I don't mean this to belittle the severity of what happened or the pain of those whose lives have forever been shattered. I just merely wish to point out that in the complexity of the human brain, we can still find surprises in the every day, mundane things. In this instance, I spent several hours this past week reading articles about Jerry Sandusky and Penn State University and it took EA Sports and a year-old PS3 title for me to really process this historically awful event.
Let me break it down.
Earlier this afternoon I was playing NCAA Football 11 while I try to get Shane to JUST FREAKING FALL ASLEEP ALREADY OH MY GOSH!!!! Seriously he was not feeling well so I was doing whatever I could to get him to get bored and fall asleep. Like a good dad should, right? Anyways, what could be more boring than watching your dad relive his imaginary glory years than by quarterbacking a pretend school on a 27 inch television?
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| And ordinarily, you'd be right. |
I don't mean that statement in a manner that belittles the sufferings of sexual abuse victims. I spent about four years at a non-profit agency working with kids who had been abused and neglected. So I have a slight idea, a limited understanding of what sexual abuse means to those kids. It's probably the ugliest thing that can happen in our society nowadays. So in the grand scheme, it really doesn't matter what it means to football.
But looking at college football as a separate entity...OH MY GOODNESS- how does this happen? I know that sports are not immune to this sort of vile crime, and that I'm prone to thinking through my idiot lens. But college football people don't do this. College football people take steroids, and pay athletes under the table, and practice more than they're supposed to, and sell their swag for tattoos, and help their athletes stay eligible by cheating in the classroom. College football people don't sexually abuse children. They don't ruin innocence. Yes, yes, I'm generalizing and type casting- but that's the college football image that has been cultivated in my mind over years and years of exposure. Sure, we break the rules...but nobody really gets hurt. They can't say that anymore.
The fact that it's Penn State just adds to the layer of shock. Maybe it's just all the articles I've read in the past couple of days from Penn State alums talking about how great Penn State is/was...but this is probably the last institution I ever would have thought I'd hear that this sort of thing had happened at. Maybe it's the boring uniforms or the lack of offseason shenanigans or the Coke-bottle glasses-wearing coach- the truth is I just never really thought about Penn State at all, which in our culture of Falling-Star worship is pretty much the highest praise I can give to an institution. They excelled on the football field, but they kept their profile out of the tabloids. You can't say that anymore.
And it took an afternoon playing a football video game for me to really get ahold of the concept that the Penn State scandal is not just about the loss of innocence for those 8 victims- it's about the loss of innocence for an entire sport. Sexual abuse is no longer just something that that faceless villains to do innocent kids in nameless towns all over the world. It's something that can happen anywhere. Anywhere. Even in college football, a place that I always thought was safe from that sort of thing.
Of course, having worked with a subset of the population that it has happened to, I knew this. It's probably my biggest fear as a parent is that somewhere in the system, someone that we trust our children's lives with will brutally and shamefully violate that trust and leave our children with the most horrible and painful scars imaginable. But I suppress it, largely because if you have that level of distrust of every person working in the system all the time- you turn into a paranoid schizophrenic.
Still though...the lesson now is that as a parent, there is a need for some hypervigilance. Those we used to write blank trust checks for are now the ones that we will take the closest look at. By all accounts, Jerry Sandusky was a saint. Now it appears he was merely a wolf dressed as a sheep. And his alleged actions (and the actions of those like him) have made wearing wool the latest fashion faux pas.
Today, I officially laid to rest college football's aura of innocence. I don't grieve for the sport- rather, I grieve for those who have been hurt because of my (and those like me) obsession with it. The culture of invincibility that we have worshipped at for countless Saturdays has been exposed as just another big business venture willing to do whatever to whoever in the name of self-interest. That said, I will try to keep perspective in the weeks and months ahead and not just assume the worst of every coach, coordinator, and player I see.
I just won't think they're Mr. Rogers, either.
PIC- http://www.nickjr.com/flex_article/assets/wallpaper/dora-school-wallpaper/dora-school-wallpaper-standard.jpg
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