When I was a grad student, Chris used to talk a lot of smack about Joe Paterno. According to him, JoePa wasn’t just a great coach, he was a great man.

Damn him. It’s all true.

This is easily the greatest punishment in recent collegiate history, an absolutely diabolical, telling, high-impact bit of discipline that should remind one and all that what Paterno has been doing out in State College, Pa., all these years is more than just win 363 football games, including 20 the past two seasons.

In a coaching business so full of phonies who talk character only to bend the rules, who consider the definition of discipline a player’s weight-room attendance, who wouldn’t dare pull something like this because it might hurt recruiting, here’s Joe Pa, four decades on the job and not giving a damn.

Except about what’s right.

You paying attention, Bobby Bowden? If wonder if the NCAA will step in and put a stop to this. It will make the slimeballs who run most of the big programs look bad.