Did you feel safer, more secure Sunday morning? Were you at least less distracted?
If so, then Penn State president Rodney Erickson should be commended for achieving his goal by tearing down the statue of Joe Paterno that stood outside Beaver Stadium.
Me? I continue to be disgusted with a university administration that remains more concerned with its appearance than with the actions of a former assistant football coach who, after he left the sideline, was allowed by Penn State to continue to use its facilities to groom his victims.
The verdict on Joe Paterno was delivered not by an impartial jury after an airing of all the evidence, but by a university-commissioned report that seems designed to fulfill one primary goal: protect the college, its trustees and its image, while heaping blame on a select few individuals.
It was just minutes after the Freeh report came out that the folks who had been blaming Paterno since the scandal broke used the former FBI director's conclusion as proof they were right - unless they were all in the advanced class at Evelyn Wood, able to read all 267 pages before sipping their morning coffee.
A more thorough read, as a few non-partisans have begun to notice, supports the fairly strong conclusions that three administration members have a deep hole to climb out of if they expect to clear their names. The same can't be said for the man who is in the ground for good, unable to defend himself from charges that are not quite as well supported by the evidence that is footnoted in the report.
Of course, there is more evidence, things we haven't seen. And maybe somewhere there is absolute proof that Joe Paterno participated in - engineered, even - a cover up. But as far as the Freeh report goes, it's all innuendo - a good prosecutor would at most try to cut a deal on such circumspect evidence, and certainly should not expect to win a case with it.
(Before this goes any further, let me note that the last time I had the audacity to say something about Joe Paterno, I was flooded with hate mail, accusing me of no less than being a supporter of child abuse, if not a molester myself. It wasn't the truth then; it isn't the truth now - but if it makes you feel better, hit send. Just don't expect a reply.)
As we left the State College Spikes game Saturday, my wife - who works with victims of child abuse at a rape crisis center - tried to explain to our young son the difficult situation of why so many people were there to visit a statue at 10 p.m., why the university was considering taking it away, and what the controversy was all about.
The real answer seems more like a magician's trick than a serious debate. You expect Erickson to remind the crowd that the man behind the curtain should be ignored.
But it's not just Penn State: The Big Ten conference already tried to violate its own charter by announcing it would take over the job of hiring and firing coaches, and the NCAA still says it might violate its own rules and impose the organization's "death penalty" against Penn State, which is not on probation - a requirement for such a punishment.
If Tim Curley, Gary Schultz and Graham Spanier are convicted of criminal acts in this case - and at this point there's reason to believe they would be if it went into a courtroom - then Penn State deserves what it gets from the NCAA.
But I think Gov. Tom Corbett, in his conflicting roles as original investigator and Penn State trustee, is far more guilty of perpetuating this matter than the former football coach.
Removing a statue of Jerry Sandusky would make sense. But tearing down Paterno? That comes across like the despotic act of a petty tyrant trying to hide the image of a man people admire more than himself. The fact that it was done in the wee hours of a Sunday morning makes it even more so.
Paterno also rebuilt and enlarged your university's famous academic library, Mr. Erickson - are you going to tear that down next? Or just erase his name off the facade to make yourself look better?
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Jeff Fishbein is sports editor of The Sentinel. Contact him at jfishbein@lewistownsentinel.com.
