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Ohio State and Penn State have played brilliant football games in recent years. The Nittany Lions defeated the No. 2 Buckeyes 24-21 at State College in 2016, and last year Ohio State (6 th) beat the Penn State No. 2 (39-38) in Columbus . Both games offered everything one could wish for a college football match. The game this year, this week, could very well be just as good.
But the Ohio State and Penn State have both been involved in a controversy, basically linked to the silencing of victims. At Penn State, officials knew that Jerry Sandusky and his relationship with the boys were causing concern, but ultimately did nothing to escalate or investigate the situation. He has continued to assault young boys for years and is now in prison, guilty of 45 charges of sexual abuse.
In the state of Ohio, Urban Meyer continued to employ Zach Smith, even though Smith was arrested in 2009 on suspicion of domestic violence and even though Smith's former wife had contacted Meyer's wife. in 2015
Given all of this, it's no wonder the Ohio State can create and broadcast the following:
Penn State has called for a White Out this weekend, a particularly effective gimmick where fans are invited to wear white shirts, giving the Beaver Stadium – a bowl that seats about 110,000 people – a distinctive look. So, if it was only a football match and nothing else could be drawn from the word "SILENCE", then … hey, good job, Ohio marketing team State. You would have won the moment!
But no. This is another example of how the country and its rhetoric have helped, for hundreds of years, to ensure that only those with power (in most cases white and straight men) are respected. And that we always treat sport as something sacred and separate from "real life".
Right now, though – a moment that may seem like it could change everything – the fact that this idea has never passed the first minutes of a meeting is despicable.
(State of Ohio said the message was the same as the one used in 2016, but typically the multi-million dollar athletic departments thoroughly scrutinize their marketing materials before simply reusing them.)
At the moment when I write this, one of three women to bring the lawsuit with allegations of sexual misconduct against Supreme Court candidate Brett Kavanaugh testifies – for the whole country to hear – about from the hour, drunken Kavanaugh tried to rape her high school.
And the country feels totally isolated – especially women, minorities and the LGBTQ community, and all those who have struggled to achieve equality in a system so determined to silence them. .
All this has been laid bare like never before. A #metoo movement sweeping the uncompromising Make America Great Again the forest, so many trees anchored in an old sodden and sodden earth, fearing the wind.
President Donald Trump has already described Kavanaugh's accusers as liars as part of a plot to derail the appointment. This seems to be largely based on the fact that he likes Kavanaugh and finds him honorable (and also that he himself has fought many similar charges).
Millions of fans have loved and found Joe Paterno – and thus his assistants, like Sandusky – honorable. The whole program was honorable. Honor was the word that Paterno would most like to see attached to his program.
Many people still find Meyer honorable and like him. I found her continued explanations on the missing situation of sincerity and candor, but I also believe that maybe a battered or abused woman.
But part of what he himself – and everyone in Ohio State – should have collected over the past few months is that allegations of misconduct must be taken seriously. It starts, of course, to really let them hear.
There are a hundred other ways to riff on the white Penn State in an attempt to energize your fans. But in one way or another, the most offensive possible has escaped the harmful bubble surrounding Columbus. Maybe in another moment, we would not have noticed. We are so used to feeling this smell.
But not this time.
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