The NCAA has acted on meting out punishments to Penn State, and the Turkey is here with his comments, criticisms, witticisms, and the usual baloney, malarkey, and bamboozlingly prosaic je ne sais quoi.
First, I want to stress that these are my personal opinions, and as such, they do not reflect the views of the Penn State Alumni Association or the Central Florida Chapter (ok, Katie?). Furthermore, if you are a local news reporter, I do not give interviews, on-camera or otherwise.
I’ll address primarily the punishments, because the corrective measures are mostly reasonable, expected, and straightforward. Fortunately, two of the possible punishment modalities were not applied by the NCAA.
Here’s what the NCAA did not do:
- Impose the so-called “death penalty”. The football program will continue to operate, albeit crippled by other NCAA sanctions. I suppose that the reasoning was that this would affect “innocents” beyond the immediate target, which was Penn State leadership and the football program itself.
- Impose a television broadcasting ban on Penn State games. This would have hit Penn State’s opponents, as well, by denying them the TV revenue for each game they play with Penn State. Again, this could be construed as unintended collateral damage.
- $60 million fine
- Four year postseason ban
- Four year reduction of grants-in-aid
- Five years of probation
- Vacation of wins since 1998
- Waiver of transfer rules and grants-in-aid retention
- Provision for individual penalties
But how will Penn State respond to the sanctions and corrective measures?
They rolled over and played dead. President Rod Erickson, Athletic Director Dave Joyner, and Head Football Coach Bill O’Brien all signed a consent decree agreeing to the penalties. I suppose that fighting it would have been futile, even though there were lots of legal technicalities that might not have survived a challenge. The NCAA bent its own rules to impose these punishments based on the unprecedented nature of the egregious offenses committed by the institution. There will be no appeal. Rod has tacitly admitted guilt on behalf of the institution, accepted his punishment, and agreed to make amends.
Isn’t the punishment just as bad as the “death penalty”?
No. It’s worse. Penn State will lose a year’s football revenue, but the four year postseason ban, the four year reduction in grants-in-aid, and the waiver of transfer rules and grants-in-aid retention will negatively impact the program for perhaps a decade. Without the potential for postseason play, potential top recruits will go elsewhere. To make matters worse, established players will be able to transfer out of the program as they see fit with impunity, while retaining their scholarships. It would not be going too far to expect Penn State to be looted of all its prime talent. Some might stay because their values transcend playing for whomever gives them the best possibility of a bowl game and visibility to the NFL, but there are damned few of those types of characters (i.e., real student-athletes) in college football today.
Give us your long-winded, bombastic Turkey take on each of the sanctions. And try to keep it to a paragraph each, Birdbrain!
OK. I will.
- $60 million fine. The NCAA docked the Nittany Lions a year’s pay. In other words, they assessed a penalty of a year’s football revenues. The fine is to be paid over a five-year period. Ahhhh, you say that the football program is supporting a bunch of other non-revenue or low-revenue sports, so just do some chopping. Nope. The NCAA thought of that, and it’s prohibited. The endowment created by these big bucks will benefit programs preventing child sexual abuse and assisting victims of child sexual abuse, except that it may not be used to fund programs run by the University. Another possible loophole closed by the smarties at the NCAA.
- Four-year postseason ban. Starting with the upcoming season and ending in the 2015 season, Penn State won’t be able to participate in bowl games, conference championships, or playoffs. Four years means no postseason hopes for current recruits and the next couple year’s recruits. Who will want to play with no incentives? It will be like playing for the fun of playing. Does anyone do that anymore? I guess they still have fun at Indiana, right?
