Some have asked if indeed Paterno ruled football and athletics like a fiefdom, especially given the Vicky Triponey articles. Here's my response.
I think he ruled it like Triponey said he did. He'd been there for 50 years. The idea that Triponey was going to come in and tell him how to discipline football players is farfetched. Yet I know he disciplined people for minor infractions--as in the Enis and Jurevicius cases. The thing in the Triponey article that was totally incorrect in its criticism of Paterno was regarding the violent fight the football players were involved in. 4 of them were thrown off the team, including Phil Taylor who went to Baylor and Connecticut's own Chris Baker who went to Hampton (both now in the NFL). So, thought that was weird. But yes, it is bad for the coach to wield this much power.
I don't think the academic stuff (i.e. high graduation rates) was BS because I taught classes there and I was even mildly annoyed by the football program which required weekly reports from me. PITA. I wasn't getting paid to babysit, I was hardly being paid. But they tracked academic progress and forced players to take real courses in majors.
Paterno had old school softness for alcohol drinking and fights. "Boys will be boys." Thefts and fraud were what angered him. Old school: yes, you can hit people but have more respect for property!!! Nonetheless, look up the case of EZ Smith. Paterno publicly called his year-long suspension ludicrous. I don't know how they got that one over on Paterno but Smith was kicked out for a year for 2 open-container alcohol violations in the dorms in the same year.
Read this first:
USATODAY.com - Penn State lineman booted from team over arrow incident
Note Paterno's attitude. The university punishes, but Paterno decides. Is it hidden? Or out in the open? Some people say this was cloak and dagger stuff, Paterno's secret rule. Yet Paterno talked openly about it for years. This was one crotchety old Brooklyn SOB. He was going to have his input. No doubt he bullied Triponey. Occasionally he lost, EZ Smith was off campus for a year because of student affairs (i.e. Triponey)
Read this quote: In 2004, after several incidents involving football players, Mr. Paterno told the Allentown Morning Call newspaper that the players weren't misbehaving any more than usual, but that such news was now more public.
"I can go back to a couple guys in the '70s who drove me nuts," he said. "The cops would call me, and I used to put them in bed in my house and run their rear ends off the next day. Nobody knew about it. That's the way we handled it."
That being said, he ruled the fiefdom just like powerful people do. We see the same thing going on at Syracuse University, at U Michigan Med., we see it in corporations and the US military when it comes to whistleblowers, we saw it at PSU with the President who had a habit of whitewashing child abuse cases that had nothing to do with football or sports.
truthfully, I would be hard-pressed to imagine to top university where the football coach doesn't run roughshod over student affairs offices. Tennessee, USC, North Carolina, Ohio State, etc. Can anyone here name a school in which these people are cowed?
My experience is that we should never criticize athletics and football programs. The vast vast majority lose a ton of money every year (tens of millions), and when education budgets are cut by 10-15% and academic programs are shuttered, you're still told to shut up less the spotlight be directed at your department for impending cuts. The President at Texas A&M lost her job over such a fight, when the football program surprised her at the last minute with a $15 million loss. Florida State just had a similar scandal. Some high powered administrators will speak openly to you, but only in casual conversation. I had such a conversation with a Dean at U. Miami years ago who told me the program was filthy, that players attend bogus 1-week intersession courses, and cretins hang around the players. Now, the NCA may weigh in on PSU, but the NCAA is a PR organization because nowadays, with the APR penalties in place, many schools are operating like Miami used to, which is to stick players in bogus 1 week courses to pump up APR scores. Graduation is not a consideration in the APR. As long as you complete bogus courses, it doesn't matter if you're proceeding toward a degree. Look at North Carolina--they routed athletes to a totally bogus department.
In other words, the question of whether Paterno ruled PSU football with an iron fist is an automatic YES. One wonders whether there is any other paradigm.
If you're asking me if Paterno was a more powerful figure than the President who had the ear of the BOT, my answer is NO. Maybe equally powerful in their own ways, but the President is a well known political figure who even has national security clearance for the DOD. After all, the BOT fired Paterno back in November, and that was long before they discovered the recent emails. They didn't fire Spanier. And they still haven't, even after the emails. Who is more powerful? You tell me.
