NCAA College Football: Sanction PSU?

[Darth Fanboy]

I find it ludicrous that in this era of NCAA scrutiny that any coach hired at any job within the past ten years enjoys nearly the same level of command Paterno appeared to have as indicated by these reports. College coaching is an incredibly volatile position these days.

[Havok]

The thing with comparing this to USC, is that there were no NCAA infractions committed at Penn State. As cold as that is to say, it is the truth.

Reggie Bush broke specific eligibility rules and the AD and Head Coach knew about them.

What NCAA violations did the Penn State football players or coaches commit? Unless there is a section on hiring, employing and shielding a child rapist on the books, Penn State committed no NCAA infractions. (I'm sure there are some vague conduct rules somewhere they can get them under)

If the NCAA decides to sanction Penn State, they are over stepping their bounds in all honesty and belittiling what happened by saying "Child Rape? Oh no Bowl Games for you." I mean, c'mon it just makes it so petty.

[Darth Fanboy]

The cover up of the crimes by school administration in this case mean that the NCAA can impose penalties. There are ethics bylaws along with the "lack of institutional control" clause that nailed USC.

Edit: Keep in mind that AD's and university presidents are subject to NCAA rules also and not just athletes and coaches.

[Block]

The thing with comparing this to USC, is that there were no NCAA infractions committed at Penn State. As cold as that is to say, it is the truth.

Reggie Bush broke specific eligibility rules and the AD and Head Coach knew about them.

False. The only coach who MAY have known, according to the NCAA's own report, was the RB coach.

[Darth Fanboy]

Plus, USC replaced a lot of the coaching staff involved as well. If the individuals responsible for infractions were gone, why bother with sanctions? I think the two year bowl ban for USC was shit (because it focused on one specific player and because other universites like Auburn and Ohio State are doing arguably worse things and not getting nearly the same kind of scrutiny), but I get that the university had to be sanctioned because rules were broken.

[Tsyroc]

Plus, USC replaced a lot of the coaching staff involved as well. If the individuals responsible for infractions were gone, why bother with sanctions? I think the two year bowl ban for USC was shit (because it focused on one specific player and because other universites like Auburn and Ohio State are doing arguably worse things and not getting nearly the same kind of scrutiny), but I get that the university had to be sanctioned because rules were broken.

I thought USC got screwed big time. There might have been a lack of institutional control but the on the field team did not benefit from anything that Reggie Bush or his family got. It's not like he was getting that stuff to stay and/or play at USC. It was someone greasing the wheels hoping to cash in on Bush once he went pro.

USC needed some sort of kick in the pants to get that sort of shit under control before it did start compromising the team by giving them a recruiting and from there an on the field edge. I also don't think Bush should have had to give back his Heisman. It wasn't like he was juicing or doing some real sort of cheating. Personally, I don't think he should have won the Heisman that year but he did so its his.


I have had a tough time on where I stand on PSU though. Before the information in the recent report came out I thought talk about punishing the football program was crazy. Now I have to wonder. Big whigs at the university and in the football program covered up illegal activities because they believed the scandal would hurt the university and the football program. That's kind of a bass ackwards way of saying they did it for the money, for the school, and for the football program. How can they both not take a hit for something like that? I could see the NCAA deciding that the school is being punished enough through legal and civil means, not to mention a likely defacto bowl ban. I mean, what bowl is going to take PSU in the near future unless they are obligated to. Maybe they should just agree to play Notre Dame at the end of the year then everyone will have a team to hate in the game.

[Darth Fanboy]

Penn St vs. Notre Dame, call it the Neverland Ranch bowl I guess...

And Tsyroc you are hitting on why I think PSU should be sanctioned, it sets the precedent that a school can do something illegal for the financial benefit of the athletics department and get out of future punishment if discovered by severing ties later.

[CarsonPalmer]

Penn St vs. Notre Dame, call it the Neverland Ranch bowl I guess...

And Tsyroc you are hitting on why I think PSU should be sanctioned, it sets the precedent that a school can do something illegal for the financial benefit of the athletics department and get out of future punishment if discovered by severing ties later.

That's fucked up, since Notre Dame priests has NEVER been involved in any accusations like that. Ever. And besides, they're a Catholic school but far from a dark ages one. It is a top quality research university, and their longtime president and current president emeritus marched with Martin Luther King.

