In the past six days, I’ve written and rewritten this column in my mind about 20 times.

One moment, I’m lamenting the loss of an icon in college football, mentioned in the same breath as Bear Bryant and Bobby Bowden.

The next moment, I’m wondering how such an icon, even in his advanced years, could let such unspeakable crimes happen on his watch, right under his nose.

Joe Paterno’s firing at Penn State last week had to happen. He knew that his former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky was accused of sexually assaulting young boys within the Nittany Lions football complex. And instead of tackling the issue head-on, he punted. He reported the issue to his superiors like some nameless middle manager at, say, Dunder-Mifflin’s regional office over in Scranton.

That’s not what icons are supposed to do.

Icons are supposed to know the right thing, and do it without hesitation. The right thing in this case would have been to haul Sandusky’s rear end into the office, and ask him if he had any interactions with boys from his Second Mile charity that could even remotely be construed as inappropriate. If Sandusky admitted that he had, he should have been fired on the spot. If not, a full investigation should have commenced immediately — not some higher-ups asking a few questions around State College, which is what appears to have happened — and then fired him if the charges proved to be even partially true.

That didn’t happen, of course, and now the storied Penn State football program has had a nuclear bomb explode right in its midst. And the heretofore clean-as-a-whistle reputation of Paterno is wrecked beyond repair.

Saddest of all, though, is the continuing reactions of fans in Not-So-Happy Valley to the coach’s firing.

You would expect a few diehard fans, those who think their coach can do no wrong, to stand by their man to the bitter end. But even that went to extremes after Paterno’s sacking was announced, as students rioted in the streets.

In hindsight, the insular community of State College may be a large part of the problem. It’s a nice city, to be sure, and perennially rated as one of the safest places in America. (I think we can count that out for a while.)

But it also owes its existence to the university, and there’s little else there of note. When “going to town” means heading down Interstate 99 to Altoona — Altoona?! — that tells you a lot. It makes Tuscaloosa look like Atlanta.

It’s a company town, and Paterno was its de facto mayor. The school revolves around the football team, and the city revolves around the school. So when the Lions are in trouble, so is the community.

And with a community that is so insular, it is extremely likely that many people knew all along about Sandusky’s problems. I used to work in Hoover, half again larger than State College, and one of the first things I heard about when I went to work there was the dalliances of Hoover High football coach Rush Propst.

Perhaps that’s why State College has a collective guilt trip right now. Too many people knew and did nothing. Skeletons in the municipal garage, as it were.

There are calls to shut down the Penn State football program for a year, coming from people who spend too much time watching C-SPAN and MSNBC and not enough ESPN. But the players had absolutely nothing to do with this, so why penalize them?

But it is clear that Joe Paterno didn’t do what he should have. And the icon had to go, even as revered as he was, locally and nationally.

Even icons sometimes have feet of clay.