By Kevin Foley
JoePa knew all along. So did the Penn State administration. There can be only one penalty for its football program now.
Death.
Jerry Sandusky was allowed to commit his sick crimes against children while head coach Joe Paterno waved off investigators, according to the blistering report delivered by independent investigators led by former FBI Director Louis Freeh.
Forget the national championships, Paterno's sterling legend or the college’s academic excellence. This is the horrific legacy that will overshadow Penn State and its football program for decades to come.
Paterno's heir apparent sodomized helpless little boys in the Penn State locker room and the people who employed him knew it and did nothing to stop him.
There must be a consequence for such institutional depravity.
When you deliberately enable a pedophile's crimes, when you cover up and lie to investigators, when at-risk children are savagely violated, their lives destroyed by a monster you aided and abetted, the punishment can't be too severe and it can't come swiftly enough.
The NCAA should deal Penn State the same "death penalty" Southern Methodist University received in 1987 for crimes far less nefarious than facilitating a pedophile's decades-long rampage. The NCAA must shut down Penn State football and cancel the upcoming football schedule, as the it did in SMU's case.
Penn State must feel real pain over this disgraceful episode. The institution should not be permitted to continue on as though nothing happened, allowed to earn income from its football program and recruit players.
The Penn State faithful will surely howl, but that's just too damn bad. These were your coaches and your administrators who decided the safety of children was secondary to your institution's image.
And, no, there should never be a street or anything else named after Joe Paterno in State College, Pa.
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Kevin
Foley is president of KEF
Media Associates, an Atlanta-based producer and distributor
of sponsored news content to television and radio media. |