[Screwston]

Quote:

July 23 (Bloomberg) -- Pennsylvania State University was fined $60 million as college sports’ governing body penalized the school for its handling of a child sex-abuse case involving assistant coach Jerry Sandusky. It avoided the stiffest punishment, a shutdown of the football program that was at the center of the scandal.

The school also was stripped of all its wins from 1998 through 2011, barred from postseason games for four years and lost 20 total scholarships annually for four seasons, according to a release from the National Collegiate Athletic Association.

The discipline announced by the NCAA avoided the so-called death penalty against the program where Joe Paterno, the coach who won a record 409 games, became a focus of the scandal. Paterno’s record will also lose the victories he recorded as coach from 1998 through last season.

“One of the grave dangers of our love of sports is that the sports themselves become too big to fail,” NCAA President Mark Emmert said at a televised news conference in Indianapolis.

The NCAA statement said Penn State’s leadership had perpetuated a “football-first culture that ultimately enabled serial child sex abuse to occur.” Emmert said Penn State had agreed not to appeal the penalties.

The NCAA acted against the State College, Pennsylvania-based school less than two weeks after an investigation found Paterno, who died of lung cancer in January, and other school officials tried to cover up abuse allegations. Sandusky, a football assistant coach for 31 years, was convicted last month on 45 criminal counts tied to the abuse of 10 boys over a 15- year period starting in 1994.

School Affected

While Penn State avoided having its football program shut down, the NCAA’s “corrective and punitive measures” probably will severely affect a school that ranks sixth all-time with 827 victories at college football’s highest level and won two national titles during Paterno’s 46-year tenure as coach.

It also will have an immense effect on the school’s finances. In the fiscal year ending in 2011, Penn State’s athletic department generated $116.1 million in operating revenue and posted a $14.8 million operating profit, according to school records.

Of Penn State’s 29 sports teams, only football and men’s basketball were profitable last year, with football generating an operating profit of $43.8 million on $58.9 million in revenue. The Nittany Lions had a 9-4 record last season.

Shutdown Costs

A shutdown of the football program would have cost Penn State and the surrounding community more than $70 million, according to an economic study commissioned by the university for the 2008-09 school year. That included $51.1 million spent on hotels, souvenirs, food, services and entertainment by out- of-state visitors, which represent about 15 percent of those attending games at Beaver Stadium, which has a capacity of more than 106,500.

Penn State has an endowment of $1.3 billion, the Pittsburgh-Post Gazette reported in March, citing Graham Spanier, who was dismissed as university president in the scandal.

The school removed a statue of Paterno outside the football stadium yesterday, 11 days after former Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Louis Freeh issued a report that said Paterno, Spanier and other university officials tried to conceal Sandusky’s abuse of children to protect the school from “bad publicity.” Freeh said his seven-month probe -- commissioned by the university’s board of trustees -- found that the abuse could have been stopped in 1998.

Sandusky Career

Sandusky, 68, was a defensive assistant for 31 years under Paterno, who won a Division I-record 409 games during his Penn State tenure and led the Nittany Lions to five unbeaten and untied seasons.

Emmert said in a July 16 interview with the Public Broadcasting Service that he had “never seen anything as egregious as this in terms of just overall conduct and behavior inside a university.”

Today, Emmert said the death penalty would have been too harsh to those not directly attached to the football program.

“An argument can be made that the egregiousness of the behavior in this case is greater than any other seen in NCAA history and that therefore, a multiyear suspension is appropriate,” he said. “Suspension of the football program would bring with it significant unintended harm to many who had nothing to with this case.”

Accountability Failure

Ellen Staurowsky, a professor of sports management at Drexel University in Philadelphia, said the NCAA was right not to impose the death penalty because it would have financially affected an entire community, not just the football program, and wouldn’t address the multiple accountability failures at the school.

Geoffrey Rapp, a sports law professor at the University of Toledo in Ohio, said yesterday that the death penalty would have been the only punishment that fits Penn State’s crime.

“The failure here was at the highest levels of Penn State’s leadership, and as the Freeh Report indicates, the only solution involves a major change in institutional culture,” Rapp said in an e-mail. “Anything less than a break from football would not address the fundamental cultural shift needed.”

