I remember back when I was on my school’s football team, there was this fellow who played defensive tackle on the varsity team, and he was excellent at what he did. He was a ruthless mechanism of male bravado, penetrating through the offensive line like a single man wrecking crew and torpedoing the ball-carrier.

He was also a sad excuse for a young adult. I recall him having the most aggressive sexual discussions on the field and bringing a police baton to school. He was frequently written up for some form of aggressive misconduct or underage drinking and was, overall, a crude, repugnant person. So when it came time for the coaches to reprimand his behavior, did they boot him from the team? No. Rather, he was given a small slap on the wrist and even allowed the honor, after being expelled, to attend my school’s mock Excellence in Sports Performance Yearly award ceremony to receive his Best Defensive Lineman award. The way he was praised was like watching Napoleon being greeted after returning from exile.

As someone who is familiar with football culture, what happened in Steubenville and the rape of the young woman at the hands of Trent Mays and Ma’Lik Richmond is not mind-boggling to me. The least shocking part of the case is the allegations of a cover-up wit-hin the community and among the coaches to protect the players. These were football stars of a state champion high school team in a small town in the middle of the Rust Belt, so they were icons.

The football team is seen as a source of pride in Steubenville  as it was where I grew up in Texas. Some small towns actually place the name of the football team on their water tower, as if to encapsulate their whole identity in a group of adolescents. What with pep rallies, large stadium games, rankings and even an ESPN spot dedicated to high school football, it does not take a wide stretch of imagination to see why the people of Steubenville are so desperate to keep faith in the sanctity of their sport and its heroes.

Therein lies the issue. Rumors that the head coach, Reno Saccoccia, knew about the rape and decided to let the other coaches “take care of it” have spread. Of course he does not care about the rape — in the eyes of the community, the sanctity of their football team is far more important than the sanctity of a young woman’s body. This is because the town’s pride and dignity are invested in what are essentially the accomplishments of foolish children. But you cannot invest a community in a silly little game because then you become accessories to their moral decisions — the moral decisions of misguided boys raised in macho, patriarchal societies with no regard for accountability.

Nikolas Reda-Castelao is a contributing writer. Email him at [email protected]