Joe Paterno has been coaching Penn State football since Elvis was “Cool” instead of “Polyester Elvis”, almost 25 years before the Berlin Wall came down, and an actor named Ronald Reagan was a budding politician and running for California’s Governor seat. And now, 42 years later, he is still roaming around the sidelines, and while the Nittany Lions have had wonderful success over time and he is most certainly going to go down in history as one of the best coaches ever.

However, there has been questions for a while now that Paterno, while his X’s and O’s may still be solid, should not be coaching any longer. The biggest question has come from the fact that the players that have been in the Penn State program have been having a ton of off the field problems. In fact, 163 of them.

163 counts of criminal activity have marred the program since 2002. During this time, while Penn State has had good success overall with the win-loss record side of things, the question has to come as to why in the world something like this hasn’t been questioned as to Paterno’s control of the team, and the recruiting of such players also comes into question.

So then–should he continue to be on the sidelines? I mean, we’re talking about an icon here–one of THE faces of college football and certainly an asset of the Big Ten. But when things like this continue to happen, the integrity of the university as well as the conference really has to be weighed against the success of the football team.

My take is this–maybe again because I am old school–but these players–by this age–understand the responsibility that they have as a student athlete and therefore must be accounted for in terms of the rules–in fact, they should be scrutinized even more as they are going to a place of higher education FOR FREE. But when these players on a certain team continue to have problems in a more widespread fashion over a period of time, the leadership of the program must answer for this and be held responsible. I know Paterno has an amazing record and is a great guy, but there must be change in order for the University to really be able to have institutional control. We love you, Joe, but it’s time to go.