A Brief and Obvious Point About The Severity Of The Penn State Penalties

And you'll keep doing that for years...

Anyone who is ready to speak about what will and won't make things better for the victims and their families....

Is filled to the brim with an exceptional amount of brown stuff that you don't want on your clothes.

There's no way to know about how much this hurts, or how much it could ruin people's lives. Some of the children who were abused are probably never going to get over this; others may be totally. The same goes for their loved ones and families, future generations, and so on. That's the lovely thing about soul-shattering breaches of trust; they don't follow a playbook. And it's also why Penn State is so clearly and totally ready to take any punishment without puling, and why their fan base...

Well, those folks need to learn how to do something that no one ever wants to learn how to do. Sit down, be quiet, and accept what's coming. That, or just go find another team to root for.

You see, the penalties for a crime -- and covering up abuse is a crime, in that it enables the next animal -- is as much about deterring others as it is in punishing the current pervs.

And there's always a next one, if there isn't a half-dozen current situations, giving the venality and vulnerability of college football programs.

Because *that* is why Penn State is going to pony up $60 million, lose scholarships for 4 years, be prevented from going to bowl games and more or less become a program that's less prestigious and competitive version of Temple or Pitt or Syracuse -- which is to say, garden variety regional Eastern I-A schools, rather than routine national powerhouses

The next college football program that hides abuses will get the same punishment and more.

The NCAA gave this the full measure to make sure there will not be a next program that hides abuses.

After all, you are Penn State.

And you are an object lesson.