Jonathan Avella's Blog

Urban Meyer just signed a six year contract worth 24 million dollars to teach college students how to play football. Perhaps that might be an oversimplification of his job title but at the end of the day isn’t that what he is doing? In addition to receiving such a healthy income, if he wins Meyer will become the most powerful person on the Ohio State campus. That’s how it works. If your University is a major player in either college football or basketball that’s what you do when you find a winning coach. Why? Winning brings money and at the end of the day that’s all these schools care about. Money makes the NCAA go around. They will claim that they do things to protect the reputation of the school, but truly they don’t care. Money is more tangible, it’s more immediate. You can’t cash tradition or reputation in at the bank so those words no longer have any place in the world of major college athletics. To see the truth one must look no further then Penn State. There was no football coach who fit the profile of a powerful, almost god-like sports figure more than Joe Paterno. He was Penn State, the face of the university. In 2002 when Mike McQueary informed him that he witnessed long-time defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky abusing a young boy in the shower all Joe Paterno did was call his boss. Here’s the problem, Joe was the boss. There was no one more powerful on the campus of Penn State than Joe. When times were good I’m sure he used his power for whatever means he deemed necessary. However, in the face of a horrific crisis he relinquished his power and wanted to just be a football coach. It doesn’t work like that Joe. True leaders lead in good times and bad. To try to pass the buck off on your so-called bosses is a sick joke. Of course they covered it up. To admit that a pillar of Joe’s Penn State community was a monster would put a serious stop to the amount of money the Penn State football program would produce. God forbid those millions of dollars be lost over the well-being of a few young boys. Not only is anyone involved in this sick mess greedy and immoral, they are stupid. If they had done the right thing the money would have returned, eventually. The reputation of Penn State would have taken a hit but would have returned, eventually. Joe, well he would have been a bigger hero than ever. He would have been the savior of many innocent young boys and an advocate to stomp out sexual abuse. Instead he enabled that monster to continue doing evil. That seems to be the motto in major college sports these days. Money over evil.  As long as you win you can sin as freely as your heart desires.