Leave Notre Dame alone on that score; that's wildly unfair.

[Tsyroc]

That's fucked up, since Notre Dame priests has NEVER been involved in any accusations like that. Ever. And besides, they're a Catholic school but far from a dark ages one. It is a top quality research university, and their longtime president and current president emeritus marched with Martin Luther King.

Leave Notre Dame alone on that score; that's wildly unfair.

I didn't pick ND for the Catholic tie-in (happy or unhappy coincidence, your choice). I just picked them because ever since they got their NBC deal I've hated them for clogging up the air waves with their games when I would rather have been watching some other teams playing. It would have to be a special game for me to root for them over another opponent. I mean, I will even pull for USC over the Fighting Irish, and as a long time Iowa (Big Ten) fan and an Arizona alum (Pac-12) it is just not right for me to be pulling for USC.

I also like to root against ND because they wouldn't join the Big Ten but I do understand that in a way it's sort of payback for the Big Ten denying them membership a long time ago.

[Thanas]

I kinda feel vindicated after claiming back then there was no way Paterno did not know and that Paterno's image was all a big show after the emails surfaced in which he fought for special treatment for football players etc.

The report is chilling.


I don't think this program can be allowed to live on. Here are a few articles as to why:


Hagiography

What a fool I was.

In 1986, I spent a week in State College, Pa., researching a 10-page Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year piece on Joe Paterno.

It was supposed to be a secret, but one night the phone in my hotel room rang. It was a Penn State professor, calling out of the blue.

"Are you here to take part in hagiography?" he said.

"What's hagiography?" I asked.

"The study of saints," he said. "You're going to be just like the rest, aren't you? You're going to make Paterno out to be a saint. You don't know him. He'll do anything to win. What you media are doing is dangerous."

Jealous egghead, I figured.

What an idiot I was.

Twenty-five years later, when former Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky was accused of a 15-year reign of pedophilia on young boys, I thought Paterno was too old and too addled to understand, too grandfatherly and Catholic to get that Sandusky was committing grisly crimes using Paterno's own football program as bait.

But I was wrong. Paterno knew. He knew all about it. He'd known for years. He knew and he followed it vigilantly.

That's all clear now after Penn State's own investigator, former FBI director Louis Freeh, came out Thursday and hung the whole disgusting canvas on a wall for us. Showed us the emails, read us the interviews, shined a black light on all of the lies they left behind. It cost $6.5 million and took eight months and the truth it uncovered was 100 times uglier than the bills.

Paterno knew about a mother's cry that Sandusky had molested her son in 1998. Later, Paterno lied to a grand jury and said he didn't. Paterno and university president Graham Spanier and vice president Gary Schultz and athletic director Tim Curley all knew what kind of sick coach they had on the payroll in Sandusky. Schultz had pertinent questions. "Is this opening of pandora's box?" he wrote in personal notes on the case. "Other children?" "Sexual improprieties?"

It gets worse. According to Freeh, Spanier, Schultz and Curley were set to call child services on Sandusky in February 2001 until Paterno apparently talked them out of it. Curley wasn't "comfortable" going to child services after that talk with JoePa.

Yeah, that's the most important thing, your comfort.

What'd they do instead? Alerted nobody. Called nobody. And let Sandusky keep leading his horrific tours around campus. "Hey, want to see the showers?" That sentence alone ought to bring down the statue.

What a stooge I was.

I talked about Paterno's "true legacy" in all of this. Here's his true legacy: Paterno let a child molester go when he could've stopped him. He let him go and then lied to cover his sinister tracks. He let a rapist go to save his own recruiting successes and fundraising pitches and big-fish-small-pond hide.

Here's a legacy for you. Paterno's cowardice and ego and fears allowed Sandusky to molest at least eight more boys in the years after that 1998 incident -- Victims 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9 and 10. Just to recap: By not acting, a grown man failed to protect eight boys from years of molestation, abuse and self-loathing, all to save his program the embarrassment. The mother of Victim 1 is "filled with hatred toward Joe Paterno," the victim's lawyer says. "She just hates him, and reviles him." Can you blame her?

What a sap I was.

