The harsh penalties handed down to Penn State Monday by the NCAA will, at least on the collegiate athletic front, go a long way toward protecting young people.

In announcing the Penn State penalties, NCAA President Mark Emmert said, “Football will never again be placed ahead of educating, nurturing and protecting young people.”

But it can be asked whether the lessons learned from Penn State’s experience really will translate to other sports and other segments of society over the long run. Only the years going forward will provide that answer.

Penn State officials never should have allowed Jerry Sandusky’s horrific crimes against children to continue beyond the first suspicion that there was a problem.

Findings have proven a mind-set of trying to protect the reputation and stature of the university and its football program. Instead, the failure to act against the abuse from day one caused harm to the university to a degree that not even the officials involved in the decision to look the other way could have envisioned.

Now the university faces years of trying to repair what former Penn State President Graham Spanier, the late former head football coach Joe Paterno, former vice president Gary Schultz and former athletic director Tim Curley have wrought by their failure to confront Sandusky immediately — and with law enforcement officials present.

If for no other reason, the university’s board of trustees also can be faulted for creating a culture allowing itself to be out of touch with a situation so serious for so long.

Meanwhile, adding to the NCAA’s decision on Penn State punishment, the university also must comply with edicts handed down by the Big Ten Conference.

One of the only bright spots emanating from Monday’s announcement was the statement from new Penn State head football coach Bill O’Brien that he’s committed to the university and has no plans to leave.

“I knew when I accepted the position that there would be tough times ahead,” O’Brien said. “But I am committed for the long term to Penn State and our student athletes.”

The days ahead will make clear whether O’Brien’s sentiment is shared by members of the Nittany Lions, who are free to immediately transfer and compete at another school.

Amid a saga of destroyed reputations, the NCAA could have severely damaged its own if it had chosen not to come down so hard on Penn State. So, too, the Big Ten.

But it can be argued whether the NCAA went too far in stripping the Nittany Lions of all of their victories from 1998 through 2011.

There’s never been any evidence that any Nittany Lions players of those years were in any way involved in the Sandusky scandal or its coverup.

It would seem that those players’ accomplishments could have been allowed to stand, in concert with an edict that Paterno’s victories during those years would no longer be recognized in terms of his personal won-loss record.

The losses that have been changed to victories for Penn State opponents no doubt will be regarded as hollow victories — at least by the schools that take a right-thinking attitude toward all that has occurred.

Likewise, the NCAA made the right decision in not imposing the “death penalty” on Penn State football — shutting down the football program completely.

Regardless, the penalties meted out are crippling, not only to the university but also to the State College community in general. Time will tell how much the sanctions cost the State College-area economy over the next four years, and even beyond.

Penn State exercised correct judgment in quickly accepting the NCAA sanctions, and Penn State President Rod Erickson also acted correctly in having the statue of Paterno outside Beaver Stadium taken down.

If the statue is to be erected at another location on campus, a logical place would be the Paterno Library.

Erickson’s announcement that the Paterno name will remain on the library rightly reflects the attitude that will be ongoing — despite all that’s occurred — about the Paterno family’s substantial positive contributions to the university’s learning environment.

No doubt dark days lie ahead for the university, if only because of the trials and expensive legal settlements that will be forthcoming. However, the university can be given credit for all the right things it has done since Sandusky’s crimes were exposed.

Football and all other sports are secondary to the necessity to protect children. And, a thought expressed in a July 18 letter to the editor in the Butler Eagle should remain a matter for reflection.

“He (Sandusky) just didn’t become a pedophile at age 55,” the letter writer said. “I was just wondering what . . . Sandusky was doing when he was in his 20s, 30s and 40s.”

Many other people might be wondering that also — and perhaps pondering what abuse might have been inflicted by Sandusky on some other innocent child or children.

Only Sandusky knows the answers to those questions.