Paint yourself a picture in your mind. (I would say "close your eyes, but that would remove your ability to read, so scratch that.) You have a good friend, someone you have known since you were younger. For the past ten, fifteen or twenty years, the two of you have lived near one another, done everything together, and folks often joke that the two of you are practically siblings because you are so close-knit.

Now keep picturing: someone comes to you and says that this friend of yours, whom you've known practically your whole life, has done something blatantly and morally reprehensible, something flat-out (or even just borderline) illegal. How would you respond? Wouldn't you just be in disbelief, at how diametrically opposed this news is to everything you know (or think you know) about this friend from all the time you have known each other? Wouldn't your reaction, since this is a person you have known forever and trust, be to go to them, ask them whether rumor was truth, and possibly even take their word for it if they passed it off as rumor?

It doesn't matter whose yard you're in - if you dig long enough, you're going to find a skeleton, even in the well tended, long-standing yard that is Penn State head coach Joseph Vincent Paterno.

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