Lost amid the sorrow and shame of the alleged Penn State abuse scandal is a simple but crucial fact: It happened within the culture of college football.
Today, the money and prestige generated by a successful program seem to carry more weight than the Manhattan Project once did at the University of Chicago. It means more to many Americans than a medical discovery at Johns Hopkins University or an earth-changing physics theory at the University of Michigan.
If it doesn’t make dollars, it doesn’t make sense—that's what college football has done to universities throughout the land.
That’s why knowledgeable people act as though football programs must be protected at all costs. That's why Joe Paterno’s illustrious career at Penn State has ended in shame and embarrassment—to protect the program. That’s why Jim Tressel left Ohio State in disgrace after lying repeatedly to NCAA investigators—to protect the program.
Some will say that college football deserves its place on a pedestal because it funds other college sports, or because it helps pay for the aforementioned breakthroughs in research. But this is not why men of so-called honor act in ways so horrible that we cringe when we learn to what levels they have stooped. They behave this way because they often go unmonitored; they seem to have carte blanche. They do it because they think they can get away with it. And for years, they have been correct.
As the Penn State scandal shows, those who are supposed to oversee college football frequently fail to do so. College football programs and athletic departments can’t police themselves—it’s idiotic to think they can. The NCAA can’t either.
This is why Congress must step in.
Yes, Congress’ approval rating has reached an all-time low. Yes, there are many other items of importance facing this country. But the Penn State scandal proves that big-time college football is so out of control that it doesn’t care who or what is destroyed in its wake. Until someone tames it, college football will remain a beast that runs crazy.
Pennsylvania Congressman Pat Meehan has called on the U.S. Department of Education to investigate the situation at Penn State. (Republican presidential candidate Texas Gov. Rick Perry, on the other hand, would dramatically reduce this department if elected.) Pennsylvania Sens. Pat Toomey and Bob Casey snatched away their nominations for Paterno to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In New York, a proposed bill would designate college coaches as mandated reporters of sexual abuse. These are just the first steps, though, in changing the way that college football programs operate, especially at state-sponsored universities like Penn State.
When it comes to college football, I don’t like the BCS deciding a national champion or the money-driven game of conference realignment. But I've learned over the past 10 days that these items are petty.
College football sometimes protects the worst of criminals—and it does it all in the name of the program.
Commentary by Alvin Reid
