Two Cents

As someone who doesn't follow college football--and I'm sure that, just as people employed by distinguished journals of opinion wrote in 2001 that non-Catholics had no right to an opinion about the pedophile priest cover-ups, I'm sure there have already been plenty of people arguing that people who don't give a shit about football, and maybe people who aren't principally fans of whatever team it is we're talking about, have no right to an opinion on this--I have mixed feelings about all this. I was aware that the higher education system is a disposable minor organ in relation to its reason for being, football and basketball programs, but still, it is hair-raising to learn that one of them is in the business of shaping people whose response to seeing a man rape a child in front of him was to tiptoe down the hall to call his daddy to ask if he thinks he ought to maybe tell his boss, or the people who tried to burn down the campus to protest the fact that Satan himself didn't get to wave at them from the field for the billionth time. (I've also been a little taken aback to hear so many commentators who claimed to be sympathetic to the idea that Mistakes Were Made also express dismay that Joe Paterno was fired over the phone, instead of having a stripper sent over to his house with a bottle of champagne and a box of chocolates, to soften the blow.) On the other hand, having finally been given an image to put to the name "Joe Paterno"--I'd probably heard the name a thousand times but couldn't have told you what he looked like or what he did for a living--it's nice to know who Al Pacino will next be playing on HBO.