They really, really want to keep the focus on the field, push the ugliness behind them.
No matter how many times Penn State's football players and coaches say that, it remains wishful thinking.
Again last week, there were partying and noise and police and Nittany Lions gathered in the same place.
And the question persists: How can kids be this dumb?
Yes, that comes with all the standard provisos. We don't have all the facts. You're innocent until proven guilty. Nobody's even been charged with anything yet.
But unless Penn State's campus police are in the habit of filing reports that are utter fiction, we know this:
"At 22:19 hours [last Tuesday], as the result of investigating a report of loud music in the Nittany Apartments complex, the odor of burning marijuana was detected coming from inside of one of the buildings. The residents of the apartment declined a consent search and a search warrant was applied for and executed on the residence. The search yielded a small amount of marijuana."
That apartment is the residence of defensive linemen Maurice Evans and Abe Karoma, defensive back A.J. Wallace, and tight end Andrew Quarless.
There is no reason, based on what is now known, to assert that any of the players possessed or used the marijuana. But it was in their home, and they didn't stop it from being there.
And this was during the season. On a Tuesday night. In their apartment.
Quarless in particular is a veteran of an underage drinking citation, a driving-under-the-influence charge, and an academic suspension. He's done more doghouse time than Rin Tin Tin.
They didn't stumble into this. The wrong place, wrong time argument doesn't begin to apply.
You can't put this one on JoePa, either. Even if you're convinced he's lost control and the inmates are running the asylum (which is at best simplistic and at worst idiocy), the players don't need this explained to them: If you care about your future and your present, you don't do this.
Their present should include major roles in a potentially special Penn State season. Their future could include playing Sundays. All four of them have at least an outside chance at the NFL and Evans, in particular, has an inside chance.
Josh Gaines, a senior defensive co-captain, said he talked to Evans before Saturday's game.
"He was in tears," Evans said. "I guarantee you he won't do anything like that again."
Paterno didn't make a statement to the media last week, but did comment on Thursday, to the most worshipful audience imaginable, on his weekly radio call-in show.
To his credit, and perhaps because he wasn't talking to media folk, he didn't get defensive, and he didn't sugar-coat.
"We're not going to play Evans and we're not going to play…Wallace will play, Wallace was really not part of that situation," Paterno said. "Evans and Quarless and Koroma were and it's unfortunate but hey, we preach, preach, preach and they stepped out of line."
Wallace did play, but apprarently less than usual and mostly on special teams. His roll as nickel back on passing situations was filled by Drew Astorino, a redshirt freshman backup safety.
Quarless dressed but stood quietly on the sidelines. Evans and Koroma were nowhere to be found.
"They deserve what they're going to get. Whatever that's going to be I don't know,"Paterno said.
"And it's disappointing because they're all three good football players, they're not bad kids. But they do dumb things and you pay for it when you do dumb things. It's something they'll be living with because the NFL is cracking down and everybody with drugs and I feel sorry for them. I wish I could do something besides saying 'hey, you're going to sit out this week until I get all the information,' because I don't have it all."
We've hard that before. They're heard it before. The way they dismantled Oregon State Saturday, maybe the Lions are getting used to it.
"Unfortunately, we've been through something like that before," quarterback Daryll Clark said. "We responded the same way we always have."
One impulse here, at least on the part of some people, will be to make grandoise statements about the state of the Penn State program or modern America youth.
Another impulse, almost the opposite of the first one, is to look back on one's own adolesence, on the reckless and unhealthy and stupid and maybe even illegal things you do when you're that age, and mutter that there, but for the grace of God, go I…
Except that most college kids aren't even potentially a year or three away from the NFL, or anything like the NFL. Most college kids aren't going to make their living with their bodies. Most college kids don't have the hopes of dozens of teammates and hundreds of thousands of fans riding on their keeping their nose clean.
So how can kids be this dumb?
You weren't expecting an answer, were you?
Mike Gross is assistant sports editor of the Sunday News. E-mail him at mgross@lnpnews.com.
