So, I'm not sure how big of a story this will be but Penn State's defensive coordinator from their glory years, Jerry Sandusky, was arrested on Friday for being a child predator. Like many of those types of guys, he was involved in a charity that gave him easy access to young boys. In 2002, after he had retired from Penn State but while he still had an office on campus, a graduate assistant saw him taking a shower with one of the young boys from this charity he ran. The GA reported this to Joe Paterno, who reported it to the AD (Tim Curley), who took no action. When asked about that by a grand jury last year, Curley apparently denied having been told about it. Because of that, the AD and the school's VP of finance and business (Gary Schultz) are facing perjury and failure to report charges.

This seems like the kind of thing that should lead to a house cleaning. I wonder if it will. Anyway, this is the reason why any talk about athletic administrators (or, really, anybody involved with the NCAA) being "so respected" or whatever disgusts me so much. Curley supposedly has a great reputation around the NCAA, yet he apparently covers up a sexual assault occurring on campus, in athletic facilities. I should point out that anybody who works with kids is told from the day they are hired that any suspected abuse must, by law, be reported to the police or proper authorities. So, this guy knowingly broke the law in order to avoid a scandal tainting his program's reputation, yet he's supposed to be a moral authority or whatever. And not only that, he totally ignored the danger that this former coach posed to children and allowed him to keep his campus office. And now he's facing criminal charges and everything came out anyway.

Paterno is out. He plans to coach the remainder of the season but there is some talk that the trustees will force him out this week. Will the school president be next?

There are two things I don't get about this case. The first is, why did Sandusky retire in 1999, when he was only in his mid-50's? If his retirement was forced by Paterno and/or the administration because of rumblings of this nature, everybody involved, including Paterno, should be in the penitentiary for allowing him to hang around and not doing anything to try to end his access to children and the university. And second, how did McQueary and Paterno see Sandusky around campus and not question why he was still coming around and not in jail after being caught having sex with a young boy?

And that 2nd question leads to another question- was McQueary's promotion to the regular staff tacitly connected to his not making a bigger deal of this? If the culture of secrecy around the program was such that janitors were afraid to report witnessing abuse because of fear of reprisal and an assistant knew to go to the coach instead of the police, something poisonous was going on at Penn State for a long while before 2002. But let's say McQueary wasn't scared of reprisal but went to Paterno to help him report it to the police because of Paterno's "gravitas". McQueary tells Paterno, Paterno says he'll take care of it and nothing happens. It probably became pretty clear to McQueary what the situation was.