I've been thinking a lot about the recent child sex abuse situations at Penn State and Syracuse. Beyond the anger and disgust over the obvious- that children were abused at the hands of adults, especially adults considered responsible pillars of their respective communities- the fact that both cases involved athletics also angers me. I'm not naive; I know fully well that there can be- and are- vile, degenerate, amoral people in all walks of life. But these cases, particularly given the reputations of Penn State football and Syracuse basketball as relative paragons of virtue in the sometimes-seedy world of big time college athletics... To me these allegations are far more distressful, far more damning than the more-typical allegations and violations surrounding recruiting, admissions allowances, illegal payments to athletes, academic violations, etc... due to the perverse nature of the allegations as well as the fact that they weren't done to gain any competitive edge but instead because someone in a position of power and authority used their power and authority for selfish, abusive, perverse ends, harming the victims, their families, and their respective programs and universities.
Again, I don't believe that I'm especially naive. I'm aware that anyone- or anything- has the potential to be corrupted. But I've always sort of believed that athletics, especially amateur athletics, is something that should be more pure, more- what?- wholesome, more good than most other spheres or institutions in our society. Religion is another. But as has been seen with the Catholic Church sex-abuse scandals now we are seeing here; underlings abusing their positions of power and influence and their higher-ups turning a blind eye toward or attempting to cover up for them in an effort to protect the image of their respective- and formerly respected- institutions. It serves to create distrust toward the majority of, take your pick, priests or coaches who are doing and always have done the right things, creates antipathy toward the Catholic Church, Penn State, and Syracuse, or more broadly toward religion or college athletics, and creates cynicism about things that ought to be considered good.
And they all brought it upon themselves.
