A Legend Tarnished

Growing up I never watched college football and really had no idea who Joe Paterno was, other than a guy who had been around Penn State forever. That's why I didn't really have a whole lot of insight when he passed away in January. But his legacy was definitely being overshadowed by the whole Sandusky case, a blight on college football and that little corner of Pennsylvania. But in light of the CNN reports that have recently come out, the damage is much greater than we feared.

I was in the camp before this came to light that Paterno had to have known something and was, to an extent, responsible for the atrocities in Happy Valley. None of us realized how right we were. In listening to John Kincade talk about it, he encouraged people (myself included) to read the article. It was eye-opening to say the least. But it also made me think back to a little over a year ago as I was finishing up my bachelor's degree.



In order to graduate from North Central College, every student had to take (in addition to general education classes, plus classes from majors and minors) 3 "all-college requirement" classes, including one on leadership ranging from a variety of topics. I took the general class during my final term, spending 3 and a half hours every Wednesday night in a classroom with about 15 other students discussing all sorts of topics related to leadership, but in particular examples of bad leaders, what went wrong in those situations, and what could maybe have been done differently. The instructor was Stephen Caliendo from the political science department, one of the best professors at North Central and someone from whom I learned much of the following.

I referred back to Bad Leadership by Barbara Kellerman (you can find a decent chunk of it here) and she talks about how in today's society, when we think of leaders, we usually think of positives, not negatives. Some may argue otherwise, but there is absolutely the possibility of having a bad leader or seeing signs of bad leadership, which Joe Paterno, if the emails are to be believed, absolutely was or possessed qualities of. But there are different types of bad leaders, both of the ineffective type and of the unethical type. Defining it, Paterno would probably fit under more of the unethical categories. You can take parts of several of these and say it fits. I wouldn't go so far as to say Paterno was evil, but I think you can safely say he was insular and corrupt for sure, and to some extents intemperate and callous. For a supposedly moral and upstanding man of character, these qualities sure scream the opposite.

At the same time, where there is a leader, there must be followers. While on paper Paterno was only a coach and had an athletic director and university brass, including the president above him, based on the emails it really seemed like Paterno was in charge of the whole operation with the AD and president following him. Why?

"Followers who knowingly, deliberately commit themselves to bad leaders are themselves bad... It's a matter of self-interest. Followers have no particular incentive to lend strong support to a leader who is merely ineffective... On the other hand, intimates of frankly unethical leaders often stand to benefit financially or politically from the relationship." (Kellerman, p. 25)

Paterno was a big reason why PSU went from a small rural college to a big-time university. His football program brought a lot of money and fame to the school. Maybe Paterno thought that revealing a pedophile on his staff would hurt the legacy of his program? We will never know why after discussing it with him the "higher-ups" decided to handle everything internally rather than reporting it.

What's to say if we were put in McQueary's place that we wouldn't end up like the experimental prison guards in 1971?

That's where another major point from my class comes up. I read through the comments on ESPN boards or other sites and many people are saying something to the effect of "Had I been Mike McQueary, I would have gone in and stopped Sandusky from abusing that boy in the shower." We all say something like that, but what are the odds that actually happens? I think back to cases like Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment and how seemingly nice, innocent kids took on roles as prison guards and turned to cruel abuses of prisoners, or the Stanley Milgram experiment where people punished wrong answers on a test with electric shocks. We say we wouldn't do these things were we in that situation, but Milgram and Zimbardo suggested otherwise. What's to say we wouldn't have also slammed a locker, run away and call my boss to report it rather than go to police? No two situations are exactly alike. Seeing a locker room rape like this won't happen in exactly the same fashion again because it already happened at Penn State. Somewhere, maybe these abuses are going on, but it's not happening that out in the open in the same kind of culture as there was at Penn State.

This calls on all of us in all our walks of life, whether we are players, coaches, staff, fans, or just any person anywhere outside of the sports realm. As a follower, we should be on alert for signs of bad leadership and prepared to blow the whistle when the situation calls for it. Bad leadership can only stay in place while the followers allow it to be.

[Author's Note: Many thanks to Dr. Caliendo for looking over this post before I published it and giving me some feedback, especially for reminding me of the Milgram experiment, which I vaguely remembered but had forgotten who did it. You know your professor did a great job when you are reminded of something he taught you well after graduation in something you see in real life. Maybe this situation can be covered in future LEV classes.]