'This wound should be left open and gaping and raw ...'

I'm not Penn Stated out. This story is too big, too important.

If I'd had it in me to write the following column I'm linking to by Charles P. Pierce at Grantland.com half as well as he did, I'd have written it and been proud to have done so.  I will serve up excerpts here, but I strongly encourage you to go to the link and read the entire piece, once if not more.

There will now be a decade or more of criminal trials, and perhaps a quarter-century or more of civil actions, as a result of what went on at Penn State. These things cannot be prayed away. Let us hear nothing about "closure" or about "moving on." And God help us, let us not hear a single mumbling word about how football can help the university "heal." (Lord, let the Alamo Bowl be an instrument of your peace.) This wound should be left open and gaping and raw until the very last of the children that Jerry Sandusky is accused of raping somehow gets whatever modicum of peace and retribution can possibly be granted to him. ...

It happens because institutions lie. And today, our major institutions lie because of a culture in which loyalty to "the company," and protection of "the brand" - that noxious business-school shibboleth that turns employees into brainlocked elements of sales and marketing campaigns - trumps conventional morality, traditional ethics, civil liberties, and even adherence to the rule of law. It is better to protect "the brand" than it is to protect free speech, the right to privacy, or even to protect children.

Click the link, read the essay. I'm not Penn Stated out. This story is too meaningful on so many levels.

And while you're at it, I give just as high a recommendation to this commentary by ESPN.com's Jeff MacGregor about football mythology and much more than that. Excerpts:

What distinguishes this week's bone-chilling Penn State story is that no one at any point in it has made a good decision. Not the coaches, not the prosecutors, not the cops, not the board of trustees. Not the students, nor the citizens of Central Pennsylvania. Certainly not the press. A chain of perfect failure, the story illuminates in terrifying detail the limits of our "decision making."

I include myself in this. Nothing I write can undo what's done. I can't comfort you in any real way, nor can I confront you for your complicity. This applies across every sports media platform in America. We're lost when we start talking about reality. ...

... the cynic in me would argue that the prayer circle at the 50-yard line was not our first step in forgiving, but a lunge toward forgetting. The two are not equivalent, no matter how desperately we pretend them to be. Only the players and the coaches will ever know what went through their minds as they knelt for that moment of silence.

My worry is that false piety is what got us here.

Read MacGregor's piece in its entirety, too. And tell me if there's anything about it that doesn't ring true. Because I sure couldn't find anything.