SHUT -- IT -- DOWN. _N O W_!!!!

The Freeh report came out today about Penn State.

It's as bad as I first thought -- the entire football program and university overlooked child rape in the guise of Our Holy Obsession With Football.

Mark Schlabach of ESPN is calling for at least a three-year Death Penalty.  Specifically, he's calling for the largest sanction ever handed down by the NCAA, and that would out-do SMU's DP from years ago.  "And the Nittany Lions should get hammered more than any other school in NCAA history."

Dan Shaughnessy of the Boston Globe says the university needs to shut down the football program.

Christine Brennan of the USA Today echoes those sentiments.

Jen Floyd Engle of FOX Sports thinks the Death Penalty is the beginning of what should happen.

There is a Facebook page, and has been since the incidents were made public, that wants the program shut down, under the guise of the fact that the university is bigger than the football program.

IS IT?  Really?  In this particular case, is the university bigger than the football program, and should the action not only be taken against the football program, but the university itself, up to and including revocation of accreditation -- which would shut the whole damn campus down!

Consider the findings, according to the ESPN analysis on the subject:

First, "Paterno and others showed "callous and shocking disregard for child victims." "

I am going to quote the first several paragraphs of the ESPN analysis article, because I want to make one simple comment:

ANY PERSON WHO ALLOWS THIS UNIVERSITY TO CONTINUE TO FIELD A FOOTBALL TEAM -- BE THEY UNIVERSITY, SANCTIONING BODY, CONFERENCE, TELEVISION NETWORK, OR SPONSOR -- ACCEPTS THIS CONDUCT.


"One night during the autumn of 2000, a janitor cleaning Penn State's Lasch Football Building observed Jerry Sandusky, then 56 years old, in the showers with a 12-year-old boy pinned to the wall. The janitor saw Sandusky performing oral sex on the boy. Later that night, another janitor saw Sandusky and the same boy in the showers, and later watched the two leaving the locker room holding hands.

The janitors' supervisor asked the men if they wanted to report what they had witnessed to the police.

"No," one janitor said, "they'll get rid of all of us."

"I know [football coach Joe] Paterno has so much power," the other janitor recalled about the incident, "if he wanted to get rid of someone, I would have been gone." He predicted that Penn State's leaders would do everything possible to protect the school's vaunted football program.

"Football runs this university," the janitor said."

If you don't think that open child rape is not grounds for the shutting down of entire athletic programs, if not entire universities, then either you are enabling to the conduct, or you are in the camp that you believe that you cannot sufficient punish Penn State, for doing so would impact people not involved.

Second, "Evidence shows Paterno, Spanier, Schultz and Curley did know of 1998 investigation and Paterno "failed to take any action."

Hence, Paterno commits perjury in front of a grand jury when he said otherwise.

Third, "PSU let Sandusky retire in 1999 "not as a suspected child predator, but as a valued member of the Penn State football legacy," allowing him to groom victims."

And this was largely suspected by Mark Madden back when this was first being reported.  I wonder how he has to feel about all this now.

Fourth, " PSU "concealed critical facts ... to avoid consequences of bad publicity.""

I can understand why, given this.  You're talking no less than the death of the entire football program, if not the University.

Fifth, "Paterno "was an integral part of this active decision to conceal" and his firing was justified"

I begin to wonder if his death is not just a little bit convenient, not unlike the disappearance of the District Attorney who was looking into this (even though a Huffington Post blogger states the police don't think so -- to which I say YEAH and RIGHT).

Remember, "Football runs this University.", and Happy Valley was a college town.

I have had several passionate discussions with friends who do not believe that the Death Penalty can be given on the latter ground, and I have nothing to say to them to dispute their beliefs, and I believe that only those who intelligently come to the conclusion (as those friends have) that you just cannot impose the sufficient penalty without impacting the uninvolved have the right to say that.

God help the rest of you.

God help the rest of you for literally standing by and considering this one of the "good" college programs.

God help the rest of you for what you did to those kids in the name of Our Holy Obsession With Football.

Without the institution of football to give this pedophilic monster absolute reign over these children, literally as altar boys to a priest with Paterno as pope, this doesn't happen.

Our Holy Obsession With Football, and the fraud that it is, raped these children as much as Jerry Sandusky did, and we have no less than Louis Freeh to verify this.

They knew.

They lied.

They raped these kids to give them access to the one and only thing which mattered in Happy Valley, Pennsylvania.

They must pay the ultimate penalty.  I would go so far as removing accreditation.  Shut down the whole damn college.

The janitor said it himself that night he witnessed it:  "Football runs this university."