Before we go any further, I want everyone to keep an eye out for the signs a god figure is being created by man: The impression of infallibility, the belief that no one ever has, nor ever will do their job close to as well as them, the thought that a person is bigger than the institution for which they work...and any erection of permanent statues and structures in a living person's honor are all good ways to spot fans that have become truly fanatical and finally have resigned themselves to simply worshipping at the altar of a false god.
If the stories of the myth of Paterno are true, at one point, he was humble enough to worship a God higher than himself. But sometime, while being genuflected to over a five decade span, he began to believe that very few that came before him, if any, were as important as he. His actions, statements and even silence tell the tail to a great extent, but allowing people to raise a statue in his likeness while his lungs still drew breath was probably the greatest sign of his hubris.
But it's pretty obvious how this monster was created. Do a quick search for the statue, and you'll find what I found- photos of posters and notes along with articles still defending a man and a legend that's indefensible.
That's why the NCAA's impending actions are of the utmost importance. Tomorrow, both the NCAA, and possibly the B1G, will announce how they plan to punish this structure that created an outlaw assistant coach, a head coach without a moral or ethical compass or any respect for the law or human decency and high-ranking officials that believed the family was more important than anything else. That family needs to be destroyed. Sadly, through firings, guilty verdicts, resignations and more and more proof of atrocious, repetitive actions and behavior, JoePa still remains a gleaming legend in the minds of tens of thousands...if not more.
The NCAA, nor a conference has ever had to hand down a punishment for something like this...Thank God something like this has never happened before. We're in unchartered, murky, foul, wretched waters. And if the message is sent loudly and clearly enough, hopefully, we'll never have to witness anything like this again.
But those that continue to worship at the altar of Papa Joe clearly are too dense to understand anything but a nuclear winter. A football season in which Beaver Stadium sits cold and silent might finally send the message in a manner that they understand.