Southern Methodist University’s football program was closed in 1987 after it was found that 13 players received $61,000 from a slush fund provided by a booster. The Dallas-based school was unable to field a team in 1988 and had one winning record over the next 20 years after it returned in 1989, before bowl game appearances in 2009, 2010 and last year.

Death Penalty

The NCAA also shut down the University of Kentucky basketball team for the 1952-53 season; the basketball team at the University of Southwestern Louisiana for two seasons from 1973-75; the men’s soccer team at Morehouse College in 2004 and 2005; and the men’s tennis program at MacMurray College for two seasons from 2005-07.

The change at Penn State started yesterday, when a 7-foot- tall statue of Paterno outside the football stadium was draped in a blue tarp and then taken down behind a fenced-off area.

Penn State President Rodney Erickson said the statue, which will be stored in a secure location, had become a “source of division and an obstacle to healing” at the university.

Paterno’s family objected to the decision to remove the bronze sculpture, saying it didn’t serve the victims of Sandusky’s “horrible crimes.” Paterno’s name remains on the university library, which was named after the coach and his wife, Sue, in 1994.

Paterno Involvement

Freeh said in his report that Paterno, whose motto was “success with honor,” had known of accusations against Sandusky before and after the assistant’s retirement in 1999 yet didn’t ban him from the university and failed to act aggressively to protect victims of potential future abuse.

Paterno, who was fired four days after Sandusky was arrested Nov. 5, was prevented by the university from telling his side of the story when the allegations emerged. Paterno told Freeh he wanted to talk to him, but died of lung cancer in January at the age of 85 before an interview could be arranged.

During Paterno’s tenure, the Penn State football program became one of the country’s elite, with five undefeated seasons and Associated Press national championships in 1982 and 1986.

Some responses to the NCAA's Penn State punishment
http://deadspin.com/5928385/i-hope-u-all...punishment

[kosko]

The irony is that the NCAA won't touch the 100's of millions of dollars Perterno made Penn State and NCCA DIV 1 Football.

Paterno hands are far from clean but throwing a dead man under the bus is a damn shame. Yes 20 boys got raped and fondled by some nutcase, but are people going to forget the thousands of young men that Paterno helped shaped into proper and professional men?

Penn State Football is preety much dead now and will be in a black hole for a good 10 years. But I'll be honest in saying that Penn State Football was not shit until Paterno got their in first place.... so really he took the program he built with him in passing.

Money hungry School Admins we're more complicit then a man hired to win football game, and coach up young athletes and nothing more.

[Timoteo]

What's interesting here is that the NCAA drags its feet on issues it has jurisdiction over, yet because of the public nature of this whole sordid affair, they swing the hammer quickly on this one, and I question whether or not they have the authority to do so in this case. They have jurisdiction over issues of competitive advantage - namely recruiting violations, improper benefits to players, institutional control of said players, etc. This was a cover-up of criminal behavior, and though it in part involves coaches, it has nothing to do with the operation of the football program.

This is grandstanding on the part of the NCAA. Vacating wins? A symbolic, posthumous punishment of Joe Paterno, because he is no longer with us and can't face the courts. As far as we know, every player was eligible, and there were no recruiting violations. Those wins are legitimate. Those players went out there and won those games, so we can't pretend that somehow the wins didn't occur. I get that the NCAA felt somewhat powerless in this situation, in that this really is a matter for the courts. It's up to the criminal justice system to go after the individual men that failed to act, and in a sense aided and abetted a child molestor.

It's hard to gauge just how badly the university as a whole will be affected by the loss of revenues, reputation, etc. That football revenue builds libraries, dorms, etc. I don't know if students (non-athletes) would hesitate to attend Penn State now - it's hard to know that. As a football program, they're dead for a while. No bowls for 4 years (which is also extra revenue), the loss of 20 scholarships in each of those years, and the right for current players to transfer elsewhere immediately without sitting out a year is the equivalent of the death penalty, because they won't be able to field a competitive team. Top recruits won't go there - they'll probably only get kids that weren't heavily recruited by other schools. And when the four years are over, how long will it take to rebuild? How will they attract top high school players, knowing that there will still be years of losing ahead? I always believed that the NCAA regretted hitting SMU with the death penalty in 1986, because they never imagined it would take them so long to recover (SMU finally made it back to a bowl game in 2009). Of course, SMU didn't have the stature of Penn State, but I'm not so sure that when the punishment is over, kids will come flooding back into the program immediately.

