One description of the adulation and, to be blunt, worship
directed at college football coaches has always stuck with me.
The questioner could not
understand why intelligent individuals would become small children again in the
presence of those in charge of an athletic program, and the response placed
those coaches, those pivotal figures in the most popular sport in the country,
as the modern day equivalent of Scipio Africanus, Caesar, Alexander the Great
or possibly even Hector of Troy. Sports are a modern supplement to the warring
of our previous societies, it was argued, and those in the lead are put on the
same pedestal.
I can’t buy into the
designation entirely, mostly because it is usually a poor idea to be glib about
the actual sacrifices of modern warriors in our military branches in comparison
to games, but the hero worship involved in college athletics can’t be denied.
My own family is not immune. Bo Schembechler, the former Michigan great, passed away the same week as
my father in 2006, and you would have thought my great big family that worshiped
at the altar of the Big House was saying goodbye to both.
Most people that claim to love
Joe Paterno have never met him. They know him vicariously, the image that is
projected on their television set and through targeted media by a staff that
has been built with the sole purpose of projecting that great persona. That Joe
Paterno, the Joe Pa that was listed as among the most noble among his
profession, will forever remain untarnished in the eyes of those who loved him,
and that’s fine, because he was never real.
I don’t begrudge those who
still defend Paterno, even after revelations have come forward that he was far
more involved in the Jerry Sandusky scandal than he portrayed himself to be.
Joe Paterno lied, it’s best to start saying it out loud, but the image
cultivated in Penn State fans’ minds can remain untarnished because the truth
had very little to do with it in the first place.
It’s best to just start saying
that too.
Column printed in the Herald Journal on Saturday, July 14, 2012.
