It is very confusing to think about, but I think there was one moment that summed up the conversation perfectly: "If Joe Paterno's verbatim response to being informed by a child that he was being molested/raped was, 'I don't want to hear about this, I have a football team to think about,' then Joe Paterno is evil incarnate."

This is the part that is the most brutally confusing. A man who exhibited the grace of a saint for decades commits an act of indifference and inaction that only a truly evil man could commit. I don't doubt that the victim was victimized. I don't doubt that Paterno was informed of that victimization in some way. I don't doubt that his subsequent inaction and indifference was abhorrent. But I do harbor doubts about this particular quote, since it is the only quote on the issue of its kind (one that suggests pure evil). I am not apologizing for Paterno, and I am not calling the victim a liar; I am calling this complicated.

To believe that Paterno looked a molested child in the eye and told him that the football team was more important than the crime is a situation that paints this as a simple black and white series of events--Paterno was told explicitly what was happening, Paterno explicitly stated that he did not care.

Paterno was wrong in every aspect of handling this sin. He erred at every step of the way. And for that, he should definitely not be honored before the game. He was a man who made a series of horrific mistakes and egocentric choices. He deserved to be fired, he deserved to have his reputation irreparably tarnished, he deserves to be thought of with contempt.

But it is simply too easy to call him 'pure evil'. Doing so is an attempt to place the blame only on him and Sanduski. It makes the rest of us feel better about our inability to end child abuse. We can all comfortably say that we would have made the right choices, because we are not evil and myopic like Paterno. The harder conclusion is to believe that even the best of us don't know how to handle tough situations, we are all just doing our best, when we make mistakes like this we show our ineptitude and selfishness, and the guilt and shame is something we must bear both publicly and privately.

Paterno was horribly derelict in his duties and responsibilities and this event should not occur before the game. But instead of arguing about how much he knew and when, I would rather consider how do I recognize instances of abuse in the world around me, and how can I be proactive to prevent it.

And even now, after writing all of this logic, it will still appear to many that I am explaining away and excusing the sins of Paterno. I am not. But confusing issues often lead us to binary conclusions, but that is exceedingly rare.