NCAA College Football: Sanction PSU?

[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.

Did you even read my post? The explanation why sanctions would ensure full cooperation and the current punishment would not?

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[CarsonPalmer]

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.

Did you even read my post? The explanation why sanctions would ensure full cooperation and the current punishment would not?

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

Did you even follow this story? Penn State was competing for a Big 10 title and did, in fact, fire Joe Paterno in the middle of the season, five days before they played Nebraska.

So your scenario actually happened. Also, did you read what I posted? That the assistant coaches will be tripping over themselves to report anything because it means their careers?

[fgalkin]

Did you even follow this story? Penn State was competing for a Big 10 title and did, in fact, fire Joe Paterno in the middle of the season, five days before they played Nebraska.

So your scenario actually happened. Also, did you read what I posted? That the assistant coaches will be tripping over themselves to report anything because it means their careers?

Because the story broke, you imbecile. I'm talking about wrongdoing being discovered internally for the first time. The point is, they have a choice of half-hearted cooperation, or going all-out, and anything that encourages them to do the latter is a good thing.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[CarsonPalmer]

Did you even follow this story? Penn State was competing for a Big 10 title and did, in fact, fire Joe Paterno in the middle of the season, five days before they played Nebraska.

So your scenario actually happened. Also, did you read what I posted? That the assistant coaches will be tripping over themselves to report anything because it means their careers?

Because the story broke, you imbecile. I'm talking about wrongdoing being discovered internally for the first time. The point is, they have a choice of half-hearted cooperation, or going all-out, and anything that encourages them to do the latter is a good thing.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

You're still not addressing the point that the assistants will all have seen what happened to the Penn State assistant coaches and know they're careers are on the line. That's enough of a long term incentive to make sure that the right thing is done.

I mean, at some point you have to say the message has been sent. The actions by Paterno and Spanier and Curley are so horrible that it's tempting to always say the punishment is not enough but how far do you need to go on people who didn't know a damn thing?

[CarsonPalmer]

Ghetto edit: Penn State did have the option of protecting Paterno by pinning it all on Tim Curley. People would have wanted to believe that, so the trustees probably could have made that fly. They didn't, though. That might have been enough cover to let him finish out the season, albeit under a cloud.

You can say it was because the story broke, but you really couldn't have asked the trustees to be more cooperative once they found out what was happening.

[Darth Fanboy]

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.

[Darth Fanboy]

Ghetto edit: Penn State did have the option of protecting Paterno by pinning it all on Tim Curley. People would have wanted to believe that, so the trustees probably could have made that fly. They didn't, though. That might have been enough cover to let him finish out the season, albeit under a cloud.

You can say it was because the story broke, but you really couldn't have asked the trustees to be more cooperative once they found out what was happening.

They never really had that option because of public sentiment, and when the first grand jury reports came out that was it for Paterno.

[fgalkin]

You're still not addressing the point that the assistants will all have seen what happened to the Penn State assistant coaches and know they're careers are on the line. That's enough of a long term incentive to make sure that the right thing is done.

I mean, at some point you have to say the message has been sent. The actions by Paterno and Spanier and Curley are so horrible that it's tempting to always say the punishment is not enough but how far do you need to go on people who didn't know a damn thing?

They still have the option of pinning the blame on one guy and leading the rest go scott-free. In fact, they have every incentive to do so, and absolutely none not to because, as you keep repeating, punishing everyone guilty would involve wrecking lots of careers.

If the choice, however, is between "wreck careers" and "compete destruction of the football program," wrecking careers suddenly doesn't seem so bad after all.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Atlan]

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.

Bullshit. EVERYBODY KNEW. The fucking JANITOR knew. Old players knew. Want to know why? Because when the rape story of 2001 broke, and Those Five stopped it from coming out, there was another thing going on. Sandursky had been organizing golf tournaments for charity. A lot of old players and alumni attended those. Afterwards, all those people suddenly stopped coming to those tournaments, and Sandursky was forced to cancel the whole shebang.
PEOPLE KNEW. Everybody knew, and nobody wanted to do a goddamn thing. Because FOOTBALL.

To hell with PSU. The death penalty is needed, because the coverup was systematic and institutional. Penn State had a choise. A damaged football program, or the rape of little boys. As an institutution it made it's choise. Now let it lie in the bed it made.

[Darth Fanboy]

Not to mention the fact that Sandusky wasn't even considered for head coaching jobs anywhere else, one would think such a highly decorated assistant would have had a nice selection of head coaching opportunities.

[Thanas]

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."

How? The statue is still standing. The name is still on the wall. The trophies are still there. The apologists are still out in full force.

In a few decades the scandal will be a mere afterthought unless people act now.

Like, nobody these days talks about steroid abuse in the 60s and 70s among popular athletes and endemic use of it by whole teams. No, instead everybody still talks about the mighty bears and the great steel curtain. Unless you act and revoke these things, popular memory will not care about it.

