PENN STATE/SANDUSKY // OLYMPICS: the Medals, to Which Country, to Whom?.

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“SPORTS NOTEBOOK” posts its columns Tuesday and Friday of every week---Ed. & Publ., Marvin Leibstone.  

PENN STATE/SANDUSKY ---  Wherever one travels to, or wherever one decides to stay put, no matter the place, no matter the beauty of the surroundings, no matter the goings on, there will be drive-by windows where persons can buy shame and ruin easily, no return policy. A most recent example of this, and of the worst that could occur in American sports, is the Penn State/Sandusky affair, an affront to all that is civil and right.

Of course, atop the heap of Penn State’s wrongdoings is Sandusky himself, a stark example of violation of the innocent, telling us that Neanderthals are still part of the crowd, that an individual’s forceful control over another for personal gratification is possible within what we like to think are our best institutions for learning and athletic grace.

At one level, an initial response to revelations of Jerry Sandusky’s behavior was, “the guy is Puke.” At another, “the man’s sick, he needs to be taken off the street, but he also needs psychiatric help. His victims need help, too, and they deserve some form of rational reprisal.”

Then responders got around to the question, “How could Sandusky’s awful entrapment and abuse of the young have happened repeatedly?” That’s when we learned (again!) that individuals aware of a wrong, then doing nothing to stop it, empowers the perpetrator of the wrong, inviting the terrible behavior to advance like a fast-spreading cancer.

Starting with Sandusky, signals of what should never be surfaced and spread at Penn State. Suddenly visible were the operative tumors that characterize villainy: unbridled perversion; greed; love of power and its abuse; fear of truth and of loss of opportunity; lack of integrity; desire to preserve institutional reputation at any cost. To some satisfaction, the school’s bad actors have been fired, and other methods of redress will be in the making at Penn State for many months to come.

Important now is that the NCAA not only insists that all other universities and colleges lift curtains where Sandusky-like behavior could occur, or may have occurred, but that mechanisms exist in their environs to prevent any reappearance of a Sandusky and of any shameful cover-ups.

Scary is that the NCAA’s record as creator and enforcer of behavioral stops in sports is not what anyone might characterize as pure and at championship level. The NCAA also needs a lifting of the curtains, along with revitalization of moral purpose that is more than talking the talk.

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OLYMPICS, 2012.   Data from the last four Olympics, and from the several World Games and Grand Slam events held since 2000, plus this year’s Olympic qualifying events, all suggest where the lion’s share of Gold, Silver and Bronze medals will likely be handed to at London, U.K., in coming days. For instance, of the top 10 countries that usually dominate post-event award ceremonies, four are from Asia (China, Japan, South Korea and Australia), and five are from Europe (Great Britain, France, Italy, Germany and Russia).

The only other continent with a country among the top 10 is North America, offering up the United States, currently number one on the top 10 list.

Following the U.S. within the top 10 are China, then Russia.

How to look at the above? We could note that the countries likely to take home the most medals are among the more highly populated, existing within similar longitude/latitude framing. Also, the top three countries have economies, or funding policies, that allow Olympic readiness programs to be state-of-the-art. We could therefore note that a large population from which a greater number of potential Olympic athletes can surface, plus geographical conditions and financial policies, equal Olympiad dominance.

But then, “Where is that dominance?”

The very best athletes at such key Olympic track and field events as the marathon and the modern pentathlon are neither Americans, nor Chinese, nor Russians, and it’s unlikely that neither of the top three medal-winning countries will dominate soccer, tennis (singles), field hockey, men’s volleyball, boxing, judo, the equestrian sports, shooting, nor fencing, archery or rowing. Basketball USA, yes! Swimming USA, (not synchronized swimming), yes! Gymnastics USA, yes! with the Chinese and the Russians not far behind in first tier sports, which have sub-events providing lots of medals.

We shouldn’t be fooled into thinking that the country with the most medals is best of all and the only “victory entity” at the Olympics. The real winner at the Olympics is “diversity.” Kenyans dominating the marathon and a few track events couldn’t care less about how many medals another country accrues, no more than America’s Michael Phelps will care greatly about who takes home Gold and Silver for equestrian or rowing prowess, no more than Basketball USA will care about which national team wins at field hockey.

To be applauded most at the Olympics should be the individual athlete, or team, turning up best, no matter the country of origin.

Not that national pride shouldn’t factor in, it also deserves “Gold.” Rather, national accumulation of medals shouldn’t be all that matters during the Olympics. Let China have ping pong!

Yet this page still wants to shout, “Basketball USA, don’t let us down, come home with shining Gold!”

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