Has the College Football Season Been Ruined by the Penn State Scandal?

It would have been difficult to script a more shocking or heart wrenching scenario in college football than what occurred between Penn State’s 10-7 win over Illinois on October 29 and their 17-14 loss to Nebraska this past Saturday.

The scandal of silence that oozed from the bulwark of traditional values that is State College Pennsylvania rocked the very foundations of college football to the degree that it transcended the world of sport.

But, has the 2011 season been ruined by the sexual child abuse disgrace at Penn State University?

Have Joe Paterno’s dismissal and university brass firings—due to not reporting alleged acts too gross and shameful to describe with words—effectively squashed the enchantment of another college football campaign?

Well, though it’s absolutely irrefutable that the 2011 season has been soiled, dampened and forever black-marked with the mortification of an entire nation, it may be too extreme to say it is completely ruined beyond repair.

Why?

For me there are at least two sets of reasons why the current season is still viable, and these in no way take away from or overshadow the very real significance and horror of the events at Penn State.

The first approach is that the campaign continues on in a practical sense because of a delicate combination between the isolation of the incident, the fact that it doesn’t change the reality that teams are still competing for one of the most elusive prizes in sport and the inherent passion of college football fans.

Yes, what happened in State College didn’t happen in Norman, in Eugene, in Stillwater, in Tuscaloosa, in Baton Rouge, in Death Valley or in Fayetteville, and even though every one of these hamlets (and a thousand in between) felt the thunder, they won’t have to pick up the pieces after the storm clears.

Add to this geographic cushion the actuality that certain sects of passionate college football fans stand, at this very hour, on the precarious edge of tasting from the chalice of national title dreams, and we see that yes, the season still matters and is frankly not completely a wash until their team is out of it.

Is this disrespectful to the situation?  I think not, because we are a multi-dimensional bunch that in a single instance can be disgusted, alarmed and ready to champion change while at the same time passionately rooting our beloved program on to the ultimate victory.

We can be completely horror-struck while still highly engrossed in the actual play of the game.  

The second line of reasoning regarding the assertion that the 2011 season has not been completely upended by the events that erupted in State College last week is a function of the same beastly force that lay at the foundations of the very issue itself…human nature.

Yes, the force that  was most responsible for the misdeeds is also the rationale for why something good and noble can still be plucked from an otherwise tainted 2011.

To illustrate, though 2011 was the season that brought Penn State and our collegiate nation to its knees in arguably the biggest scandal in the history of the game, it is also the year that paralyzed Rutgers player Eric LeGrand bravely led his team on to the field to face West Virginia.

It is the year that a 61-year-old placekicker scored for a NAIA school.

It is the season when players like Robert Griffin III, Andrew Luck, Kirk Cousins and Russell Wilson lit it up on the field and then impressed us with their rock solid character and sportsmanship off the turf.

Indeed, it was the year of the golden pants coin for sale, but it was also the season that a group of Michigan fans initiated CPR on a Notre Dame enthusiast who was suffering a life threatening heart attack in the shadows of the packed grand stands, ultimately saving an opposing fan’s life amid the backdrop of one of the greatest games of the season.

2011 brought us the Miami meltdown, but it was also the year when two Missouri Western players rescued a toddler who was trapped and in a car on a scorching hot day (the child was losing consciousness when the gridiron Griffons managed to save the day)

It was the year that that Virginia Tech laid a “Hokie Stone” at the Marshall University memorial for victims of the 1970 plane crash (two of the 75 lost were Virginia Tech grads) before the Hokies and Thundering Herd squared off on September 24.

Our culture almost dictates that the media cover the ugly side of human nature (resulting in scandal, rumor and humiliation), which trumps the telling of tales involving the amazing stuff that happens whenever you bring people together for a cause, even one as seemingly shallow as college sport.

Yes, 2011 will forever be remembered as the year that Penn State fell from grace in an indefensible and unfathomable fashion, but this ugly issue will lay ruin to the current football campaign only if we allow it to extend its evil reach to the degree that it overshadows all the good that is overlooked and under-reported by the national media.

We can’t turn our heads and act like none of it ever happened (that’s already been done to the demise of innocent victims), but we can choose to fix the injustice, punish the guilty, learn from the tragedy and then celebrate the palpable goodness that continues to covertly flow forth whenever humans interact.