Nike’s World Headquarters Campus near Beaverton, Oregon, has a child day care facility called the Joe Paterno Child Development Center. They aren’t interested in changing the name, but they’re keeping an eye on things.

“Our relationship with Penn State remains unchanged,” Nike said in a statement. “We are deeply disturbed by the claims brought forth in the indictments. We will continue to monitor the situation closely.”

I think the most important question is HOW CLOSELY DO YOU HAVE TO MONITOR THIS? Go ahead, Mark Parker, get right up against your television screen with a magnifying glass and watch Mike McQueary equate “not calling the police when you saw children being raped” to being in a snow globe. My job as a comedy sports blogger is to type sh*t like “well at least they got rid of the Jerry Sandusky statue! I wonder why they built it in the showers! Derp!” but I am not Jay Leno and South Park episodes aside I don’t think any of this is funny. It’s f**ked up. The closest the situation should be monitored is Nike hearing “Penn State child sex scandal” ONCE. This isn’t Tiger Woods sleeping with strippers, it isn’t some gossip game for TMZ to capitalize and emphasize at will; this is a dark, scarring, systematically-abusive belch of humanity.

The worst part is that the irony of the title is less inappropriate than Nike reenacting Penn State’s stance on the scandal. The abuse to these children wasn’t reported because the people who knew about it thought it was more important to protect themselves and their reputations. That’s what Nike’s doing. Mark Parker, Nike’s president and CEO, graduated from Penn State in 1977. Paterno was called “Nike coach Joe Paterno” in Donald Katz’s 1994 book Just Do It The fact that children were sexually abused is less important than smearing the reputation of and embarrassing the college football coach with whom you’ve had a long, successful relationship. Protection of the institution.

I hate this. I hate writing about this. Nike should be making shoes and deluded basketball ads, not inquiry statements. Stop enabling rape culture, and better yet, stop making me type “rape culture” on the Internet.

Earlier today, Burnsy sent me an e-mail that read “I suppose we should do something about this” and linked to the Lion Eyes transcript of Monday night’s phone interview between Bob Costas and Jerry Saundusky. As Burnsy had mentioned in his piece on the Penn State rioters, it’s hard to be a (mostly) conscionable sports comedy blog and find it in you to make jokes about a guy who allegedly gave blowjobs to little boys in the school showers. It’s not LeBron James losing pick-up basketball games to kids. It’s not even Xavier Nady having Crohn’s Disease. It’s one of the most legitimately disturbing, unnerving stories I’ve been alive and adult enough to understand in the world of sports, and no part of our job description reads “making sense of this”.

That being said, we should so something about it. If you haven’t read it, you should. Or you shouldn’t, I guess. I haven’t quite figured it out. It’s something you should know about, but shouldn’t have to hear about, if that makes sense. The only way I think I can share this without wanting to jump through my upstairs window is by Cracked-dot-comming the hell out of it and presenting to you some of the most cringeworthy, thankfully-out-of-context quotes from the conversation.

I’ve got to warn you, they’re not easy to read. They might make your stomach hurt, or worse, so reader discretion is advised.

1.

Costas: “Innocent? Completely innocent and falsely accused in every aspect?”

Sandusky: “Well I could say that, you know, I have done some of those things. I have horsed around with kids. I have showered after workouts. I have hugged them and I have touched their leg without intent of sexual contact. So if you look at it that way, there are things that would be accurate.”

If you look at it that way.

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Obviously the general news media is in an uproar over the happenings at Penn State University this week, as longtime head coach Joe Paterno will retire at the end of this season thanks to no other choice from the school’s Board of Trustees, because his former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky allegedly sexually abused children. It gets worse because these were kids that he was purportedly helping through his philanthropic endeavors, and it gets even worse because a witness reported encountering said sexual abuse at Penn State facilities.

The above image is a student gathering at Paterno’s house last night, as a hundred or so Nittany Lions fans showed up to support the embattled 84-year old. Many people have argued that they should have showed up to storm his castle gates, and I can understand the outrage. And that’s where our discussion is going to end today.

Being that this is primarily a sports humor blog, there aren’t really any jokes that I feel comfortable making about the sexual abuse of children. I also don’t feel like opening the doors to endless debates about why JoePa is a complete scumbag POS for knowingly allowing this behavior or why he still deserves to be loved and adored by the people and fans that appreciated the two national championships he won in 45 years because the police said that he did what he was legally obligated to do. Feel free to argue, though, I just don’t have much desire to stand on a soapbox and shake my fist in rage.

In the meantime, I had a once-in-a-lifetime sports collectible opportunity that I was going to recommend to our readers with deeper pockets, but unfortunately Sandusky’s 1986 National Championship ring has been removed from eBay. Presumably to be thrown into the fiery pits of Mordor.

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