PSU has no way out of this mess

Wednesday, 09 November 2011 00:30

Written by Bob Smizik

Penn State, by most indications, is hunkered down in damage control and, presumably, mapping some sort of strategy out of what is a catastrophic situation.

This proud school, which has forged ahead by leaps and bounds academically over the past few decades, is buckling at the knees.

The man who has been the public face of the university for some 40 years is likely to be forced out of his job within days or weeks. The athletic director has taken a leave of absence to prepare for criminal charges and it is highly unlikely he‘ll ever return. The president could -- and should -- be gone before the football coach.

Faced with covering up multiple sexual abuse charges against a former assistant football coach, Penn State is the focus of the nation’s ire and contempt. And the first shoe had barely drooped.

Up next, will be the ugly firings and dismissals to be followed by an epidemic of lawsuits that will have near-universal public support and which will likely cost the university or its insurance carrier hundreds of millions of dollars.

A giant of a university is staggering beneath an avalanche of horrific publicity.

And here’s what is amazing. Penn State knew this was coming. It had six months to prepare and it was totally unprepared. It was a known and published fact that Jerry Sandusky was under investigation and it was pretty well known that the news would not be good -- although no one expected the depth of the charges against Sandusky.

Penn State was so unprepared for what it should have been prepared that president Graham Spanier continues to call the situation ``troubling.’’

Troubling is a tooth ache or losing a football game. The situation Penn State is in is about 500 times greater than ``troubling.’’

As for the Paterno angle to this story, it makes no difference what he heard or did not hear from Mike McQueary. If McQueary said nothing more than he saw Sandusky in the shower with a 10-year-old boy -- and I doubt he said that little -- Paterno had to be aggressive in finding out exactly what happened and taking action against it.

But the New York Times is now reporting Paterno’s public stance that McQueary did not make him fully aware of the nature of Sandusky’s 2002 assault on the boy might not hold up.

The paper said, ``A person with knowledge of Mr. McQueary’s version of events called Mr. Paterno’s claim into question. The person said Mr. McQueary had told those in authority the explicit details of what he saw, including in his face-to-face meeting with Mr. Paterno the day after the incident.’’

There's no happy ending to this story. It should not be drawn out. Spanier needs to go the way of Curley and as a soon as possible.

Paterno needs to step down no later than the last game of the season.

Finding a successor will not be easy. Does anyone think Urban Meyer wants any part of this mess? He can have his pick of jobs. Why would he want one so tainted by a horrific scandal.

There is no PR solution to this. It cannot be finessed.

Penn State has made a gigantic blunder at the highest levels of the school. It has no choice but to take it’s medicine and hope to rebuild from the rubble.