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Students visit the Joe Paterno statue at Penn State after the football head coach was fired.Patrick Smith/Getty Images

Shock waves from the child sex-abuse scandal that has rocked Penn State University, toppling a sporting legend and besmirching a beloved institution, have rippled far beyond the sporting world, laying bare the outsize influence of college athletics on American education and identity.

In the scandal's wake, both iconic head football coach Joe Paterno and university president Graham Spanier were fired Wednesday night by school trustees. The massive shakeup came just hours after Mr. Paterno announced that he planned to retire at the end of his 46th season at Penn State.

Speaking at his house to a couple of dozen students, Mr. Paterno said, "Right now, I'm not the football coach. And I've got to get used to that."

He shook hands with many of the students, some of whom were crying.

The charges that university officials did little to stop Jerry Sandusky, a former assistant football coach, from allegedly molesting eight young boys over 15 years have torn through the fabric of communities built on a Friday Night Lights way of life, where 100,000-seat stadiums such as Penn State's are virtual houses of worship.

Once again, the uneasy relationship between powerful college football programs and universities' role as educators, community hubs and stewards of young people is being harshly scrutinized. State legislators and White House officials have joined the frenzied chorus demanding answers.

University vice-president Gary Schultz and athletic director Tim Curley are charged with failing to report one of Mr. Sandusky's alleged crimes against boys from a charity he founded for at-risk youth.

Improprieties inside U.S. college football programs are nothing new, and neither is the suspicion schools may have hesitated to act on them, but past revelations often involved players' garden-variety crimes or circumventions of the National Collegiate Athletic Association's labyrinthine regulations. Penn State was held to a higher standard.

The Nittany Lions had a clean-cut reputation, symbolized by the long tenure of Mr. Paterno, known locally as "JoePa." An avuncular figure, Mr. Paterno preached a moral code to his players under the program's official motto, "Success with Honor," asking them to be worthy of the adulation heaped on them.

In hindsight, he said Wednesday that he wished he "had done more" than simply alert his superiors when then-graduate assistant Mike McQueary reported seeing Mr. Sandusky allegedly raping a 10-year-old boy. Earlier in the day after tearfully telling his team he would be leaving at season's end, one player said the core message was still to "Beat Nebraska" – Penn State's next opponent.

Matchups like that earn U.S. schools billions of dollars a year in revenues, mostly from television contracts and sponsorships, as well as ticket and merchandise sales. Coaches like Mr. Paterno draw seven-figure salaries but the players are unpaid, leaving multimillion-dollar windfalls that are indispensable to many schools' budgets.

The scandal could deal a major blow to Penn State's ability to recruit – and not just athletes or donors. But the greater fallout is felt among the masses who carry a deep emotional investment in what happens on the gridiron.

Earlier this week, an "extraordinarily angry" Arne Duncan, U.S. Education Secretary, reiterated the "absolute moral, ethical and legal responsibility" all educators have to protect children.

"If a blind eye was turned towards it, or if the allegations were somewhat buried or not taken seriously … you're giving the abuser more opportunities to hurt more kids," Mr. Duncan said. "I just can't fathom that."

Penn State's legions of followers can't quite fathom it either, as they watch the celebrated leaders of a national monument being toppled before their eyes.

With reports from Associated Press

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