Being Penn State: The Role of Joe Paterno's Prototypicality in the Sandusky Sex-Abuse Scandal

More than any other man, Mr. Paterno is Penn State – the man who brought the institution national recognition, the man who built a football program based on honor for 46 years, the winningest football coach in Division I history…Paterno is at the core of the university's sense of identity. (Guarino, 2011, November 10)We believe that Alderfer's (2013) intergroup analysis of the Penn State scandal can be enriched by focusing on the special role that Joe Paterno played in the events leading up to the 2010 grand jury that brought the scandal to light outside the university community. On the basis of the social identity theory of leadership (Hogg, 2001), we argue that the community afforded Paterno the trust that he appears to have abused to suppress the scandal because he embodied the norms, values, and goals of Penn State in a way that made him prototypical of the university. By making the broader group category salient, Paterno was able to shape the behavior of representatives of many sub-groups described by Alderfer within the administration, athletics, and community. Coupled with a high degree of institutional ambiguity, Paterno's prototypicality likely enabled him to suppress the “constructive diversity” (p. 123) of checks and balances that should have operated at Penn State. This disruption to effective intergroup processes prohibited necessary oversight over the PSU athletic program and the Second Mile that otherwise might have uncovered Jerry Sandusky's crimes much earlier.