Success Without Honor: Cultures of Silence and the Penn State Scandal

On November 5, 2011, Jerry Sandusky, a former defensive coordinator for football at Penn State University, was arrested on charges of abusing 8 boys over a 15-year period. In this paper, I strategically deploy feminist methodological considerations to “give voice” to marginalized groups, Foucault’s concept of discourse and discursive silences, and media framing analysis to interrogate silence as a means by which various forms of power and privilege operate in the scandal. I extend the discussion of silence to engage the critical sport studies’ critique of the “institutional center of sport” and examine what was left outside of the frame in the mainstream news media coverage. These silences within media frames rendered invisible an important critique of the contemporary culture of big time athletic programs. In this way, silence operated to simultaneously reaffirm the institutional power of big time athletic programs and the culture of sport wherein violence is normalized.