- Four-year reduction of grants-in-aid. Penn State is hit horribly hard with this one. We’re not talking about playing for fun or glory here, we’re talking about money. The total number of scholarship so-called student athletes will drop from 85 to 65 for four years starting with the 2014-2015 season and extending to the end of 2017-2018. Instead of initiating a maximum of 25 new scholarships per year, Penn State will be allowed only 15 for the four academic years beginning 2013-2014 and running through 2016-2017. Now, not only will premier recruits not want to commit to Penn State because of the bowl ban, but they won’t be able to commit to Penn State because they ain’t no damn money for them. Welcome to Division III football for the next 7-10 seasons.
- Five years of probation. If Penn State should screw up during this period, they are threatened with “additional, more severe sanctions.” Oy, vey! This program better be damn well squeaky clean for five years. Pussified, almost. An Independent Integrity Monitor (IIM) is to be appointed to make sure of that. Don’t even think of bribing or extorting the IIM to look the other way for even the most minor of rules infractions. This is your prison cell, Penn State. Stay in it and don’t even think of attempting any funny business, or else!
- Vacation of wins since 1998. Vacation? A “win holiday”? I can’t find the appropriate definition of vacation in Webster’s, so it must be legalese. I tried looking in legal dictionaries, too, so let’s consider this a quasi-legal colloquialism meaning, “Screw you, Joe! (May he rest in peace.)” Every football team win from 1998 through 2011 will be considered a loss. This isn’t just mind play. It will be so written in the NCAA record books, the permanent record that follows each team for the rest of its days. It means that Joe Paterno no longer holds the record for the most wins in Division I, as his 409 wins now becomes 298. It also means that Tom Bradley’s only win as head coach is now a loss. This is good news for Eddie Robinson and Bobby Bowden’s supporters, although Bobby still won’t get a win for the 2005 Orange Bowl. This sanction hits directly at Paterno and his record. Removing his statue obviously wasn’t enough for the NCAA. As I thought, it was a token gesture that would be seen for what it was. The “vacation” of wins expunges a major hunk of Paterno’s legendary career, although the penalty encompasses the waning years when the team was mediocre and Paterno couldn’t win big games. (I would have hated to see the two national championships and several undefeated teams go into the dumpster.)
- Waiver of transfer rules and grant-in-aid retention. This is the death blow if ever there was one. There is now nothing to keep players from transferring to wherever they please, like rats off a sinking ship. I predict many defections. Previously, Penn State players who transferred to another FBS school would have to sit out a year, but now they don’t. Furthermore, he gets to keep his football scholarship, even if he doesn’t play football. So, they’re practically encouraging players to bail. Geronimoooooooooooo!
- Individual penalties to be determined. This one is interesting and beneficial, but vague. The NCAA reserves the right to conduct investigations of individuals after the conclusion of any criminal proceedings related to those individuals. Specifically, this would seem to apply to Curley and Schultz, as they’re the only individuals presently awaiting criminal trials. But what could the NCAA do to an individual? I don’t think they can tell the University to revoke their pensions — that seems to be something Jim Delany and the Big Ten think they might be able to do with a minor rule change here and a tweak there. And what about investigating Spanier, who seems to get off the easiest? There are no criminal charges against him at present. Does this mean that he is exempt from additional investigations by the NCAA? One thing is for sure, they won’t be further investigating Paterno, but they hit him as hard as they could without disinterring him (see #5).
I think the word draconian fits nicely in this context. Penn State takes a huge hit in its ability to compete on the football field. That was the obvious intent of the sanctions. The NCAA is at least playing a cover-its-own-ass charade about the vaunted “student-athlete.” They want to broadcast the message that the academy comes first in each member univesity, while football takes a backseat. Penn State, with its highly visible and egregious offenses serves as the whipping boy whose punishment sends a strong message to other programs with lesser offenses lurking just behind their fine veneer, shielded by a layer of ivory tower Omerta. The NCAA damn well knows they’re out there, but the organization cannot go looking for sins at every one of its member schools. The hope is that by sending this clear message, the others stop their questionable practices.
