Opinion

Melt Joe Paterno

NCAA President Mark Emmert says he may well hit Penn State with the “death penalty” — killing its entire football program for several seasons — in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky child-sex scandal.

“I don’t want to take anything off the table,” he said yesterday. “What the appropriate penalties are . . . we’ll have to decide.”

If he follows through, that would be a profoundly unfair — not to mention unwise — sanction.

This is not in any way to minimize the extent of Sandusky’s serial pedophilia, or the involvement of top Penn State officials — from sainted head coach Joe Paterno on down — in covering it up.

Indeed, Emmert is likely right when he says he has “never seen anything as egregious as this in terms of just overall conduct or behavior inside a university.”

But the people who would be directly affected by such a severe sanction don’t include anyone who participated in the scandal and its coverup.

Paterno, his once-sterling reputation permanently shattered, is dead. Sandusky hadn’t coached since 1999 — and, anyway, he’s going to die in prison.

The ones who would take the brunt of the “death penalty” are today’s football players, many of whom staked their future careers on attending the university.

And who had nothing whatsoever to do with Jerry Sandusky.

Or Joe Paterno’s failings.

Penn State’s other athletic departments would suffer, too — because college football is a huge revenue generator for the university. Certainly there’s no evidence that any of them were involved in the coverup.

Killing football would also hurt literally every student at Penn State, where the loss of revenue would only drive up the school’s already sky-high tuition.

Only once before has the NCAA imposed the death penalty: SMU, which was sanctioned for repeated recruiting violations. But those involved not just university officials, but student athletes themselves.

Melt down Joe Paterno’s statue, for sure.

But to penalize all of Penn State’s students — and especially its current football players — would be monumentally unfair.