Last Friday -- and don't folks always release unpleasant news on Friday, hopeful it might be overlooked? -- the NCAA announced it was restoring 111 victories to late Penn State football boss Joe Paterno's coaching record. Those wins return him to the top of the all-time major college wins list, with 409.
Those victories, you might also recall, were stripped from Paterno in the wake of the sickening Jerry Sandusky child-sex-abuse scandal after it was revealed that Paterno knew of Sandusky's pedophilia at least as early as 1998 but never did much more than pass off the longtime PSU assistant's horrific behavior to administrative higher-ups.
So NCAA president Mark Emmert, correctly describing that time three years ago as "in all ways, an extraordinary circumstance," went for the Nittany Lions' jugular. He slashed scholarships, banned them from bowl games, fined the school $60 million and erased all those JoePa wins.
And like so much else the NCAA has done under the watch of the clothes-less emperor Emmert, a feeling soon took hold among some that he had wildly overstepped his boundaries. This was certainly a legal issue as it pertained to Sandusky. It screamed for righteous indignation. It begged for strong actions.
But whether it was an NCAA issue remains murky to this day, especially following Friday's news that the NCAA caved to a lawsuit led by Pennsylvania state Senate Majority Leader Jake Corman and state treasurer Robert McCord.
"The NCAA has surrendered," Corman exclaimed in poor taste when the settlement was announced.
Yet that surrender also briefly seemed worth celebrating, not only because of the NCAA's questionable reach in this case, but also because at least one NCAA official has since come forward saying all those penalties that Emmert got Penn State to accept in exchange for the NCAA pulling its threat of the "death penalty" were essentially a "bluff."
Because of that, I'll plead guilty to briefly being among those thrilled with the settlement. Not because I'm necessarily thrilled Paterno got his wins back. I really don't care about that, though I do believe that former Penn State quarterback Matt Senneca made a strong point over the weekend when he said, "They thought they were taking away [Paterno's] wins and hurting him. But in reality, they were taking those wins away from the players and hurting them."
That shouldn't be ignored. No player did anything wrong in this mess. Nor is there any evidence that Penn State ever broke NCAA rules under Paterno's watch. Instead, they were the model program of compliance. Before the scandal broke, Emmert even planned to single out the PSU athletic department for always doing things the right way.
But then ESPN's Keith Olbermann said this Friday, labeling the Sandusky scandal "the most nauseating, the most horrifying, the most indefensible institutionalization of corruption in American sports."
And with that it all came rushing back -- the grand jury testimony from a handful of Sandusky's 10 victims. So nauseating, so horrifying, so indefensible as to cause anyone reading it to grow physically ill and morally outraged.
Or as one anonymous government employee familiar with child sexual abuse told me when asked about the return of those 111 wins: "It seems like they care more about those football games than those (abused) kids."
Bingo.
It's not that the NCAA was inarguably correct to strip Paterno of those victories. Sandusky retired, probably under pressure, in 1998, the year the first mother called the police to report the assistant's abhorrent behavior regarding her young son. Maybe Paterno considered that presumably forced exit punishment enough.
Even a lawyer for one of the victims, Michael Boni, told ESPN following the settlement: "(Paterno) did a world of good."
Yet he quickly added, "He made a huge, huge error in judgment in helping cover up Sandusky's pedophilia, and even posthumously I think that has to be recognized."
It is folly to believe a court settlement with the NCAA will permanently end this. It won't. It can't. Unless we sadly let it.
As James Moore wrote on the Huffington Post website over the weekend: "We can now look forward to the winningest major college football coach in history being a man who turned his head away from child abuse because he didn't want anything to interrupt the glories of his football team."
Maybe that's harsh. After all, Paterno was from a different generation, from a time when such horrors were whispered rather than shouted. He was also a devout Roman Catholic, which meant his perspective came from a church whose track record regarding pedophilia is shameful bordering on despicable.
But pretending to see no evil isn't the same as doing no evil. And Paterno's refusal to admit evil in his midst allowed evil most heinous to flourish in Happy Valley, Pa., for decades.
Erasing those wins probably didn't erase the scars of that evil. Restoring those wins hopefully won't erase the guilt of those who should have done more. If any single good came from the settlement it may have been that the $60 million that was originally supposed to be spread about the country by the NCAA to combat child sexual abuse now will all remain in Pennsylvania for the same mission. The horrors took place there. So should the healing.
But while restoring those 111 wins may be fair to the players who won them, returning the 7-foot, 900-pound statue of Paterno to PSU's football stadium should never happen.
Unless, perhaps, it comes with the inscription: "Joe Paterno -- the man who turned his head away from the most nauseating, the most horrifying, the most indefensible institutionalization of corruption in American sports history."
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com.