Blue White Illustrated

November 2013

Penn State Sports Magazine

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been another passion of Levine's, although he hasn't seen many games at Beaver Stadium since he initially moved to Miami two days after graduation in June 1969. But he has a unique perspective from covering the beginning of the Paterno era for the Collegian and traveling with the team in 1967 and '68. To the best of my knowledge – I was the Collegian's sports editor during the 1958 season – Levine is the only editor of the paper to continue covering the team after his sports editor year of 1967-68, sharing the beat both years with Ron Kolb, who became the sports editor in 1968. "Looking back at the teams that had Mike Reid and Jack Ham and Ted Kwalick on them – and then just as I was leaving, incoming freshmen like Lydell Mitchell and Franco Harris – those were mighty exciting times, Levine said. " "Nobody beat those teams. Penn State was 22-0 and started that record 31game undefeated streak in 1967." However, like on campus today, there was more than football on everyone's mind back then. That was a period of great change and unrest at Penn State and throughout the country. "If you could go back in a time machine to 1965 and spend a little time and then go back to 1969 in a time machine, you'd go, 'Wait, these are two different places. This is crazy, Levine said. "There were '" several things going on at once: the escalation of the Vietnam War, the student power movement – and there's a phrase I don't believe I've used in 40 years – and the Civil Rights movement. "There were also less-serious things – maybe this falls under student power – like let's eliminate curfew hours in the women's dorm, which is something we marched about. We would march about a lot of things. And it became, for a short period at Penn State, uncool to go to pep rallies and those sort of things because the war was on and the student movement was on, and 'How could you go and cheer for a football team or a basketball team?' "Now, I did not agree with that, and I had my feet firmly planted in both camps, the student power camp and increasing black enrollment – which was the big issue in The Daily Collegian in 1968 – and at the same time I covered the football team and followed all the other sports, and I didn't see any inconsistency in that and I still don't. But there was tension among the students with the administration. Some students wore coats and ties every day, and a lot of students weren't shaving or taking showers. "When the head of the SDS – Students for a Democratic Society – somehow managed to get an appointment with president Eric Walker, Eric Walker's first comment to him was, 'Don't you shave when you're coming to see the university president?' That's a line pregnant with meaning because it showed the divide and the lack of understanding between the two groups." Levine sees a similar disconnect in the wake of the arrest and conviction of former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky for child sex abuse. "Many of my acquaintances on both coasts who have just the passing knowledge of what happened, a knowledge they acquired through the mass media, have a violent [anti-]Penn State attitude, and have bought hook, line and sinker the theories espoused by some, including some sportswriters, who have waged these hate campaigns, Levine " said. "I am very disturbed by the reaction I have heard by some otherwise intelligent people. "People who haven't made a study of it, haven't read the critiques of the Freeh report and don't follow things the way I do, they're headline readers, basically, and the headlines often are damning when the facts are not." As a former journalist and attorney, Levine is angry at how the media and the legal profession have handled the scandal. "There is so much misreporting," he said. "The public perception, which was the result of media reporting, is that a football coach working at Penn State until about yesterday was molesting children in the locker room and that's what was witnessed. The chronologies were fouled up. They essentially told the prosecution's side of the story as if that was the final determination of guilt of Joe Paterno and the three administrators and that created a very misleading impression across the country. "The fact remains there really wasn't an NCAA violation. They couldn't find a rule that had been broken by this. So, as horrible as it was in terms of what Jerry Sandusky did, the nuclear fallout from that that settled over Penn State was the result of this crazed reaction of the media, this hysteria and fear of the board of trustees and the bullying by the NCAA. "I followed this closely from afar, and it seems to me it's a really bad idea to make major decisions when you're in a state of hysteria. The way it looked from afar is that the board of trustees made a series of major decisions, both involving Joe Paterno and the NCAA, in a state of nearhysteria and fear. Perhaps some of those decisions over time can be reversed. But some damage was done in a misguided effort to protect the university. " "My overwhelming feeling that this could have occurred at Penn State is one of sadness," Levine said with a little melancholy in his voice, "sadness for Penn State, sadness for Joe Paterno and his wonderful family, sadness for the victims and sadness for Tim Curley, Graham Spanier and Gary Schultz, who are still awaiting their trials. I knew Jerry Sandusky casually for 20 years and I was stunned by the revelations. "Like many of us [alumni], I am heartbroken on many different levels. I'm heartbroken that Jerry Sandusky turned out to be who he turned out to be. And I'm heartbroken the way the university has treated Joe and his memory. I'm numbed and pained at what happened." Levine has no intention of having the outspoken Jake Lassiter comment on the scandal. Instead, he'd rather have his off-the-wall tough-guy lawyer defend the former university president and two administrators at trial. "Jake would vigorously argue that even if they made errors of judgment, his clients had no criminal intent, and their actions did not amount to crimes," Levine said. "In my world, Jake Lassiter I would win acquittals."

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