But this Turkey is, as you know, a cynic. I believe that the culture of independence and secrecy is deeply ingrained in most, if not all, universities, and one only has to follow the money to find the skeletons in their closets. Regardless of the strong warning provided by Penn State’s punishment, other institutions and their “entitled” leaders will continue to test the waters. Did SMU’s football “death penalty” at the behest of the NCAA deter Auburn, FSU, Miami, PSU, OSU, USC, etc.? Think about it. Follow the money!
So the Nittany Lions take it on the chin. How will this affect your Saturday afternoons in the fall? Will you still watch Penn State games, even if the team appears to be playing at high school level? Can Bill O’Brien work wonders with the dearth of talent? In fact, will Bill O’Brien even stay at Penn State? If he leaves, who will want to coach the Nittany Lions? Don Jonas?
What are the corrective measures?
Pretty much what you would expect. Clean up your backyard, Penn State, the homeowners’ association is watching closely.
The actions are:
- Adoption of all recommendations presented in Chapter 10 of the Freeh Report.
- Implementation of Athletics Integrity Agreement. This obligates Penn State to comply with Chapter 10, as mentioned above, plus perform the following specific additional actions within 10 days:
- Create a position for and select a Compliance Officer for Athletics.
- Create a Compliance Council consisting of faculty, administrators, and the Compliance Officer, for oversight.
- Create a reporting mechanism and hotline for whistle blowers.
- Designate a coach to certify annually that the program meets all the requirements of the Compliance Council.
- Ensure that the athletics director annually certifies full compliance to the Compliance Council, the board of trustees, and the NCAA.
- Create or update any code of conduct for the athletics department to codify the values of honesty, integrity, and civility.
- Implement a training course for all student-athletes and university employees associated with the athletics department that addresses issues of ethics, integrity, civility, standards of conduct, and reporting of violations. Each individual must certify in writing that he or she has obtained such training.
Any perceived breech of the Athletic Integrity Agreement shall be met with the full force of the NCAA’s artillery, including extending existing sanctions.
- Appointment of an independent Athletics Integrity Monitor (AIM) for a five-year period. This will be a university funded position but it will report to the board of trustees, the Big Ten Conference, and the NCAA. The AIM will prepare a quarterly report of the execution and maintenance of the AIA and will make recommendations of steps deemed necessary to ensure compliance with its terms.
- He or she will be selected by the NCAA.
- He or she will have access to all university facilities, personnel, and non-privileged records, as appropriate.
- He or she will have the authority to employ personnel required to assist in the proper discharge of his or her duties.
It would seem as if the NCAA has covered all bases with respect to shackling Penn State to the rule book and the code of ethics. This, in my opinion is appropriate, but I have to wonder how it will work in practice. Will we see a reduction in the number of off-campus arrests? Boys will be boys, but if they don’t have Papa Joe to protect them, they might think twice about doing something that will automatically get them kicked off the team.
I realize that my tone here should be somber and perhaps, sad, but I actually welcome many of the remedies. The sanctions, well, that’s another story. But in all fairness, I do believe that all universities should be made to comply with at least the rudiments of the corrective measures prescribed above.
I would dearly love to see Penn State actually live up to the “success with honor” dictum for a change, and I would dearly love to see the elimination of watered down academic majors such as kinesiology, sociology, parks and recreation management, black studies, liberal arts, underwater basket weaving (available only at University of Miami and USC), etc., that are there because of stupid athletes who couldn’t keep their grades up if they were in non-fluff majors. Alas, if the NCAA is willing only to set examples using programs that transgress in a highly visible manner and is not willing to reform the whole damn lot of member schools, then we’ll be stuck with the “student-athlete” scam forever and always.
Those who get away with crossing the line will always win the most football games while preparing the majority of their athletes for nothing at all beyond football. The NFL has only 1,440 positions. What happens to the rest of those ill prepared students? Well, there’s the CFL and the AFL, but I’m just sayin’.
