Penn State football is a $53 million gravy boat we all slosh in

Revenues of $72,747,734. Expenses of $19,519,288.

These are the figures Penn State's associate athletic director Richard Kaluza entered on a required U.S. Department of Education form detailing financial data for PSU's football team during the fiscal year ending June 30, 2011.

That's $53,228,446 in profit. It's a staggering figure. What could you do with that money aside from funding 56 swimmers and divers, 71 lacrosse players, 237 track and field athletes, 35 wrestlers and all the of the other hundreds of Penn State participants in 29 varsity sports.

If you could pay back the 10 established victims of Jerry Sandusky with some of it, that'd be something.

But you can't ever pay them enough. And whatever millions that civil litigation mines will emerge from other spouts of Penn State's liability insurance and 10-figure slush bucket.

So, in some dreamworld, what would you do with that money to create something lasting and good? What if all the so-called “non-revenue” varsity sports that run in the red, many wildly so, suddenly regressed to club status and had to make their own way and support themselves as they did generations ago? And all that profit football makes every year wasn't used on volleyball training equipment and women's basketball plane flights and the like but handed over to child sex abuse charities and causes?

Nah, that'll never happen. I know it and you know it. I just use the illustration as an exercise to show what a monster this whole major college athletic business has become. The money is so huge for a small handful of national football programs such as Penn State that they've developed a culture where each sport depends on football. Everyone feeds at the trough. So many have become dependent.

That's how it got this big at Penn State. And that's why it will stay this big. Too many have too great a stake in it.

That goes for many media outlets who profit from all the readers and viewers who want to know more, more, more all the time about Penn State football.

The Patriot-News and amply included. You won't see me calling for Penn State football to be given a hiatus, will you? I'm not stupid. Penn State football is our lifeblood.

Stephen A. Smith can scream for the NCAA “death penalty.” He has dozens of other sports and teams to pontificate about for the ever more bloated ESPN./p

Christine Brennan can shriek for it in print. USA Today can assign her to something more esoteric tomorrow. Maybe a preview of Olympic rhythmic gymnastics.

Not me, baby. I know where my bread's buttered. Penn State football is the pimp I love and hate. Lately, more the latter. But it owns me, doesn't it? I'm no different than a crack whore in need of a fix. And Bucknell basketball won't buy it.

That's the thing, folks. It owns all of us. And it's so big, it doesn't even care.

So, how can we control a monster so sprawling and multi-tentacled? Because its size and its outrageous profit lines are really what made the Sandusky scandal happen. Those 8-digit figures are what caused so many intelligent men to rationalize their inaction.

And you can say it was merely some sort of Mad Men-era tendency to plunge one's head in the sand when confronted with unspeakable stories of pedophilia.

I don't believe it. No, I think a lot people were scared the machine might start coughing and wheezing and printing fewer greenbacks if someone as grotesque as Sandusky was held under a klieg wearing a blue-and-white shirt for all the world to see. People might be held accountable and fired, sure. But the good players might quit coming, too. The national brand might become indelibly stained.

More expedient just to forget about those screaming little boys. Pretend nothing happened but horseplay.

So, it's safe to say nothing remotely this heinous will ever happen again. Why even bother to crank the machine down a notch or two? The kids and coach and athletic director and president now had nothing to do with that other thing. What does football have to do with this, right? Why can't we pay off the victims and go back to having our fun and making our money? Football season's right around the corner!

See, you might not believe it. But there are moments lately when I feel very sad. Dirty, actually. Because I've fed the monster for more than two decades. I will continue to feed it.

And I don't know how to stop. Because it feeds me.

DAVID JONES: On Twitter: @djoneshoop.