CarsonPalmer wrote:
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".
Thanas's accurate comment about hair splitting aside you continue to make false analogies. Joe Paterno killing a person with a sword is one thing, Joe Paterno and other members of the Athletic Department using their influence to cover up a crime FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE SCHOOL AND ATHLETIC DEPARTMENT is different. Not sanctioning the school justified Paterno's actions in that the school, while getting a reputation hit, does not suffer any other consequences. The sad thing is, and I think we would all agree, if Sandusky had been stopped right away the program's reputation would not have taken as big of a hit as it has with the exposure of this coverup.
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.
Except that NCAA institutions have an obligations to act ethically and legally, so while this is not on-field cheating and not something that should affect Paterno's record for wins, this is an extreme case of an athletic department acting unethically.
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".
The abuse in the Baylor case IIRC was limited to the coach, and not spread amongst some of the top figures at the university as it is in the Penn State case.