more rant about this penn state ordeal

my last blog came about an hour before the story dropped that joe paterno got the ax from penn state university.
at that time, i thought it was sad that he was going to be out at the end of the year for such a reason.
an hour later, i thought it was incredibly ridiculous that he got fired on the spot.
today, i am still utterly confused and have a secnd best song i could dedicate to the entire debacle.
really? the facts as they have been presented:
his former assistant coach sandusky allegedly molested eight different young boys between 1994-2009. some of these abuses took place at penn state athletic facilities. assistant coach mcqueary admitted that he witnessed sexual abuse taking place in the locker room. his version of the story has been changing over the week, but it basically is that he went to paterno and other school officials about it. he is now saying that he also went to police, though this has been denied by police.
as this has come to light, former coach sandusky is under investigation and awaiting trial. penn state university has fired coach paterno, university president spanier and the senior vp for business and finance has resigned. the athletic director is on administrative leave. the university is going to great lengths to protect mcqueary, who, honestly, i find to be the most questionable character in all of this. further ramifications have included paterno's name stripped from the championship trophy and other such places of honor. people are asking about whether his statue should be removed from in front of the stadium.
on the other side of the coin, there are students at penn state starting riots, tipping news vans, breaking out windows and stuff like that. though i think it is a bit extreme, i must say i am more on the side of the protesters than the critics and university officials. because i think what they are doing is more extreme than the rioters. consider:

1. joe paterno coached at penn state for 66 years. he is the all time winningest coach in college football history. his presence in various rings of honor can never be disputed in terms of gridiron accomplishments.
2. he was fired for not doing enough to bring this injustice to light. he did say he wished he had done more, which is ultimately what the board went on when they fired him. however, he did go to university officials and they did nothing. while it is true that some of those guilty parties have also been fired, why was his responsibility greater than that. hindsight will say, yes, he should've gone to the police. but then hindsight may say he had good reason not to.
3. if these university officials did not go to police, what's to say they didn't convince him that they would take care of things? or, most likely that there is more to this complex part of the story. just to think about it simply, if you are at work and see someone doing something illegal, who do you go to? you go to your boss, they go to their boss, appropriate action is taken through a chain of command. if you go straight to the cops and in turns out to be an extreme reaction, your reputation is on the line for putting your employer in a poor light. so, why would paterno go to the police?
4. most crucially, sandusky has not even been convicted! what if it turns out, as he says, that he is completely innocent? then after the witch hunt and everyone's been burned at the stake, penn state finds out that nothing happened, then what? while it is quite apparent that some sketchy things went on, it also stands to reason that sandusky might not have broken any law. if that's the case, everyone in the university followed the proper course of action in simply barring him from bringing children to the university. as we have found out, he was exonerated by the d.a. for accusations of such activity in 1998.
if paterno took such information into account, it would seem to be appropriate to question the validity of any later claim that sandusky had done something wrong. on the other hand, if he believed that mcqueary or others had already gone to the police, why would he feel the need to go also?

seeing evidence that the d.a. didn't buy into the allegations in 1998, seeing the shifty story that mcqueary is telling, seeing the questionable position that higher people within the university took, it is enough to warrant more solid information before such reactions as firing a legendary coach and stripping his name from everything. for all we know at this point, the police were involved and officials higher than even the university were involved in covering things up to prevent a scandal. the point is that we don't know a damn thing about what happened yet, but many consequences have already paid. i would riot too!



seriously. in the worst case scenario, i think that what jim tressel did at ohio state was worse. heck, i even think that gary pinkel getting busted for a dwi is worse, although i am questioning the extreme fines he has to pay. i think that what pete carroll did at usc was worse. if paterno did things along those lines, that would be much worse than going to police when he had plenty of reason to give pause. he did enough to alert his superiors.
if there is someone who is not seeing this my way, please help me understand what joe paterno did wrong.

incompetent and immoral university officials

just when the so-called “game of the century” is over, bigger and better things in store this week. two major games of note, and as always incompetent university officials at the center.

out of nowhere, JoePa is going to be coaching his last home game for penn state? after 46 years, the all-time leader in victories suddenly bids adieu this saturday and it comes down to a scandal? listening to the media, i really have to feel for the guy. apparently, support for paterno has “eroded” within the university following a scandal involving former assistant sandusky who is being investigated for alleged inappropriate relationships with teen boys over about a 15 year period. it was said that paterno had known something, but “turned a blind eye.” the police investigation released him from responsibility, but critized him for only telling university officials and not reporting it to the police. they say he has a moral responsibility to tell police. in principle, i would agree that would have been prudent to tell police, but the part i don’t understand is that the police let him off the hook for no wrongdoing while university officials are bloodthirsty because he didn’t go to the police? the catch 22 of it is that he went to university officials in the first place when he learned of the incidents. they could have gone to the police. why was it paterno’s sole responsibility? so, the university wants him out for something that they are equally, if not more, responsible for? i can see why the penn state vice president and others are also being targeted, but man i feel sorry for JoePa.

