Jerry Sandusky Scandal Bigger Than Penn State, Joe Paterno

I was as stunned as anyone when I saw the "Breaking News" tag scrolling the information at the bottom of my television screen Saturday morning. "Penn State AD Tim Curley, other administrator, charged with perjury in connection with sexual abuse case involving former Penn State assistant coach Jerry Sandusky."

I am basically a black-and-white guy who has learned to live in a world that is, for the most part, varying shades of gray. There are axioms I have found to be true more often than not and I take refuge in those axioms as I try to make sense of things that simply don't make sense.

Two of those dictums might appear to be in conflict with each other in this situation, but they really aren't. The first is simply that the cover-up is worse than the crime. The second is that there are always exceptions to every rule.

Whatever happened at Penn State that precipitated a nine-year gap between the reporting of an alleged sexual assault involving Sandusky and a young boy in a shower inside the Nittany Lions' football facility in 2002 and Sandusky's indictment and arrest in 2011 can't be called anything but a cover-up.

In fact, it is a cover-up that—from the outside looking in—appears to rival that of the Catholic Church's reassignment of problem priests for so many decades amid allegations of sexual abuse.

In 2002, Sandusky had his locker room keys taken away and was told not to bring children from the Second Mile program to Penn State. He used to hold football camps and other activities as part of his work with The Second Mile, a foundation Sandusky founded in 1977 ostensibly to help at-risk kids. Now, however, it appears the foundation enabled Sandusky to help himself to at-risk children.

However, Sandusky was using facilities on other Penn State satellite campuses as recently as last week, when he was seen working out at the Lasch Football Building.

Again, it's pretty easy to see there was an effort by officials at the university to sweep this Sandusky stuff as far under the rug as possible.

But let's be clear: The cover-up in this case is in no way, shape or form worse than the crime being alleged. Morally repugnant? Yes. Ethically bankrupt? Absolutely. But not worse than what Sandusky is accused of doing to at least eight of the at-risk children his foundation was supposed to be helping.

Fans of the football program are torn between their loyalty to its iconic coach, Joe Paterno, and the moral corruption of what allegedly took place both in the program's training facility and later among its administrators.

For starters, I do find it interesting that this story broke on a Saturday morning, on a day when the Nittany Lions weren't playing.

It also broke a week after Paterno broke a tie with Eddie Robinson for the most wins by a Division I football coach, when Penn State beat Illinois to give Paterno 409 career victories.

Since Paterno appears to be free of any criminal wrongdoing, is it possible that authorities in Pennsylvania opted to sit on the indictment and arrest warrant until Paterno could have what is likely his last big day in the sun?

Realistically, I was skeptical that Paterno would come back to coach in 2012. He passed Robinson. There is no way that, at the age of 85, he will ever run down St. John's (Minn.) coaching legend John Gagliardi, who has won 483 games at the Division III level.

But the allegations against Sandusky, who retired as an assistant coach at Penn State in 1999, are going to stick to the Nittany Lion program, at least for awhile. They will also stick to Paterno.

The allegations will stick because while the cover-up in this case is not worse than the crime, it's unfathomably awful just the same.