Dumb Penn State Execs Blow It Big Time

President Clinton and Martha Stewart have learned their lesson the hard way. Now, so will Penn State.

The Freeh Report teaches once again the fundamental but often-ignored lesson that the cover-up is worse than the crime. 

The corollary lesson: what passes for intelligence in upper management at institutions and in business, large and small, is actually myopia and utter dearth of good sense. 

Why? Because from a management standpoint, the right way to handle the Sandusky fiasco was plain to see. Let's lay it out. 

Pretend you're a Penn State decision maker. A potential problem is brought to your attention about Jerry Sandusky involving at best inappropriate, and at worst criminal, behavior with young boys on university turf. You huddle up the brain trust; emails fly. What to do? What to do?

It seems you have two primary scenarios.

Sandusky Scenario 1. 

Meet the issue head on. Report it to outside law enforcement. Investigate it immediately, independently. Have a private eye follow Sandusky. Tell him -- and Paterno -- straight up what you're worried about and that you must take it very seriously. Put Sandusky on paid leave, ask him to steer clear of the university for a while. Once you get the slightest credible confirmation of the horror -- easily done, since the landscape was littered with red flags -- you fire him.

You take PR offensive. You announce the firing. You say you have good reason to believe that improper behavior involving young boys may have occurred on campus. You say you are not 100% sure, but must take assertive action to protect any victims and to prevent further episodes, because the health and safety of the boys are paramount. You say that if you're acting in error, you'd rather err on their side. You remind the world that Penn State stands for the highest aspirations in more than academics, in more than athletics. Penn State stands for what's right. 

Based on your credible info, you've taken the risk that Sandusky sues you for wrongful discharge. If he does, and can make it stick in the face of what you've learned, and you have to write him a check for a couple of million, so what? If you have to write a check to support the good work of his foundation until it recovers, so what? 

Under Sundusky Scenario 1, you turn a PR problem into a PR win. You remove a scourge from your watch. You preserve Joe Pa's pristine reputation for posterity. By taking the moral high ground, you get credit, not blame. The finest student athletes in America flock to Penn State in greater numbers than ever. And you've put this sorry incident behind you years earlier.  

OR:

Sandusky Scenario 2.

Your considered wisdom is to minimize the problem and avoid the PR hit. You fudge it, fumble it, punt it. You let Joe Pa drive the car. You even let Sandusky roam free on campus and at Penn State games, practices, and steamy locker rooms, with his innocent quarry in tow. And sometimes pinned against the wall.

You ostrich it.

Years later -- and inevitably, given the pin-head width of your consciously chosen vision -- when the quantum of victims and crimes spilled over all containment, the world now knows that Penn State has consciously done wrong. Your leaders have acted irresponsibly. Dishonestly. Even criminally. 

Joe Pa is no longer a god. He's a co-conspirator.     

You've pissed away the moral high ground. The stain, virtually indelible, will last years and years. Now you've got yourself a PR hit, exponentially worse than than one you first hid from. Do more or fewer parents want their son to play ball for Penn State? 

As Eliot Ness said to Capone, here endeth the lesson.