Can This Teenager Save Penn State Football?

ESPN Recruiting lists Fork Union Military Academy's Christian Hackenberg as the #1 senior QB prospect in the nation.

Hackenberg gave his verbal commitment to Penn State and new coach Bill O'Brien on February 29, long after the events of November had shaken the nation's consciousness.

Then on the heels of July's Freeh Report, the NCAA handed down crippling sanctions against Penn State that included a postseason ban and a crippling reduction in scholarships. Hackenberg didn't waver:

"At the end of the day, if there's football at Penn State, I'm going to be there."

He's saying all the right things, and he appears to be the guy to back it up. His family comes from Pennsylvania, though his father Erick wasn't good enough to realize his dream and play for Paterno, so he walked on as a backup QB at Virginia and transferred to lower level Susquehanna (PA) so he could start as a senior.

Hackenberg is enrolled at one of the top military prep schools in the nation, and has a solid family structure behind his decision. There won't be any middlemen brokering him into D1 football.

On the other hand, if Penn State can't put quality personnel on the field with him against Big Ten competition, that would retard his progress to get to the pros. If his receivers can't get open and his O-Line is undersized and can't protect him, then the integrity he showed in riding the storm out would only be a detriment to his future - and his health.

The thing to remember is that no commitment is official until National Signing Day - February 6, 2013. Hackenberg has plenty of time to weigh the options.

If being the QB to lead Penn State out of the wilderness, and learning the offense of a man who mentored Tom Brady is the ultimate goal - is it going to be worth the sacrifice?

Hackenberg and Fork Union Military (VA) begin their season this afternoon vs Hermitage (VA) in Chesapeake, Virginia at 3 PM.

Meanwhile, The Penn State Cleanup Continues

In the spring of 2007, six Penn State football players were arrested and charged for their involvement in an off-campus fight. Joe Paterno decided that the team needed a lesson in accountability - that they were their brothers' keepers.

The entire team was assigned the grunt work of cleaning up Beaver Stadium Sunday mornings after the first five home games that season. The pay they would receive for their labor would be donated to Penn State club athletic programs.

At the time, it seemed to be the outside-the-box type of discipline that Paterno was famous for. But terms like "accountability" and "brothers' keepers" don't ring true today, knowing what we know now. Lessons will still be learned at Penn State, but first the punishments must be handed down for those so grossly unaccountable.

Jerry Sandusky has been incarcerated. The prosecution's case was swift and precise, and heavy justice was handed down.

Joe Paterno is dead. The posthumous fall from grace continues, which is the only recourse since he would have never had his day in court. 

A trial date has now been set for former AD Tim Curley and former VP Gary Schultz, who face perjury and possible "failure to report" charges. Jury selection begins January 7, 2013. They will have high-powered lawyers, and won't be thrown to the wolves as easily as Sandusky was.

As for President Emeritus Graham Spanier (that's his official title), still no charges have been filed. The Attorney General's office is likely doing its due diligence here, as it did with Sandusky where the Grand Jury collected all the testimony it could and they built an overwhelming case.

The AG would have to verify the findings from The Freeh Report, then likely make Spanier the backstop for everything associated with the coverup. That will take time. In the meantime, housecleaning continues in State College.

Backtime Dissects The Freeh Report

When a fishing boat veers off into dangerous waters, it can change course and/or seek help.

When an aircraft carrier finds itself in dangerous waters, it has no turning radius. It is the danger. It keeps charging forward and you'd better get out of the way.

Welcome to the USS Penn State.

Sixteen days ago, Jerry Sandusky was convicted on 45 criminal counts and will spend the rest of his life in prison. That was not the beginning, middle, or end of the story.

The 267-page Freeh Report really begins in earnest on page 11, titled: INDEPENDENCE OF THE INVESTIGATION. And it gets right to the FINDINGS on p. 14:

"The most saddening finding by the Special Investigative Counsel is the total and consistent disregard at Penn State for the safety and welfare of Sandusky's child victims."

"Four of the most powerful people at The Pennsylvania State University (Spanier, Schultz, Curley, Paterno) failed to protect against a child sexual predator harming children for over a decade. These men concealed Sandusky's activities from the Board of Trustees, the University community and authorities."

