Billy Reed on Penn State football: "Universities do not exist mainly to sponsor teams."

Billy Reed still can bring it. His essay at louisvilleky.com comes close to matching the gold standard set by Charles Pierce last fall: Penn State child rape deception: "One more lie to maintain the preposterously lucrative unreality of college athletics."

Reed: Death to Penn State Football, by Billy Reed

In the name of simple decency, Penn State needs to give itself the death penalty. Cancel the 2012 football season. It won’t begin to atone for the atrocities that the late Joe Paterno refused to see through his thick glasses, but it will be a symbolic gesture that shows the university understands how disgusting and shameful the tragedy is.

Penn State child rape deception: "One more lie to maintain the preposterously lucrative unreality of college athletics."

There are times when the only thought occurring to you after reading an essay is this: Why couldn't I have written that?

The Brutal Truth About Penn State: The problem can't be solved by prayer or piety — and it's far more widespread than we think, by Charles P. Pierce (Grantland).

... It no longer matters if there continues to be a football program at Penn State. It no longer even matters if there continues to be a university there at all. All of these considerations are trivial by comparison to what went on in and around the Penn State football program ...

... It is not a failure of our institutions so much as it is a window into what they have become — soulless, profit-driven monsters, Darwinian predators with precious little humanity left in them. Penn State is only the most recent example. Too much of this country is too big to fail.