NCAA hits Penn State hard, but ‘death penalty’ appropriate (UPDATED with video)
Mark Emmert moved fast and hit Penn State for their actions (and inactions). (AP photo)
(See video blog with CineSports’ Noah Coslov below)
(Updated at 6:40 p.m. with comment from Penn State president that school accepted penalties to avoid death penalty)
Let’s start with this: NCAA president Mark Emmert acted swiftly and justly. That’s a rarity for the NCAA.
Emmert didn’t need a 17-month investigation by an overworked and underpaid staff to unearth something that we didn’t already learn from prosecutors and witnesses in the Jerry Sandusky child sexual abuse trial, or from the exhaustive, 267-page Freeh Report, conducted by a former director of the FBI. Anybody who believes Emmert moved too quickly on Penn State without the NCAA doing its own leg work must not having been paying attention for the past several decades, when policing college athletics became far too big of a job for that relative mom-and-pop organization.
The NCAA appropriately slammed Penn State Monday for its perceived enabling and cover-up of Sandusky. Emmert referenced an athletic culture “that went horribly awry” and a misguided “hero worship” that led to it. He didn’t bury the lead.
The penalties will double-over every blinded school official, player, fan, alum and misguided individual who hugged and tried to protect the Joe Paterno statute. The school was hit with a $60 million fine, equivalent to one year’s gross revenue for the football program (the money will fund an endowment that will fight child sexual abuse).
There’s also a four-year bowl ban; the loss of 40 scholarships over four years; the freedom for existing Penn State players to transfer to another school without having to sit out a year; the vacating of all victories since 1998, a symbolic punch to the gut for the memory of Joe Paterno. (The quarterback for Paterno’s last official win in 1997: Mike McQueary, whose eyewitness account of seeing Sandusky in the shower with a young boy was ignored years later.)
The sanctions will cripple the football program. But Emmert still fell short.
The NCAA, as I’ve written previously, should have gone one step further and shut the program down for one to two years. It would’ve been more than just a symbolic hit.
There is a need for a cultural change at Penn State, as Emmert himself said frequently Monday, and the “death penalty” would have increased the likelihood of that happening. It would have prompted anybody who ever took part in a cover-up or ignored whispers about Sandusky to reflect during Saturdays in the fall when football wasn’t being played at Penn State. Beaver Stadium could have been used for weekly prayer vigils for the victims.
Penn State officials need time to process this. They need to consider where, when and why they jumped the rails on their mission. While there’s no question the NCAA’s punishment will make them feel the pain of their actions, nothing can equal the silence of an empty stadium, the absence of weekly pep rallies. No program in history deserves to be shuttered as much as the Penn State football team. We send criminals to jail. We don’t tell them, “OK, you can still go back to that bank that you robbed, but now you’ll have to take the bus, and just don’t do it again.” Penn State needed to lose its freedoms, its privileges.
For some reason, the NCAA apparently gave Penn State a choice. President Rodney Erickson told the Centre Daily Times the school accepted the sanctions to avoid the death penalty: “We had our backs to the wall on this. We did what we thought was necessary to save the program.”
Some believe the death penalty would have been a softer punishment than what Penn State received. I don’t get that. Has anybody seen SMU since the death penalty?
Emmert believes the death penalty would’ve caused “unintended harm” to those who were innocent in this mess. That’s true. Unfortunately, the innocent always get hurt in NCAA probation. New players and often new coaches are in place when sanctions hit for past misdeeds.
Those who believe Sandusky’s crimes didn’t warrant any sanctions because they did not give the school a competitive advantage are missing the big picture. Question: If Jerry Sandusky was a chemistry professor and not a former high profile football coach, do you believe he would’ve been protected? Of course not. Penn State’s actions and inactions were about preserving the competitiveness, image and profitability of the football program.
Even without the death penalty, however, it was encouraging to see Emmert take charge. The NCAA has needed somebody with logic and courage to run things. The hope is that this won’t be an isolated case, because the leaders of college athletics have long since lost perspective.
Emmert said the Penn State case “involves tragic and tragically unnecessary circumstances. One of the grave dangers coming from our love of sports is that the sports themselves can become too big to fail, too big to even challenge. The result can be an erosion of academic values that are replaced by hero worship and winning at all costs. In the Penn State case, the results were perverse and unconscionable.”
They were the perfect words to punctuate the punishment and begin the process of closure. Going one step further would have made it just a little better.
By Jeff Schultz
Here’s my chat with CineSports’ Noah Coslov on the NCAA’s sanctions against Penn State.
Yes, first you read me, now you can see me in living color!
Tell us what you think about the site
Customer Care »
Vacation stops, manage subscriptions and more
AJC Services
Sections
Other Editions
Visitor Agreement | Privacy Statement
© 2013 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
525 comments Add your comment
JSS
July 23rd, 2012
1:25 pm
@ Jeff Schultz… Check your FB email tonight…
reckingball
July 23rd, 2012
1:26 pm
I don’t see how “hundreds of thousands of jobs” would be lost due to a Penn St. death penalty to their football.
But, I do agree that the penalties they recieved is a near-death sentence. It will hurt their program for a long, long time.