I hope Penn State loses civil suits until the walls of the accounting office cave in. I hope that Spanier, Schultz and Curley go to prison for perjury. I hope the NCAA gives Penn State the death penalty it most richly deserves. The worst scandal in college football history deserves the worst penalty the NCAA can give. They gave it to SMU for winning without regard for morals. They should give it to Penn State for the same thing. The only difference is, at Penn State they didn't pay for it with Corvettes. They paid for it with lives.

What a chump I was.

I tweeted that, yes, Paterno should be fired, but that he was, overall, "a good and decent man." I was wrong. Good and decent men don't do what Paterno did. Good and decent men protect kids, not rapists. And to think Paterno comes from "father" in Italian.

This throws a can of black paint on anything anybody tells me about Paterno from here on in. "No NCAA violations in all those years." I believe it. He was great at hiding stuff. "He gave $4 million to the library." In exchange for what? "He cared about kids away from the football field." No, he didn't. Not all of them. Not when it really mattered.

What a tool I was.

As Joe Paterno lay dying, I actually felt sorry for him. Little did I know he was taking all of his dirty secrets to the grave. Nine days before he died, he had The Washington Post's Sally Jenkins in his kitchen. He could've admitted it then. Could've tried a simple "I'm sorry." But he didn't. Instead, he just lied deeper. Right to her face. Right to all of our faces.

That professor was right, all those years ago. I was engaging in hagiography. So was that school. So was that town. It was dangerous. Turns out it builds monsters.

Not all of them ended up in prison.

Death penalty is necessary

Penn State should not play football

Four of the most powerful people at The Pennsylvania State University -- President Graham B. Spanier, Senior Vice President-Finance and Business Gary C. Schultz, Athletic Director Timothy M. Curley and Head Football Coach Joseph V. Paterno -- failed to protect against a child sexual predator harming children for over a decade. These men concealed Sandusky's activities from the Board of Trustees, the University community and authorities. They exhibited a striking lack of empathy for Sandusky's victims by failing to inquire as to their safety and well-being, especially by not attempting to determine the identity of the child who Sandusky assaulted in the Lasch Building in 2001. Further, they exposed this child to additional harm by alerting Sandusky, who was the only one who knew the child's identity, of what [Mike] McQueary saw in the shower the night of February 9, 2001. -- Page 14 of the Freeh report

They come into this world with close to nothing, with little money to make life easier, more respectable or contain more opportunity. The family unit that provides us our stability, which helps life make sense, which provides the mortar that holds it all together, is denied or devastatingly incomplete, a world of single mothers, broken fathers, not enough money, not enough education, not enough luck.

We call them the underclass. We call them the disadvantaged, the underprivileged. With our education, resources and good fortune, we were supposed to be the something good that happens. We were the ones who had more, who said we wanted to change the world and make a difference in the lives of those less fortunate. We were the trusted.

The most they have -- their children -- they send out to us. They were sent to Penn State, to Jerry Sandusky, Joe Paterno, Graham Spanier, Gary Schultz and Tim Curley, and to the world to show the goodness in us and what was possible for them with just a little opportunity, if someone, for once, showed a little bit of interest. They got to see the good life -- so visible but inaccessible on television -- in person, on the sideline at practice, at a bowl game, at a Philadelphia Eagles game, standing next to Andy Reid himself. They got to see the simple foundations: the picnics, the gifts and the attention.

The good life, we all know now, was simply the bait, and they were always the prey. Sandusky used the good life as the carrot to rape children. Paterno, Spanier, Curley and Schultz, four fathers, let him do it because they cared about Sandusky, their reputations and their power more than they ever cared about these boys. We know this because we know that for the past decade and a half, there is no record that Paterno, Spanier, Curley or Schultz even asked for the name of the child they were told was being targeted by Sandusky.

May 3, 1998 -- Sandusky assaults Victim 6 in Lasch Building shower. -- Page 19

It went so far that this Penn State four could no longer keep their lies, their corrupted priorities, in order. It went so bad that even the power -- that so often does whatever it can to protect itself -- could no longer deny all that the trusted had not done and had to request outside review that produced a numbing, devastating self-criticism that makes it impossible to deny what must be done.

Penn State cannot be allowed to have a football team.

