The responses of these people are indicative of an arrogance at the root of this unparalleled stain on major-college sports. If there's been any public remorse for the Sandusky victims by the Paternos, it's been buried beneath the obvious mission — that of somehow restoring the image of the family patriarch as a grandfatherly man who created an island of recruiting purity and educational emphasis amid a sea of collegiate athletic swill.
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Paterno's most formidable ally in creating that image, which essentially was a work of fiction, was geography. Located in north central Pennsylvania, the town of State College is conveniently distanced from the area's major media markets. Reporters from Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and New York usually have been limited to game-day appearances; thus Penn State's programs have been subjected to less scrutiny than most others have.
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In a recent Time magazine article, Matt Paknis, a Penn State graduate assistant during the 1980s, offered the following: "There was this projection outside of Penn State that he was the dean, this nice old guy. That's the furthest thing from the truth. He ruled with an iron fist. You had to fit into the approval system that was out there. There wasn't a lot of challenging, saying, 'What's going on here?'"