I’m rambling about one of my pet peeves — the myth of the student-athlete — so I’ll sign off now. Well, sort of. I have one more thing to say. Paterno family: please, stop the statements in response to any significant finding or action involving the late, lamented Joseph V. Paterno. They’re not swaying anyone from their opinion of the whole thing; people either exonerate or implicate Joe in their own minds and won’t move off their position unless they hear it from Joe himself — and he ain’t talking. Many more of these statements will cause the Paterno family to be likened to O.J. Simpson and his pledge to find “the real killer.”
What’s done is done now. And now, I’m done.
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BigAl says
You’re right. The penalties are worse than the death penalty and Erikson and Joyner sold out Penn State (with the BOT’s tacit approval.) Penn State will be an FBS (fka 1-AA) team playing a Big 10 schedule for the next 6 years, so the ban on bowl participation is meaningless. This year’s team is the only one that will have even a ghost of chance of becoming bowl eligible before the 2018 season.
It may very well have been futile to fight the sanctions but at least Rodney the Unready could have tried. And if he were unsuccessful in getting due process and/or some reduction in penalties, the ENTIRE athletic program should have been terminated indefinitely. I think State would survive and that would send a powerful message to the NCAA bureaucrats about the importance/place of college sports.
What am I going to do? Nothing. And by that I mean I will not contribute a dime to Penn State any other university or pay to attend any NCAA sanctioned event for the next 5 years. I may watch some ACC football games on TV , but that’s going to be it.
The Nittany Turkey says
Given the free ride accorded to players by the NCAA, I expect a plethora of defections before the season begins — not only decommits from new recruits but also bail-outs by established starters and bench warmers alike. Here’s a tweet by ESPN’s Joe Schad:
I think that the question to ask at this point is not who we think will leave, but rather who we think will stay. By the time the rats leave this sinking ship, O’Brien’s options will be reduced to playing Lavon Chisley, if he is eligible for the work release program. That is, if O’Brien himself sticks around.
It looked to me as if Erickson tried to get away with the minimum possible prep for Emmert’s decision. As I recall, the statement from the NCAA upon release of the Freeh Report was to the tune of Penn State’s response will inform our decisions. So, what steps did Penn State take? Two highly visible symbolic grandstand plays with no lasting impact on the program: Garban’s retirement from the BOT and Bronze Joe’s departure from his concrete pedestal. If these were documented at all to the NCAA it was through the media. Did Erickson direct any other remedies associated with the Freeh Report’s recommendations? Did he document anything at all to the NCAA before that organization made its decision?
I guess he thinks he was chosen to placate the forces of destruction, so rolling over for the NCAA was part of the deal. Penn State has some serious self image problems and doesn’t seem ready to stand up to anyone except the Paterno family right now.
I actually think I will want to watch The Team Formerly Known As Penn State play on Saturdays. It will be fun to watch, even if they’re being beaten 77-3, especially if Fera leaves. Hell, I’ll have a ball writing about the buffoons. It’ll appeal to my penchant for irony and flat out comedy.
—TNT
BigAl says
I never watched when State was blowing out MAC and FCS (I got the stupid division initials wrong in my first post) teams, so I’m sure not going to watch State get blown out. The older I get, the less I care about sports anyway.
But I am totally pissed off at the NCAA and Erickson and Joyner’s gutless response to them. I’m not buying in the “lets put this behind us and show them what Penn State is really made of” manure that Rodney is spreading.
I believe that when you are oppressed you take action against your oppressor. Even if that action hurts in the short term.
The NCAA is a voluntary organization and addiction to the football program operating profit (allegedly arount $20M) is not enough reason to submit to the NCAA. Just drop the intercollegiate athletic program, tell the NCAA to go to hell, and upgrade intramural and club sports.
Besides, the student body would be better off participating in intramurals instead of sitting on their asses and shouting WE ARE …
The Nittany Turkey says
That’s a fact. I had great fun in intramural sports at PSU. Working up a sweat gave me a good excuse to drink more beer.
