"Shakespeare and Penn State"

I don't know how many of you have ever read or seen Shakespeare's tragedy Macbeth. It was his shortest play, one of his bloodiest, and one of his strangest. The King of Scotland is murdered in his sleep by Macbeth, in a power play mixed with an evil wife, 3 witches prophesy's and in short it gets pretty weird. The night the King is murdered, Shakespeare, in the play, refers several times to how weird and strange everything around the castle feels; how nothing seems in it's right place. The characters were noticing that nature itself seemed disturbed. His point was that somethings that people do are so offensive that even nature is thrown out of whack. Things get weird. He called it a perturbed spirits.

Well, I don't know if you can feel it where you are but such perturbations now float over the not so Happy Valley, Pa. world of Penn State University.
The natural order has been disturbed there and things around the place just seem to be getting weirder. Long time (and highly successful) football defensive coordinator at Penn State, Jerry Sandusky, has been accused of, arrested for, and bound over for trial in the alleged molestation of at least 9 young boys going back 20+ years.
That would be bad enough, but trouble for the PSU faithful was just getting started. Two senior level college administrators were arrested for perjury and obstructing justice by lying to authorities about what they knew about Sandusky. Apparently, as the charges are outlined, they had been told sometime ago about Coach Sandusky but claimed under oath they knew nothing. Undoubtedly, they were trying to protect Sandusky but more likely they were trying to protect Coach Paterno, the football program and the University.

Would that were all there was!
But no, it seems that head Coach (Papa Joe) Paterno had also been told (years before) about goings on in the men's locker room between Sandusky and a boy. Coach Paterno has admitted in his own sworn statement that he was told (in graphic detail) that his defensive coordinator was molesting a boy in the locker room. What did he do? He told a senior member of the athletic department what had been reported to him. He never followed up and continued letting the man coach.

His claim, today, is that he did what he was legally obligated to do. Apparently it's true that he met his legal obligation but if you had been told your number #2 man in the program had been seen (by another coach) in the shower doing illegal and gross things with a boy wouldn't you not sleep until you knew for sure that he had been investigated and either charged or cleared? How many more boys were molested during the time that Paterno was content to have fulfilled his "legal obligations"? He said no more, never followed up and just let things alone. Alone in this case means the team won a lot of games, the university made a lot of money and apparently everyone at the University slept well at night.

Aye, there's the rub. This one didn't sit well with a "perturbed nature" and now it has all come back to wreck havoc on the the whole Penn State community. The University President has been fired, athletic director has been fired, Coach Paterno has been let go, the coach that saw the molestation (McQueary) has been under fire for not having told more people and has been let go or surely will be let go. Former coach Sandusky has been arrested and will likely go to trial. ( I suspect he'll do a plea deal to avoid putting his family through more humiliation + the victims testifying and the continued ugliness for the University) Will that be enough?

Apparently not. Coach Paterno now reports having lung cancer of the treatable kind. This prevents him from being able to travel to and from hearings and so forth, As the Church Lady said on Saturday Night Live, "how convenient". Essentially, poor coach Paterno is "out of the legal loop" just as some would argue he took himself out of the "moral loop" years ago. In truth, he probably has paid a heavy price if he's the good man everyone swears he is. Knowing about what his assistant did, not pursuing the matter to protect the boys (ironically he made his legend being a mentor to young men)and losing his job mid season in what would have been the last season of a Hall of Fame career. You can put that thought on hold for the time being. Who knows what the future is for Coach Paterno?
Is this enough?

Apparently not. There was talk (albeit briefly) of not inviting a "damaged" Penn State team to a bowl game this year but fortunately smart people got involved and realized the obvious that this group of players and coaches had NOTHING to do with what happened years ago and they were rightfully invited to a bowl game. STILL, it goes on in Unhappy Valley. Friday the starting quarterback got into a fight with a second string receiver in the locker room after practice. The quarterback suffered a seizure during the fight and was taken to a hospital. He seems to be okay now.

Allegations, affidavits, depositions, arrests, resigning, firings, moral lapses, seizures, fighting, likely molestation's, ruined families, victims, and who knows what still might ooze to the surface of this mess? All in the name of winning football games, and the closed ranks of the "coaching fraternity" and the desire to make money for the University. Some of you may think I don't like college athletics or Penn State. It is completely the opposite. I love college football, followed Penn State for years. I admired the football coaching philosophy they adhered to over the years (run the ball, good special teams and defense). When every team in the country was lured into wearing multiple alternate jerseys, weird stuff like Oregon and Maryland wear, not Penn State. Dark Blue tops, white pants, and helmets with no logos on it. Circa 1967, about when Coach Paterno showed up. But beneath the "classic" veneer was a "classic" cover up of major proportions. It doesn't matter how many wins your program racks up (USC/CLEMSON) or how much money your bowl appearances make for the University. It doesn't matter the name, the brand, the image of Papa Joe, or the back story if/when the time comes you choose all of that over making sure things are right.

Macbeth had a lot of reasons for why he had to kill King Duncan and cover it up.
But he never felt right about it. "Macbeth hath murdered sleep, Macbeth shall sleep no more"and he never had another good night's sleep again. A heavy pall hung over Scotland for years. Eventually Happy Valley will be happy again. Meantime, perturbed spirits are in the air and I suspect some people are not sleeping well at all.