[rlongo924]

it's just a sad situation all around.

[Screwston]

(07-24-2012 12:29 PM)rlongo924 Wrote:  

it's just a sad situation all around.

Yeah, it really is. Pretty creepy how some students and alumni are saying the shit they're saying.

[R Smoov]

this just goes to show you that NCAA are dicks.

[Timoteo]

I understand the behavior of those in and around Penn State, as fucked up as it may be. Groups will defend their own no matter how irrational it is. Penn State, and Paterno, are under fire from the outside world. They're closing ranks and defending themselves. Those within the family that are sickened by what happened are simply keeping their mouths shut for fear of attack. I remember in the early days of this scandal, when kids were out rioting on campus, one brave kid came on camera and expressed his disappointment with the administration. That took some balls for a young man, and I'm sure he faced some backlash for it.

Penn State was all about protecting the institution. They wanted to avoid ANY culpability for what happened on their campus, which was impossible. If they had turned Sandusky in when they first had knowledge of what he was doing, they probably still would have been named as a defendant in any lawsuits because some of the molestations occurred on their premises. They still would have been able to lean on the fact that they did the right thing and turned in a pervert. But they wanted to totally distance themselves from what happened there, and it simply wasn't possible. I get it. It's what institutions of all kinds do. But once it got out, everyone responsible should have been fired, and they didn't do that either. If they had done that, the NCAA wouldn't have acted as strongly as they did. If an institution shows they either can't or won't self-police, they can't complain when an outside institution does it for them. I still feel that the individuals responsible should have faced punishment, and not the institution. But on the other hand, the individuals that run an institution ARE the institution.

[UgSlayer]

At the end of the day, it's just football. Sandusky molested and raped dozens of kids for decades and ruined their lives. Fuck him and fuck Penn State.

I do believe that they're unfairly using Paterno as a scapegoat, though. Although a lot of the burden of responsibility falls on him, all of Penn State's administration is at fault and they took the coward's way out by completely shifting the blame on a dead man who can't even defend himself and probably wouldn't even throw them under the bus like that if he was still alive. No honor. No integrity.

[Timoteo]

(07-25-2012 07:00 PM)UgSlayer Wrote:  

At the end of the day, it's just football. Sandusky molested and raped dozens of kids for decades and ruined their lives. Fuck him and fuck Penn State.

I do believe that they're unfairly using Paterno as a scapegoat, though. Although a lot of the burden of responsibility falls on him, all of Penn State's administration is at fault and they took the coward's way out by shifting the blame on a dead man who can't even defend himself and probably wouldn't even throw them under the bus like that if he was still alive.

Paterno was the face of the program per se, so he's the convenient target. No one knew who the other men involved in the coverup were before this broke. Paterno probably got a disproportionate share of the love, so he catches a disproportionate share of the blame when things went awry.

[UrbanNerd]

The death penalty for 1 or 2 years would have been better...then Penn State could have restarted with the 85 scholarships. By having 20-25 less scholarships over 4 years basically means that Penn State will be essentially and "Division 2" team.

There will be a lot of 50-0 losses at the hands of Ohio State and Wisconsin for the next 7 years.

[Timoteo]

(07-25-2012 10:18 PM)UrbanNerd Wrote:  

The death penalty for 1 or 2 years would have been better...then Penn State could have restarted with the 85 scholarships. By having 20-25 less scholarships over 4 years basically means that Penn State will be essentially and "Division 2" team.

There will be a lot of 50-0 losses at the hands of Ohio State and Wisconsin for the next 7 years.

This year should be a normal one for them. As far as I know, no current players on the roster are transferring out. A couple of top recruits coming in de-committed and are going elsewhere. However, after this season, you could see a considerable drop-off. In a season or two, you could see them struggle to win a conference game.

[Timoteo]

I do like one thing that the Penn State administration did. They extended Coach Bill O'Brien's contract another 4 years, to compensate for the 4 years that the school won't be bowl eligible and the loss of scholarships. He took over in an impossible situation not of his own doing, so they're compensating him for that. This is a good and decent move.