"These individuals, unchecked by the Board of Trustees that did not perform its oversight duties, empowered Sandusky to attract potential victims to the campus and football events by allowing him to have continued, unrestricted, and unsupervised access..."

On October 29, 2011, Jerry Sandusky sat in his normal club suite at Beaver Stadium and hobnobbed with University officials as Joe Paterno collected his record-setting 409th career victory. It was 7 months after the Harrisburg Patriot-News reported that Sandusky was the subject of a Grand Jury investigation. More importantly, it was 10 years after Assistant Coach Mike McQueary witnessed Sandusky and a young boy in the shower.

It was also two days after Penn State attorney Cynthia Baldwin learned that Sr. VP Gary Schultz and AD Tim Curley would be included in the Grand Jury presentment.

Curley had tried to remove Sandusky from the season ticket list in July 2011 (p.105), but when Mrs. Sandusky inquired about it, the access was reissued.

Steve Garban, then the Chairman of the Board of Trustees, was "astounded" (p.91) by Sandusky's attendance in the Nittany Lion Club, and just assumed that the Attorney General's office didn't have a case.

The Board of Trustees first heard of the investigation on May 12, 2011, when President Graham Spanier "downplayed" (p. 89) the Grand Jury situation, saying that it did not "involve" (p.88) Penn State.

"Some Trustees reported that their meetings felt "scripted" or that they were "rubber stamping" major decisions already made by Spanier." (p.101)

After the Trustees were briefed on the Sandusky investigation at the May meeting, it was not revisited in subsequent meetings in July or September. Spanier may not have known the depths of Sandusky's crimes, but he probably assumed it would just be more water under the deck of the Penn State aircraft carrier.

"There are 76,460 undergraduate students and 9,745 graduate students that currently attend the University. The University's annual operating budget is approximately $4.1 billion..." (p.32)

Insignificant efforts were made in the past. After the 2001 McQueary/shower incident, the Gang Of Four - Spanier, Schultz, Curley, and Paterno - agreed (conspired) on a "humane and reasonable way to proceed." (p.75) This would involve three things: informing the Second Mile (Sandusky's charitable organization), the Department of Welfare, and telling Sandusky himself to stop brining children around Penn State football facilities.

How the information was relayed to the Second Mile is murky since that organization ultimately viewed it as a "non-incident" (p.64). The Dept. of Welfare was not informed. And how would barring Sandusky from the football program be enforced? Especially if Sandusky, a Penn State professor emeritus defied the order (request). Who was going to stop him?

"there is an over-emphasis on "The Penn State Way" as an aprroach to decision-making, a resistance to seeking outside perspective, and an excessive focus on athletics..." (p.129)

Only 4 people knew the plan. There were no legal grounds to keep him away unless the authorities were informed, and that would involve expanding the circle of knowledge, and that would mean exposure. That would mean smearing the pristine Penn State image, tarnishing Paterno's legacy, and bringing down the whole house of cards.

It was considered "very rare" (p.49) for a situation like this not to be reported the the Office of Human Resources.

It's not surprising that The Second Mile didn't act. Several months after "the plan," Penn State sold a tract of land to The Second Mile in September 2001 for $168,500 (p.79).

So please excuse the awful analogy, but Penn State University, Penn State Football, and The Second Mile were all in bed together. Could we say that they were all married to one another? A spouse can't be compelled to testify against another. If corporations are people, can they marry? How does this polygamous situation fall under the Defense Of Marriage Act?

It's like how the American economy is intertwined with the big banks. We may be furious with them but without them the whole system crumbles, and thus they are untouchable. And nobody has yet been held criminally accountable for the 2008 financial crisis.

What exactly Joe Paterno knew died with him. He was an old-school football coach who never touched a cell phone or used e-mail. He is referred to as "Joe" or "Coach" in various Tim Curley e-mails, but his level of complicity can only be assumed.

The transfer of Paterno's home in the summer of 2011 to his wife in exchange for $1 is thought to be a protection of his family should he ever have been a target in a civil suit.

The discussion now is whether Penn State should suffer the NCAA "death penalty," whether the Paterno statue should be removed, and what should happen to the three remaining obstructors of justice.   People call for NCAA sanctions based on a "lack of institutional control," when it was more akin to TOTAL institutional control.