A culture of reverence for the football program that is ingrained at all levels of the campus community. -- Page 17

Paterno, the legendary coach that so many people instinctively protected before thinking about the welfare of the 11-year-old he knew was being sexually assaulted by Sandusky, is dead. So too is the Second Mile foundation, the place we now know Sandusky used to recruit his victims, the place whose leadership called Sandusky preying on the charity's kids a "non-issue," the place Penn State continued to do business with after knowing that Sandusky was assaulting children, the place where 75 percent of its board were Penn State alumni.

If the NCAA and Penn State have any decency, even a shred of integrity, remorse or belief in regaining standing, the Penn State football program, the carrot used by Sandusky to rape children, the monolith that intimidated good people from coming forward and doing the right thing and the financial jewel Paterno, Spanier, Schultz and Curley protected at all costs, should be indefinitely terminated.

There are times when the entire monument must be razed in order to be rebuilt if it is to have any moral value. This is one of those times. To allow Penn State to continue playing football when Southern Methodist University lost its program for something as common as a recruiting scandal is to condone the past and enable the future. It is to suggest that all the next university in trouble need do is to make the right public relations moves.

For Penn State to open the season Sept. 1 versus Ohio when the University of Southwest Louisiana lost its basketball program for two years over academic fraud and recruiting violations after Spanier, Schultz, Curley and Paterno responded to repeated child rape by negotiating not only an honorable discharge for Sandusky, leaving him financially intact, respected and elevated, but also for ways for Sandusky to continue to have contact with young children would show an equally striking lack of regard for the victims. A Paterno handwritten note in 1999 suggests a "Volunteer Position Director" for his trusted assistant.

August 1999: Sandusky is granted "emeritus" rank, which carries several privileges, including access to University recreational facilities.
December 1999: Sandusky brings Victim 4 to 1999 Alamo Bowl.
Sandusky assaults Victim 4 at team hotel.
November 2000: Sandusky assaults Victim 8 in Lasch Building shower.
Janitor observes assault by Sandusky, but does not report the assault for fear that "they'll get rid of all of us." -- Pages 21-22

Janitor B explained to the Special Investigative Counsel that reporting the incident "would have been like going against the President of the United States in my eyes." "I know Paterno has so much power, if he wanted to get rid of someone, I would have been gone." He explained "football runs this University." -- Page 65

Most of all, allowing Penn State football to survive and profit -- as if this were only about a couple of kids who cheated on an entrance exam -- says that all of the rhetoric about accountability and protecting children was just exhaust, that compared to the importance of football, the university didn't care then and doesn't care now about children being raped on its premises. It is to retain the culture of intimidation and invincibility that has brought Penn State to this place. If a massive institutional failure that allowed young boys to be sexually molested on campus does not constitute reasonable cause to terminate the program and force true reflection, true change and true reform, nothing can legitimately deserve that penalty. The fear of Janitor B to come forward as a whistleblower in the face of power would be justified. Penn State football would indeed be invincible.

Despite Spanier's, Schultz's, Paterno's and Curley's knowledge of criminal investigations of Sandusky regarding child abuse as early as 1998, they failed to control Sandusky's access to the University's facilities and campuses. -- Page 103

The most they have -- their children -- they sent out to us. We still call them the disadvantaged because it makes us feel good, but in deciding to hand their sons and daughters off to a teacher, a coach, a troop leader or a priest, to tell them to listen to the adults, not to talk back and do what they are told, tax brackets and nice houses don't matter. They are us, and we are them. In that transaction, the decision to entrust our children to someone who may be the best swim coach in town or may be Jerry Sandusky, we are all equals.

Perhaps there was nothing anyone could do to keep Sandusky from striking once, but Spanier, Schultz, Curley and, yes, Paterno had the power to prevent it from happening again. They demonstrated instead that the carrot was more important. They allowed the bait to work.

As with the Catholic Church and the Boy Scouts (among other large organizations that have previously failed to stop abuse), no parent can send a child into the world without wondering not only if a Sandusky is near their child but also if there are Paternos and Spaniers, Curleys and Schultzes who lack the courage and priority to protect them. The trusted failed, and everyone lost.

Paterno needs to be stricken from all records, the program he built needs to be terminated.

