‘Penn State football is simply Too Big to Fail.’
that’s true now; an economic crisis would be the result, at least in central PA, if PSU football even just slacked off, much less disappeared, but it wasn’t always that way...
before Paterno and his mentor Rip Engle arrived in 1950, PSU was content in playing the likes of Bucknell and Holy Cross, Lehigh and Colgate, at a stadium in the middle of the campus seating about 30,000, a nice way to spend a Saturday afternoon, but no monetary monster...Engle upgraded the schedule, with good results, establishing PSU as an eastern powerhouse, and created Beaver Stadium, eventually more than doubling the seating; Paterno upgraded the program into national prominence, and the rest is history...the difference between PSU and SMU is stark; SMU could have shuttered football forever, and the Dallas area would have yawned and moved on-—PSU, well, the whole state of PA might have shut down...
Same reason why they won’t give Baylor the Death Penalty. The Waco economy would collapse.
But I was very happy to see that Baylor lost to UT-San Antonio on Saturday. They probably wish they got the DP after that.
SMU got the death penalty. PSU, got a slap on the back.
There will never be another school that gets the death penalty now. All they have to do is say “Are we wore than Penn State?”