Penn State trustees file appeal

ESPN ^ | August 6th, 2012 | Don Van Natta

[Third Person]

A Penn State board of trustee member filed an appeal Monday afternoon with the NCAA over sanctions levied against the university after the Jerry Sandusky child sex-abuse scandal.

Three other trustees joined the appeal, which states that the consent decree university president Rodney Erickson signed with the NCAA agreeing to the sanctions is "null and void" because Erickson "lacked the legal authority" to enter into such an agreement without the board's approval.

Trustees and a person with first-hand knowledge of the discussions said the move is a precursor to a federal lawsuit asking a judge to invalidate the sanctions, because trustees expect the NCAA to reject the appeal.

The appeal, sent to the NCAA from attorneys hired by Ryan J. McCombie, a retired Navy SEAL who joined the 32-member board in June, also challenges the NCAA on the following fronts:

• The NCAA did not give Penn State trustees and the university due process when it did not follow its usual investigation and enforcement procedures.

• The consent decree is fundamentally unfair because it relies on the Freeh report, which "contains findings and conclusions not that are contrary to the evidence presented ..."

• The sanctions are "excessive and unreasonable" because they inflict "permanent damage to an entire generation of student-athletes and coaches who were innocent of any wrongdoing during their time on campus ..."

Erickson signed the consent decree late last month with the NCAA after consulting with board chairwoman Karen Peetz and university counsel, but he did not bring the decree to the full board for review or a vote.

The package of sanctions included a $60 million fine, a four-year bowl ban, scholarship losses and the vacating of wins from 1998 through 2011.

[Uncle Chip]

Good men are doing something.

They are standing up to the lynch mob mentality perpetrated by the MSM, Louis Freeh who has a trail of disasters behind him, and a whole lot of lemmings who are ignorant of the facts.

Aren't those involved here entitled to due process or are those empty words in your vocabulary???

[Uncle Chip]

Joe got many of those wins because he didn't turn Sandusky in.

Ohhhh Baloney -- Sandusky retired in 1999.

[JoeProBono]

[Uncle Chip]

What I would like you to do is point to the irrefutable evidence in the Freeh report that shows Joe Paterno orchestrated a coverup.

He can't -- that's why he posts pictures. Nor can anyone.

The cover-up here was not between Curley, Schultz, Spanier and Paterno but between Emmert, Freeh, and Erickson.

Why were they in a hurry to put this all behind them and not conduct a full open investigation???

And why did Freeh refuse to interview Paterno before he died???

[Third Person]

You want an open investigation? Really? Be careful what you wish for.

Paterno knew what Sandusky was up to and he did little to nothing to stop him. Maybe he didn’t orchestrate the cover-up, but he was certainly complicit in it’s success.

He chose to protect his football program instead of those young boys.

[privatedrive]

“So, Happy Valley is like a (bucolic) third world country?”

No, the NCAA is.

[privatedrive]

ANYONE who actually READ the Freeh report KNOWS that his conclusions were NOT based on actual evidence.

And remember: Freeh NEVER even talked to McQueery.

[Uncle Chip]

Paterno knew what Sandusky was up to and he did little to nothing to stop him.

That's not what the Grand Jury found. And Freeh found no evidence of such -- only fact-Freeh allegations. If you have evidence for your claim then why are you afraid of an open investigation???

Why are you not pushing for a full investigation of Dr Jack Raykowitz who ran the Second Mile and was professionally trained in child welfare with contacts in all state agencies??? He was made aware of Sandusky in 1998 and 2001 and what did he do??? Nothing because if Sandusky went down, then so would his $233,000/yr job with TSM.

Let the investigation begin --

[InvisibleChurch]

This is an interesting article about the deal. If you read it, you'll know that I meant nothing about Sandusky being retired or whatever but the results of what might have happened had PSU not put the team on a pedestal.

death penalty

One of the trustees is an unrepentant Joe worshipper, showing that changing the culture at psu might not be so easy. Re whether the kids are penalized via fewer coaches or whatever, I wouldn't be surprised if there was no reduction in cash flow into the program, that the money is to be payed by the university via whatever means minus siphoning $ from the other athletic programs. I aslo don't think that the university is going to put any kids at risk by denying them trainers or coaches. those people who teach the kids proper techniques to avoid injury. The worst I see at Penn State is having to play a little harder to beat IU. GO IU!

[Third Person]

Yes, investigate away.

This goes well beyond Paterno and his involvement. The Second Mile should be turned inside out. Clean out the deviant bastards. It’ll be difficult, as I’m sure many of them are well-connected.

But to believe that Paterno wasn’t involved with the Sandusky cover-up is to be in denial. So Paterno insulated himself by falling back on “I followed protocol” and “Oh shucks, I had no idea anything like man-boy rape existed”. Bottom line is he knew about Sandusky (How could he not have known?) and he didn’t stop the abuse. Paterno already admitted he should have done more. What does that tell you? Paterno’s lucky he’s not around to face, at a minimum, perjury charges.

Paterno didn’t know about Sandusky, and Obama didn’t know about Fast and Furious. Right.