[Questor]

My only point of disagreement with Thanas is one of scope. Athletics department was complicit, and so the entire department that was built out of the football team should be given the DP. Anyway, the DP would decimate the department, and I don't think it would be fair to force the students to stay at a the school because they play, say, baseball. DP the school, Blacklist the Athletics and football staff, and release the athletes. Go farther. Say any released Penn State athlete does not count to scholarship limits.

[Havok]

Again. Paterno is dead. Sandusky will die in prison. The other people involved will never be attached to football or athletics anywhere.

Why punish the rest of the students and faculty that had nothing to do with it? I'm not talking a few people, or even a hundred. You are literally punishing thousands of good students, student athletes, teachers, professors, maintenance workers ect., for the actions of very few, literally 5-6. No matter how despicable the crimes, causing innocent people to suffer in the punishment is not acceptable.

Give Penn State the chance to redeem itself and show that they can move on from this and be better, don't destroy the whole institution. That is knee jerk overkill.

[Thanas]

Why punish the rest of the students and faculty that had nothing to do with it? I'm not talking a few people, or even a hundred. You are literally punishing thousands of good students, student athletes, teachers, professors, maintenance workers ect., for the actions of very few, literally 5-6.

When there is such a clear culture, something so ingrained in an institution, the only way to stop that is to disband the institution itself. That is the same reason why corrupted organizations have been disbanded in the past. Is it unfair to disband a union for mob ties, for example? Maybe, but it is necessary.

No matter how despicable the crimes, causing innocent people to suffer in the punishment is not acceptable.

The athletes can be given transfers with full eligibility remaining, or their scholarships can still stay if they want to continue studying at PSU. No harm done with regards to them. As for the other employees, clearly a lot of people were aware of it. Not crying for them, and as for the rest, that is life. The legacy of Paterno should not be allowed to continue.

[CarsonPalmer]

You know, Reilly misses the point. The point isn't that Paterno was never for real. He won Sportsman of te Year because he earned it. He wasn't a fraud, he was a monumental fuckup, on a scale bigger than his previous accomplishments. But those accomplishments were real.

The issue is that he had gotten too much power. There was no one there to tell him he couldn't cover this up. No one should have gotten that much power; no one should have had the opportunity to fuck up that monumentally.

My problem with the culture argument is that ultimately the coverup was perpetrated by three people. It isn't like the whole football program was in on it.

[Darth Fanboy]

Again. Paterno is dead. Sandusky will die in prison. The other people involved will never be attached to football or athletics anywhere.

Not true, those people who made the firings and accepted the resignations? There's responsibility there, the institution itself is also responsible and to give it a pass in this case is absurd.

Why punish the rest of the students and faculty that had nothing to do with it? I'm not talking a few people, or even a hundred. You are literally punishing thousands of good students, student athletes, teachers, professors, maintenance workers ect., for the actions of very few, literally 5-6. No matter how despicable the crimes, causing innocent people to suffer in the punishment is not acceptable.

If you allow the athletes to transfer or give them a year of added eligibility you aren't hurting them one bit.

And as much as I enjoy sports you are not harming a student's education if they don't get to go to 5-6 home football games per year. How in any way are teachers and professors being harmed by this? If a school can't exist without it's football program its not much of a school to begin with.

Give Penn State the chance to redeem itself and show that they can move on from this and be better, don't destroy the whole institution. That is knee jerk overkill.

Penn State University's redemption will be in paying for its mistake and that doesn't mean fielding a team, by covering up the scandal as long as they did they were able to reap millions of dollars for their program. The school should not be rewarded by continuing to get the financial benefits of a top tier college football program without the backlash they were trying to avoid when Sandusky started this shit years prior.

[CarsonPalmer]

Well, let's say the names again. Sandusky the criminal, Mcqueary the coward, Paterno, Spanier, and Curley the cover-up artists. That's five people who knew.

All of them are going to prison for it. Not one person who perpetrated the cover up will benefit from it. Heck, no one associated with Paterno who was completely innocent will benefit from (nobody from that staff, no matter how innocent will get a big time football job again). So for what reason the death penalty? The Board of Trustees did the right thing as soon as they found out.

5 men knew, not the whole university (which will rightly pay some hefty civil damages antway6. And that brings us back to power again.

