Sandusky is convicted. The Paterno statue is gone. The NCAA hammer has just fallen on Penn State. Kickoff at Beaver Stadium is at noon on September 1st against the Ohio University Bobcats. If that last bit strikes you as more than a little bit unseemly, join the club.

(Note: This column was written before Monday's NCAA press conference, though it has been edited slightly since)

I have pretty much kept my powder dry as far as writing on the Penn State situation here on the front page at TCF. To begin with, the subject is itself repellant, and the ”unspeakable” quality of the crimes and the cover-up rendered it that way for me for quite some time.  Besides that, I went for many weeks making a point not to join the “I’m more outraged than you are” competition going on among genuinely outraged Americans with keyboards. To paraphrase Ms. Steinem, I felt the world needed my opinion on the subject like a fish needs a bicycle. Little has changed in that regard I'm sure, notwithstanding what follows.

With the Sandusky trial behind them and years of civil suits still ahead, Penn State University is pressured by the looming season opener to come to grips now with just how Penn State football will proceed...or not proceed...in light of the Freeh Report’s damning findings.

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Thirty years ago the University of San Francisco basketball program was one of the most consistently successful in the sport. The Dons won back-to-back National Championships in the 1950’s with Bill Russell in the pivot and in the ‘60s and ‘70s, with stars like Ollie Johnson, Phil Smith and Bill Cartwright they were the second-strongest program in the West behind John Wooden’s UCLA dynasty. They even owned the top spot in the polls during the 1977 season.

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There is no amount of reality that can change the mind of someone in denial. Committed smokers will ignore every warning to their health until it's too late. So, too, apparently will the Board of Trustees of Penn State.

Seemingly committed to implementing most (but not, of course, all) of the recommendations of the Freeh report that detailed institutional criminal indifference to the helpless and numerous victims of Jerry Sandusky's sick obsessions, the Board of Trustees still can't understand the fuss about a little ol' statute of culprit and disgraced former head coach Joe Paterno that stands as a beacon of sorts, in not so Happy Valley.

The results of the independent investigation into the whys and wherefores and hows of Sandusky are such that for whatever good intention Penn State's so-called "Grand Experiment" of balancing athletics and academics once had that experiment is now over and it failed miserably.

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A year ago the Ohio State recruiting class of 2012 was close to being written off as a down year...an unavoidable consequence of the trials and tribulations the program went through in 2011. But starting on November 28, the day Urban Meyer became the head coach of the Buckeyes, the team’s recruiting fortunes turned around. Meyer and his staff finished with a flourish, landing several top-rated prospects in the last few weeks before signing day, and arriving in early February with a class ranked among the nation’s top three or four by most of the scouting services.

A handful of this year’s freshmen enrolled early and went through spring football, but the majority have yet to suit up for their first full practice session, so projecting the ten most likely to contribute significantly in 2012 is guesswork on the order of...well...of last week’s Ten Breakout Buckeyes. But here we go.

Asked in February which of his new signees he expected to redshirt in 2012, Meyer’s response was, "We don't redshirt. We're going to recruit the caliber of athlete you do not redshirt at Ohio State." I do believe Meyer will use his freshmen early and often, not least because, with the exception of his running back and defensive line units, his current roster is not a very deep group at all, and the incoming group is loaded with talent. In the Tressel years, about half of any freshman class would redshirt for a variety of reasons, and although Meyer wants all of his first-year guys to be ready to play, invariably some of them will end up saving a year of eligibility.

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