Many know Joe Paterno as a legendary football coach of the Penn State Nittany Lions, yet at the end of his tenure, as the most successful college coach ever with the most wins of all time, a scandal/crisis broke out involving Jerry Sandusky, who was an assistant under Joe Paterno for decades, and was accused of rape and sexual assault of young football players for Penn State.

In March of 2011, Jerry Sandusky was indicted on 52 counts of child molestation, stemming from incidents that occurred between 1994 and 2009. Sandusky was charged and is facing 30 to 60 years for the offenses, this obviously shocked the college football world, with Paterno being the game’s most recognizable figures, this was unforeseen, although it was Sandusky that was the man of the crime, Paterno oversaw these actions and continuously renewed him as an assistant, knowing of his terrible actions. The aftermath of this crisis scandal was, as a result of the scandal, the  (NCAA) imposed sanctions on the Penn State football program: a $60 million fine, a four-year postseason ban, scholarship reductions, and a vacation of all victories from 1998 to 2011.

This was the most harsh punishment the NCAA has ever handed down, and as a result Penn State was faced with a strong challenge, bouncing back from this crisis, taking a deep breath and trying to move forward. Although, there is not much that could be done after these horrific acts occurred, Penn State tried their best to clean their name as best as they could after the fines and suspension, Penn State had to pull the plug on the legend of their beloved coach. Penn State had to start an entirely new rebrand, they lost recruits, millions, attention and exposure, basically everything. Yet, everything changed when they hired the perfect coach for the rebuild, James Franklin, who was able to turn around the image of the program and the school.