I know I’m a little late to the party in talking about this particular topic, but I hadn’t quite managed to wrap my head around my thoughts on the subject until recently. The topic, of course, is the Sandusky abuse scandal and subsequent fallout at Penn State. I’ve been following the news reports on it, certainly, and given my geographic origins, I’ve been rather inundated with information and opinion via social networking sites. I found more than a few of these opinion posts troubling, for various reasons. As I’ve done some thinking and discussing, I think I’m starting to get a handle on why.

I grew up in Central Pennsylvania, within an hour or two of Penn State University’s main campus. I was well with the sphere of influence of Penn State football and the cult of personality surrounding Joe Paterno. I knew many a dog named JoPa and many a cat named Nittany, nearly all of which amused their owner’s guests by drinking cheap beer from a bowl (yes, even the cats). I lived in a place where the Sky was blue and white because God was a Penn State fan, and everybody’s two favorite teams were Penn State and whoever was playing Pitt that weekend.

I don’t think I ever met the coach as a kid, but it rather feels like I did, because people in that part of the world look at Joe Paterno like family, like the uncle that made good – Paterno’s triumphs on the field were, for whatever reason, personal victories for people all over the eastern half of the Commonwealth. I’ve often made the observation that people from Central PA don’t exactly ascribe divinity to Joe Paterno, but if Jesus sits at the right hand of the Father in Heaven, then Joe, when he was alive, sat just to the right of Jesus, except on Saturday afternoons in the fall.

Which, I suppose makes the recent news that for years, Paterno, the humble blue-collar coach, mentor, and humanitarian, covered up, or at least looked the other way, while one of his assistant coaches abused over a dozen young boys a bit hard for people to take. While Joe didn’t do the actual diddling, he certainly didn’t do anything constructive to stop it once he found out it was going on. That’s a big failing, and it’s causing a hell of a lot of cognitive dissonance.

A lot of people don’t like to see the objects of love and worship proved not worthy of it. And when such a thing happens, for many people, there’s less mental stress in doubling down on denial than there is in adopting the new facts into their frame of reference.

That’s what a lot of the reaction I saw to the whole package (the allegations, their proving out in the legal system, and the subsequent penalties imposed by various authoritative bodies) looked like to me. There was lots of denial, misdirection, and oddly constructed justifications thrown about, all designed to somehow prove that Sandusky was a “lone gunmen” and that the decades-long pattern of avoidance and cover-up throughout the Penn State football program (including Coach Paterno) on up through the university administration didn’t actually happen, despite all those “facts”.

All these people, with their posts on social networking sites and message boards (and those students who were looking for an excuse to semi-peaceably assemble on campus in support of the coach) were totally invested in their chosen reality, and no manner of smoking gun would convince them that their sky was blue and white for some reason other than the fact that God has granted his special blessing on the Penn State football program, which could not possibly have engaged in such despicable activities.

This divine imagery isn’t accidental on my part – Penn State is rather like a religion in certain parts of the world with certain people; more importantly, it’s a tribal marker (and if you ask Fred at slacktivist, that’s the modern purpose of religion for an increasing number of people). The most vociferous defenders of the infallibility of Penn State have no ties to the university*; they’ve never walked any of the campuses, never sat in a lecture hall, never met Coach Paterno or any of his staff, though through their profession of devotion to Penn State football, they’re marking themselves as part of the “in group”, for so many people, being part of the club is the highest (if often unacknowledged) goal in life.

My discomfort with it comes from the fact that despite being surrounded by that sort of thing, I just don’t understand it, and trying to get myself in that headspace is difficult. I’ve never been one of those people that defines themselves by their affiliations. It’s something I’ll never grok, because I’m just not wired that way. Being witness to that sort of on-the-fly cognitive dissonance live, in real time, is an interesting thing to watch, but it’s alien to who I am and my way of looking at things.

And I guess I’ve always been that way, to some extent. When I was a kid, the fanatical devotion people had to Penn State football was a little weird. As an adult who feels driven to think about these things, it’s gotten even weirder to me.

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*Actual alumni I talked to seem to have a more nuanced view. Understandably, most feel betrayed by the university administration (and the football program – even in their minds, Penn State can’t help but equal football at least in part). One friend took the position that the Penn State “concept” for him isn’t the public face of the university, but rather the four years of memories, experiences and friendships he made there, and he’ll have those regardless of how many conference titles or football wins the NCAA strikes from the record. That’s an interpretation I can get behind.