The list of scandals in college sports has been growing at a sickening rate in recent years, both in number and magnitude. It started a few years ago with USC and the Reggie Bush saga. Then, schools like Ohio State, Boise State, Miami (Fla.), Memphis, Michigan, North Carolina and Oklahoma drew the ire of the NCAA as well. That list isn’t exhaustive, but nothing has been more disturbing than what has unfolded in the last 48 hours with Penn State and the University of Central Florida.
It started when news of a systemic cover-up leaked from Happy Valley. People cringed because college athletics had never seen a scandal of such magnitude. It is alleged that this cover-up enabled Jerry Sandusky, a coach at Penn State from 1969 to 1999, to continue sexually assaulting young boys after administrators and coaches found out about his indiscretions in 2002 but decided to look the other way. He remained an integral part of the university and was seen there last week — even after the grand jury had filed its charges against him. This scandal has resulted in the firing of Joe Paterno, the winningest coach in NCAA football history. Graham Spanier, Penn State’s president, has also followed him to the unemployment line.
Please don’t feel sorry for JoePa. If you do, read all 23 pages of the grand jury report and re-examine your values. Sure, he is in the clear legally, but his moral actions are reproachable. How could he, or another staffer, not take a report of a 10-year-old boy being raped in Penn State’s locker room to the police? I don’t even want to think about the coaches’ motives in covering up for Sandusky.
But this is not about Joe Paterno or even Penn State. It’s about the moral compass between right and wrong when dealing with young men who will be forever scarred due to the heinous actions of one man and the subsequent inaction of many others.
Since the national media has been investigating the Penn State situation, the University of Central Florida’s NCAA violations have been swept under the rug. In what looks like the worst NCAA violations since Southern Methodist’s in the late 1980s, UCF’s Athletic Director Keith Tribble and football assistant David Kelly were forced to resign for involvement with runners for sports agents and giving cash payments and gifts to recruits.
The NCAA alleges that Ken Caldwell and Brandon Bender, recruiters for a professional sports agency, pushed six basketball recruits — including Michael Jordan’s sons, Marcus and Jeff — and five football recruits to enroll at UCF. Additionally, the NCAA claims that Caldwell and Bender paid tuition and fees for various basketball players, gave a laptop computer to a football recruit and covered transportation expenses for men’s basketball recruits.
This looks bad from all angles. While the violations themselves are standard in comparison to what we’ve come to expect from corrupt athletic departments, the fact that UCF is currently under probation for illegal phone calls to recruits amplifies this situation by tenfold. If they are hit with both failure to monitor and lack of institutional control by the NCAA, it’s not out of the question that either program could receive the death penalty.
Even though the Penn State scandal is in a universe of its own due to the fact that laws, not just NCAA rules, were broken, it is a microcosm of the problem that big-time college athletics breeds. Instead of being guided by a moral compass, many administrators in charge are guided by different incentives such as money or power. Paterno’s case is by far the most difficult to stomach. Instead of his career being celebrated for his unparalleled success, he will live with a stigma that will be forever emblematic of his and others’ inaction, which allowed a monster to roam free for over a decade.
Matt Emch is a sophomore in the College. Riding the Pine appears every Friday.
