Joe Paterno,White Patriarchy and Privilege

As usual, my early Sunday morning was spent half-awake on the couch watching television when I was capitulated into full consciousness with breaking news. As I wiped the sleep from my eyes, I realized that there wasn’t a national tragedy, but instead that Penn State’s former football coach, Joe Paterno, had died of lung cancer. The spectacle that began with this “breaking news” did not end with the initial reports, but rather continued with ample columns, discussions, tributes, and memorials to a football coach in which he was described as an “icon” (Hamilton, 2012), a “revered coach” (Rubinkam & Armas, 2012), “a leader” (Maisel, 2012), and “a legend” (Maisel, 2012). The hyperbolic tone of the postdeath commentaries is most vivid in Ivan Maisel’s (2012) tribute to Paterno:

The 409 victories, while record setting, are not the full measure of the man. The young men he left behind, the campus to which he devoted his life, a campus whose leaders shoved him aside in the panicky, feverish days after the scandal broke, also give testimony to the life of Joseph Vincent Paterno. The whole of his life renders the seismology of modern-day journalism moot. The facts of a 62-year coaching career were shaken. They did not topple over.

Maisel’s eulogy—like so many others citing Paterno’s success on the field, his millions of dollars in charitable donations, his “fatherly” relationship with his players, and his importance in the local community—have effectively sought to elevate Joe Paterno to sainthood. Despite everything that has happened, the sports punditry has also sought to resuscitate “the image of Joe Paterno,” which Bomani Jones noted “is null and void.”

This is not to say that media coverage has erased his connection, involvement, and culpability for the alleged child molestation committed by assistant coach Jerry Sandusky. The tragedy in his death rests with the cloud of uncertainty, contempt, and unease about Paterno’s legacy. The ubiquity of the memorials reflects a societal unease that “he was, like so many of the characters in the books he told us to read, unable to have a perfect ending” (Frantz, 2012). The anxiety and discomfort reflects at one level a belief that he was unfairly treated and demonized because of the actions of another person. During Paterno’s memorial, Nike’s cofounder and chairman, Phil Knight, made this clear, arguing that it

turns out (Paterno) gave full disclosure to his superiors, information that went up the chains to the head of the campus police and the president of the school. The matter was in the hands of a world-class university, and by a president with an outstanding national reputation.

Paterno’s death, and the subsequent memorialization, allows for the defense of his actions, turning the injustice of sexual abuse into the purported cloud of injustice hanging over him.

At another level, the anxiety and anger surrounding the sexual abuse scandal and the subsequent firing of Paterno reflects the belief that he deserved better, that his life work mandated a state funeral of sorts. The references to the scandal became the pretext for the celebration because without it, there would be no reasons for the story of redemption and hero worship to the extent seen. His connection to the sex abuse scandal has thus been pushed aside, serving as little more than a footnote to justify the societal mourning of a great football coach. As noted progressive sportswriter Dave Zirin in a message to me,

I really do believe that the drama of his last two months has fueled the media barrage. There is a high-octane effort aimed at defining his legacy as positive. That takes a lot of sweat equity given the recent scandals

In many regards, the discussion around Paterno’s death is framed around the last few months, his firing, the scandal itself, and his involvement. This is why there is so much celebration and this is why it is breaking news. It is difficult to imagine the extent and scope of the commentaries and celebrations had the last 2 months not occurred; I would be hard pressed to come up with a recent athlete or sports figure (celebrity) whose death has provoked so much memorializing as we have seen with Joe Paterno.

Yet the superlatives and efforts to redeem not through erasure of the child abuse scandal but in reference are not solely about the last few months. The efforts to memorialize and the hypercelebration also reflect the power of white masculinity and nostalgia within the cultural landscape. Described as a “model of law-abiding sportsmanship” (Hobson, 2012), “a disarming mix of a lofty diploma and Brooklyn-bred blue-collar grit” (Bunch, 2012), and as someone committed to education and honor (Murti, 2012), Joe Paterno has been revered as part saint, part God.

As noted by Rick Reilly, Paterno

was a humble, funny and giving man who was unlike any other coach I ever met in college football. He rolled up his pants to save on dry cleaning bills. He lived in the same simple ranch house for the last 45 years. Same glasses, same wife, same job, for most of his adult life. (2012)

[Paterno] was a bridge from a simpler time to the cutthroat business college football has become, somehow serving as both a progressive force (he believed in players’ rights, a playoff system and welcomed advancements in television) and a stubborn traditionalist (the Penn State uniforms remained basic, he never learned how to send a text message and he still used old-school discipline).

