A Modest Proposal to Penn State Fans: Skip the Nebraska Game

After the week from hell, the candlelight vigil Thursday night was noble gesture. The “blue out” slated for Saturday is likewise a fine thought, if a bit contrived. You know it’s been a bad few days when the New York Times asks, “Should Penn State Cancel Its Season?” But you’re already trying to make amends (for others’ sins, no less). And the show always goes on.

Still, there might be something more you can do here.

In the past week millions of people have wondered, if confronted with the awful circumstances around Jerry Sandusky’s (alleged) crimes, what they would do. If we, like a graduate assistant, found a grown man sodomizing a child — would we not intervene? If we, like a janitor, found a grown man performing oral sex on a child — would we not dial 911? And if we were administrators, would we take action, any action?

Many of us — and of you, surely — decided that such moral fiber shouldn’t be in short supply, that we would do everything in our power to keep a child from being raped. Many of us, mired in workaday lives in which not much of moral consequence seems to happen, would be humbled to be called to do something so clearly, obviously right as to prevent that crime. That the university’s board of trustees summarily fired Joe Paterno, Tim Curley, Gary Schultz and Graham Spanier for their abominable negligence seems, from the outside, like the very least it could do.

So outside of State College, it baffles us, and scares us a little, to see “We (Heart) Joe Pa” posters at the impromptu student rallies this week. You all must know that it’s impossible to scapegoat the men at the top. Either they were in charge, and deserve to be fired, or they weren’t really in charge, and thus deserve to be fired.

Those of us on the outside wish we had some tangible way to register our horror. But we’re not there. We don’t make donations to the school that we can withhold. We don’t have Penn State diplomas to burn, as one alumnus did this week. Instead, we stand on the sidelines and ask ourselves what we would do if it were our university. In other words, we’ve moved on from asking what we would do if we were Mike McQueary or Joe Paterno. We’re asking ourselves what we would do if we were you.

And again, the answer comes: We hope we would show courage and integrity in these circumstances. And thus, we hope you will continue to as well.

I hope I’m not overstepping here. As much as everyone outside of Penn State has, over the past week, been stunned and repulsed, it must be worse in Happy Valley. We feel for you. You don’t bear the blame for this, yet the burden is largely yours. Your response will be as personal as any grief, so I cannot tell you what is right for you. All I can tell you is what I’m hoping you’ll do Saturday:

Skip the game.

That’s it. Just don’t go. If you have a ticket, don’t use it and don’t sell it. Don’t watch the game at a sports bar, where the national media will find you and once again equate you and this morass with Penn State football. Don’t watch in your driveway, or at a tailgate. Catch highlights later, if you must (and I know you must). Just make today a day of rest. Play outside. Contemplate. Cook a family meal. Live well, and let this moment settle.

Your empty seat, your silence, your refusal to tacitly endorse an institution that allowed this to happen, will speak best of you, and the respect that your community has built over the decades will, I promise you, begin to return. Beaver Stadium holds 110,000 strong, and it’s always brimming on game days. When the eyes of the country are on you tomorrow, imagine what message even 5,000 empty seats would send. Or 10,000. What if 40,000 people didn’t show? Or 100,000?

Imagine the statement that would convey to the university and to sports fans at large. The message to other administrators at other schools, or to business executives, or to politicians — to anyone else in a position of power, who ultimately depends on popular support.

It would say, This corruption is not us. This corruption does not represent us. We have the power, and we will not see it used to protect those who would prey on the weak. It would say that loyalty to job, to program, to tradition, cannot obscure our duty to the young and vulnerable. It would remind anyone in a position to do the wrong thing that the price of a cover-up is severe.

It would say that you are willing to make the sacrifice that administrators were not. Penn State football grossed $50 million 2009. That cash, you must imagine, stoked the fear of justice in this case. For years, those profits were hush money the university paid itself.

An empty stadium tomorrow would say that you are not willing to participate in that culture. Not at this cost.

Listen, I know Nebraska’s in town. It’s a big game. But the Huskers will be back another day. You want to support your team, the players, the coaches who have just been through the worst week of their professional lives. But they will all be back. Life will go on.

So for one game, give it a rest. Give it all a rest.

Sit this one out. A day of silence will not undo the past nine years of silence. But the rest of us are watching, and listening, and hoping that you will do something, and that it will be bold. We hope that you, not the so-called men who failed you, are in fact Penn State.