Sometimes ‘lockdown’ leads to lockup

FAYETTEVILLE — Today most every public university president, chancellor and athletic director should ask themselves this question:

Why must our athletic department operate so secretly?

It’s not only a pertinent question, but in the wake of Penn State, a chilling one. And unavoidable.

Now surely to God, the grand jury allegations that Penn State retired defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky sexually molested male children at Penn State’s facilities is the rarest of aberrations throughout our country’s college athletic departments.

But the climate of athletic departments secrecy is not.

That secrecy helped keep undisclosed - until Sandusky’s arrest Sunday on 40 charges - that a graduate assistant coach in 2002 provided an eyewitness account alleging he had seen Sandusky sodomizing a boy in a shower at Penn State.

As coaches’ salaries and power increasingly escalate, so does the remoteness of athletic departments to the universities of which they are supposed to be a part and not apart.

The University of Arkansas’ Broyles Center was once as open as since retired Athletic Director Frank Broyles’ always open door, but now it is routinely described in comparative “lockdown” by alumni and others who were once accustomed to visiting it.

Just imagine when the UA’s football operations center is completed. The football fortress might be more forbidding than Fort Knox.

Apparently, Joe Paterno and Penn State were ahead of their time.

The iconic head football coach, who was fired Wednesday night along with Penn State President Graham Spanier, had Penn State football in lockdown mode as far back as the 1970s, according to a column by Gene Collier of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Because the NCAA never had cause to come to Happy Valley to ask questions about rules violations, like it has nearly everywhere else, and because Paterno led his teams to more victories than anyone else, “Joe Pa” was canonized.

Now JoePa falls hard.

Turns out he was told in 2002 of Sandusky’s alleged conduct, which was beyond reprehensible. After relaying that to Penn State Athletic Director Tim Curley, who is now on leave and facing perjury charges, Paterno did nothing further. Neither did Curley.

Meanwhile, an alleged child molester continued to roam Penn State with unfettered emeritus access.

And Penn State’s subservience to Paterno State continued.

Before Penn State canceled Paterno’s regular weekly news conference Tuesday morning, its media relations department informed media that only questions related to today’s Penn State-Nebraska game would be addressed.

Former Arkansas Chancellor John White probably would have approved.

As chancellor, White advised Razorbacks coaches: “When you’re asked a question by media, I always give an answer, but try to answer the question you wish they had asked. I just give them the answer to the question I wish they had asked until they sort of go away.”

White never received so much as a public reprimand regarding why disingenuousness should be a public university’s standard operating procedure.

It seems we have become so conditioned to obfuscating and prevaricating from our public officials that we resign ourselves that it’s standard public policy.

It is not only an immoral policy but an incompetent policy.

Just ask Penn State officials how well secrecy and disingenuousness worked for them.