If that blights Joe Paterno's declining years, that's too bad. If that takes a chunk out of the endowment, hold a damn bake sale. If that means that Penn State spends some time being known as the university where a child got raped, that's what happens when you're a university where a child got raped. Any sympathy for this institution went down the drain in the shower room in the Lasch Building. There's nothing that can happen to the university, or to the people sunk up to their eyeballs in this incredible moral quagmire, that's worse than what happened to the children who got raped at Penn State. Good Lord, people, get up off your knees and get over yourselves.

A view of Penn State and big-time college sports so harsh that it makes me feel dirty for following basketball.

Comments

[Andrew Brod]

"It no longer matters if there continues to be a football program at Penn State. It no longer even matters if there continues to be a university there at all. All of these considerations are trivial by comparison to what went on in and around the Penn State football program."

It doesn't matter if there's a university there? I agree with everything else in this column, but this obviously goes too far. Universities have been known to generate important benefits for society. Investigate and punish to the hilt, absolutely. But let's retain the university, shall we?

[sean]

on Enda Kenny's decision to excoriate the catholic church in ireland:

"He did not drop to his knees. He did not ask for a moment of silence. He did not seek "closure" but, rather, he demanded the hard and bitter truth of it, and he demanded it from men steeped in deceit from their purple carpet slippers to their red beanies. Enda Kenny did not look to bind up wounds before they could be cleansed. And that is the only way to talk about what happens after the raping of children."

amen.

[Ishmael]

Not so much following sports as being caught up in the hoopla and sensationalism that is the marketing of sports entertainment.
It is not wrong to value excellence, but it is wrong to worship the athlete, the teams, the coaches, the institutions.

[Bill Yaner]

"The problem can't be solved by prayer or piety". Many would (do) argue that it can, but I think Pierce makes a very bold statement about public piety.

[Billy Jones]

Nuke State College, PA!

Just kidding.

[greensboro transplant]

If Sandusky is guilty, then he should spend the rest of his life in jail and anyone who aided and abetted deserves whatever punishment can be legally imposed.

that said, maybe just maybe, the players who engaged in prayer weren't engaging in public piety. maybe their point was that there is One to be worshiped and it's not the players or the coaches.

Matthew 6:1 says "Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them". I think he'd do well to consider this. This piece doesn't provide any insight. it just seems like a self-righteous rant.