BIRMINGHAM, Alabama - Now that Louis Freeh has spoken, it's Mark Emmert's turn.

Now that the former FBI director has shined a light into the dark heart of the Penn State football pro­gram, it's time for the NCAA president to line up the fir­ing squad.

Set a precedent worth set­ting.

Unleash the enforcement staff, armed with the Freeh report, to finish document­ing the worst lack of institu­tional control on record.

Empower the members of the infractions committee to judge the worst scandal in the history of college sports.

Give them the liberty to give Penn State death.

Pay the coaches what they're owed and allow the players to transfer without restriction, but this program has to be destroyed before it can be rebuilt. It has to be destroyed because, as the Freeh report details, pro­tecting and preserving it led the most powerful men on campus to cover for a monster, a child molester named Jerry Sandusky, who not coincidentally happened to be the long-time beloved defensive coordinator.

"Four of the most powerful people at the Pennsylvania State University failed to protect against a child sexual predator harming children for over a decade," the report said. "These men concealed Sandusky's activities from the board of trustees, the university community and the authorities."

Those four co-conspirators: university President Graham Spanier, Vice President Gary Schultz, Athletics Director Tim Curley and head football coach Joe Paterno.

What was their motivation? "To avoid the consequences of bad publicity."

Has a college football program ever used its power for a more sick and twisted reason?

Paterno, who's been disgraced since his death as much as he was celebrated during most of his life, wrote a letter before he passed. As he'd done for decades on matters big and small, dictating everything from uniform design to discipline, he tried to control the message of Sandusky's deviant and criminal behavior.

"This is not a football scandal and should not be treated as one," Paterno wrote, but for once, he didn't get the last word.

Freeh did. His report, all 267 pages of it, commissioned and financed by Penn State, outlined in painstaking and painful detail what can happen when a football program becomes "a closed community . . . an island where staff members live by their own rules."

This is very much a football scandal that, after the legal and financial pipers are paid, deserves a football remedy, too.

Read the words of Janitor B, one of the custodial workers in one of the football buildings. He witnessed Sandusky and a young boy leaving a shower holding hands the same night a co-worker saw Sandusky sexually assault the young boy in the shower.

Neither of the janitors that saw Sandusky during or after his crime reported it. Why not?

"I know Paterno has so much power, if he wanted to get rid of someone, I would have been gone," Janitor B said. "Football runs this university."

Paterno and the other leaders of Penn State football were absolutely corrupted by their absolute power, and it didn't stop with covering up Sandusky's crimes, which were brought to their attention after separate incidents in 1998 and 2001.

Ten years later, Sandusky attended six Penn State home games in 2011. He participated in the 25th anniversary celebration of the program's 1986 national title.

He enjoyed these and other, enabling privileges such as locker room access right up until his arrest even though Spanier, Schultz, Curley and Paterno all had appeared before the grand jury investigating Sandusky in January of 2011.

Different people told Freeh's investigative team that, during the last decade, "Sandusky was treated as a celebrity and some university employees admired him 'like a god.' " All at a time when there was more than enough evidence to take his name in vain.

The idol worship of Paterno and Penn State football ran much deeper. You don't change that culture -- "a culture of reverence for the football program that is ingrained at all levels of the campus community," the report said -- simply by changing the staff.

The university doesn't have to wait for the NCAA to begin the necessary cleansing. There are drastic steps it should take right away.

The Paterno statue should be melted and sold for scrap. The Paterno name should be sandblasted off the library. The Paterno program should be dismantled as a message to every program that operates as a kingdom unto itself.

The message: This is what can happen when football rules, when there are no rules. Don't let this happen to you.

The last thing Penn State needs anytime soon is 110,000 people wearing white and cheering till they're blue in the face. When it was really time to stand up and shout, Paterno and everyone beneath him stayed silent.

Now it's Penn State football's turn for a little quiet time.

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