Don McPherson got to know Bernie Fine well as a member of the Syracuse athletics family. But McPherson, the former SU quarterback who has spent more than 20 years speaking out against social issues such as sexual abuse, said his thoughts are a little jaded. 

McPherson said his viewpoint is clouded by the fact that he is familiar with the issues being brought up.

‘It’s not a matter of being surprised, it’s a matter of being saddened by it. … This isn’t a normal case because it’s Bernie Fine, and it’s attached to a major national media story,’ McPherson said.

McPherson played for Syracuse from 1983-87, starting at quarterback for the Orangemen in his final three seasons. In 1987, he won the Maxwell Award as the college football player of the year and finished second in the Heisman Trophy voting.

In his post-football career, McPherson has devoted himself to help boost awareness on critical social issues. He said he’s been traveling the country during the past couple of weeks since the news broke about Pennsylvania State University’s child sex abuse case. 

After the Penn State scandal, McPherson said he isn’t shocked, but he’s withholding judgment on the case. He said people should be careful to listen for facts and not speculation. 

He knows Fine, but said Bobby Davis and Mike Lang, the two former ball boys making the molestation accusations against Fine should be heard, respected and trusted because they have made serious claims.

‘Unfortunately, now Bernie’s name is going to forever be linked to a sex abuse accusation,’ McPherson said. ‘And again, if he’s innocent of that, it’s a tragedy. And if he’s guilty of that, it’s a bigger tragedy. So there’s nothing good out of this story.’

Like with Penn State, McPherson said the general public only looks into these uncomfortable issues when they come up against other things that it cares about. Child sexual abuse is an issue that is always around, but the conversations are happening more because it’s affecting sports.

McPherson said conversations about preventing child sex abuse have to continue after these events go away to stop them from happening.

‘They become news stories and they survive a news cycle and then we tend not to have the real hard conversations, the difficult conversations that lead toward prevention,’ McPherson said. ‘And that’s, unfortunately as long as we’re talking about Penn State University and Syracuse University as the stories behind this behavior, and not sexual abuse and why it happens and how we can recognize it, how we can help kids.

‘As long as we talk about Jerry Sandusky as a monster and not as a human being who we need to really understand and help other people understand how to protect themselves, then it’s going to continue to happen.’

mcooperj@syr.edu

Published on November 21, 2011 at 12:00 pm

Contact Mark: mcooperj@syr.edu | @mark_cooperjr