My latest post has a couple of interesting SI.com essays as well as statements by Erickson, Joyner, and O’Brien. There’s also a PDF of the consent decree.
—TNT
Tom says
I am so thoroughly disgusted with Erickson – I am more disgusted with the gutless, cowardly respone to the NCAA sanctions than the sanctions themselves. Tell the NCAA to go pound sand and drop all sports under their purview. I hope all the players leave so they can’t even field a team. If I was on the coaching staff and saw my team sold out by the administration I would quit on the spot and tell all my players to take their best shot elsewhere. I will never send Penn State a dime and heaven help the next caller from Penn State asking for a donation.
The Nittany Turkey says
If what the CDT is reporting — that Erickson was given the choice of the sanctions he ultimately agreed to or a four-year death penalty — then your solution was the only other alternative: drop all sports.
I just think that all of collegiate athletics and the NCAA needs to straighten up and fly right. Penn State is the whipping boy because it’s convenient to use the Sandusky scandal opportunistically to gain acceptance and support by the public. Emmert fully subscribes to the Rahm Emanuel philosophy of never letting a good crisis go to waste. But I digress. Nobody talks about recruiting guys who would raise the team’s GPA. If I sat in a bar lauding the virtues of a weaker player with a 4.0, I’d be laughed off my stool. The student-athlete is a myth, and the NCAA does all it can to perpetuate the fairy tale.
—TNT
Joe says
First the easy part:
vacate (v): a. to cancel or rescind, b. to make void or of no effect; annul
In essence the NCAA annulled 111 wins from 1998 through 2011. But unlike the way ESPN reported it, they do not become losses-they just disappear in to some unknown dimension.
I don’t really care about this, as the NCAA wanted Paterno expunged from any meaningful records and this was the way to do it. In fact some of those seasons I would rather forget anyway.
I’m curious if the administration truly felt that Garbon’s resignation and the removal of the statue (which explains the haste in which it was done) would somehow mollify the NCAA. I’m also curious how we responded to their “4 questions” to which Emmert referred to last week-obviously not well enough.
From what I’ve read, the BoT deferred to Erickson as to what to do and from what the Centre Daily Times is reporting per an interview with Erickson today, the NCAA either said take the poison or you get a Death Penalty sentence that lasts 4 years. Erickson said he was backed in a corner and had no choice if he wanted to preserve some vestige of football at Dear Old State. In reality, I think he wanted this over with and so it was done.
Couple of points on the penalties. I’m okay with the fines (NCAA/B1G) as I thought this was going to be a part of anything they handed down, but I’m concerned that we will be forking over roughly $112M over four years to somebody with the intent that it go to victim abuse awareness/prevention.
With all this openness and transparency everyone is talking about, there better be a quarterly accounting of where this money went (unlike our stimulus program). I can see every fly by night organization out there attempting to get some amount of this money in the name of preventing child sexual abuse and it going for meetings in the Cayman Islands. We (PS) should also make sure that a certain amount of our money goes to the new center in Hershey-if we have the chestnuts to ask for it!
As far as the bowls go, I expected 2-3 years. This year and next for sure. I disagree a bit about losing recruits because of bowls (although Hackenburg said that could be the deal breaker for him), but honestly we have been an Outback/TicketCity/Alamo Bowl team for years. Maybe some of the recruits came to PS to get their $500 Best Buy gift card, but I think not. Sure we may have been able to play for a B1G championship down the road (and maybe a Rose Bowl), but I think we all knew the next couple of years were going to be shaky (new coaching staff, new system, etc) and if we went anywhere it would be to a second or third tier bowl.
What really hurts with the bowl ban is the 15 extra days (or some number) of “bowl practice” that you are allowed under NCAA regs. This was usually the time when the staff started working on the underclassmen and assessing what they had for the next season. This is the real gotcha here.
