Commentary: Reopen the locker room

The game ended, the doors opened, and we all brought our questions inside. I look out at quizzical faces in classrooms at Penn State as I describe the way things once worked in nearly every college football town.

Those looks remind me that the chance to learn from conversations with players in their dressing-room environment, rather than the antiseptic surroundings of an interview room, has all but gone the way of single-platoon football, typewriters, and Western Union operators.

We entered the Penn State dressing room soon after the 1978 home opener, a nondescript victory over Rutgers that had been the only event standing in the way of a week's worth of anticipation of a game at Ohio State. All anyone in town was thinking about was Ohio State. All we wanted to ask about was Ohio State.

Until a high-pitched voice suddenly pierced the room. "Don't ask about anything except this game," Joe Paterno said. "I've done all the talking about Ohio State."

All righty then. A columnist at the student newspaper, apparently upset that his angle had just vanished, compared the coach of the Nittany Lions with Genghis Khan and Idi Amin.

But that is not the point. We had been able to witness a glimpse of a coach's concern, the first hint of next week's plot. We had learned something about how things work and, by extension, so had all the followers, in the stands at Beaver Stadium and in front of all those television screens, whose interest fuels the football industry.

I was reminded of that moment as a reconstructed university administration confronts the issue of transparency, a factor that will help determine the reputation and credibility of the new Penn State. A coaching staff led by Bill O'Brien has a chance to make a symbolic statement toward that effort. The Nittany Lions can reopen the dressing-room doors.

According to information compiled by the Football Writers Association of America, of the 120 institutions in the Football Bowl Subdivision, six opened their dressing rooms to the media after games during the 2011 season:

Auburn. Georgia. Hawaii. Rutgers. Stanford. UCLA. That's it.