You’ve heard it a million times: A fate worse than death. Welcome to the world of Penn State. And the legacy of the man who built it, Joe Paterno. Technically, the Nittany Lions avoided the death penalty when the NCAA came down on their football program like a ton of bricks for the way Paterno and the school’s top administrators handled the Jerry Sandusky child-sexual abuse scandal.

Their football program did not. Neither did the saintly Paterno’s legacy.

For weeks, I railed against Penn State and Paterno, proclaiming loudly that I did not believe for a minute that JoePa did not know that there was a problem with Sandusky.