Growing up in the South you learn at an early age that football reigns supreme; especially college football. With the recent scandal that has developed at Penn State University, a storied college football program which was at times praised as the Mecca of standards for all of college football, they have overnight unraveled their own spotless record and cast a dark shadow over all of college football.

For anyone who hasn’t yet heard the news, long-time Penn State assistant coach Jerry Sandusky has been charged with forty counts relating to child molestation. What’s really troubling about this whole situation is that the current charges only came about because of a 2002 incident in which an assistant coach found Sandusky allegedly having intimate relations with a young boy in the Penn Sate shower rooms. Jump back just four years earlier and the story takes a turn for the worst.

In 1998, the State College Police investigated Sandusky when a victim came forward. The State College Police and investigators then interviewed Sandusky and he admitted showering with the boy and hugging him in the shower room while they were both naked. The case was then sent to the Centre County District Attorney’s office where he decided to press no charges against Sandusky.

This coupled with the newest evidence coming in from the case (an email that Mike McQueary, the assistant coach who witnessed the 2002 incident, sent to a friend that says he told the police and his boss about the incident) raises even more questions. The police have also released a statement concerning this email and have stated that they have no record of this ever occurring.  So the question is, what happened!?

Sadly, this type of secretive and contradictory behavior among colleges and universities has become ever more commonplace and is ruining collegiate football as well as other sports. Colleges and universities need to learn that trying to cover up incidents within their schools is only going to ruin their reputations more when the information is finally revealed to the public. Whether it is getting caught in a NCAA academic scandal like Florida State, or something as heinous as what Sandusky has allegedly done, it’s always best to come clean.

There is no single person to blame for the “alleged” cover-up of these crimes committed by Sandusky, mostly because there was a network of people that were willing to compromise their ethical obligations to the abused progeny of their fellow man in order to protect the program. The assistant coach was wrong for only telling Joe Paterno, Paterno was wrong for only telling his bosses and everyone, Paterno’s bosses included, was wrong for not telling the police.

What people tend to forget in these types of situations though is the real story; the victims. These victims’ lives have been devastated by sexual abuse and by the very people that they trusted. This is the real reason why scandals like this help destroy everything that collegiate athletics has worked to instill within the young men and women of America.  College athletics used to stand for sportsmanship, honor, and generally just good moral-fiber. I believe that I speak for everyone here at the Campus Companion, when I say that our hearts go out to all the victims of this tragedy, and that College’s need to do a better job of policing those who wish to further corrupt the sanctity of our fabled teams.

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