Jerry Sandusky Sex Scandal: Tom Bradley Will Restore Penn State's Integrity

The wounds left at Penn State by the Jerry Sandusky scandal will take years to close up, and won't likely ever heal completely, but if anyone is going to at least restore the integrity of the Nittany Lions football program, it's Tom Bradley.

Like so many of the coaches on Joe Paterno's staff, Bradley is a Penn State lifer, having played for the Nittany Lions as a defensive back in the late 1970s and worked his way up the ladder from graduate assistant to positional coach to defensive coordinator and now, in a pinch, head coach.

The man known around State College as "Scrap" has long desired to be Paterno's successor. He served as "co-head coach," along with offensive coordinator Galen Hall when Paterno was injured during the 2006 season. Bradley has had the opportunity to play elsewhere, interviewing for the top jobs at Pittsburgh, Connecticut and Temple this past January, but has turned them all down.

Because he's loyal to Penn State and because he cares deeply about the university.

To be sure, there is some danger in letting Bradley, a product of the very same institution that allowed Sandusky's travesties to carry on, to lead the university on its long and arduous journey back to credibility. Who worse than a man so close to the scandal to clean it up?

But, realistically, who else would dare take on such a daunting task?

Whoever ends up filling the president and athletic director vacancies full-time are going to have a tough time convincing any big-name coaches (i.e. Urban Meyer, Al Golden, Jim Caldwell) to come within a mile of this program in any capacity, much less take on the head coaching duties full-bore, until the Sandusky trial is over and some semblance of normalcy and honor has been restored to Happy Valley.

That is the task with which Bradley is charged, a task at which he will succeed, particularly if his audition this past Saturday was any indication. He let his eldest lettermen have what little was left of their Senior Day against Nebraska, ceding leadership out of the tunnel to them while himself running out from behind.

As a coach, he was nearly able to will his distraught team to a come-from-behind win over a solid Cornhuskers squad, though the Nittany Lions ultimately came up short, 17-14.

He didn't try to hog the spotlight or answer for Sandusky's transgressions because, frankly, that's not his job. Bradley isn't the moral authority at Penn State, nor should he be.

Nor should any football coach be given (or allowed to absorb) such responsibility. We all just saw what happened the last time Penn State tried that with JoePa.

But, chances are, the university's new administration will still conduct an exhaustive search of candidates from well outside the bubble that for so long surrounded the program, and Happy Valley as a whole, even if Bradley somehow coaches Penn State to a Big Ten Championship and a berth in the Rose Bowl.

Because, at the end of the day, this isn't about football, though the program served as an incubator for evil.

It's about doing right by Sandusky's victims and restoring the university's tainted reputation. Tom Bradley is certainly capable of doing just that.

Whether Penn State will, or even should, let him is another story entirely.