When we’re little kids and we do something horrible – like staining the carpet with grape juice – our first thought is “Don’t tell Mom and Dad.”  Remember the “Brady Bunch” episode where the boys break Carol’s favorite vase while playing basketball in the house?  They clumsily glue it back together and pledge to keep the secret.  Of course they’re found out when Mike brings flowers home, the vase is filled with water and leaks all over the place.  Moral:  You will be found out.

We all like to think we’ve left that mindset behind by the time we cast our first ballot or have our first legal drink.  Certainly we expect we’ll have evolved by the time we start receiving recruitment letters from the AARP.  By then Mom and Dad will most likely be gone and we’ll be full-fledged adults.

Sadly, we don’t all get there – a fact that’s brilliantly demonstrated by the Penn State scandal.

The Penn State story would be pathetic if it weren’t so tragic.  Untold number of at-risk boys sexually abused by local “hero” Jerry Sandusky.  How much slimier can a story actually be?  And while most fingers are pointing at coach Joe Paterno, former president Graham Spanier, VP Gary Schultz and athletic director Tim Curley, these men can count much of the rest of Penn State, the town of State College and the state of Pennsylvania amongst their enablers.  The football culture was and is all-permeating and ultimately poisoning.  Of course that doesn’t absolve the top guys – including the 70+ and AARP-eligible Paterno – who decided to glue the vase back together and hope that no one put water in it.  They deserve whatever they get.

Some say if women were involved in the upper levels of administration at Penn, the outcome would have been different, that the boys’ club culture was the problem.  Maybe.  Women definitely would have had a different perspective on Jerry Sandusky’s actions and a woman might well have dropped a dime on him, but I think that also assumes that women could have risen in the ranks without being drawn into the “football as god” Penn mindset or being subject to the pressure of the community.  I seriously doubt that no women in State College, PA had heard anything about what Sandusky was up to, yet nothing was reported.

I wonder what the response would have been if Sandusky’s crimes had been “more serious” or something that the men of Penn were more comfortable talking about.  What if Sandusky was murdering students rather than raping underprivileged boys?  I expect – I would hope – there would have been no discussion about being “humane” to him before he was turned in.  Murder would obviously have been “serious” and it wouldn’t have pushed their collective homophobia buttons.  I feel relatively certain that any crime that didn’t force them to think about there being a “homo” and a “perv” in their midst would have had a better chance of coming to light.  I’m afraid that they would be less embarrassed to have a Ted Bundy on staff than a Jerry Sandusky.

Think of all those boys who were victimized because a bunch of “grown-ups” thought they’d get in too much trouble if they told the truth and because what was happening was too icky to talk about.  Think about all those boys who were drawn into Sandusky’s web by the trappings of Penn privilege afforded him even after the higher-ups knew what he was doing.  Then again, who were these kids?  No one knew them.  They weren’t really hurt – not really.  They’d probably forget it ever happened.  And they got to the inner sanctum of Penn State Football.  Now that’s something.  And it never would have happened without Jerry Sandusky.  Besides, they were never going to tell anyone.  Kinda makes you sick, doesn’t it?

Not being a big sports fan, I’d never heard of the “death penalty” before now.  Some say Penn deserves it, some say no.  I don’t know that the extreme is warranted; I assume there are good kids in the sports program who shouldn’t be punished because the school was run by idiots and that there are other innocent parties involved.  I don’t think getting rid of Paterno, Spanier, Schultz and Curley, even paying millions in restitution is enough, though.  This is obviously a massive and endemic problem.  Without more severe consequences, all those fans and boosters and staff and administrators will rationalize these crimes and the cover-up away and will soon be right back to their blind support.  You can hear the rumblings whenever someone says it’s sad that Paterno’s career had to end this way.  It didn’t have to end this way.  He ended it this way.  He walked into it with his eyes wide open.  And again, would anyone say that if Sandusky was a serial killer?

If football remains the unquestioned ruler of Penn, it’s only a matter of time until another tragedy is uncovered.  And it will be uncovered – eventually.

Remember:  Someone will always fill the vase with water.