Harsh Punishment Handed To Penn State and Joe Paterno
July 23, 2012 2 Comments
Over the weekend a statute of Joe Paterno was removed from outside of Penn State’s football stadium. Initially I opposed the move, largely because it felt like it was pressured out of Penn State by the national media, including nitwits at ESPN like Jeremy Shapp. On one hand Paterno had a 40+ year record of graduating football players and on field success. On the other hand he failed to protect children by conspiring with the athletic director and university president to protect Jerry Sandusky, a now convicted child molester. Worse, Paterno likely perjured himself when he said denied knowing about Sandusky’s allegations prior to 2001 when it is clear he knew as late as 1998. Ultimately, the statute had to go if for no other reason then Paterno’s likely perjury which shows he actively protected Sandusky at the expense of children
So now the Paterno statue is gone but that hasn’t stopped the NCAA from levying penalties. Today they announced they were fining Penn State $60 million, banning the football team from bowl games for four years, reducing scholarships by 10 initially and 20 total over four years and vacating all wins since 1998. The first question is whether or not the NCAA even has authority to issue penalties in a case like this. Generally the NCAA only has authority to issue penalties in cases that involve rules violations. No NCAA rules were broken, which makes the NCAA’s claim to have the ability to punish dubious at best. Penn State apparently agreed to these penalties, so that makes this point moot until it comes up again in the future at another school.
The fine is right and proper as a punishment. A fund is being set up to compensate victims of Jerry Sandusky with an endowment also set up to fund external (read: not at Penn State) child abuse prevention programs. If there was ever a good punishment for this sort of situation it is this. Vacating wins is absolutely pointless as the games already happened, we all know the results and as such it’s almost like the Soviet Union pretending that people knocked off by Stalin never existed. The bowl ban and scholarship reductions only hurt current Penn State students and football players and their coaches, none of whom are responsible for anything associated with Jerry Sandusky.
This to me is a key point. Joe Paterno is dead, the former athletic director and President are no longer working for Penn State and are awaiting trial on charges relating to this matter. Sandusky is in jail, never to get out. What exactly is the point of punishing student athletes who had nothing to do with anything associated with this horrible cover up? One could make that argument with any of the NCAA’s penalties handed down over the years. Sure, it’s a school punishment but the brunt of the punishment falls on the next crop of kids who had nothing to do with any rule violations.
As a general rule, if I were running the NCAA I would rather fine schools than ban them from bowl games. (ex: allow schools to go to bowl games but prevent them from receiving a bowl payout) If scholarships are going to be taken away and bowl bans are going to be in place, then I would say allow all current scholarship players to transfer to another school without penalty. This happened at USC a few years ago, it isn’t clear if current Penn State scholarship athletes will be afforded the same opportunity to transfer. Hopefully they are.
The Jerry Sandusky saga at Penn State is going to destroy their football program for a generation. I would love nothing more than to see the Big Ten kick these eastern interlopers out of the conference. But what I don’t want to see is current student athletes unjustly punished for something that happened long before they set foot on campus. In that, perhaps the NCAA needs to rethink their penalties and move to a monetary based system of punishment. For all the positive things Paterno did at Penn State, his reputation is forever destroyed by his failure to protect children from a child molester. Everything he worked for in his life has been destroyed, sadly he’s getting exactly what he deserved.
Update: Apparently NCAA rules will allow all Penn State football players on scholarship to transfer without having to sit out. If I were such a player, I would jump ship as soon as possible.
About Steven
Accountability? Its due, but maybe not from the NCAA. Punishment for sure is deserved in a larger sense. But the NCAA serves nothing but its own PR here. The Courts are the place for judgement, settlement and recovery of damages…not the knucklheheads that gave us the BCS and the farce that is current “student athletes” in big-time sports. I seriously doubt the NCAA’s financial penalty passes the smell test for a public institution with its moral and fiduciary obligation to PA’s citizens. And what is the NCAA going to do with the money anyway? It is hardly a charitable organization, in spite of its ostensible non-profit status. As conservatives, shouldn’t we suspect the fine ends up sanitized through non-conservative “programs”. This fine is nothing but mission creep by a organization of creeps capitalizing on one creep enabled by a bunch of other creeps. The fine plays off people’s desire to see retribution, but it matters even more who administers the punishment. The NCAA should have deferred to the Courts for non-athletic punishment, and the overreach is an ironic indictment of the NCAA itself. Penn State should just say “no”, accept its fate in the Courts, and focus on its real business: education. Sports at Happy Valley won’t go away, but its big-money intercollegiate stature might for a while. So what?
Supposedly the money is supposed to go in escrow and is meant to first compensate Sandusky’s victims. I don’t believe the 10 or so kids who have claims have $60 million worth of claims but they certainly have a claim that deserves compensation. Perhaps the NCAA wants to see those claims settled out of court, if I was Penn State I’d probably want to see those cases settled out of court as well. As for what happens with the rest of the money, your guess is as good as mine. Taxpayers in PA ought to demand public accountings.
I tend to agree that this is an overreach by the NCAA. I don’t see where they think they have the right under their bylaws to construct such a penalty. That said, Penn State chose to go along with this penalty and for better or worse have given up their legal right to protest in court. I happen to like the fine in this case and believe fines should be the basis for NCAA penalties in the future, regardless of rule infraction. I see no point in punishing current student athletes for the sins of previous student athletes, their coaches or university administrators. Let Penn State go to a bowl game but don’t let them get a bowl payout.
On another note, I’ll bet the farm Penn State significantly alters their uniforms if not this season than next. The boring jerseys they currently wear are closely associated with Paterno and it’s obvious Penn State is going to be spending a lot of time distancing themselves from JoePa. One symbolic way they’ll do it is ridding themselves of the boring uniforms he insisted on having his team wear.