Rick Pedone: Yes, but a compromise is acceptable

Rick Pedone
Sports Editor

Penn State football has to go away.
Maybe not completely.
Not forever.
But, for sure, soon.
As a Pennsylvania native, I have friends and relatives who went to PSU, some who are still enrolled there.
So, it’s not easy to call for penalties against the once-great program.
But all the pride and perks of being a PSU student, fan, faculty member, alumnus ­– and they are largely deserved – pale next to what happened on that campus over the past decade and a half.
You know the details. Child molester Jerry Sandusky, the former PSU assistant coach, was the catalyst of a great football program’s demise, but the mind-boggling administrative conspiracy headed by legendary coach Joe Paterno to hide Sandusky’s villainous deeds from law enforcement, according to the Freeh Report, are what buries the program.
And buried, it is.
Penn State will take the field 12 times this season and all that most with a conscience are going to see is 11 Jerry Sanduskys.
The PSU players could be exposed to ridicule they don’t deserve.
If this happened at any other university, with the exception of Notre Dame, maybe, somehow, we could eventually look past the nightmare that occurred in the campus showers and focus on football. Maybe.
But Penn State and Joe Pa were elevated above the sleaziness that permeates big-time college football. It was Happy Valley, the football equivalent of the Land of Oz.
Of course, it was never true. The Nittany Lions had plenty of screw ups, like all top-tier football programs do, but we skipped past those problems because of the icon that Paterno became over six decades at Penn State.
Darn it, we loved the guy: the thick black glasses, the amazing shock of slicked back hair, the black – always black – athletic shoes.
He was college football’s greatest winner; its greatest ambassador.
We saw the library he donated $4 million to, we approved of the impressive graduation rate of his players and we chuckled about Peachy Paterno ice cream.
Penn State, we thought, was above the cheating and lying that goes on at other places; with Joe Pa as the guiding force, PSU seemed as pure as the team’s plain white and blue uniforms that harken back to the 1940s.
Really, do you want to see those uniforms right now? Do you need to be reminded of the illusion they have been for so long?
It’s not fair to the PSU players to lose their team, but there are other teams. When companies go bankrupt and close, the employees lose their jobs. That’s not fair, either.
But, a compromise is acceptable.
Maybe an entire season doesn’t need to be lost.
Next year, take away the out-of-conference games that Penn State profits from. Surrounding businesses will be hurt by canceled home games, but they will have a year to prepare.
That still gives the Lions and their fans a Big Ten Conference schedule of games. If they win the conference championship, let them go to a bowl game. Success under such adversity deserves to be rewarded.
The proceeds from a bowl game must go to a greater cause than the Big Ten coffers and the Nittany Lions’ athletic department. It wouldn’t be hard to find a suitable recipient for those funds.
Meanwhile, get rid of that statue of Paterno outside Beaver Stadium. It stands as a biting mockery of what it was intended to be.
On a side note, perhaps there is a lesson here for drooling administrators and fans who feel compelled to reward every championship-winning coach or player with a statue.
What is the rush to memorialize these people? Wait for their life journey to culminate before deciding whether to immortalize them.
As we have painfully learned, so very few are worthy.