You miss the point. “The program” isn’t the problem. Never said it was. The problem was that nothing in central Pennsylvania was more important than “the program”. The football team ran that school. Paterno himself intimidated school officials over threatened discipline of players, lest they miss a game or bring bad press to “the program”, demanding that only HE be able to decide how to punish “his players”. OH, you mean college students that had to go through the normal discipline process? NO, JOE PATERNO’S FOOTBALL PLAYERS. Never, ever to be confused with Penn State college students. And therein lies the entire problem.
Football needs to be entirely ancillary to the process of education. At Penn State, the learning institution was there to serve the football program. It’s the same story at Notre Dame as well. That program killed an employe an they only had to pay a 40 thousand dollar fine and the case was over and done with.