The nostalgia for yesteryear is powerful so much so that Paterno becomes both the representation of the best of college sports and a visible reminder of the end of an era.

Amid a myriad of sports media spectacles regarding collegiate sports corruption, amid the billions of dollars changing hands, amid the increased visibility of student–athletes accused of crimes, Joe Paterno offers an alternative, albeit within the imagination. Constructing him as an outsider, evident by his loving relationships with players, his teams’ refusal to partake in the “me generation” ethos (no names on back of jersey; non descript helmets), and evident by his purported involvement in the community, Paterno has come to represent a parallel or alternative to the modern sports world. In fact, supporters use his firing as evidence of the callousness and demise of college sports, and the dangers resulting from feminism, diversity, and progressive politics. Paterno’s death and firing was not only the end of a life or the assault on Paterno, but a threat to all that is good within college sports.

Within the defense of JoePa there is a profound subtext regarding white masculinity under attack. That Paterno, despite spending a lifetime helping others, doing the right thing, and otherwise embodying a heroic masculinity has been savaged within the media. It is yet another morsel within a larger discursive field that is defined by “the production of images and narratives of victimized and disadvantaged . . . white males that both reflect and reproduce the discursive logics of contemporary white male backlash” (Kusz, 2001, p. 392). Paterno, like so much else in popular culture, is imagined as a “white male protagonist” who is “underprivileged, lacking social, cultural economic or genetic privileges and under constant siege” (Kusz, 2001, p. 396). Paterno, with his gruff masculinity and his unwillingness to follow the corrupt rules of college sports, is the embodiment of the underprivileged white masculine body that in the end contributed to the criticism and demonization he experienced in life and death. At least, that is the argument and basis of the celebration from his defenders.

The celebration of Paterno as patriarch, as the embodiment of a white working-class ethic, as a coach of a different era, sits at the core of the demoralization of Paterno. The national mourning in this regard reflects both a desire to redeem him in the face of the sex abuse scandal and to celebrate nostalgia for a different era of college sports and a heroized white working-class masculinity.

Within the national imagination Joe Paterno offers a “breath of fresh air for an American public ‘tired of trash-talking, spit-hurling, head-butting sports millionaires’” (Cole & Andrews, 1996, p. 72). He offers the possibility of a sports world define by discipline, selflessness, and hard work, as opposed to scandals. He provides a racial time machine to an imagined period of sports where (White) male heroes did the right thing; he is constructed as a clear alternative to black athletes “who are routinely depicted in the popular media as selfish, insufferable, and morally reprehensible” (Cole & Andrews, 1996, p. 72). Thus, has Joe Paterno long functioned, even more so in his death than in his life, as a source of nostalgia and celebration of white sporting masculinity. Writing about 1980s sports films, Marjorie Kibby concludes,

In the face of changed economic and social conditions, normative visions of masculinity were problem in the present and threatened in then future. The new ‘social’ and political conservatism of the late seventies/early eighties reflected a hope that allegiance to old doctrines might somehow restore masculinity and the nostalgic quest was elevated to the mythic in cinema in a romantic reaffirmation of boys’ own adventure. (Kibby, 1998, p. 16)

Akin to prominent sports films of the kind deconstructed by Kibby, (e.g., Hoosiers, The Natural, Field of Dreams, etc.), the image of Joe Paterno offered a particular narrative and celebration of “white heterosexuality, masculinity and patriarchy.” The economic, cultural, and demographic shifts inside and outside of sports “lessened the availability of sportsman as a role that could be unequivocally occupied by those who saw [white] masculinity as under threat in their own lives” (Kibby, 1998, p. 16). As pointed out by Tim Keown (2012), “The regurgitation of the Paterno-as-moral-messiah (-until-Sandusky) fable is what happens when people close their eyes and see the world the way they thought it was, or how they want it to be.” Or, as Bomani Jones told me, “We are here because of the image we created of Joe Paterno,” because of the brand of Penn State and JoePa.

The aftermath and the response to Joe Paterno says much more about us than him. It reveals our continued difficulty, silence, and unwillingness to deal with the issue of sexual violence and abuse. It illustrates the ways in which we valorize and hero-worship football coaches and where football sits on the national landscape. It highlights the power of nostalgia and the celebration given to a particular inscription of white masculinity. Over the last year, several prominent African American figures passed away—Gil-Scott Herron, Etta James Manning Marable, Fred Shuttlesworth, Derrick Bell. Their contributions to humanity, to knowledge, to community, to justice and helping others reach are without reproach. Why hasn’t their deaths been breaking news . . .?