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and is a prototype that has been adopted by other colleges. That's sig- nificant to note because of an absurd Freeh report recommendation (page 139) citing the need for the athletic department to "Integrate, where feasi- ble, academic support staff, programs and locations for student-athletes." So, how did the Freeh report and Emmert's NCAA conclude that the "culture of football" had corrupted the academics of Penn State's athletics? That perception appears to have taken hold in the media during the frenetic days of last November when the scandal erupted and Paterno was fired, and one former and one current top university administrator were at the root of it. On Nov. 22, The Wall Street Journal and USA Today published interviews with Vicky Triponey, the controversial former vice president of student af- fairs, who abruptly left the university in 2007 after a clash with president Graham Spanier over policy changes in the Office of Student Affairs and her displeasure with the discipline of football players. Triponey basically claimed that Paterno, the football program and the leadership of the athletic department were out of con- trol and that when she tried to stop it, she was thwarted by Spanier. The Associated Press also picked up the story, and it spread quickly through the media and into the pub- lic consciousness like a new, infec- tious virus. Triponey's assertions were one-sided distortions and half- truths containing out-of-context "evi- dence" without any challenging views, especially from Spanier, Paterno and athletic director Tim Curley, who could not respond because of pending legal consequences. Subsequently, Triponey gave addi- tional interviews to other media, in- cluding CNN and ESPN. Most signifi- cant, she was interviewed by Freeh's committee, telling it that she "per- ceived pressure from the Athletics Department, and particularly the football program, to treat players in ways that would maintain their abili- ty to play sports." Then, two weeks after USA Today's interview with Triponey, the newspa- per published a separate interview with the newly named Penn State president, Rodney Erickson, that seemed to support the contention that Penn State had a rogue football program. In a story headlined "Penn State rethinks role of football pro- gram amid scandal," Erickson indi- cated that Penn State needed to de- emphasize athletics, particularly foot- ball, saying there was "urgency for discussions about the role of big-time athletics and where they interact with higher education." In a follow-up story the next day, written by the same writers, Kelly Whiteside and Kevin Johnson, Em- mert complimented Penn State, and thus Erickson and the trustees, for re-examining the role of athletics within the academic environment, saying that if the allegations in the Sandusky case are correct "then it certainly suggests that the culture of the program has gotten out of bal- ance with the realities of what an ac- ademic institution and society de- mand of it." Others in the media leaped into the fray, seeming to ac- cept as fact this concept of an unre- strained football factory oblivious to the university's academic mission. Later, when pressured in a series of meetings with alumni and the media, Erickson backtracked, saying his words were misinterpreted. But his retraction hardly caused a ripple in the media, nor did it change public perception. Then the Freeh report made it offi- cial, and the NCAA followed up by reaffirming Freeh's conclusions with its unprecedented sanctions. Freeh went beyond football and aca- demics to claim there also was a "Penn State Culture" that isolated the athletic department from the rest of the university. He asserted (page 139) that over several decades the athletic department had been a "closed com- munity" and was "perceived by many in the Penn State community as an 'island,' where staff members lived by their own rules." However, there is SEE PRATO PAGE 60

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