The author is a former reporter for the Detroit Free Press and The New York Times.
By Joe Lapointe
So what’s next for Matt Patricia, the embattled new head football coach of the Detroit Lions?
Matt Patricia at Thursday's press conference.
Absent no new statements or evidence, he may survive the 22-year-old allegation of sexual assault against him and a teammate when both were RPI college football players in 1996 on spring break in Texas.
But that was before the current #MeToo era in which male sexual aggression – some of it from long ago – is being exposed in an evolved mindset as a criminal and fire-able offense.
The woman who made the accusation against Patricia chose not to testify in a 1997 prosecution because, she said, she didn’t want to suffer the stress of a public confrontation against two men who, she told police, burst into her hotel room and took turns.
But what if that Indiana woman – now in her 40s – chooses to speak up now, like so many alleged victims of Hollywood film producer Harvey Weinstein, television star Bill Cosby, President Donald Trump and journalists like Matt Lauer, Bill O’Reilly and Charlie Rose?
She couldn’t force a prosecution – the statute of limitations prevents that – but she could embarrass the coach and his employers and force a hard choice for this often-flailing franchise. Should she speak, the next shoe to drop in the Patricia case could be a boot that punts the Lions’ deflated reputation both sideways and out of bounds.
Duke Lacrosse Allegations
Before you blame the media, allow me to reflect on two very different cases involving accusations of sexual offense in sports and the journalists who reported them.
A decade ago, I worked in the sports department of the New York Times, a news organization that tries very hard to get things right the first time. An exotic dancer in North Carolina accused three Duke lacrosse players of gang rape.
The case had many “hooks” of an intriguing story, especially from a progressive point of view. The accuser was female, African-American and a working-class single mother. The accused were male, white and from privileged backgrounds. The district attorney backed the accuser.
At the Times, a sports columnist and deputy sports editor – both female – quickly made up their minds that the players were guilty and the coverage reflected it.
But when the accuser’s story fell apart – her claims didn’t check out, there wasn’t any evidence – the Times was among the last major national news organizations to acknowledge that they’d been gullible and had been duped by a delusional accuser and a politically ambitious prosecutor.
Never Assume
Since then, I’ve tried to teach lessons from this to journalism students by twisting an old cliché. When there’s smoke, there’s smoke. Just smoke. Don’t report “fire” unless you know there is fire.
And check out the “smoke,” too. It might be hot steam, cool fog or just dry dust swirling in the wind. Or maybe just smoke.
Conversely, journalists can miss major sex scandals hidden in plain sight. In the early 2000s, I covered Penn State football for the Times and greatly enjoyed it. Coach Joe Paterno was in the last, good stretch of a long, great career. College football in Pennsylvania’s Happy Valley is a first-rate experience.
By this time -- he was in his middle-70s – Paterno had turned a little cranky, sort of in his Fred Sanford phase. But, like Michigan’s Bo Schembechler, he could pour on the kind of charm that let sports reporters write flattering stories about Paterno’s football savvy, his intellect, his sense of humor and his high-minded ideals.
“Giuseppe!” he called to me one day as he invited me into his office. “We Italians gotta stick together!”
Blindsided
It didn’t seem like a good time to tell the coach that “Lapointe” is a French-Canadian name. Joe Paterno was my paisan! A Catholic man from the Latin Mass era, he reminded me of the kind of guy I grew up liking and trusting in our parish -- that sort of coach, scoutmaster or priest.
So Paterno was the last person I would have imagined covering up a scandal about one of his former assistant coaches, Jerry Sandusky, raping young boys in the football shower room and elsewhere. Some of it took place while I covered the team.
I’d never thought to ask Paterno, “By the way, Joe, is there any rape going on in your building?” And Paterno covered it up the way the bishops did with the priests in the Catholic church scandal at about the same time.
I’d stopped covering the Nittany Lions in the middle of the decade, but I read all the early Sandusky stories with incredulity when they broke in 2011.
At first, I thought, they’ll never fire Paterno, then 85. They’ll let him step down with dignity at the end of the season. And then I read more, about how Paterno knew about the Sandusky allegations but reported them only within the university hierarchy and not to the cops.
Toppling a Symbol
Not only will they fire him, I thought then, but they’d better take down that Paterno statue outside the stadium before someone does a Saddam Hussein number on it.
Another recent sports scandal, closer to home, is the serial molestation of gymnasts by Michigan State doctor Larry Nassar. How many more might there be?
Sports – which are based on youth, fitness and physicality – might logically be a tempting field for sex predators. And we train athletes in competition to use physical force to get what they want.
In his measured response to The Detroit News scoop about him, Patricia portrayed himself as a victim of those “trying to damage my character and credibility.”
Maybe so. But, if so, who? And why? There must be at least two sides to this dispute about what “she said / they said.”
If the accuser keeps quiet, this case may fade. But if she speaks up, this might get much worse for the Lions and their coach.
