Heroes.

“We don’t need another hero.” 

That was the refrain in a song a long time ago. Yes we do, we need heroes. We need individual human beings who are better than we are because they can inspire us to be better. To a lot of people Joe Paterno was a hero. That evinces a character flaw in Penn State people, for a football coach should not be a hero of a university. And Paterno came to define the university. Outrageous.

People like to knock the heroes of others off pedestals. “See, they’re only human like the rest of us.” Paterno has been knocked off his pedestal by this scandal and there are more knocks to come against Penn State.  Paterno should never have been there, not because he was a flawed human being “like the rest of us,” because he was just a football coach. Penn State was, is, a cheap imitation of a university that was built on a foundation of sand.

But he was a hero to them. And so there is sorrow today too for Penn State people who grieve the loss of their heroes. Here’s to heroes and the people who have them.