I have no idea. I merely followed the case and read the report. I have faith in the system, especially having seen the swift and exact punishment that was handed down to Sandusky once authorities were able to investigate. (Though DA Ray Gricar failed to do so in 1998 - he later disappeared and is presumed dead in another twist to this case)

The Freeh Report recommends sweeping changes in Penn State policy and hierarchy.

I know that universities are beholden to their athletic programs. Especially football, and especially when icons are involved. This situation could have taken place in previous eras at Nebraska or Alabama.

Today, the University of Alabama's NCAA Compliance coordinator makes approximately $45,000 while Nick Saban makes more than $6 Million. There is no way to reasonably keep college football programs in line when the universities and entire states involved are so co-dependant.

The only way to try to reign it in is to make it all transparent. Each school needs independent auditors to have unlimited access to paper trails, phone records, travel logs, etc. But how is that to be implemented? By the school itself? By the NCAA? By the Federal Government? And what happens if they encounter obstruction? What's the recourse?

Backtime's ultimate diagnosis: College Football is too big to fail.

Backtime Returns: Let Your Garden Grow

Please forgive me for I have sinned. It has been 601 days since my last blog post.

What was I waiting for? Some big rollout for Backtime 2.0? Something of the utmost significance to occur? 

Well many opportunities came and went, and I realized I'm no web designer. I don't know the first thing about graphic layouts and I don't know the second thing about HTML. I'm not a marketer either. All I do is write content - which is the only real requirement for this.

I sat next to a quasi-celebrity on a plane once. He had a hit TV show once, and has written several books. He had some simple and novel advice for me: Feed your blog and it will grow, leave it untended and it will shrivel up and die.

So today I symbolically went to The Home Depot and spent about $60 planting seeds for the future. I have a few weeks before I hit the road again and I will make sure I tend to my garden. Metaphorically speaking, I hope to do the same with this web log. Water the plants and Backtime every day. 

You never know what will happen. I hadn't posted in almost a year and on Monday November 7, 2011, Joe Frazier died. People around the world searched his name and came upon my link, and by the end of the week my dormant blog received nearly 10,000 hits.

So Backtime is back. And there's no rollout, no new message. Just perspective on all things.

Tomorrow: Backtime's editorial department consumed the entire Freeh Report and deconstructs the Penn State debacle.

Backtime Road Trip Day 7: Eastbound and Downright Frustrated

I doubt there is a more depressing stretch of road in the eastern United States than the length of the state of Pennsylvania on I-80. 310 miles of nothingness, broken up only by tedious road construction and landmarked only by a couple of nuclear power facilities.

No wonder they call Penn State "Happy Valley." It's because people are so happy to have found civilization.

So we woke up this morning in Cleveland, Day 6 A.D. (After Decision). For the short time I was there, the city seemed no more or less depressed than it normally is. Cleveland is actually very nice - in July.

You'd think that losing LeBron is like any major city losing their #1 commodity, akin to Detroit losing GM. But basketball still wasn't "king" in this town.

There was a lot of local coverage on the death of Cleveland native George Steinbrenner, the American Shipbuilding magnate who tried to buy the Indians in the early 70s but was thwarted. The rest is history in two cities.

But baseball doesn't reign in this town or the state for that matter. You see, George Steinbrenner's role model and mentor was Woody Hayes. Everything in Ohio is football. LeBron's headline news cycle runs until the day Browns camp opens. Period.

As I was cruising the streets on the Baldwin-Wallace campus near my sister's house in Berea, there were football tributes on your average street corner.

So now came the single hardest leg of the trip (at least thus far), the one day trip from Cleveland to New York City. After four stops, a 45-minute construction crawl, and a ton of junk food, we arrived at Grandma and Grandpa's place 8+ hours later.

Now we get to stay in (generally) one spot for a whole week. And a pretty cool spot it is. Six stories up, overlooking Central Park. And tonight we were greeted by fireworks. Bastille Day! Who knew?

Now the hard part of the trip is over, and the real fun can begin. At least until the 13-hour drive home next week. But that's still a long way off. Bonne nuit!