“The most powerful coach in college football” has weighed in on the Jerry Sandusky child abuse scandal. Nick Saban, coach of the Alabama Crimson Tide spoke out about the scandal yesterday, suggesting that an additional tax on ticket sales might be an appropriate part of any resolution for Penn State University.
He didn’t offer specific details about how such a tax might work, simply saying:
Maybe they ought to tax all the tickets that they sell on athletics and give the proceeds to some child abuse organization. Or something like that, rather than worrying about some punishment that is really going to have no positive affect on anything.
So wow.
There is so much wrong with Saban’s suggestion that I almost don’t know where to start. I’ll go with the obvious: tax shouldn’t be used as a punishment. And that’s what Saban is suggesting: a punitive tax on the fans of Penn State University. The fans that weren’t in the room when Sandusky – the real villain in this horrible story – committed his crimes. The fans that weren’t in the room when discussions were had about how to “deal” with Sandusky. The fans that weren’t in the room when the decision was made not to contact the authorities.
And punish them, why? To benefit “some child abuse organization”? The tie-in couldn’t be more tenuous. And to an outsider (like me), it sounds patronizing. It has this feel of throwing money at a problem to make it go away. This is a problem that can’t be solved by throwing money at it. It’s bigger and deeper than that.
Which is perhaps why Saban followed up by saying, “I probably shouldn’t have said that. I’m just a regular old coach.”
Yeah.
Saban is a “regular old coach” who makes $5.3 million per year, making him the highest-paid college coach in the country. As part of his contract, he receives 25 hours of private use of a university airplane, two cars, and a country club membership. Just like you and me.
All snark aside, I’m not going to beat Saban up for being rich (ditching the Dolphins so publicly, maybe).
But I am going to suggest that while he might be a talented football coach, his grasp of tax policy is somewhat lacking. Part of what’s wrong with our tax system is this notion that everything we deem to be bad deserves a tax. That’s why we tax everything from cigarettes to booze to porn.
I think we all agree that what happened at Penn State was bad. More than bad.
But linking it to a tax won’t change what happened. It won’t make the lives of those boys any better.
And shouldn’t that really be the focus? There’s one point on which Saban and I agree. In his statement, he went on to say that the emphasis at Penn State should be on “what do we need to do to make it better.”
I don’t know what that is yet. I look to those wiser than me to come up with a solution. But I do know that beating up an entire community over something they couldn’t control isn’t the answer.
You see, I don’t buy into this notion that fans and alums at Penn State are so blinded by football that they don’t understand what has happened. They are parents and brothers and sisters and kids, too. Trust me, they get it.
The real issue is this: Penn State has to figure out how to move forward from this tragedy. And I don’t mean simply move forward as if it never happened – and that’s what would happen by simply slapping a tax on fans and calling it a day. There has to be a strategy for addressing the terrible things that have come out of this dark chapter in their history and trying to make it right. I would suggest that’s much bigger than football.
(HT to @mpthomas1 for inspiring this post with his tweet.)