfolded on the inside pages of newspaper sports sections, not on Page One.

From another perspective, however, the Sandusky scandal must be seen as a cautionary tale to all major colleges that have big-time sports programs.

Obviously, the Freeh report (thefreehreportonpsu.com) is foremost a frightening account of failure to remove a menace like Sandusky from his easy access to his victims. It is a study in cowardice.

But it?s also an example of what happens when a football program becomes, to borrow a term from the financial crisis, too big to fail.

In page after page of the report, we see a university president (and, essentially, an entire university) that is completely subservient to a football coach. And we see a football coach who views the world through the prism of his football program.

?(T)he principals in this case only looked the other way because the football program was involved,? observed sportswriter Allen Barra of Salon.com. ?If this had happened in the economics department or the school of music or even on the soccer team, Sandusky would have been out of Happy Valley and behind bars faster than a Penn State linebacker sacking a quarterback.?

Penn State may have been the perfect incubator for the extremes of the Sandusky scandal, but it?s not difficult to imagine powerful sports programs, especially football programs, exerting similar control over the people who ostensibly oversee the entire university. The money involved is too great to dismiss that possibility.

Last December, Forbes ranked the Penn State football program as the third most valuable in the country, worth $100 million ($53 million in profit). Consider this: Filled to its capacity of 110,000, Beaver Stadium becomes Pennsylvania?s third-largest city every home game. Seven of the Top 20 most valuable programs were from the Big 10, with Iowa rated 20th with a $48 million value and $24 million profit. (The University of Illinois didn?t make the 2011 Forbes Top 20, but football earned a profit of $15.1 million on $28 million total revenue, according to figures following the 2010 season.)

At its most basic level, the Penn State debacle is an example of what happens when a university chooses protecting its investment over preserving its standard of ethics. No component of any university ? whether it?s the football program or the chemistry department ? ever should be afforded the kind of power needed to force such a choice.

Source: http://www.sj-r.com/opinions/x661515099/Our-Opinion-Cautionary-tale-for-all-schools-big-on-sports

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