How many more sports scandals are out there?

The day after the information began to be reported in the media about the full investigation into the horrific heinous abuse of the minor children at the hands of the perverted-deviant-convicted-felon-coach from Penn State, a friend sent the headlines from various newspapers in Pennsylvania to me. They told the story of what had happened as college leadership did everything possible to keep an alleged major crime out of the media. The long years of the cover up are now being made known to the public. The desire was to keep as much information as possible from the public eye. The motive was to protect the football program and the reputation of the coach with the longest stretch of wins in football history. This is so wrong on so many levels it is almost as if I am writing about a never ending nightmare. Have you ever tried to make sense after waking up from a nightmare and the small details will not come back to your mind? The nightmare scenes stay with you all day, and you try to figure out why you would have dreamed as you did. How far down this slippery slope of moral depravity has this nation gone when the concern is to protect the reputation of a coach, rather than concern for the innocent victims of what has to be the most awful violation that could ever be forced upon any one? With calls from many parts of the country to remove the statue of the successful football coach, the trustees of Penn State have concluded, according to media reports that the statue will stay up. They have said the decision allowing the statue to remain or be removed will be made once the emotion and passion of the moment passes. Oh really? Passion and emotion of the moment wins out over the harm that can never be reversed to the victims of sexual abuse, in the minds of the adult trustees of Penn State. How can this happen? How is it that our nation is so in love with football, or any other sport, that the reputation of the coach is more important than anything else? Awards, trophies, buildings named in honor, money granted to young players with a dream of playing for a legend, and winning games trumps the lifetime of horror that will linger in the memory of untold numbers of victims of sexual abuse. Once the first person saw or even thought he was witnessing sexual abuse, the alarm should have been sounded. At the first sign that one of the coaches in the football legend’s squad was suspected of over-attention to young children, immediate action should have been taken to assure that the coach would not be in any way in touch with minors. But the football program was the thing to be protected no matter what it took to do so. Are we to believe that protection of a sports program and fear that money would not be sent from the alumni (to keep the sports program at the highest level) caused the people making the decision to make insane decisions? It is possible that the decision was already made that no matter what crime was committed all must be done to protect the program and the winning coach from public harm. Are our children safe anywhere? As sports camps are being conducted across the country at large and small colleges this summer are there other deviants lurking near the showers to catch a glimpse of the young innocent children? Will we now look at every sports program with a careful eye to be sure that what happened at Penn State would never be repeated? Will the college presidents and coaches assure the parents of the young and innocent would-be future college sports stars that the only interest they have in them is to develop their athletic ability? Will the full disclosure of what happened at Penn State when the priorities got turned on their head be enough to demand that all colleges put forward assurances and programs protecting the innocent lives of the student athletes? Are there stories from other colleges and coaches that have not yet been exposed? We have more questions than answers at this time. Some people reading this column might suggest this is an overreaction, I do not think so. The time is now that we must rethink the entire craze in our nation with sports.