Jerry Sandusky Sex Scandal: McQueary Must Be Fired Before Monday

“What became clear is that, under any circumstances, he would not be able to function in a coaching role.”

That’s what new Penn State president Rod Erickson told the media late Thursday night when he announced receivers coach Mike McQueary would be taking a leave of absence.

They need to take it a step further. Fire him.

McQueary is one of the main characters in this twisted, sad story and the longer he is associated with the program, the longer the painful memories of what happened are going to be revisited.

Sure, McQueary legally did the right thing by telling former head coach Joe Paterno about seeing Jerry Sandusky molesting a young boy in the shower, but the moral failure of his decision is too hard to ignore.

Obviously, the pain and suffering is going to remain for decades, but the school can attempt to get past this epic scandal by shipping every single person involved in this far away from State College.

In a way it’s not fair to McQueary, a man who has never committed the heinous crimes of Sandusky. All he did was tell his employer what he saw. Yet there is no way around forgetting about his inability to prevent the incident at the time, and for other children that were alleged victims of Sandusky after 2002.

McQueary has received death threats, dozens of angry letters and should feel a general sense of fear at a place referred to as Happy Valley. The school has yet to say when he will return to the program, but if it’s at some point this year, it would be one of the biggest mistakes of all time.

When asked if McQueary would be fired, Erickson pulled the run-around out of the playbook:

"There are complexities to that issue that I am not prepared to go into at this point."

Let him go, and let him go off into exile for a while. Let people forget about who he is for awhile. I’m not saying he shouldn’t ever coach again, but just not anytime soon, and certainly not at Penn State.

It’s for his own good.