There’s obviously still a lot of pain and anger over this situation.

Inside Higher Ed reports.

Outrage on Penn State Plan to Honor Paterno

Word spread Thursday that Pennsylvania State University plans to honor the 50th anniversary of Joe Paterno becoming head football coach — and outrage spread too.

While Paterno was highly successful on the field, his career was tarnished by reports — that have grown in the last year — that he and other Penn State officials looked the other way as Jerry Sandusky — a key member of Paterno’s coaching team — abused numerous boys. “The most powerful men at Penn State failed to take any steps for 14 years to protect the children who Sandusky victimized,” said the 2012 report Penn State commissioned about the Sandusky scandal, and that statement counted Paterno among those men.

The honor for Paterno was buried in press announcements made by Penn State about the 2016 football season, where it was first noted by the blog Onward State.

Under activities for the September 17 game against Temple University, Penn State included this item: “Commemoration of the 50th anniversary of Coach Joe Paterno – Activities during the game will take place to commemorate Joe Paterno’s first game as the head football coach at Penn State — September 17, 1966.”

Penn State has struggled with Paterno’s legacy. The university fired him in 2011 after the Sandusky scandal broke and he died of cancer not long after. Many Penn State football fans, some of them major donors, have defended Paterno and said that the university was too harsh in its judgments of him. But many others have said that any honors for Paterno suggest a tolerance of his actions (and especially his lack of action) in the Sandusky case.

Amid these tensions, court documents released in July raised the possibility that Paterno knew about — and ignored — the abuse by Sandusky for a longer period than had previously been thought, a scenario that could have significantly increased the number of boys Sandusky abused.