Penn State: The Wins Debate

The NCAA announced that the 112 wins vacated by Penn State in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky Scandal are to be restored making the late Joe Paterno again the winning-est head football coach of all time with 409 victories. The stripping of the 112 wins pitted the sports world on two sides of a divide. Either the NCAA was justified in stripping the wins of a program and coach that valued football  over the well being and care of the children or the NCAA was mistaken for stripping the wins of hundreds of players who had no knowledge of the events going on behind the scenes in their own facilities.

Frankly the restoration of the wins only opens the debate and the rage of the scandal but the vacating of wins in the first place was not practical. No illegal competitive advantage was afforded Penn State, therefore by that logic Penn State should not have to void any wins that occurred on the football field. But this is all the about the players. While the players had no knowledge of any of the utterly evil and despicable acts of Jerry Sandusky, they cannot be punished; it'd be equivalent to punishing the child for the father's transgressions. 112 wins stripped of the hundreds of players who played during those games is rather a blemish on the NCAA. The players fought hard for those victories and not one of them had a clue of the atrocities occurring in their own showers. However, football staff did know about the acts of Jerry Sandusky and failed to report such incidents. Paterno himself knew of such incidents and failed to do much about them.

The negligence and incompetence at the top of Penn State football should speak volumes to Americans when it comes to sports and moral conviction. Not only did staff at Penn State fail to protect children from Sandusky, they simply cast it off as "not a Penn State issue." Perhaps they had "better" things to worry about; like winning a Big Ten game. In the grand scheme of things winning football games does not matter. This a sport after all. However, this problem is not on all of Penn State. It falls on men at the top of Penn State who failed to take any action whatsoever. A few "good" men had their their reputations tarnished and with good reason. Not only is not taking action against a man who endangered the well being of children inexcusable it's borderline evil. Taking away the wins was an empty effort that put the blame on all who went to Penn State, when under further examination it was the men placed in charge of the institution who are to be blamed. Paterno was a hell of  a coach who did everything right except one thing. This one thing happens to outweigh and right or wrong will outweigh all the things Paterno has accomplished because of swift action by the NCAA. Maybe he was a man who got caught up in the glory of football. His record for most wins shouldn't have been taken from him, this wasn't a matter of football, it was a matter of morals. Morals were forgotten here, it's not a Penn State culture problem, it's a Penn State leadership problem. Paterno failed here and those wins should come with an asterisk. He did everything right on the field, he didn't off.