Sick.
Sick can be literal, immediate. Joe Paterno died Sunday morning, lung cancer delivering the mortal blows in the inevitable battle we all lose at some point. Paterno fought maladies through the past decade as might be expected of a man reaching 85-years-old. We knew deep down that one day the venerable coach would be gone, but like the best magician, he escaped those perils and, with a brush of the sleeve, presented himself unscathed at the end each time. We all exhaled; the icon was never really in danger.
But Sunday morning, his invincibility was broken. This sickness was serious and vicious. Cancer, like any coward, attacks in moments of weakness, and when weakness isn't within reach, it transforms the strong until they fit that description. For a man who served so many men during his life, there was at least some fairness in that life being taken from something outside humanity.
Sick, colloquially, can describe an unfixable flaw. Former Penn State assistant Jerry Sandusky was arrested this past fall for a series of sex abuse charges. Sandusky used the power and access afforded by his Penn State appointment to the nauseating depths of human potential, manipulating children too inexperienced to check down in the face of a life-altering blitz.
Flawed to his core, Sandusky certainly would have found prey in whichever waters he hunted. But in State College, a brand-first community like so many in our country, he found a predator's paradise, a reef of potential victims who would not expect his advance.
Directly and indirectly, Paterno created this harbor. Paterno, by far the biggest fish in the State College pond, knew the predator was hunting. But rather than protect the ecosystem, he looked away. Yes, due process and proper channels muddied the waters, but Paterno the Whale could have ended the terror in a number of ways.
But it wasn't only Paterno's inaction that incubated Sandusky's sickness. Paterno's State College was supposed to be insulated from this kind of horror. Disconnected from Rust Belt decay and East Coast debauchery, mythical State College was a place where the home-standing blue and white withstood the invasion of the outside for decades. Time passed, but as long as Paterno was there, milk-and-cookies Penn State was, too. Vigilance seemed a waste of time.
Paterno's State College passed away in November a few months in advance of the man himself. The myths of insulation and safety are smashed. New head coach Bill O'Brien and whomever else becomes the face of the university will work to create a new vision of the college town, but whatever it looks like, it can never go back. Sandusky's sickness was contagious, claiming the old Penn State along with his child victims.
Sick can signify a temporary drop in quality. College football programs ebb and flow, but rarely like Penn State did in the past two decades. NCAA rules were partly to blame. Changes in scholarship totals allowed talent to spread across the country like silt carried by the Nile's flood waters.
A consequence of that diaspora was a foundation-rocking change in the sport's structure. The traditional dominance of programs like Penn State became endangered, and after dominating the Big Ten in its first few seasons in the conference during the mid-'90s, Paterno's teams struggled into the new millennium. Relegated to unprecedented mediocrity, the Penn State fan base began to wonder whether their iconic leader had finally become a relic no longer fit for an evolving reality. In a display soaked with generational symbolism like honey through layers of phyllo dough, one Penn State fan even registered FireJoePaterno.com. The new Penn State needed a reason to believe the old Penn State could still exist.
And then 2005 happened. In Happy Valley, the early season success probably felt like the breaking of a fever, portending a return to normal health. But nationally, the narrative of Paterno's age and Penn State's orthodoxical decay stuck, and the Nittany Lions' quick start was greeted with skepticism.
Yet on October 8 of that year, Penn State received a full bill of health. Yes, the defense was inspired and buried a top-10 Ohio State team, but that night was about more than the result. The frenzied crowd wore white — the original White Out — and showed a national audience what Penn State still could be. The proud program went 11-1 and won the Orange Bowl, and Paterno the coach proved he was more than a mascot of a fading program. The malaise was lifted; as much as ever, they were Penn State.
Sick can be ascribed to a society at large, noting decay. As its leaders and upper crust grew increasingly glutinous, Rome was sick. Fueled by the embarrassment of World War I's aftermath and willing to accept genocide as a coping mechanism, Nazi Germany was sick.
An ailing community is not rotten through and through. There were noble Romans; certainly, the entirety of WWII Germans were not evil. But when good people allow wrongs to go unchecked through association or inaction, it signals a sickness of communal proportion. How much can we blame the society, the members whose fault is merely impeding the glaring faults of others?
In a purely utilitarian society, Joe Paterno would be lauded. The mass of those he beneficially influenced easily could tally six figures. Players, coaches, families, and fans felt better and were better because of Joe Paterno. But sometimes individual consequences have broader significance.
When a society's best man doesn't stop its dire threats, it speaks to the community's health. There was no more noble Penn Stater than Joe Paterno, but even he couldn't heal a community sick with an inability to question its idols.
When a person of note dies, we rush to discuss his legacy as if the balance of a person's impact on this planet could be neatly transcribed on a note card and filed away for reference. Like all of us, Joe Paterno will be remembered for his wins and losses, his virtues and his faults. But no life is that simple. Nobody's existence should be boiled down to a syrupy reduction so the rest of us can taste its most prominent notes.
Joe Paterno, the man, was beneficially influential to an army spanning decades. And Paterno, the icon, was in some part responsible for a bubble where fanatical devotion blinded justice to the plight of several victims. His legacy will vary by with which of those parties you most closely identify.
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