Penn State in the wake of Jerry Sandusky39s Scandal

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For way too many months now, the Penn State Nittany Lions football program has been under the scrutiny of the NCAA and the nation. Head radical tennis racket is that once the reports flourished and the investigation kept on revealing the school's incompetence to protect children who were been sexually abused in the school campus, Penn State simply became synonymous with everything that is wrong with the win-at-all-cost mentality. At the end of the day, fans, students, graduates, the community build around Penn State and it's stellar football program had to acknowledge that what had happened was a tragedy, that the fact that Jerry Sandusky was able to sexually abuse kids over and over again in a 15-year- period was simply unacceptable. Whether you agree with the severity of the sanctions imposed by the NCAA to Penn State, that's a whole different issue. What nobody could really argue is that if this went along for so long an nobody really did anything to protect those kids, the blame had to go up the latter into the highest hierarchy of the school and it's football program. There is simply no excuse for the lack of action, for the fact that nobody went on to call the police, just because they didn't want to get the wrong kind of attention from the press. And this is why I believe that they did get the punishment they deserved. But this is also why I could understand how meaningful their last week's win over Navy was for Penn State. After all, the Nittany Lions hadn't come off the field with a wince since last Nov. 19 at Ohio State. That was just a few days after aassistant coach Jerry Sandusky was charged with child-sex abuse and the late Joe Paterno was fired. That Nittany Lions new had coach Bill O'Brien was hired in January as Paterno's replacement, but he knew well that the best part was yet to come. It would be very hard to rebuild this team, both mentally and physically. Not only because of the sanctions but because a deep change in the mentality of the team had to be made. Then came July and the NCAA went on to give them some of the harshest penalties we've ever seen in collegiate sports. The school was forced to vacate all its wins since 1998, so technically that 20-14 victory against the Buckeyes didn't even count. The Nittany Lions' last official win was 35-10 against Wisconsin on Nov. 22, 1997. Now the NCAA president Mark Emmert has said that he is really pleased with the way the team has been dealing with the sanctions. "What's not getting attention is the athletic-integrity agreement that Penn State signed and is taking very seriously," he said in a press conference in Detroit this week. "We have Sen. George Mitchell involved in overseeing it, and there is no question of his credentials. That's the part that is going to create serious change in the Penn State culture(...) We're also in the process of collecting the $60 million fine and distributing to groups that work against child sexual abuse." It's hard to say what is it going to take to get a clean slate for Penn State. All we can say is that they have a long uphill way to go.