The Penn State Board of Trustees last night decided to fire both Coach Joe Paterno and President Graham Spanier as the first steps to righting an unbelievable wrong. Board vice chair Joe Surma stated, "The University is much larger than its athletic teams." The press conference to announce the firing of Paterno continually referenced how Penn State will make decisions from a moral perspective. After all, Penn State is supposed to be the morally right institution graduating over 80% of its student athletes. If you truly want to do what is morally right then you forfeit the rest of the season and bowl season. For the last decade the athletic department and school officials knowingly allowed a pedophile to use its facilities as his own devil's playground. For an entire decade Penn State put its football program ahead of the 40 to 100 innocent children that were abused by Jerry Sandusky, who had an office on campus. To knowingly put sexual abuse over college football tradition is the wrong of all wrongs from an institutional standpoint. Now with this Saturday's home game against Nebraska, Penn State will again put football over abuse.
The student athletes that will play in this Saturday's game will be directly affected by the cancellation of the season. But they will get over it. This is a chance for a state university to show the world and its athletes that morals are more important than sport. After all as the Joe Surma put it, " The University is much larger than its athletic teams". Prove it...
