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The coaches recruit players – players who don’t get paid for their services in sort of an indentured servant setting in exchange for the promise of being able to pursue an education when they are freed from sports duties – and coach a game. All sports TV and all sports radio stations elevate the coach into a higher level of humanity and some like the Paternos and Knights become deities and journalists (along with faculty members) are urged not to cross them.

The coach is protected by a sports information director who by his/her very presence makes reporters aware that some questions better not be asked. Paterno had a good guy aura as did Bobby Bowden down in Florida. There was an implied trust that Joe did no wrong and was as pure as Caesar’s wife.

If there was dirty work to be done in recruiting or dealing with boosters for cash payments to a program, Joe was above board. He was a famous football coach who won championships and was above board.

Americans or at least Pennsylvanians could dote on celebrity. Joe seemed safe enough and Penn State had a winning football team.

The doting on celebrity has turned ugly. University of Nebraska officials have opened questioned the security of the football team and the “fans” who are traveling to State College to watch this weekend’s game between the two universities. Nebraska officials have told Cornhuskers fans not to wear red, the color of the Nebraska football team. It might trouble.

This is not an Occupy Wall Street type confrontation between police and protestors. This is not about college kids with no job prospects heavily in debt because of college bills or alums who have lost their jobs and their homes because of bad political decisions made by elected officials.

This is all because of the Paterno firing which should be a side product of the charges that Sandusky is facing. Someone is charged with a crime, Paterno tells his superiors but not law enforcement officials and the students’ revolt at Paterno’s firing.

Pennsylvanians dote on fame; at least some college kids did on Wednesday and took matters into their own hands.

Suddenly the Big Ten Conference expansion doesn’t seem all that important. Penn State is part of the Big Ten. Suddenly the entire specter of college sports realignment seems petty and a just a naked money grab for select schools.

Paterno and his coaching peers have presided over fun and game and provided entertainment for a bevy of people---jock sniffers----which included college presidents, boosters, marketing partners, advertisers, well-heeled alum who wrote checks for programs and others who wanted to rub elbows with coaches because they doted on celebrity.

It really is hard to understand why a coach in football or basketball on the college level becomes a deity, like Paterno, like Knight, like Woody Hayes. Why they become the state's highest paid employee at state universities. It is insane. They give motivation speeches, get paid for TV shows, they are the object of genuflecting adults who throw money at college sports teams. Paterno was bigger than anyone in Pennsylvania because he coached a state university football team. He was just a coach, nothing more, nothing less. But our society elevated him to an unrealistic level. Maybe we should start looking at why he shower these people with adulation and awe. They are just coaches nothing more, nothing less. They don't cure cancer or solve economic problems. But we over value them.

Don Fehr, who controlled a whole bunch of famous people during his tenure at the Major League Baseball Players Association and now at the National Hockey League Players Association, was 100 percent right.

“Americans dote on celebrity.”

Americans dote on celebrity to their detriment.

Evan Weiner, the winner of the United States Sports Academy's 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business." His book, "The Business and Politics of Sports, Second Edition" is available at bickley.com, Barnes and Noble or Amazon Kindle.

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