Penn State needs to come out from hiding

THE OVERTURNED television van was righted. The chanting kids went home to their dorms, the sting of pepper spray chasing behind. The new football coach held a press conference and an entire university braced for what will be a spectacle of a game tomorrow, an afternoon that will be painted as a wake, or a new beginning, or a gross morality play, depending upon who is doing the painting.

Penn State remains in survival mode, and will for a while. There is more to come and everyone knows it following the firings of university president Graham Spanier and coach Joe Paterno. After the school's failure to deal with former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky, an accused sexual predator in its midst, the internal investigation into who knew what, and when, is as essential as it will be painful. The testimony in the Sandusky case, if it goes to trial, will be heartbreaking.

Still, the school will stabilize at some point. And then what? When it happens, and as the Board of Trustees gathers itself, the most fundamental of questions will need to be asked:

When people within an institution fail so tragically to do the right thing, is it the very existence of the institution that is the issue?

In other words, are big-time athletics the problem?

The answer is no. The explanation why is as varied as an undersized linebacker who is the first kid in his family to get a college degree, or a champion rower who receives a partial scholarship to participate in a sport that would not exist at some universities (along with the partial scholarship) if not for the money printed by the football program.

The problem is not the size of the truly behemoth college-football programs in this country, and it is not the amount of money they generate. That isn't why no one who suspected Sandusky of being a predator, or at least guilty of inappropriate conduct, could bring himself to pick up a telephone and call the police.

Size is not the problem. Wealth is not the problem. If they were, by the same logic, the largest American corporations would need to be dismantled immediately because they would be a potential breeding ground for these kinds of issues, for a culture that protects the most valuable of brands at the expense of all else.

That isn't true, though. The problem at Penn State is not that the football program is too big, but too secret and too centered upon the cult of one man's personality.

That is the issue the Board of Trustees will need to address. Penn State needs to find a way to open its football program to future inspection, and to true oversight from the Board of Trustees.

The days of a public university fighting against the public release of the coach's salary - which they did for years with Paterno - have to end. It was a small thing but it was symbolic of a mindset.

The notion that university trustees and the school president could urge Paterno to retire in 2004 - and be rebuffed without consequences or further action - has to be a thing of the past. No single man can again be allowed such control.

The issue was the oversight. The issue was the secrecy. Some people wonder what it would be like if Paterno and his program had tried to exist in downtown Pittsburgh or Philadelphia - bigger, more accessible media markets than State College. Would it have made a difference? It is impossible to know. But State College's location does not help.

It seems plain now that Penn State itself is going to have to solve this puzzle of isolation. It needs not only to invite scrutiny, however uncomfortable, but also to institutionalize it.

There are plenty of people who do not see the place for big-time athletics on a college campus. They say that, yes, sports can be a unifying force for students and alumni, and successful sports can drive donations to the university that benefit everyone, but that big-time sports aren't worth all of the compromises that need to be made along the way (and to academic integrity, first and foremost).

It is a fair argument, but it is not this argument. It is impossible to defend some of the excesses of college sports, but they have nothing to do with a chain of allegations against a predator that never received the attention they demanded.

Penn State football does not need to become smaller, or less nationally relevant. It needs to open itself up instead. After all of this, the worst thing the school could do would be to hire a new coach and refill the moat.