In 1998, police investigated a report that Jerry Sandusky, for many years the defensive coordinator for Penn State's football team, had showered in a Penn State locker room with a boy Sandusky met through his work with the Second Mile Foundation. In 1999, Sandusky resigned as defensive coordinator after learning from Penn State's longtime head coach, Joe Paterno, that he would not be named as Paterno's successor at whatever time the legendary coach decided to retire. Penn State's lessons for leaders of organizations: Identification and application What should be learned from the Penn State fiasco? The list of lessons includes those identified in the paragraphs that follow. The latter group included one whose departure from Penn State must have been especially regrettable to Paterno: his son, Jay,…show more content… Had the child sexual abuse scandal occurred at a school whose football program was less prominent than Penn State's and had the head coach involved in it been less well-known than the iconic Paterno, the public would still have been shocked. Paterno's reputation would have been burnished; he presumably would have remained as the head coach at Penn State for the remainder of his life or until he decided to step down in the normal course of events; the other individuals who lost their Penn State positions would likely have continued to hold them; and the lingering reputational effects for the university would not be present. The previously identified lessons from the Penn State fiasco remain important ones for leaders in other organizations even if it is unlikely that the unwelcome information those leaders acquire will match the Penn State
