College football's bowl system is at an impasse, and it has absolutely nothing to do with an LSU-Alabama rematch in the BCS Championship Game or Virginia Tech somehow getting selected for the Sugar Bowl over Kansas State and Boise State. It has nothing to do with BCS or Oklahoma State's relegation despite the Cowboys' stomping of Oklahoma last weekend, but everything to do with the tumultuous situation occurring in Happy Valley.
Penn State's biggest fears have already been realized, so what happened Sunday pales in comparison to its legendary football coach being fired after his defensive coordinator allegedly sexually molested young boys. But from a football standpoint — and I can't stress enough how little this matters in the grand scheme of things, but it still maintains relevancy given that sports will likely help heal a betrayed campus — getting invited to the TicketCity Bowl was just about the worst thing for the Nittany Lions.
Though Penn State finished tied for the fourth-best record in the Big Ten at 9-3, it was relegated to Dallas for the TicketCity Bowl, the seventh bowl on the list of games affiliated with the conference to select. There's no doubt that the other bowls — three of which picked Iowa (7-5), Ohio State (6-6) and Northwestern (6-6), all teams that lost to Penn State this season — were terrified at associating themselves with the Jerry Sandusky scandal.
Injustices happen every season, especially in college football. Virginia Tech, for some reason, is playing in the Sugar Bowl even after the Hokies played three games against ranked teams and lost two of them, both to Clemson, by a combined 48 points, most recently in a 38-10 rout in the ACC title game on Saturday.
And the Sandusky case is a colossal injustice unto itself. But this is unprecedented — a football program being punished for the non-football-related crimes of one of its staff members. While USC is currently serving a two-year postseason ban for infractions dating back to the Reggie Bush era of 2004, an instance that correlates directly to on-field performance.
The thing is, no one will get bent out of shape about this, because who could possibly counter the decision on this? Who would dare stand up and say that Penn State deserves better in spite of what occurred? To do so would result in being labeled an apologist, even if such a knee-jerk reaction means equating Sandusky's actions with the program as a whole.
The bowl system had no other option than to choose the "moral high road," a gross irony considering that it makes millions each year consciously avoiding that same path. This doesn't reek of a distraction, by any stretch of the imagination, but rather just another way for college football to say, "Hey, we do the right thing from time to time."
In spite of the snub, this might be a best-case scenario for the Nittany Lions. They'll be playing in a low-profile bowl on Jan. 2, likely void of the overwhelming national scrutiny they would have received had, say, they been selected to the Insight Bowl. Their opponent, Houston, boasts the nation's top offense and one of the most prolific college quarterbacks of all time in Case Keenum and would have reached the BCS had it not lost to Southern Mississipi in the Conference USA championship game.
Plus, new Penn State President Rod Erickson has already announced that his university will donate $1.5 million of its bowl money to a pair of sex-crime advocacy groups. So at this point, it seems to matter little where and when the Nittany Lions will go bowling; what matters is that the administration is viewing it as an opportunity to help make amends.
But I'm sure the players are upset nonetheless. Wouldn't you be?
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Alex Prewitt is a senior who is majoring in English and religion. He can be reached on his blog at http://livefrommudville.blogspot.com or followed on Twitter at @Alex_Prewitt.