The scholarship reduction hurts, but the effect comes at the end of the penalty cycle. If I recall, USC lost a couple of upper class kids when the Reggie Bush sanctions came out and they were hit with a 15/30 for three years (we have a 10/20 for four.) Seems like they’ve done pretty well recruiting wise for the last two years even with Pete Carroll bailing. We may not get the 4 or 5 star recruits, but we never got too many of them before anyway.
O’Brien and company started off pretty well this year, but no one has seen the product on the field yet (wins/losses) so we don’t know if that would have continued or we would have been back where we started.
There are a lot of 2-3 star under the radar kids out there that I would think would love to come to PS just to play at that level (B1G) and get a solid education. We just may have to make do with them for the next couple of years (think the early 2000’s-ouch.)
I’m thinking we may lose a couple of 3rd, 4th and 5th year guys, but I’m thinking it may not be too many as this seems to be a pretty tight knit group with perhaps something to prove. I think we lose some of the new freshman class, but this was not a strong class to begin with-problem is if they go, you can only add 15 new a year up to a max of 25 (I think it starts with the 2013 class, but I’m not sure.
So as we begin our long march across the desert, it is what it is.
We have to hope that O’Brien can pull a rabbit out of his hat and keep this team together for four years and I can’t think of a better person right now to give that job to.
As I’ve said before, there is still more to be told in this tale (did you happen to see Spanier’s letter to the BoT?) We now have the PS4RS and their lawyers involved and yeah two perjury trials that still have to be scheduled (seems strange that Sandusky went to trial, was convicted and is awaiting sentencing and we still don’t have a trial date for Moe and Larry even though they were all charged at about the same time-strange huh?)
If anything, I know with these penalties and sanctions, the nation, NCAA and university chancellors and presidents everywhere can go to sleep tonight knowing that we have fixed the child sexual abuse problem in this country and assured ourselves this will never happen again and that we have now de-emphasized college football to the point that there will be no more conference jumping for increased revenue, no huge new TV deals with ESPN, Fox and NBC, No new private TV networks, no gazillion dollar bidding war for the new NCAA football playoffs and statues of active coaches will be removed from college campuses within the week.
Oh and the press can now go back to bashing the NCAA for overstepping their bounds in punishing PS.
‘Effin hypocrites one and all!
The Nittany Turkey says
Thanks for the definition of the verb “vacate”; however, I was merely disputing its nominalization for comedic value, as in “Joe’s wins take a vacation.” Sometimes my comedy can be so obtuse that not even I get what I’m talking about.
Yes, I’m aware that the vacated wins don’t become wins for Penn State’s opponents in those games. On one TV news show, someone posed the idiotically naive question of whether the NCAA will go back and divide all the bowl shares so Penn State gets the loser’s share in each of the six bowl games won during 1998-2011! Well, hell, I guess people think the NCAA is all powerful.
Someone, I forget who, wrote that the NCAA should change its logo to include a tail wagging a dog.
Your irony slays me. It is perfect for the situation. I liked it so much that I kept the half-asleep AS awake last night to read it to her:
Still, it will be interesting to see how this team congeals, with Moses O’Brien leading it across the desert. (Biblical metaphors provide such rich comedic ground, like Silas Redd perhaps going to visit the site of the burning of Bush.)
I did see Spanier’s letter to the BoT. I posted a link to it last night.
Agreed that we’ve only scratched the surface of this sordid affair. I the NCAA thinks it closed the case, think again. The political intrigue of following the Second Mile money is just too juicy a potential story for Pulitzer Prize winning reporters to lay off. I just hope that if Sarah does go there, she has adequate protection and keeps a copy of what her investigation yields in a safe, but known, place. We might yet find out what happened to Ray Gricar.
