Do you believe in human sacrifice? Do you believe that for the greater common good some children can be tortured? Do you believe that if hundreds of young adults are taught solid values and helped to become solid human beings it's okay to so traumatize some other children such that they will be haunted their entire lives, some unable ever to experience healthy relationships, some destined to spiral through various forms of self-destruction? Is there a percentage? How many children are worth sacrificing for how many young adults to be given special opportunities?
ESPN's Ivan Maisel:
The Sandusky case has rubbed raw all of us who have children, or once were children. Paterno, the most powerful man on campus, is one more person who looked and did not see, who listened and failed to hear. He told the Post this month what he said in November. He wished he had done more. It is ineffably sad.
But it should not cancel all that came before it. It should zero out neither Paterno's six decades of achievement at Penn State nor his lifetime of leadership and beneficence at the university.
Paterno did a lot of good for a lot of people. But one cannot separate the good from the heinous. If one is attempting to weigh the man's legacy one must put all factors on the scale. Six decades of achievement against innocent children tortured and traumatized.
The Sandusky scandal has revealed that Joe Paterno missed in real time what may be seen so plainly in hindsight. The scandal has cast a shadow over a brilliant coaching life. But even the darkest of eclipses are temporary. To say that this scandal should obscure all that came before it ignores the meaning of legacy.
Paterno is dead. Those who loved him and cared for him will process his legacy as do all friends and loved ones of people who are complicit in enabling horrors. But we as a society have to look at the larger picture, and that leads to exactly one question: if we were told ahead of time that innocent children would be tortured and their lives traumatized so that hundreds of young men would experience leadership and beneficence, would we make that deal? Because that is the deal Maisel and people like him are asking us to make.
This is not about Joe Paterno and football. This is about innocent children. This is about our values. This is about us.