Penn State Scandal: Should President Obama Step In to Discipline Penn State?

With so much media coverage swirling around Jerry Sandusky’s indictment and the resultant fallout at Penn State, it’s only natural that the nation’s highest-ranking sports fan would be asked to weigh in. At a press briefing yesterday, though, President Obama (through press secretary Jay Carney) kept the focus where it belongs.

“The president’s thoughts and prayers,” Carney stated (as reported by the Washington Post), “and all our thoughts and prayers, are with the victims of the abuse and the family members of those victims.” Carney added that Obama feels “that if the allegations…prove true, what happened is outrageous.”

The president’s sentiments are hard to argue with. Given the high visibility of the case, he had little choice but to comment on the situation. Commenting, however, is as involved as Obama needs to get with this particular scandal.

Jerry Sandusky’s alleged crimes—and Penn State’s handling (or mishandling) of them—are a matter for the courts to deal with and they are already in the process of doing so. What happened to the abuse victims is horrific, but that doesn’t automatically bring it under the president’s purview.

Fox Sports' Jason Whitlock disagrees, arguing that Obama should personally order a federal investigation into what went on at Penn State. Although Whitlock's skepticism of the university's internal inquiry is understandable, he gives too much credit to the idea that the criminal courts will kowtow to Joe Paterno or Penn State.

The very notoriety that has made this case worthy of presidential attention in the first place has also made direct federal intervention unnecessary. No one involved with the investigation can reasonably expect to get away with shielding the school or football team at this point, even if they were so inclined.

Imagine, in contrast, how this story would be playing out if Sandusky had been connected to PSU through academics instead of the football team. The apparent cover-up that led to the university firing president Graham Spanier would have been national news for a couple of days, and then everything would have faded away.

After all, it’s hard to picture Penn State’s (or any other university’s) students coming to the defense of a professor in such numbers and so vocally as some of them did to support Joe Paterno.

The fact that interest in the story is artificially magnified by the connection to sports isn’t entirely a bad thing—all the scrutiny does seem likely to improve the chances of justice being served for the victims and their families. At the same time, though, it doesn’t change the nature of the crime to make it into something that warrants the president getting involved directly.

Penn State needs to clean house, and that process appears to be going forward (if not as fast as it should have done). If the university investigation or the criminal case against Sandusky uncovers anything further that warrants federal involvement, Obama would certainly be able to act on it at that time. 

Given the way the case now stands, however, personal intervention by the president would be unnecessary.