Also, this:

Bullshit. EVERYBODY KNEW. The fucking JANITOR knew. Old players knew. Want to know why? Because when the rape story of 2001 broke, and Those Five stopped it from coming out, there was another thing going on. Sandursky had been organizing golf tournaments for charity. A lot of old players and alumni attended those. Afterwards, all those people suddenly stopped coming to those tournaments, and Sandursky was forced to cancel the whole shebang.
PEOPLE KNEW. Everybody knew, and nobody wanted to do a goddamn thing. Because FOOTBALL.

To hell with PSU. The death penalty is needed, because the coverup was systematic and institutional. Penn State had a choise. A damaged football program, or the rape of little boys. As an institutution it made it's choise. Now let it lie in the bed it made.

Agreed in full.

[Elfdart]

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.

The football program at SMU was shut down for two years (and still hasn't recovered) because some of the alumni were caught repeatedly -over the course of several years- giving cash, cars and other gifts to players. If that's the penalty for paying "amateur" players out of a slush fund then what punishment do you think the NCAA should mete out to Penn State for letting a known pedophile have free rein on campus? I would be in favor of letting anyone attending Penn State transfer without having to sit a year. Other than that, tough titty for Penn State football.

As far as Paterno's statue is concerned, I like the idea I heard mentioned on the Howard Stern Show: Keep the statue, but paint it bright yellow to remind everyone of what a coward Paterno was.

One more thing: When SMU got busted by the NCAA, and Barry Switzer was forced out at Oklahoma to head off a similar penalty for that program, guess who all the sports hacks prostrated themselves in front of for words of wisdom as to how you run a "clean" athletic department?

[Elfdart]

Not to mention the fact that Sandusky wasn't even considered for head coaching jobs anywhere else, one would think such a highly decorated assistant would have had a nice selection of head coaching opportunities.

That's because for a long time it was assumed that he would take over for Paterno when he retired. Why take a job elsewhere when such a plum job is waiting for you if you stay put?

[Darth Fanboy]

That's because for a long time it was assumed that he would take over for Paterno when he retired. Why take a job elsewhere when such a plum job is waiting for you if you stay put?

That depends, a reporter covering the Freeh report out here mentioned that Sanudsky didn't even get much consideration from other schools once the rumors started churning, right about the same time he stopped hosting golf tournaments and such. Nobody wanted to be involved with the guy.

Plus, you take a job elsewhere even if you are "in waiting" because the new job does come up at a higher salary. For all his faults Paterno was the last of the highest profile coaches making less than a million per year.

[Thanas]

Less than a million a year in official salary. When you count in the other perks provided by the university for life (luxury stadium box, use of private plane etc.) it might unofficially add to a bit more.

[Darth Fanboy]

Yeah but considering the salaries coaches command at other programs of similar stature that's still pretty cheap, even for 2001. The point is that the rumors surrounding Sandusky were gaining momentum and keeping him from jobs even before he "retired", I don't know if there is a more prominent example of a coach in waiting who retired before the person they were supposed to succeed without getting another job first.

[CarsonPalmer]

See, that I think you're misremembering. The line when Sandisky retired was that he realized he was never going to be the head coach at Penn State. His retirement pretty much knocked him out of the line of succession. I remember talking about it with my dad, and we thought it was a sign that he was pushing his son as successor. It was obviously something else.

Either way, I'm just too depressed by the whole thing (I had grown up admiring PSU and Paterno was the model of who a coach should be). I don't care one way or another any more what happens to Penn State football at this point.

[Purple]

After reading the whole thread I have to point out one thing that confuses me about the arguments you are trying to make here. All of you seem to agree that a harsher punishment for everyone involved, even those that were not guilty of the crime and did not even know of it would somehow make people more eager to report such crimes in the future. However that strikes me as kind of self defeating. I mean, let's look at who can report this kind of a crime. The people who did not know about it can't do it. And the people doing it definitively won't. And so you are left with only the group of people who know about it but are not directly involved. The kind of people who witnes a crime and have to make the choice to either come out about the crimes of others or to shut up and try to cover it up. And your way of wining these people over so that they come out and report it is to offer them complete personal destruction both in terms of reputation and carrier prospects. If anything such measures would motivate a lot more people to actively cover such crimes up because now they would have a personal stake in it not getting out.

[Atlan]

After reading the whole thread I have to point out one thing that confuses me about the arguments you are trying to make here. All of you seem to agree that a harsher punishment for everyone involved, even those that were not guilty of the crime and did not even know of it would somehow make people more eager to report such crimes in the future. However that strikes me as kind of self defeating. I mean, let's look at who can report this kind of a crime. The people who did not know about it can't do it. And the people doing it definitively won't. And so you are left with only the group of people who know about it but are not directly involved. The kind of people who witnes a crime and have to make the choice to either come out about the crimes of others or to shut up and try to cover it up. And your way of wining these people over so that they come out and report it is to offer them complete personal destruction both in terms of reputation and carrier prospects. If anything such measures would motivate a lot more people to actively cover such crimes up because now they would have a personal stake in it not getting out.

