The unfolding sage at Penn State will continue to provide critical lessons on how the pressure to meet financial goals can cloud our judgment.

As was reported today on Bloomberg:

“There is so much money tied into big-time college athletics that it forces some people to make bad decisions,” Harris said in a telephone interview. “They may be people affiliated with a program, or coaches and administrators who do things purposely wrong, or turn a blind eye, because they are focused on generating revenue and not necessarily the integrity of the enterprise.”

We don’t yet know whether Joe Paterno was cynically rationalizing his inaction because of the business pressures of running the football program, or whether he deceived himself into inaction. But the key question is whether is really matters.