Posted on 07/23/2012 10:50:35 AM PDT by Absolutely Nobama
INDIANAPOLIS -- Penn State football was all but leveled Monday by an NCAA ruling that wiped away 14 years of coach Joe Paterno's victories and imposed a mountain of fines and penalties, crippling a program whose pedophile assistant coach spent uncounted years molesting children, sometimes on university property. The sanctions by the governing body of college sports, which capped eight months of turmoil on the central Pennsylvania campus, stopped short of delivering the "death penalty" of shutting down the sport. But the NCAA hit Penn State with $60 million in fines, ordered it out of the postseason for four years, and will cap scholarships at 20 below the normal limit for four years. The school also will be on probation for five years.
(Excerpt) Read more at sports.espn.go.com ...
Thank you.
I missed that detail as I was beating on my monitor.
You’re welcome. Cases like these draw an emotional response...as is expected. A bunch of grown men covering up for a pedophile over a game is disgusting. I have done the same thing more than once when responding to a thread that upsets me.
I suspect the NCAA knew if they put PSU on the Death Penalty it might not hold up, since PSU wasn’t on probation before...and thus, PSU would have grounds to appeal it.
And now that they are effectively on probation, they are now looking for the slightest violation in the next few years to slam them with the DP.
“I have done the same thing more than once when responding to a thread that upsets me.”
I just realized that sentence could be taken the wrong way. I mean I have reacted emotionally to a thread before.
The offense here is institutional. YES the alums DID do this. The foundation board did it. The boosters did it. The fans did it. The football program built and sustained the university to such a degree that they covered up child rape for over 10 years - with the full complicity of everyone from the president on down, literally, to the janitors that watched what was happening but were to afraid to report it.
What happened was indefensible, and that the entire organizational apparatus acted to cover it up cries out for a punishment that redefines what the NCAA believes is the death penalty.
3 years - no NCAA football. A fine equal to the football revenue generated since 1998 - the time ONE of the offenses was known by the ‘big 4’ at the university, but not reported - the proceeds of which go to a foundation that a) remunerates the victims, and 2) the rest of which funds research into the causes of pedophilia, and the quest for a cure.
If that kills the university, so be it. Never have I seen anything so like the atmosphere of 1940’s Germany in modern times. What must be done to merit universal opprobium any more? What must one do to be shunned?
This is like the LIBOR scandal. You can argue against conspiracies in general, until you realize that it required all 16 banks and at least two regulatory agencies (the Fed and the FSA) in two countries to perpetrate such a thing. The corruption was so culturally ingrained that when Barclay’s admitted to it, they figured the fine would do the trick and it would all blow over. After all, everyone was doing it.
As for the people who require justice being unaffected here, everyone still alive who knew and didn’t report can and should go to jail.
I will bet that were you to depose enough players, students, and alumni, there are others that knew, or witnessed actual crimes, that should have done something about it.
The irony is everyone, especially the NCAA, wants to move on, but not killing off Penn State is going to guarantee they can’t. Ohio State, by the way, is loving this. They should have had their asses handed to them, same as Auburn - including vacating a national title.
Now? “At least we didn’t anally deflower a ten year old. If you didn’t give them the death penalty, you can’t give us the death penalty either.”
LOL. I’m afraid that would be a task of Herculean proportions. But seriously, I keep hearing “you can’t do this, it will hurt the program, school, players, coaches, tradition, etc”. Why is it that schools such as MIT and the University of Chicago seem to be doing just fine without athletics? Probably because they made a decision long ago to concentrate fully on academics instead of sports.
You seem to forget that the NCAA exists because of the member institutions, not the other way around. The big football schools already have a very tenuous relationship with the NCAA. So let’s say that the NCAA did some draconian penalties like you proposed. Then what?
Well, then let’s say that Penn State left the NCAA and began to talk to other big time football schools about leaving the NCAA: free of scholarship limits and revenue sharing and free to form a “super conference” that could command a whopping TV contract. How would that work out for the NCAA?
The NCAA knows this is possible. This is why schools like Ohio State, USC, Alabama, and Penn State get lesser penalties in football and schools like SMU get the death penalty.
Why is it that schools such as MIT and the University of Chicago seem to be doing just fine without athletics?
MIT had a decent baseball team back when I played against them. Their football team does all right as well.
Sex crimes, lying before a grand jury, letting a pedophile use the stadium showers.
Pretty much anything egregious is covered in a general morality clause.
If Penn State or any other school does not want to abide by the broad institutional control statute they have the option of not seeking NCAA sanctioning and not playing in their sandbox.
Kinds of like if you want to sleep around don’t teach at a Christan School that forbids it. This is a standard the school voluntarily submitted to. It is disengenuous to whine that it isn’t fair.
gratuitous
But don’t they play in either Division III or club level? Division III or club level do not allow scholarships. My point is that the two schools I mentioned do not emphasize athletics nor I bet do they allow players who cannot meet the academic standards to play for their team. In other words, Andy Katzenmoyer would not be able to play football for MIT.
Keep in mind the defense of Mann was under the administration of Spanier, who should have been fired years ago at PSU. It would be good for the current President to review this case, considering Spanier’s behavior.
Also, wonder how many people on this thread actually read the report or are they taking the media’s interpretation? We, as conservatives, need to educate ourselves and not really on the MSM to tell us what the report says.
Good point.
Growing up I was really into college sports, but increasingly it really has become little more than a minor league system operating on college campuses.
These sanctions are way over the top and amount to grand standing and trying to taking a stand more holy than tho.
Sure, the Penn St. athletic dept., its rent a cop security dept. and the higher ups dropped the ball & covered up a sad crime against kids who happened to be in their locker room because a skank ex asst. coach still had privileges. But, these sanctions go so far they tarnish the work, wins and records of a lot of college athletes who played their hearts out for the school. The sanctions also poison the athletes still there who were not connected in any way to the wrong doing.
The NCAA is on no pedestal as TV money and exploiting a lot of kids who want to play sports is its main game. Sportsmanship and amateur sports ethics is way down in its to do list.
Also, some of us are still wondering what happened to that ADA that went missing. Something really stinks in this case.
They didn't get the raw deal that those kids got. They'll live.
So it seems to me as well. Let the judicial system do it’s thing and butt out...
...apparently it has escaped your notice that the NCAA’s contention in all of this revolves around the notion that the studied silence by the PSU officials was done to protect the football program’s reputation, thus allowing its prestige and revenue prospects to continue unabated...in other words, to evade an event that might put it at a disadvantage in the public arena, and by extension on the football field...this is hardly an implausible conclusion from reading the Freeh report, which the university commissioned and has accepted.
...regarding the judicial system, Sandusky is in jail, and Curley and Schultz face perjury trials, which I predict will not land them in jail, while Paterno could possibly (though I would think not) have faced a charge of perjury for his grand jury testiomony which was never credible in the first place. In what regard do you say let the judicial system play out? It has in fact spoken, quite loudly...
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