Don't be an idiot. They're not being punished for coming out and reporting it, they're being punished for NOT coming out and reporting it. They DESERVE to have their reputation and careers tarnished.

[Purple]

Don't be an idiot. They're not being punished for coming out and reporting it, they're being punished for NOT coming out and reporting it. They DESERVE to have their reputation and careers tarnished.

I do believe you have failed to read what I was replying to. So try again, from the start. Like the parts where people here openly advocated shutting down the whole football program for decades or even indefinitely even thou most of those who would be harmed by such an act are complete innocents that did not even know about it.

And while we are at it read my post again. Slowly. And let me translate it to you in simple terms. Why do witness protection and plea bargains exist? To make people who know stuff testify. What happens when you replace them with flat out punishment for these same people? Will they testify? Will they even report it? No, they will try their best not to get fucked over so they will cover it up.

[Straha]

And while we are at it read my post again. Slowly. And let me translate it to you in simple terms. Why do witness protection and plea bargains exist? To make people who know stuff testify. What happens when you replace them with flat out punishment for these same people? Will they testify? Will they even report it? No, they will try their best not to get fucked over so they will cover it up.

If the NCAA releases a statement that says "Penn State is being punished solely for the act of covering up the actions of a child molester for over a decade" how does that not solve for your objection? Future schools will understand that if they try to cover shit up they'll be punished, and schools will know that they'll be in the clear from NCAA sanctions if (and only if) they come clean immediately.

[fgalkin]

And while we are at it read my post again. Slowly. And let me translate it to you in simple terms. Why do witness protection and plea bargains exist? To make people who know stuff testify. What happens when you replace them with flat out punishment for these same people? Will they testify? Will they even report it? No, they will try their best not to get fucked over so they will cover it up.

Let me use small words because you are clearly unable to understand what you read. If they report wrongdoings, they will not be punished. If they do not report wrongdoings, they WILL be punished. They are being punished for NOT REPORTING wrondgoings.

Got it now, or must I explain it again?

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Terralthra]

And while we are at it read my post again. Slowly. And let me translate it to you in simple terms. Why do witness protection and plea bargains exist? To make people who know stuff testify. What happens when you replace them with flat out punishment for these same people? Will they testify? Will they even report it? No, they will try their best not to get fucked over so they will cover it up.

Let me use small words because you are clearly unable to understand what you read. If they report wrongdoings, they will not be punished. If they do not report wrongdoings, they WILL be punished. They are being punished for NOT REPORTING wrondgoings.

Got it now, or must I explain it again?

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

Your plan punishes thousands of people who did not report wrongdoings because they had no idea they were occurring.

[Dark Hellion]

And while we are at it read my post again. Slowly. And let me translate it to you in simple terms. Why do witness protection and plea bargains exist? To make people who know stuff testify. What happens when you replace them with flat out punishment for these same people? Will they testify? Will they even report it? No, they will try their best not to get fucked over so they will cover it up.

Let me use small words because you are clearly unable to understand what you read. If they report wrongdoings, they will not be punished. If they do not report wrongdoings, they WILL be punished. They are being punished for NOT REPORTING wrondgoings.

Got it now, or must I explain it again?

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

Your plan punishes thousands of people who did not report wrongdoings because they had no idea they were occurring.

My god are people really this fucking stupid? The argument being put forth is that the culture of football at PSU (and other schools) is toxic in that it gives incentive for schools to cover up crimes to ensure the legacy of the program and to continue to make money. The idea of the death penalty for the program is to send the message that the school and program has a higher obligation and that failure to live up to that obligation should result in far reaching penalization.

Personally, I find that there are very screwed up priorities in wishing to protect the program. While it may make PSU a large amount of money, many schools manage to maintain financial solvency without large sports programs by focusing on research and other academic pursuits which is supposed to be the primary pursuit of universities.

[Darth Fanboy]

Thousands of people punished?

I assume you mean the students who won't get to watch football games and cheer for a team (boo hoo, this is not some inalienable college right) or perhaps the businesses who profit off of PSU football games (who wouldn't be profiting as much if PSU football had taken a hit to its reputation if Sandusky had been outed sooner). This of course, ignores the fact that the plan Fgalkin discussed punished people that did not report wrongdoings because they were covering for a child molester.

Representatives of Penn State University, at the university's highest levels even, created a situation that enabled a representative of their university to sexually assault children systematically for years. By covering up the scandal and delaying the knowledge to the public, not only did the Athletic Department allow for further crimes to be committed, but they also profited by not having to deal with the fallout from Sandusky's depravity (via a percieved good reputation and whitewashing a part of their history, which had definite financial benefits especially as Penn State climbed back to national prominence late in the last decade).

But yes a bunch of 19-23 year old kids getting to enjoy the college experience through a game 5-6 times per year on campus means so much, how could we ever take it away...