[Darth Fanboy]

Well, let's say the names again. Sandusky the criminal, Mcqueary the coward, Paterno, Spanier, and Curley the cover-up artists. That's five people who knew.

All of them are going to prison for it. Not one person who perpetrated the cover up will benefit from it. Heck, no one associated with Paterno who was completely innocent will benefit from (nobody from that staff, no matter how innocent will get a big time football job again). So for what reason the death penalty? The Board of Trustees did the right thing as soon as they found out.

5 men knew, not the whole university (which will rightly pay some hefty civil damages antway6. And that brings us back to power again.

So you would ignore the fact that the university reaped tons of benefits from these crimes being covered up? Even though the people responsible were ousted that doesn't change the fact that the prominence of the program (and thus financial gains) benefited from this coverup. By not sanctioning the university, the NCAA basically lets the coverup be successful in its original intent, to protect the football program. As of now the reputation is the only thing sullied, but the money still rolled in.

[CarsonPalmer]

So you would ignore the fact that the university reaped tons of benefits from these crimes being covered up? Even though the people responsible were ousted that doesn't change the fact that the prominence of the program (and thus financial gains) benefited from this coverup. By not sanctioning the university, the NCAA basically lets the coverup be successful in its original intent, to protect the football program. As of now the reputation is the only thing sullied, but the money still rolled in.

Teddy Roosevelt benefitted from William Mckinley's murder. Those with guilty knowledge have been and will be punished, PSU will pay out money in civil suits...what else can be done? Should players who were drafted from Penn State give their salaries back? They benefitted from the cover up, but just like the university at large did so unknowingly. Not one person who was involved in the cover up is still at PSU. Not one person associated with Paterno's staff, even the innocent, is still at PSU. There is no more Joe Paterno coaching tree, since those guys rarely left anyway.

Punishing parties without guilty knowledge isn't really a workable principle of justice. They'll pay out in civil suits, but doing more...I don't see a cause for it. Even the trustees are essentially innocent.

[Darth Fanboy]

Not the same since TR didn't have anything to do with the murder itself. Basically you would set the precedent that a school can evade sanctions by simply firing people directly involved once they are caught. Like it or not PSU did benefit from the cover up. The civil settlements with the victims are separate from this. PSU football shouldn't be sanctioned because of Sandusky's crimes, they should be sanctioned because of what Paterno and others did, a coverup which does fall in the NCAAs jurisdiction.

[Questor]

You know what I find funny? If this had happened at Notre Dame, USC, Texas, or any school in Florida, there wouldn't be a single person defending the athletic department.

[CarsonPalmer]

Not the same since TR didn't have anything to do with the murder itself. Basically you would set the precedent that a school can evade sanctions by simply firing people directly involved once they are caught. Like it or not PSU did benefit from the cover up. The civil settlements with the victims are separate from this. PSU football shouldn't be sanctioned because of Sandusky's crimes, they should be sanctioned because of what Paterno and others did, a coverup which does fall in the NCAAs jurisdiction.

Does it, though? If Paterno took a broadsword and hacked somebody to pieces, should PSU be sanctioned for that? He did it to protect Penn State football's reputation, but there was no on-field benefit to it and Sandusky was no longer a coach. No NCAA rules cover "If your football coach does a horrible thing".

You give sanctions for two reasons: to send a message not to do it again and to counteract the impact of cheating. This wasn't cheating, as horrible as it is, and considering that once word spread beyond the Paterno-Spanier-Curley axis, university authorities acted.

If we look precedent to what was previously the worst scandal, at Baylor in the early 2000's, you see an example of what I mean. Baylor was sanctioned for their coach having paid the tuition of a player to evade scholarship limits, failure of the coaching staff to exercise institutional control (referring to unethical relationships between boosters and players), and failure to report positive drug tests.

For the real horror of the scandal (one player murdered another and the coach tried to frame the dead guy as a drug dealer), Baylor was NOT specifically sanctioned. The coach, Dave Bliss, was tagged by the NCAA with a "show-cause", which is essentially a ban from coaching. He was punished individually. If Paterno wasn't dead, I'd support that, but it's irrelevant now. Tim Curley the AD should get that tagged on him, though.

I don't really have a problem with setting the precedent of "If five men pull the wool over he ees of the whole university, and the university immediately cleans house, they don't get the death penalty".

