Dear Editor,
From what I have read, it appears that everyone is missing the real common denominator underlying the Penn State sex abuse scandal. It is my understanding that the Penn State football program “earns” approximately $60 million in profit per year to which some of the money is used to subsidize other PSU sports teams and pay for academic scholarships earmarked for athletes. Further, it is my understanding that none of the money is used to reduce the cost of tuition, books, lodging, etc. I must have been under the false impression that some table scraps made it to the students. Oh, wait a minute; students? What are students? Do they attend PSU as well or do they just serve as a front for the mission statement?
Didn’t college sports spawn from the belly of college academics back in the day when men carried clubs and dragged women around by their hair? But there had to be a better way to live. That’s why men finally got the idea to put down the club and go off to college so they could learn to read, write, speak and listen. Imagine that, a rationale to create an institution to promote thinking with the attainment of knowledge so as to produce understanding. Somehow the dudes preferring the clubs decided it would be better if they hijacked the universities and convert them to athletic facilities, disrupting the whole concept of the learning institution. This expression has now become an oxymoron because the only “learning” going on is that of studying a playbook and engaging in self-promotion hoping to attain that holier-than-holier of titles, “celebrity.”
The reason for Mr. Joe Paterno’s cover up is to protect, preserve and defend his almighty empire. There was no way he was going to allow the exposure of child rape to jeopardize his royal highness-ness. And now all the king’s horses and all the king’s men can’t put humpty dumpty PSU football back together again. Gee, all those poor athletes who are being punished for Pa’s misgivings now have to go somewhere else to ply their trade. Folks, it’s time to throw the college sports baby out with the bath water and permanently sever the twisted and corrupting umbilical cord that has had a strangle hold on college academics.
From this day forward PSU will be split into two separate and entirely different institutions. One shall be referred to as PSU Academics and the other as PSU Sports and never again the twain be joined at the hip like some two-headed Siamese twin. When the day finally arrives that PSU has its priorities straight, this revolutionary concept can spread all across our great country. But only this time the careers of athletes will not be incubated on the backs of students. As John Houseman used to say, “They [will have to] make money the old fashioned way…they [will have to] earn it.”
Sincerely,
Joe Bialek
Cleveland, OH
Wow. Sounds like somebody got picked last in Dodge Ball!
Sorry to be the one to tell you Joe, but Revenge of the Nerds was actually a work of fiction.
Scholarship , Athletics, and an appreciation of the Arts have always been the hallmarks of a well rounded education.
It seems that the greater the effort and the higher the expectations are within an organization the more people celebrate their failings.