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Penn State’s 14–10 win over Tem­ple wasn’t the biggest story of col­lege football’s Week 3.

I mean, it wasn’t even close.

But there’s no ques­tion that the Nits’ nar­row victory–a vic­tory that was only made pos­si­ble by some late Tem­ple mistakes–has made clear once and for all that the Penn State pro­gram has reached some­thing of a break­ing point. Because the Joe Paterno sit­u­a­tion, I am afraid, has become untenable.

Paterno’s� pro­gram is tread­ing water. It lacks energy. It lacks ath­letes. It lacks buzz. And until Paterno moves on, until he hands reins of the team over to some­body who is actu­ally capa­ble of deal­ing with the demands of a big-time col­lege foot­ball enter­prise, the Nit­tany Lions will be pre­cisely what they were on Sat­ur­day against the Owls: Mediocre.

Look, for all that Paterno has done for Penn State (and that’s a lot, obvi­ously) the scene at Lin­coln Finan­cial Field told the whole story: Paterno, a man who has already stopped actively recruit­ing, a man who is strug­gling to recover from injuries suf­fered dur­ing prac­tice ear­lier this year, was once again forced to “coach from the booth,” removed from his team, removed from the action on the field, removed from game itself. He was not there to make the deci­sions that head coaches need to make. He was not there to talk with his play­ers, to cajole them, to rep­ri­mand them, to spur them on. He didn’t even make it down to the locker room at half­time to deliver a pep talk.

In other words, he didn’t do any of the things that head coaches are sup­posed to do.

And yet, he remains head coach.

It’s a ridicu­lous sit­u­a­tion. A sad situation.

I just won­der if any­one in power at Penn State real­izes this–or cares.