Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/79325
JUDGMENT CALL lighthearted fluff. Anyone who read his comment as an endorsement was probably looking for something to be outraged about. This, however, is the world Penn TALK SHOW O'Brien has stressed the need to move forward following the NCAA sanctions. Jonh Beale Wading into the culture wars was asked by a Chicago radio re- porter about #teamoutlaw, a Twitter account that was started up in the aftermath of the NCAA's announce- ment of sweeping penalties against the Nittany Lion football program. Hill clearly didn't know anything D about it, so he said the most non- committal thing he could think of, which was this: "I would say it's dif- ferent for Penn State to be outlaws. Could be a good thing, could be a bad thing. If that's something we want to go with, I'll run with it." Does that sound like a full-throated endorsement to you? Me neither. But when a Chicago columnist got wind of Hill's comment, he took excep- tion and tweeted the following: "For something so clearly tone-deaf and in- uring a roundtable interview at Big Ten Media Days in July, Penn State defensive tackle Jordan Hill sulting, his answer was an endorse- ment. A normal person decries it." For the record, #teamoutlaw was tone deaf and insulting. It trivialized the Sandusky scandal by attempting to transform it – and the NCAA sanc- tions to which the scandal gave rise – into motivational fodder for this year's football team. It was an exam- ple of Penn State at its worst: insen- sitive, unthinking, defensive. But it was clear that Hill was un- aware of the offensive Twitter ac- count. A normal person may have de- cried it, but normal people don't spend their mornings answering questions about everything under the sun posed by dozens of microphone- wielding strangers. In entertaining the question about #teamoutlaw, Hill was playing along with a reporter whose tone and body language sug- gested that this was all just a bit of State now finds itself in, a post-San- dusky world in which people really are looking for thing to be outraged about. Lots of people. The crimes at the center of the Sandusky scandal are so heinous that no amount of punishment seems adequate. And be- cause many of the key figures in the case are either in prison or are under indictment or are beyond the reach of the justice system, the general public has expanded the circle of culpability in order to satisfy an understandable craving for vengeance. One result is that any and all Nittany Lion football activity is being scrutinized for signs that the Penn State community just doesn't get it. In announcing the sanctions, NCAA and Big Ten officials cited Penn State's unhealthy concentration of power and also what they described as problems in the broader "culture." It was a wide-ranging denunciation – so wide that it was hard to reconcile the various lines of attack. For exam- ple, if a handful of powerful people at the very top of the org chart were in- tent on hushing up Sandusky's be- havior – and it took the state Attor- ney General's Office and a former FBI director to uncover the facts of the case – then how was the broader uni- versity community supposed to know something was amiss? Even if you accept that Penn State's culture was part of the problem, it's unclear whether NCAA's intervention is going to change anything that was- n't already destined to change with Joe Paterno's departure. That's be- cause Penn State's culture isn't all that different from that of other big- time football schools. Alabama has statues of all its national champi- onship coaches outside Bryant-Den- ny Stadium, including current coach Nick Saban. Ohio State is paying Ur- ban Meyer $4 million a year, nearly $2 million more than the average head coaching salary at major schools last season. By contrast,