Should Penn State remove the statue of Joe Paterno outside Beaver Stadium?
I don't know.
How's that for a strong opinion?
The nation appears split with an ESPN poll with nearly 200,000 votes by Saturday running 52 percent in favor of removal and 48 against. Local polls, including one on altoonamirror.com, favor keeping it up.
Either way, instead of a hasty decision, which the Board of Trustees was accused of when it fired Paterno by phone on Nov. 9 - something that's now easier to justify in the wake of the Freeh report - everyone would be wise to calm down a tad and think it through until the pendulum-swinging emotions level out.
There will be enough regret if it ends up being taken down. That regret should not be magnified because the decision was rushed.
Paterno meant and represented many things to many people - those who filled Beaver Stadium and made it a special place - and he was beloved for most of his 60-plus year tenure.
That's evidenced by those who continue to visit and take pictures with the statue and defend him in conversation, talk shows, letters and Internet comment banter.
National media screaming for a decapitation of the statue may never have contributed a nickel of the billions Paterno raised for Penn State.
Despite all his warts - his mishandling of Jerry Sandusky, his penchant for controlling everyone around him, his preference for running his program in secrecy - there was, is and probably always will be an unconditional love for him among the Nittany Nation diehards.
That's indisputable, especially among most of the thousands of former players.
Now there's no question his approval rating has taken a major and deserved hit with the disclosures in the Freeh report - that he did in fact know about the 1998 police investigation, even though he previously lied about it, including to the grand jury, by saying he didn't.
And if you think it's the first lie he told, well, think what you want.
Paterno often talked about a team defining itself by how it performed "in the clutch," and yet when it came time for him to perform "in the clutch," he took a knee, covered up or at least did not aggressively demand the pursuit of precious information that could have spared innocent child victims.
That is impossible to condone and difficult to forgive.
It clearly cost Paterno the chance to have Beaver Stadium renamed in his honor, something many lobbied for over the past few years.
Despite his flawed legacy of not doing enough to stop Sandusky and for staying on the job way too long, it was not Paterno in the showers with Second Mile children, and there is still plenty of information that hasn't come out.
With respect to Louie Freeh, the former FBI director's group did not speak with four of the five principals in the case - Paterno, Mike McQueary (at the request of the Attorney General's office), and Tim Curley and Gary Schultz (because their cases are pending in court).
Maybe that testimony in the upcoming court cases will make it look even worse for Paterno, if that's possible. And if so, maybe at that point it will be obvious the statue will have to be removed.
It's also not unreasonable to consider that the statue area should be edited to recognize Paterno for being college football's all-time winningest coach and change or delete the "coach, teacher and humanitarian" tribute.
There are no easy answers.
Leave the statue up, and it may be insensitive to child-abuse victims and appear Penn State still has misplaced priorities.
Take it down and run the risk of offending a significant portion of the fan base.
So let this open wound heal for a while, continue to gauge public opinion and allow more of the court cases play out - even if it means the statue is still up in seven weeks when the season mercifully opens on Sept. 1.
