"The most saddening findings by the Special Investigative Council is the total and disregard by the most senior leaders at Penn State for the safety and welfare of [Jerry] Sandusky's child victims."
That is why Penn State should be honest about being an institution of integrity and shut down football at the school in, at the very least, 2013.
I'm probably the biggest college football fan you'll find. I believe in the what is [supposed to be anyway] the idea of young men on the field, battling each other for the ideals of high-minded collegiate institutions that are about education and growth. But this scandal gets at the heart of what is wrong with college football. College football, mainly big-time college football, -- which can't even get over its greedy ways to come up with a simple championship format like every other sport -- has gotten so rich, greedy, selfish and insulated in its own cocoon of self-importance that the powers that be who run this national enterprise have now seen what that culture can create - people who think they are above not only the law, but the well-being of people who they don't deem to be very important.
In this case, that means children.
Jerry Sandusky, the former defensive coordinator for the Penn State football team, spent 30 years at the side of head coach Joe Paterno. The two were locked arm and arm as they won and won on the football field over the years. But behind the scenes, behind the winning headlines, Sandusky was hiding a secret life in which he molested children. He raped children. And Joe Paterno, the man who was the picture of college football's high-minded concern with education and dedication to the minds of young people, was in the end helping Sandusky to hide his dark side. A dark side in which he raped children.
"Four of the most powerful people at Pennsylvania State University - President Graham B. Spanier, Senior Vice President - Finance and Business Gary C. Schultz, Athletic Director Timothy M. Curley and Head Football Coach Joseph V. Paterno - failed to protect against a child sexual predator harming children over a decade. These men concealed Sandusky's activities from the Board of Trustees, the University community and authorities."
Penn State's top individuals did nothing to stop a child predator. A man they knew was a child predator. The displayed a "striking lack of empathy" towards these victims because they did nothing. Nothing. Why? Because they did what college football officials think they can always do - sweep things they deem negative and a threat to their image under the rug. No one will ever know.
Except those children.
Football's importance is so out of whack on campuses now, so much so that this sort of thing has happened. The sheer pitiful nature of this shouldn't be too surprising to people. It's the kind of thinking that goes on behind the school-colored walls of the college football world. Maybe not so sickening as this. But damn near close.
And that's what makes this a football issue.
So if Southern Methodist University can get the NCAA's death penalty for having boosters who paid players and did all kinds of things that countered the college football world's high-minded morals, where does this Penn State situation stand? I have an answer.
Penn State shouldn't be playing football this season. It's as simple as that.
(quoted material comes directly from Louis Freeh's report on the Penn State football scandal)
