TIP OF AN ENORMOUS ICEBERG

By H.N. Burdett

Full disclosure: I am a college sports fan. As an undergraduate student, I was the sports editor of my college newspaper. As a graduate student, I was a stringer for the Associated Press, covering intercollegiate sports. After military service, during which I'd been sports editor of my army post newspaper before becoming its editor, I was a burnt-out sportswriter. Rather than applying for a position in the sports department, I began my journalism career on the rewrite desk of a metropolitan daily newspaper, later evolving into a political writer and editorial page editor. No more sportswriting thereafter.

Over these last several days of shocking allegations that a Penn State University assistant football coach is a pedophile rapist, I have given considerable thought to my long ago years as a sports reporter and editor. My conclusions are not based solely on the sickening crimes with which Jerry Sandusky has been charged, but the rape of young boys in showers has certainly triggered my reflections of bygone years.

Beyond what the Penn State tragedy has done to the lives of the alleged victims, beyond the termination of the careers and reputations of a university president and a legendary football coach, among others, what cries out for exposure is the entire culture of intercollegiate sports. It is a phenomenon that incites even the most rational and responsible among us to cheer our hearts out for the home team, then look the other way when reprehensible actions of some coaches and some players are brought to light.

As of this writing, no one has accused a single Penn State football player of anything inappropriate, much less anything as heinous as the charges against Sandusky. Still, had I been a member of the board of trustees of that university, I would have vigorously argued for canceling at least the Nittany Lions' game last Saturday against Nebraska, if not the remainder of their football schedule.

To the dyed-in-the-wool fan, this may seem unreasonably harsh - a presumption of guilt against the alleged perpetrator of despicable crimes in a nation that prides itself on the presumption of innocence. On another level, however, it would demonstrate that the university administration and the National Collegiate Athletic Association, consider the Penn State travesty worthy of a deep and serious investigation.

Any such probe must extend well beyond Penn State. It is high time for an in-depth examination of factors that have exponentially multiplied and thoroughly corrupted college sports - grotesquely distorting them into a culture that has spawned myriad circumstances revolving around the mindset that "jocks will be jocks." The Penn State nightmare is but one example of where sports hysteria has brought us.

This is not to suggest that anything as horrific as child rape is a common occurrence at universities, nor that what allegedly happened at Penn State is directly attributable to football. The obsessions that hold up players and coaches as more than campus heroes, but national icons to be worshipped, has a disturbing dark side - one that allows minor and major transgressions committed by these self-same idols to be routinely dismissed without as much as a second thought.

The focus of national attention must be on the irrefutable fact that college sports has become, in today's parlance, too big to fail.

In conjunction with the Sandusky case, we have learned that Penn State's football program raked in $72 million for that university's coffers last year. Multiply this figure by the amounts raised by higher-end Division I football and basketball programs and the overall picture becomes crystal clear. Are there any further questions regarding how and why coaches and players receive what amount to permission slips for getting away with behavior that would never be tolerated from any other faculty member or student?

If top-of-the-line football coaches often enough take home larger paychecks than Nobel laureate physics professors and university presidents, the obvious discrepancy might be answered by the ghost of Babe Ruth. When asked how he felt about being paid more than the President of the United States, the Sultan of Swat once responded: "I guess I had a better year than Hoover did."

When a college's football or basketball program is consistently selected for bowl games or the NCAA tournament, or finishes its season among the Associated Press poll of the top 20 teams in the nation, the profits accrued mount well beyond ticket sales. Proud, well-heeled alumni are eager to assure the continuation of the sports program's success by fueling it with hard cash. Bragging rights about your old school is fun and games, but it is also costly.

Not only is it costly in terms of dollars and cents, it is costly in what the mass lunacy over major college sports is doing to the very fabric of our society - most especially when we hold athletes and coaches to virtually the same meager standard that has been applied in recent years to junk bond pitchmen.

More than 50 years ago, University of Maryland President H.C. "Curly" Byrd was determined to build a state-of-the-art football stadium on the College Park campus. Byrd was widely known for the kind of charm that could coax cats down from fish trucks. The Maryland legislature was the fish truck; lawmakers were the purring felines. When the university president wanted something from the state's General Assembly, it was usually as good as done. Grumbling could be heard from those unable to fathom why the head of a state university might choose to build a football field at a time when the College Park campus library was, to put it mildly, a laughingstock.

When that very question was posed to Byrd, his response was that if the seats were filled in his new stadium, he would build all the libraries any university would want. Once the stadium (bearing his name) was completed, he had a hunch that the football program would be on its way to becoming something special. And he was on target. The Maryland team immediately obliged with an undefeated season, achieved third in the AP's national rankings, and went on to demolish top-ranked Tennessee in the Sugar Bowl.

Over the next few years, the Maryland Terrapins accepted a couple of Orange Bowl invitations. As the football team paved its way to Miami, Byrd Stadium seats were filled to near capacity. But some five years later, the University of Maryland lost its academic accreditation. High on the evaluators' list of shortcomings was the university's woefully inadequate library for which a new and improved replacement had not yet materialized. Byrd, incidentally, was the only university president within memory who had once been his school's football coach. Among his early hires after taking over as the university's president launched the career of one of the most successful and powerful football coaches of all time - the legendary Paul "Bear" Bryant.

Eventually a decent library was built on the university campus, under the president who succeeded Byrd, Wilson Elkins. Elkins had been a track star and football player during his own undergraduate days. Unlike Byrd, Elkins's doctorate was earned rather than honorary. Nonetheless, the new university president had no sooner taken the university reins when he felt it necessary to pledge that the strength of Maryland's athletic program was among his highest priorities.

