Penn State Scandal: Why PSU's Days as Football Powerhouse Are Over

The stench of the Jerry Sandusky scandal is still wafting in the air. The fumes will continue to hang over Happy Valley for centuries, essentially killing this proud program. 

On Wednesday night, we found out that the Penn State program would be changing powerful personnel immediately. 

The board of trustees dismissed President Graham Spanier and head coach Joe Paterno. That bomb will resonate long into the winter and beyond. 

In regards to winning and legacy, those are luxuries that Penn State may be without and will have to leave as secondary priorities. That fact makes football productivity all the more problematic. 

It is hard to continue the long and storied tradition of winning. Ask Notre Dame how difficult it is to run a clean program and continue to win titles decade after decade. 

That already arduous task of maintaining prestige and pedigree just got all the more difficult for whoever coaches the Penn State Nittany Lions next. 

The first thing to consider is that Penn State lost every last ounce of mystique it once had. This was a honorable program that was lauded by the entire nation for running what looked like the perfect organization. 

How wrong we all were. 

It will take the next athletic director and head coach years to restore the trust that was given over so freely. This will of course hurt recruiting and the hunt for a coaching staff. 

Unless a top-tier head coach is hired, it will be hard to convince crucial assistants to come to a program that has now been dragged through the mud and will be subjected to ongoing investigations for quite some time. 

The department of education will investigate, and so will the board. For months this campus will be ground zero for the biggest scandal in college football history. No top-tier coach or recruit will want to go to Happy Valley. 

It is hard to say and harder to think, but this is the end of Penn State as we once knew it...in every facet of that statement.