Interesting what the CDT reported, that Erickson was given the choice of agreeing to the sanctions or killing the program completely. Talk about weak bargaining positions, having to negotiate from your own one yard line with the opponent on first-and-goal, and being given the option of a forfeit! Emmert had him by the balls, and had the court of public opinion to back him up. If Erickson hadn’t lain down on the tracks, Penn State would have been accused of further abetting a child molester.
You said:
Butbutbut the consent decree specifically forbids Penn State from applying funds created from the penalty endowment for university entities. What am I missing?
Great comments, as always!
—TNT
Joe says
If you’re so inclined, check out Tim Tolley’s comments on Victory Bell Rings. He brings up a point about the “NCAA punishment” that not to many people considered.
http://victorybellrings.com/2012/07/23/ncaa-gets-it-wrong-de-humanizes-student-athletes/
The Nittany Turkey says
Tim speaks well to the NCAA hypocrisy.
He oversimplifies a bit, though. Indeed, there are many so-called student-athletes who don’t fit the two basic classes he establishes. Perhaps there are some who want to be closer to the two dogs back in Georgia. Perhaps Silas Redd’s mama is sick and tired of the Penn State stigma and would rather have him earn his degree at USC.
And yeah, what about Silas himself? Think of the glory of being a USC running back, charging the line in the footsteps of Reggie, O.J., … Screw sanctions! Everybody’s got them these days. All other things being equal, there are the palm trees, the sun, the surf, the babes, all of LA, and he gets to play in the Rose Bowl once a year, anyway. The stadium, anyway.
Until we out the charade of the “student-athlete”, we’ll debate about how to best play the game of masquerading jocks as full-time students, in which the NCAA is fully complicit. I hate to view these players as chattel to be jerked around at the whim of the NCAA, but get used to it, boys! When your dreams of the NFL come true, you’ll be worth a few draft picks at best if you can play at that level.
—TNT
The Nittany Turkey says
***** Received via email from Mike *****
The sanctions on Penn State by the NCAA are naive and way off-target!
It is horrendous that that the administration and Joe Paterno’s organization covered things up to protect the football program. I agree that the children-victims should have the closure that justice in this matter could provide. I think they are due compensation, but no compensation will undo the emotional and psychological damage that they have suffered from Jerry Sandusky’s atrocious actions.
In older days, a visit to the gallows would be somewhat satisfying, I think, but these are not older times…
Without THAT kind of public punishment for such a personal offense, the “system” is searching for a way to balance the injustice. However, penalizing Penn State as an institution won’t really work and is unjust to those who had nothing to do with Sandusky’s offences. This should be handled in the spirit of this quote:
“The person who sins will die. A son will not be punished for his father’s sins, and a father will not be punished for his son’s sins.”
The current sanctions penalize the innocent – the students and the faculty – who depend on the revenue historically brought in by the athletic program. This hurts research, hinders the advancement of knowledge and it ultimately hurts the USA. Rather than blockading revenue to the school, the NCAA *could* mandate that the school accelerate its revenue raising efforts with a mandate that the additional revenue should go into programs aimed at eradicating child abuse in the future – this should be SPONSORED and FUNDED by Penn State in light of this tragedy – not taken away from them!
Students who have worked hard to get into Penn State (a competitive challenge, I’m sure) should not be penalized by loss of research support. Instead, alumni and other concerned parties unassociated with Penn State (like me) should be asked to increase their support toward a cleaner, purer, accountable system that will re-double it’s effort to ensure that a situation like this never EVER happens again in the future.
I agree that football should not “drive” the policies of the institution of Penn State simply because it produces revenue. Alumni, I think, would ultimately agree.
I agree that Joe’s statue should be taken down, but ONLY if it can be conclusively proven that he was complicit in hiding these atrocities to protect the Penn State Football image.That would ve selfish – self-serving in the extreme.
Overall, this whole thing completely pisses me off — and I’m not even an alumnus. The handling of it pisses me off even more and will drive the opposite of the desired result!
End,
–mike