Another Judgment Day looms for Penn State football. Opening arguments were set to begin today in the civil trial for former assistant coach Mike McQueary in Bellefonte, Centre County.

McQueary will forever be notorious as the whistle-blower who said he saw defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky sexually abusing a boy in the Penn State locker room.

Five years ago, McQueary’s testimony helped convict Sandusky as a serial pedophile and topple three Penn State senior administrators who had tried to cover up the incident.

McQueary is suing his alma mater and former employer for $4 million, claiming he was unjustly forced out of his $104,000 a year coaching job and has been unable to find a coaching job at any other college. He claims former PSU president Graham B. Spanier, athletic director Tim Curley and Vice President Gary Schultz drove McQueary out after he testified they failed to act on McQueary’s report of Sandusky’s abuse in 2001.

The university is fighting McQueary, its former star quarterback and rising star of an assistant coach under the once-legendary Joe Paterno.

Attorneys for the school hang their case on the argument that McQueary wasn’t fired because of the Sandusky scandal. They say Paterno’s successor, Bill O’Brien, did what many new head coaches do: hire their own staff of assistants and let the former coaches’ contracts expire.

The school’s resistance is mystifying. Already, Penn State has paid out a reported $92 million in out-of-court settlements to 32 Sandusky accusers. After paying $92 million to keep 32 accusers out of the courtroom, why does Penn State seem so eager to take McQueary before a jury?

In a broader sense, McQueary did a heroic thing — he defended a defenseless child from a monster when others who might have been aware of the atrocities did nothing to investigate. McQueary helped to remove a cancer from the campus athletic program, probably knowing that it was destroy the program and tarnish its leaders — including himself.

In fact, Pennsylvania’s laws now make the reporting of suspected child abuse mandatory. The child-abuse laws were overhauled because of the Sandusky scandal. Not only did McQueary do the right and the heroic thing, he did what is now the only legal thing by reporting what he saw.

His lawsuit will come down to the 12 Centre County residents who were chosen last week to serve as jurors. Two of the jurors are Penn State employees.

Will they sympathize with McQueary’s claim that the case has ruined his prospects for a coaching career — and that the university is responsible for his damages?

In a preliminary ruling that allowed the trial to proceed, a judge said that if McQueary can prove his allegations, the university might be liable for punitive damages. That means a jury could award an even larger sum to McQueary.

For an out-of-work football coach, that would be justice.

But it leaves many of the rest of us — Penn State alumni, in particular — wondering why we have to reopen what are now old wounds. McQueary’s claim against Penn State should have been settled out of court.