Though there may be no correlation whatsoever, the university's football fortunes, under Elkins and those who succeeded him, have since followed a roller coaster trajectory, but have reached nowhere near the lofty heights enjoyed in the 1950s when Curly Byrd was crafting his dubious legacy.

The worship and coddling of figuratively and literally the biggest men on campus - athletes and coaches - did not happen over night. It has been going on for what seems forever and it has obviously not been confined to the University of Maryland, where, indeed, it did not begin. And this progressive corruption has been anything but a dirty secret clinging to the nether parts of the realm of higher education. It has been a sore festering for decades as television and national advertising sponsors have elevated college football and basketball into Big Business. Outrageously large sums have even been contributed to enshrine the names of corporations on college sports stadiums and field houses for the further glorification of the corporate brand.

It is Big Business fueled by the sports mania that explodes seasonally in virtually every village and hamlet across the land. The tales are many, but those in a position to step forward to relate them are virtually non-existent. A code of silence to protect the guilty is rather obvious. What sports fan or booster club member has not heard stories of college coaches plying prospective athletes with promises of automobiles, pocket money and even willing and eager co-eds? Pressed for more information, those relating such anecdotes frequently respond by saying it is just some rumor, nothing anyone can prove. When such rumors persist, year after year, decade after decade, it is reasonable to at least suspect that where there's all that smoke, there just may be fire.

It is difficult to think of the stories I heard as a student many years back as rumors - particularly those that came from actual participants, or at least individuals who claimed to be personally involved.

In the perfect vision of hindsight, those anecdotes were red flags that should have signaled matters of legitimate concern. Why would anyone with even a marginal moral compass, including myself, not sound the alarm? That no one did is an indictment of the spell that sports mania had already begun to cast.

To argue that it was an entirely different era, a time when reputable media represented by responsible and respected journalists declined to reveal what they knew or had heard about the dalliances of United States Presidents, is at best a wholesale wimp-out. Times were indeed different in countless ways, but do morals and ethics have timelines?

A star basketball player required a passing grade in a composition to be eligible to suit up for the upcoming season. At the eleventh hour, the paper was delivered to the athlete's English professor who gave it a passing grade. There is no way to know whether the authorship claimant had ever read the paper that guaranteed his eligibility. I do know, however, that he did not write it. And I can further report that the go-between, whose concern about his buddy's plight led him to seek out someone capable of writing the paper the campus hero could not, later became an elementary school principal.

That same basketball player received a regular paycheck for part-time janitorial services to the university. His primary duties consisted of turning on the gymnasium lights prior to practice and turning them off after the athletes had all showered and departed for their respective destinations.

There was a professor who informed a couple of students who just happened to be football players that the night before the test was scheduled a copy of the final course exam could be found on the center of the desk in his unlocked office. I have no recollection of any football player that year who was ruled academically ineligible.

An intimidating, no-nonsense dean, known as an uncompromising disciplinarian who would not hesitate to expel or suspend students for relatively minor violations, became marshmallow-soft when athletes appeared on his carpet. A former college athlete himself, that university official chose to act as defense counsel for varsity lettermen rather than as their judge on cases ranging from public drunkenness to property theft to date rape.

As a college student, I was uncomfortable hearing these stories. I was aware then, as I am now, that none of the participants would, on the grounds of self-incrimination, relate what they had told me to either appropriate authorities or the press. Still, it is a lame excuse for not exerting the effort to get them on the record. It is also true that I viewed my position of sports editor as reporting and commenting only on what was happening on the playing field. I might further plead that I was young, inexperienced and poorly qualified for investigative reporting. All true enough and, in the eyes of more than a few, these defenses might have at least a modicum of merit. Today, not so much.

If anyone learning of the aforementioned incidents had an inkling that turning a blind eye to cheating on test papers, receiving copies of final exams before they were administered, shrugging off corrupt university officials, would almost inevitably snowball into something far worse, the alarm might have sounded loud and clear.

Today I am the grandfather of a young man who once participated in youth baseball and basketball. When he was the very same age of the kid who was allegedly sodomized by a coach in that Penn State shower, I attended not only every game my grandson played but every practice, from beginning to end. I had no reason whatsoever to suspect inappropriate behavior by any of his coaches. But I was well aware of scattered newspaper accounts of pedophilia among Little League coaches and Boy Scout troop leaders around the country.

I had read such articles with both anger and sympathy. I wanted to get my hands tightly around the neck of any adult who would abuse any child. My rage built against low-life predators who would misuse positions of authority and trust to satiate their deviant appetites. At the same time, I realized that clouds of suspicion would form around dedicated coaches, often enough parents of players on teams to which they are assigned, who give generously of their time and experience to teach kids sportsmanship, fairplay and the many life lessons that can begin on playing fields. It is easy enough to envision such prospective mentors refusing to have anything to do with youth athletics and even the remote possibility of vicious accusations of misconduct from sports-crazed parents for no reason other than their kid not getting enough playing time.

Horrendous as the Penn State scandal is, it raises the hope that it may teach at least some of us that accumulated small transgressions beget palpably unacceptable larger ones. More than a few of us now know how we would react if we were to witness what the graduate assistant claims he saw in the shower room; we would not even think about calling the police or reporting it to the appropriate link in the academic chain of command. We would take immediate and swift action to stop the rape of a 10-year-old boy.

Had I witnessed a scene similar to the one the graduate assistant saw in the Penn State shower during my college days and done anything differently than what I know I would do today, my self-respect would have been lost, never to be fully regained; my life would have been in shambles and deservedly so.
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