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Though the Penn State abuse scandal involves and surrounds members of the football team, this is not a sports story. This is a human interest story.

That being said, individuals are reacting strongly to the developments over the past couple of weeks, especially to the removal of Head Coach Joe Paterno, 84, one of the most revered college football coaches of all time.

Paterno was unjustly fired by Penn State’s Board of Trustees on Nov. 9, but why?

It was a regrettable attempt to save face.

Before he was fired, Paterno issued a statement, saying that he would retire at the end of the football season (there was one regular-season game remaining).

“With the benefit of hindsight, I wish I had done more,” he said about the information he received from a teaching assistant concerning former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky’s alleged sexual abuse of a young boy in Penn State’s football facilities.

But university officials couldn’t wait. They announced later that Paterno, along with college President Graham Spanier, were to be fired effective immediately.

But just because Paterno wishes he could’ve done more, doesn’t mean that he should’ve been fired.

This particular incident (there have been as many as eight from 1994 to 2009, according to Bloomberg Businessweek) has been under investigation since 2002 and Spanier knew of it at that time.

So then why, if Paterno had really done anything legally wrong, didn’t Penn State fire him at that point?

Instead, officials waited until news of the investigation went public early this month.

The college claimed that “they lost confidence in their ability to lead,” according to the Bloomberg article, so it makes no sense to let him lead a nationally recognized football team for nine years before finally taking action.

With the controversy under wraps at the time, Penn State kept Paterno because the administration recognized that he was the face of the college and helped bring in millions of dollars in revenue for the football program.

If his actions were so condemnable, why did the Board of Trustees wait?

If that argument isn’t enough for you, consider this: According to Pennsylvania’s Child Protective Services law, Paterno did what he was legally required to do.

The law states that required reporters must immediately notify the person in charge of the institution (Spanier) and the person in charge is responsible and obligated to report the suspected abuse to ChildLine (an organizational unit of the department that handles reports of child abuse) immediately.

For that reason, Spanier, who was notified about the alleged abuse, definitely deserved to be fired, because he did not fulfill his legal duty.

The same law also says that the reporter has the option to report it to ChildLine as well, but the text does not require him to do so.

The phrase “moral obligation,” has been thrown around a lot during this media frenzy, and rightfully so.

But for a coach who before November was the highly regarded face of the Nittany Lions for 45 years, who recognized that he should have fulfilled his moral obligation and offered to retire, Penn State made the situation worse, tarnishing its own name even more, and that of the great JoePa.

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