Look, there's nobody in collegiate athletics who has a more difficult job than Sandy Barbour.

In so many ways, Penn State's athletic department is one that is being rebuilt. So, too, is the reputation of its flagship program, with the horrors of the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal still fresh in the minds of so many.There's nothing she can seemingly say or do as athletic director that simultaneously will both appease the national perception of what went on back when Sandusky was allowed to roam the campus freely and satisfy the student body and vast alumni base.An alumni base that knows better, there are so many more intricacies of fact and understanding of circumstance that should go into forming a complete opinion.So in regards to those "409" decals Penn State's men's hockey team members wore on the back of their helmets during their game against Michigan State, there was no doubt Barbour was going to hear complaints.The only question was whether she'd respond by appeasing the national perception, or by satisfying the alumni and students and fans, the majority of which didn't seem to see any sort of problem dancing on the NCAA's grave after it handed late coach Joe Paterno and the football program the 112 wins it took away as part of the sanctions.Barbour's response, to a remark on Twitter, predictably started a firestorm among Penn Staters."Inappropriate and insensitive," Barbour tweeted back. "It's been taken care of."The national response was predictable: "Gee, someone is finally talking sense at Penn State and thinking about Sandusky's victims."The Penn State response was predictable: "Start rewriting your resume, Sandy. There's nothing wrong with celebrating the return of something we never should have lost."And so, the story that couldn't seem get any more messy just did.Columns like this one are getting so difficult to write, really. The scandal became international news more than three years ago, and while so much has changed, the fact is that far, far too many people picked a side long ago and have refused to budge from it. There's no longer a sense that this story can be judged on an instance-by-instance basis, because about 10 major stories have been wrapped into one huge ordeal. Sandusky's atrocities, for example, led to the shaming of a to-that-point legendary coach with a pristine reputation. That led to sanctions. That led to the Freeh report. That led to the NCAA's sanctions. Which led to the NCAA's ability to punish Penn State for breaking what amounted to exactly zero NCAA rules. Which led to findings that the NCAA and Freeh may have been in cahoots.This story is all of that. It's the Second Mile. It's Children and Youth Services. It's the Paterno statue. It's the records. It's ... well, it's a lot of different things that have very little to do with Sandusky and the actual victims of this whole episode.Today, it's "409" stickers. It's how much can Penn State realistically expect to return to the normalcy the NCAA was forced to hand it?What Barbour should have done was call a quick meeting of her coaches Friday, told them that as happy as the athletic department was to get the wins back which she also wrote on Twitter she expected teams to show restraint in displaying their excitement, to consider the victims.That's an understandable stance, because if taken, it never puts the issue back in the public eye. She can't control what fans and students do to celebrate, but the current student-athletes are a different story. She's the boss. She makes the call, and it's almost as stunning an issue that the hockey team wore any kind of decals without her knowledge or authority.What hockey coach Guy Gadowski should have done, though, was a better job relating the decision to wear them once the flood gates opened.After the game Friday, and during an interview with TSN Radio in Canada on Monday, Gadowski repeatedly insisted the decals were designed to honor students who've worked hard to enhance the university's reputation in recent years. But that isn't exactly true either. It's a "409" decal, after all.That's the symbol Penn State fans have used to protest the NCAA's actions, the Freeh report, the sanctions, the consent decree everything that got invalidated in one wave on Friday.Bottom line is, nobody outside of Penn State is buying the public-relations arguments that this was about students.State the reasons why you think the sticker was really OK, then move on. Don't answer every question the same way. Don't take an awkward 30-second pause when asked what Sandusky's victims might think, as Gadowski did. If you think the NCAA wronged Penn State, force people to at least listen to your side.Like so many aspects of this mess, this is another sidebar to the scandal that could have and should have been handled much differently. Sandy Barbour is not the most popular person in Happy Valley today because of that fact. But understand, she's not completely off-base here.Those who defended Penn State against the NCAA were completely right to do so, and they're completely right to try to continue to set things back the way they should be.But it's also completely right and necessary to consider the feelings of Sandusky's victims and try to do as right by them as possible.Err on the side of the victims. If that means a quiet celebration instead of one the nation gets to debate for days, that's a fair price to pay.