I am a Penn State grad. Twice over, actually. I was only there for two and two-thirds school years, a transfer student from a small private school in Pennsylvania, but I was conferred two degrees from The Pennsylvania State University. At the time of my transfer, I considered myself a lucky out-of-stater to be given the nod. In-state or out, undergraduate acceptance into Happy Valley was not easy to obtain. With so many branch campuses to shunt applying students off to, Happy Valley could choose the best of the best.

And State College was idyllic. Set in a lovely valley in rolling Pennsylvania terrain, the town was all about Penn State and the students. The sun shone. The birds sang. The squirrels cavorted from majestic tree to majestic tree. The students went to class, licking ice cream cones from our very own campus creamery. Everyone, students, business owners and townies, rejoiced and celebrated the magnificence of the university.

But where were the best of the best at the one and only Nittany Lion football game I attended? Where were they when the crowd all around me began pushing and pushing, yelling for the stadium door to open? My breath tightened as my anxiety rose, and the air was pushed out of my lungs, so tightly was I being forced against the people in front of me. The stadium doors opened just in time...mere months before a Ohio concert where the timing wasn't so on point, and members of the crowd got crushed to death as the crowd stampeded the entrances.

Where were the best of the best when, during the second quarter, the drunken young spectators in my section started throwing crumpled up paper cups and hitting other people in the crowd? When a brainiac decided to throw a crumpled can instead, and hit a Down's Syndrome teen in the eye? The scratch on her temple began to bleed, and she began to cry. 

I walked out, sick to my stomach.  And angry on that cold windy day in Happy Valley. Yes, I walked out on Jopa—god almighty—Terno and his Penn State team, before half time. I didn't care if the Nittany Lions were about to tackle cancer down there, I could not be part of a scenario that hurts defenseless children.

But apparently I am part of that scenario, once again by association. During my time at Penn State, the years before, and the years after, Football Coach Jerry Sandusky was being given free reign to hurt defenseless children, over and over and over again.

I've been around sports a lot, more than most people, I would wager. My husband is a professional basketball coach. I've been in a lot of back hallways standing outside college and professional teams' locker rooms. I've watched to what lengths people will go to to bow down to a winning college coach. I've stood astounded at the NBA owners' groups busting into the locker rooms after the game—wives, teenagers, young children. And I've seen these male athletes, incredible specimens of human prowess, close up and personal many times over. One would have to be dead not to be aware of the malstrom of power and sexuality that surrounds these elite players and their leaders, the oxygen that feeds this flaming obsession with athletes and sports. And yet, despite all I've seen, I can not get my head around what happened at Penn State. Coaches, university officials, and university staffers knew one of their own was sexually abusing young boys in the shower in the football locker room, AND THEY DIDN'T STOP IT!

Joe Paterno has uncovered himself as a complete, and dangerous, fraud. He has tarnished Happy Valley for hundreds of thousands of graduates. Standing at the powerful helm of the biggest thing going in Happy Valley, why did Jopa not step forward and get his very sick, sick assistant coach some help? That would have made him a real hero. He could have saved the future victims of Sandusky's twisted affections from having their own lives ruined. And he would have preserved the intergrity that I thought was part of the valley I lived in, and the academic institution I attended, for the better part of three years of my life.

And where are the best of the best now?  Apparently some of them think Joe should  be coaching his team out there on the field, if the news reports are true.  That Joe got a raw deal.

Penn State Proud? I'm Penn State Mortified.