Print - In the Ruins of a Blue and White Empire - Esquire:
The high school on his shirt is his old high school, the one he transferred out of when too many people in this small town told too many other people what they'd heard about the runner. He still runs for his old high school, but he never again wants to walk its halls.
Faggot.
It's your fault JoePa's gone.
The adults, the school administrators, well, they weren't as rough as the kids. Not quite. They didn't drop epithets or invoke gods, at least. But they didn't bend over backward to help him, to support him. It was a small-town school, with a small-town football team, but for several years it had been basking in the voluntary coaching assistance of Jerry Sandusky, a hero descended from the Penn State pantheon, a man so great people had once even thought he would eventually take over for Joe. It's hard to lose the attentions of a great man, and perhaps that's why, when the runner came forward four years ago to tell his story, to put an end to it, according to his mom, one of the top administrators at his high school had a quick and devastating retort.
"Jerry has a heart of gold."
As the scandal exploded, as its impact expanded, the news that the runner was Victim 1 spread on the unstoppable breeze of rumor.
Let's spread another rumor here.
Let's say that it's rumored that before the runner left his old high school behind, he visited a different administrator's office on a matter unrelated to the scandal.
He visited to complain about the dismissal of an assistant track coach, an assistant coach who had clashed with the head coach, but whom the runner and all the other members of the team admired.
"What," the school official replied, "are you sleeping with him, too?"