[Thanas]

Does it, though? If Paterno took a broadsword and hacked somebody to pieces, should PSU be sanctioned for that? He did it to protect Penn State football's reputation, but there was no on-field benefit to it and Sandusky was no longer a coach. No NCAA rules cover "If your football coach does a horrible thing".

That is hair splitting to the extreme. Paterno was Penn State.

[fgalkin]

Well, let's say the names again. Sandusky the criminal, Mcqueary the coward, Paterno, Spanier, and Curley the cover-up artists. That's five people who knew.

All of them are going to prison for it. Not one person who perpetrated the cover up will benefit from it. Heck, no one associated with Paterno who was completely innocent will benefit from (nobody from that staff, no matter how innocent will get a big time football job again). So for what reason the death penalty? The Board of Trustees did the right thing as soon as they found out.

5 men knew, not the whole university (which will rightly pay some hefty civil damages antway6. And that brings us back to power again.

Personally, I would support shutting down the entire football program, not merely for two years, but either permanently or for something like a decade, something that it will take them forever to recover from. You know why? Because a message needs to be sent so that this never happens again.

It's simple cost-benefit analysis, really. Imagine, something like this happens again, but is discovered in mid-season and the school has a good chance of winning. They'll have every incentive to keep this covered up until after the end of the season, and afterwards, give up as little people as possible to minimize the damage to the program. Meanwhile, until then, the rapes will go on. This is unacceptable- a game cannot take the precedence over the well-being of people.

But then, they will remember what happened to PSU and realize that forfeiting a season and losing some people is actually not all that bad, and the alternative is far, far worse. In fact, they will be tripping over themselves in their haste to report this to the authorities because they would know that even the slightest appearance of a coverup will be disastrous.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[CarsonPalmer]

Does it, though? If Paterno took a broadsword and hacked somebody to pieces, should PSU be sanctioned for that? He did it to protect Penn State football's reputation, but there was no on-field benefit to it and Sandusky was no longer a coach. No NCAA rules cover "If your football coach does a horrible thing".

That is hair splitting to the extreme. Paterno was Penn State.

Which comes back to power again...but now he's dead. And none of his assistant coaches will inherit the program. Not Tom Bradley and not his son (both of whom are evidently innocent of any wrongdoing, but they obviously cant take over). So what more needs to be done o Penn State? The new head guy is a pro coach, connected in no way to Paterno. Same for the AD and the staff.

[CarsonPalmer]

Well, let's say the names again. Sandusky the criminal, Mcqueary the coward, Paterno, Spanier, and Curley the cover-up artists. That's five people who knew.

All of them are going to prison for it. Not one person who perpetrated the cover up will benefit from it. Heck, no one associated with Paterno who was completely innocent will benefit from (nobody from that staff, no matter how innocent will get a big time football job again). So for what reason the death penalty? The Board of Trustees did the right thing as soon as they found out.

5 men knew, not the whole university (which will rightly pay some hefty civil damages antway6. And that brings us back to power again.

Personally, I would support shutting down the entire football program, not merely for two years, but either permanently or for something like a decade, something that it will take them forever to recover from. You know why? Because a message needs to be sent so that this never happens again.

It's simple cost-benefit analysis, really. Imagine, something like this happens again, but is discovered in mid-season and the school has a good chance of winning. They'll have every incentive to keep this covered up until after the end of the season, and afterwards, give up as little people as possible to minimize the damage to the program. Meanwhile, until then, the rapes will go on. This is unacceptable- a game cannot take the precedence over the well-being of people.

But then, they will remember what happened to PSU and realize that forfeiting a season and losing some people is actually not all that bad, and the alternative is far, far worse. In fact, they will be tripping over themselves in their haste to report this to the authorities because they would know that even the slightest appearance of a coverup will be disastrous.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

You don't think the message is already sent by "Your beloved legend of a coach will die in disgrace. Your AD and president will die in prison. The reputation of your football program will shattered. All the trophies and big games you won in fifty years will be rendered meaningless."

Hell, the fact that the assistant coaches all had their careers ruined for something they didn't know about-any assistant coach who finds out something like this in the future will run, not walk, to the police station if only out of sheer self-preservation.

The message has been sent without NCAA intervention.