then, just when you thought 'bama-lsu was a good matchup, the pac-12 north will more or less be determined when oregon plays at stanford. third-ranked stanford is a 4 point favorite against sixth-ranked oregon, but this could be a blowout in either direction. too hard to predict. the entertaining part for me is the story that broke in the oregonian on sunday. i won’t say i told you so, but talk about incompetent university officials, i challenge any school in the country to beat the university of oregon in a game of immorality.

the following is an outlined version of facts presented in steve duin’s article referring to the subsisdies the university of oregon athletic department receives.

the university has always maintained that the sports programs, specifically the football team, are self funded. that is, they are independent of the university general fund for support and as such, student fees do not cover any expenses. i am sure that as much as most of the students down in eugene love their ducks, none of them particularly want to fund it. however, the athletic department funding itself has always sounded suspicious. even when they make about $50 million playing in the national championship game, most of that must be dispersed to the other programs in the pac-10 (now pac-12) and a lot of the rest is spent getting to such an event. not a lot left to bring back to eugene.

duin’s article proposed that “hidden subsidies drive the myth that the UO athletic department is self-sustaining” with it’s $78 million annual budget. it gets tricky to prove because the university is quite adept at covering its tracks. but, consider these factors:

1. “overhead assessment”
each “revenue generator” on campus must pay a percentage of it’s budget to compensate the university for services provided. for example, groups like university housing, the health center and even associated students must give back 6% per year (going to 7% next year) to use buildings and other accommodations. the athletic department also pays an overhead assessment, however, in 2009, just two weeks before president frohnmayer left office, he signed a memo with then-athletic director kilkenny that allows the athletic department to pay only 3% through 2013. so, for the $1.378 million the athletic department spent in overhead costs last year, the 3% cap saved them $920,000. in 2013, that same subsidy will save them $1.84 million. that is money not going back to the university. who makes up for those losses?

2. “academic support”
from 2002-2010, the university funneled $8.5 million from the general fund to pay for academic support of athletes. it may be argued that athletes are students and need support like all others, but $1 million per year seems rather steep considering that most of the student body are not athletes while a large percentage of student support services are being given to people that aren’t necessarily accepted into the school based on their academic successes to begin with. why shouldn’t the athletic department fund the support of their own requirements for things like gpa, or at least a fair portion?

3. parking revenues
the athletic department banks the revenue from parking during sporting events. no figures were given, but try to use your imagination. if it only costs say $2 per hour to park during a basketball game and that game lasts three hours, each car pays $5. the arena holds 14500. if as many as half of the fans are students that don’t drive and four people carpool in each car that does drive there, a full arena would still pull in $8750 for one basketball game! and be sure that $2 per hour is a low-ball figure. why does the atheltic department get this break? when there is a linguistics symposium, does the liguistics department get to bank street parking revenue and, if so, is that revenue maximized because the university used general funds to promote that symposium to no end?

4. seating at autzen
the administration must pay the athletic department for use of 800 club seats and the presidential suite at autzen stadium. this comes to $375, 000 per year. where does that money come from? probably would get a convoluted answer if you were to ask the university.

5. seating at autzen (part 2)
prior to 2002, autzen stadium capacity was 42,000 and 5,800 seats were reserved for students. after the expansion, autzen now holds 54,000 (though it exceeds capacity by several thousand per week) and only 5,500 seats are reserved for students. students may not be paying directly, but they are definitely losing out and the athletic department is banking buckets of cash off seats that should be given to students for free. does any part of that money go back into the general fund or even offset the cost of the presidential suite?

6. court costs
currently, the university is under investigation for possible ncaa recruiting violations. the university general fund is paying 50% of the legal fees. exact numbers would be hard to guess, and the oregonian didn’t give an estimate, but trust that number is in the millions.

just eyeballing it, i see around $20 million the athletic department gets in “favors” from the university that student fees are paying for. that’s not even considering lots of other sources that we don’t even know about. i may be $58,000 in the hole for a degree i wasn’t allowed to finish, but at least i got to attend 4 football games and one basketball game to cheer for a team i don’t even like. yeah it was probably worth it. i’m not bitter. thankfully for that awesome university, not everybody sees this the way i do.

go stanford!