Paterno and company behaved shamefully and likely criminally. There is little doubt of that. What I don’t understand is the calls to end football at Penn State and the sentiment that Penn State be “nuked”, “burned to the ground” and all of that. Using that logic every Pope, Priest, Nun, and Catholic Church should suffer the same fate. THOUSANDS of children have been raped and victimized by leaders of the Catholic Church. It has been proven, over and over again, that the Church hierarchy, at the very highest levels, knew about the rape and abuse and DID NOTHING to stop it. In fact, worse than Penn State, the Catholic Church, for DECADES, did everything they could to cover this up. Try to comprehend the Church coddled and enabled HUNDREDS of “Sandusky’s” moving the pedophile Priests to fresh hunting grounds whenever their abuse became an issue in a particular Parrish. What is the greater scandal?
Part of the difference is that Penn State is run by the STATE of Pennsylvania. In other words, payment to this organization is not voluntary for the people of PA, or, to the extent that Penn State gets federal funds, for any Americans.
Anyone can stop, or never start, funding the Catholic Church. In a just world, people would also not be forced to fund Penn State. In other words, the University should have it’s government funding eliminated over these events. That would likely lead to Penn’s shutdown, or at least to a major shrinkage.
In this world, on the other hand, the fact that Penn State and it’s football program are government programs means that they are eternal. People, mainly in PA, but also from elsewhere, will have to pay their own money every year to keep a pedophilia-sponsoring organization running. That’s one of the many offensive things about this whole story. Calls to shut down Penn State are, in my opinion, at least partly a reasonable, if ultimately futile, protest against being forced to fund this organization.
Because college head football coaches enjoy god like status in their communities and all of them should be put on notice that if you look the other way or just pay lip service to a severe problem in your program you and your program will be taken down.
Second the insiders at Penn State knew what was going on and they had the benefit to see what happens when it is handled badly (aka the catholic church) and they chose to cover it up anyway.
If Penn state does not deserved to be Nuked for this scandal then what exactly would a football program have to do to deserve to be nuked?
Penn state football needs to go away for a while and if I were a student there I would be looking for a new school whether I was a football player or not.