Everyone knew that the 2000 and 2001 seasons were long ones for the Penn State football team, and everyone knew they took a serious toll on the Nittany Lions.

But no one knew just how much until Joe Paterno, a man who has been everything but canonized by the college football world, spat out graduation rate figures at a press conference in an attempt to remind the media of the dignity of his program while he deflected questions about Anwar Phillips.

Phillips had just been charged with sexual assault and was about to enter a not-guilty plea in court despite earlier telling university police he believed he had intercourse with a woman without her consent in November. He also "accepted responsibility" for his actions in front of judicial affairs in December, which earned him a two-semester expulsion from Penn State. He still played in the Jan. 1 Capital One Bowl.

Paterno has always been one of those coaches who is credited for showing his players that there is more to life than winning football games. Those continually high graduation rates and the successes many of his players have achieved outside of football are proof of that. But it seems that those two seasons were so traumatic that he let himself forget that. Not all of that is selfish. He didn't want to win this past season for himself as much as he wanted to for his players, a group he said he was closer to than any other. These kids had fought through a lot of adversity in those two five-win seasons, he often said, and they deserve every fair opportunity to win games. And at some point that line of thinking might have crossed a line. Assuming Paterno knew about Phillips's case, it crossed a line when Paterno brought him to the bowl game.

Maybe the word of Phillips's expulsion was stopped somewhere in between the athletic department and Paterno's ears. Even if it wasn't, it's preposterous to believe that Paterno really thinks that sexual assault is a less egregious offense than shaky grades. But if that message made it, it shows that winning the Citrus/Capital One Bowl was a whole lot more important to him last season than in 1998, when, oddly enough, he kept star wideout Joe Jurevicius from the same game because of his grades. They met the NCAA's standards, but not Paterno's. No player who admitted to sexually assaulting a woman should've been out there no matter how good he is. However, one of the most puzzling aspects of this situation is that the reputation of the Penn State football program is being degraded because of a nickelback who doesn't even play half of the defensive downs. Jurevicius would have clearly made a difference in the Lions' 21-14 loss to Florida in the 1998 Citrus Bowl, but Paterno stuck to his guns then. This time, apparently believing that if a backup started there was a good chance he would fail to make a play Phillips would have made and his team might lose, Paterno let him play. He has come to fear losing so much that he won't do anything that could be the least bit detrimental to the team itself unless he has no other choice.

He can justify that to a point because he has set a positive precedent for allowing his players to remain innocent until proven guilty. However, unlike in the previous situations, Phillips has admitted to university authorities his wrongdoing. Whether he gets off on a technicality in criminal court or not, everyone, including Paterno, now knows that Phillips had intercourse with a woman without her consent.

Paterno wouldn't be in this situation if he realized that he is a good enough coach and has good enough players to win if he continued to hold up his standards for academics and behavior. If he continues to bend his own rules, he'll end up tarnishing one of the greatest careers in the history of coaching. If he doesn't think he can win without doing that, he should just get out now.

If he wants to keep coaching, Paterno is going to have to remember who he is and what he stands for.