[Uncle Chip]

<>One of the trustees is an unrepentant Joe worshipper,<>

He could do worse. He could be an NCAA worshipper or ESPN worshipper or Louis Freeh worshipper.

<>showing that changing the culture at psu might not be so easy.<>

Change to what??? It’s the same at most all major colleges with athletic programs these days, allbeit on different scales. Should IU be sanctioned to compel change there???

What’s wrong with conducting a full investigation in all those places that Louis Freeh chose not to look into — like Sandusky’s treasure trove — The Second Mile:

http://notpsu.blogspot.com/2012/03/the-second-mile-questions.html

[privatedrive]

Thank you, Mr. Freeh. And you have leapt to this conclusion based on what specific evidence?

[Uncle Chip]

So Paterno insulated himself by falling back on “I followed protocol”

Why is telling your superiors as protocal requires called "insulation". It's called doing your duty as the law requires and the Grand Jury acknowledged. If Dr Jack Raykowitz had "followed protocol" as Paterno did, Sandusky would have been put away 10 years ago -- but that would be the end of Raykowitz's high paying job which he was protecting.

[IrishBrigade]

Let the investigation begin —...

...while you have made some interesting and salient points about the Freeh report, and while I am on record here as saying that Paterno was scapegoated in the classic sense of the word, any further investigation, no matter how you slice and dice it, is going to turn up one unalterable fact...that the football program as represented by Paterno and Curley, and the administration, in the persons of Spanier and Schultz, knew that Sandusky was engaged in questionable behavior on campus grounds...and that if uncovered, this behavior could prove,well, most inconvenient...so they decided to prohibit Sandusky from bringing his ‘guests’ onto the campus, thusly ending any responsibility for the misbehavior on their part...
...that is what condemns them on a moral level...they knew they would be in trouble if Sandusky’s deviancy were brought to light, but they regarded his misbehaving elsewhere with studied indifference, as Paterno’s alert dying on the chain of command starkly indicates...we can possibly grant that they may have been unaware of the level of deviancy, but they knew enough that it would have redounded to their discredit, and attempted to funnel it somewhere other than campus...
...this is, as I say, unalterable fact, and you can blame the Freeh report, and the NCAA for PSU’s current woes, and be able to make some compelling points in doing so, but you cannot reclaim the honor that these men (including McQueary, and his father and family friend Dranov)so studiously pissed away, nor the moral high ground that was explicit in the name of image of Penn State football through the years...it required one phone call by any of these individuals (Schultz or Spanier, most likely, but any one of them, and obviously Paterno)to competent authorities, and at least some of Sandusky’s deviancy would have been thwarted...but they did nothing...when all else is boiled down, and PSU and its football program move on to better times, as it will, this is the legacy that will be remembered, that deviancy by an inidividual on campus is bad news, and needs to be stopped, but deviancy by that same person elsewhere-fine and dandy by us...

[HamiltonJay]

Look you bunch of a$$hats, your university got the hell off easy, if I were running the NCAA your teams, NON OF THEM, would ever play under the NCAA banner again... EVER.

Your university, and its leadership knew what was going on and turned decided turning a blind eye to protect the program was more importan than protecting kids.

Frankly the fact the NCAA didn’t throw you out tells me they are nothing more than an associate member of NAMBLA.

[Third Person]

Sad... you guys just don’t get it, do you? See post #51.

[citizen]

Hunh. These so called ‘trustees’ hired a retired Navy SEAL to be their front man. Another group of university weenies thinking they deserve no punishments for allowing decades of violent sexual child abuse at Pedo State U.

[HamiltonJay]

Like I said, for me, if I were the NCAA no team from Penn State would EVER be allowed to play under the NCAA banner again, period.

This university showed, at its highest levels, that playing sports was more important than protecting kids.. they knew what he did and was going to do, and covered it all up just so they could protect their program.

If that isn’t repugnant enough for the NCAA to say, we don’t want you playing ever again under our banner, you have shown you are completely unworthy of the spirit and purpose of college athletics, nothing is.

Anything short of the death penalty, for EVERY sport at PSU, was a cop out, and not suprisingly the little whores at the NCAA copped out. NCAA showed its just as much worried about its money than it is doing the right thing, its basically an associate member of NAMBLA at this point.

I would have immediately expelled the university from the NCAA forever, allowed, and help any athlete at the school to transfer without penalty, and founded a fund to help the victims.

The NCAA had an opportunity to show its not just a money grubbing entity, and truly believes the PR line it feeds about why it exists, and it didn’t, it failed miserably. Whores, the whole lot of them.

[Uncle Chip]

Even Sandusky was afforded by our legal system “Due Process of Law”.

Shouldn’t those at Penn State who had nothing to do with this scandal be accorded the same???

http://notpsu.blogspot.com/2012/03/the-second-mile-questions.html

[Lancey Howard]

ANYONE who actually READ the Freeh report KNOWS that his conclusions were NOT based on actual evidence. And remember: Freeh NEVER even talked to McQueery.

Yes, it was a lazy hack job - a prosecutor's brief that made no attempt at balance. Freeh and his staff had their minds made up from the beginning: "Guilty, guilty, guilty." After that, it was just a matter of slopping together a report that would jump on the popular bandwagon and satisfy the hungry lynch mob.