Editorial: Don’t cancel Penn State’s football season

Needless to say, this has been a turbulent week for Penn State. Riots, a media frenzy and abrupt… Needless to say, this has been a turbulent week for Penn State. Riots, a media frenzy and abrupt changes in administration have embroiled one of the nation’s sleepiest college towns and permanently tarnished the reputation of an esteemed institution.

They’ve also, unsurprisingly, prompted certain media outlets to question the necessity of Penn State’s football season. This past Thursday, The New York Times published a virtual roundtable on whether the team should cancel its remaining games. Several pundits, including the Times’ Gail Collins, have maintained that such a move would affirm the University’s commitment to justice and integrity.

However, although we’re disappointed with many Penn State students’ reactions to this crisis — particularly those of the rioters, who decried football head coach Joe Paterno’s dismissal while virtually disregarding Jerry Sandusky’s alleged abuses — we don’t think the University should punish innocent athletes.

Penn State’s Board of Trustees acted remarkably quickly — some would say hastily — in dismissing or reprimanding nearly everyone implicated in the cover-up. Nevertheless, the football team has been allowed to continue playing because, first and foremost, the scandal has nothing to do with the sport itself. The same series of events could have transpired in virtually any athletic — or, for that matter, academic — department. To cancel the season would be to associate a heinous act with a sport that in no way facilitated it, and to eliminate the University’s only immediate shot at media redemption.

In any case, although Penn State lost to Nebraska this Saturday, the team boasts an impressive 8-2 overall record. Now more than ever, it’s vital that the athletes remain at the top of their games — if not for the students who overturned news vans and destroyed public property last Wednesday night, then for themselves. College football players have their own public images, and potential careers, to consider.

This isn’t to say Penn State football should continue as if nothing happened. Rather, the program can demonstrate its integrity in a variety of ways — donating the rest of the seasons’ proceeds to Sandusky’s alleged victims, for example. Righting past wrongs, not making high-minded symbolic gestures, should be the principle guiding the University’s present agenda.