I don’t think that innocent people that derive their income from the football games should be made to suffer for the crimes of a few criminals.
5150 UOAD
July 23rd, 2012
1:26 pm
WELL….then the NCAA needs to make the RULE EXACTLY the same for VIOLATIONS but that is not how the NCAA works.
The BAR(PSU) helped create an environment for the Crimes to be committed.
If you Punish the action(Sanduski) and Environment Creator(PSU) then you have to Punish the DRUNK(Sanduski) and the BAR(PSU)
The Grinch
July 23rd, 2012
1:26 pm
phil
July 23rd, 2012
1:24 pm
Before long “PSU Alum” will be challenging some of the forfeited wins from one of his favorite seasons, say 2001 for example.
Well
July 23rd, 2012
1:26 pm
“You call me an idiot”
I never called you an idiot, Ray. Stop lying.
phil
July 23rd, 2012
1:27 pm
What A Laugher!
July 23rd, 2012
1:19 pm
“Football will never again be placed ahead of educating, nurturing and protecting young people” – Mark Emmert
**************
Of course it won’t be…..LOLOLOLOL!!
I guess ol’ Emmert thinks were all stupid out here…
PSU Alum
July 23rd, 2012
1:27 pm
You UGA fans are just piling on because it makes you feel better about your corrupt program with thugs and crooks.
Well
July 23rd, 2012
1:28 pm
5150 UOAD
So what you’re really saying is that Penn State should not receive probation at all?
The Grinch
July 23rd, 2012
1:28 pm
PSU Alum
July 23rd, 2012
1:27 pm
I’ll take a 20 year old getting arrested for possession of alcohol over child rape any day of the week.
phil
July 23rd, 2012
1:28 pm
hundreds or thousands, not of thousands…
Who’s the new coach up there? Not that it will matter but….
Fire him too!!
JJ
July 23rd, 2012
1:30 pm
The fact that the Penn State football program will continue operating this fall is yet another disgusting chapter in this whole saga. Unbelievable.
Well
July 23rd, 2012
1:30 pm
“You UGA fans are just piling on because it makes you feel better about your corrupt program with thugs and crooks.”
I’m in no way, shape or form, a UGA fan. I can not stand UGA football and I think their fans are some of the biggest idiots in all of college football. But with that said, this is not about another school. UGA is not running a corrupt football program and you have nothing to back up that lie.
Going and calling UGA a bunch of thugs is sad considering your school just got hammered over the biggest scandal in all of sports history.
dean
July 23rd, 2012
1:30 pm
I am all for putting a bullet in Sandusky’s ear. I am all for putting the heads of anyone who knew and tried covering it up on a pike.
Trust me. If here now 53 years later the cops came to me and said, “We found him.”, as God as my witness I would do everything in my power to kill the sonofabich.
I would take my chances with explaining to God why I had to take care of business before He did.
The only good child molester is a dead one.
Well
July 23rd, 2012
1:30 pm
“I’ll take a 20 year old getting arrested for possession of alcohol over child rape any day of the week.”
Check. Mate.
phil
July 23rd, 2012
1:31 pm
PSU Alum
July 23rd, 2012
1:27 pm
You UGA fans are just piling on because it makes you feel better about your corrupt program with thugs and crooks.
**********
I personally don’t give a rats butt about my corrupt program filled with thugs and crooks….it’s not like we ever do much of anything anyway…
What I do care about is your sewer of a school and what it allowed to happen for so long….You should be too.
Browncoat
July 23rd, 2012
1:32 pm
PSU Alum, child rape doesn’t seem to bother you, just that PSU has been hurt…….
Big Crimson 75
July 23rd, 2012
1:33 pm
I still can’t believe Paterno let this happen under his watch.
He knew what was going on & chose to look the other way.
Paterno had me fooled. I thought the Man stood for something.
Turns out, He allowed a Monster to prowl on innocent kids for 20+years!!
You think you know somebody, but you have no idea!!
Schultz, you got the red floppy feet on again
July 23rd, 2012
1:33 pm
You ask, “Has anyone seen SMU since the death penalty”. Say what? Your comparing SMU to PSU? Oh please. Does your nose light up too?
Well
July 23rd, 2012
1:35 pm
Big Crimson 75
I couldn’t agree with you more. It’s unfathomable to think that this kind of stuff could go on at a major university. I can not wrap my mind around anyone “looking the other way” when child rape is happening.
Well
July 23rd, 2012
1:37 pm
PSU Alum
I’ll give you some friendly advice. When your school is on the world stage as having covered up 20 years of child rape, it’s best to just not come on a public blog and spew the kind of garbage you’ve been spewing.
The Grinch
July 23rd, 2012
1:37 pm
Big Crimson 75
July 23rd, 2012
1:33 pm
I kind of thought Paterno was getting senile the past decade or so. My belief was that he stayed on to get the “wins” record.
Maybe a mandatory retirement age for head coaches? You know, if you can’t bend over and tie your own shoe then maybe you shouldn’t be the leader of a bunch of young gladiators playing a violent sport.
PSU Alum
July 23rd, 2012
1:37 pm
Penn State did not rape those children. A retired former coach did. He has been punished. The entire school should not be.
You rednecks just keep perpetuating the stupid stereotype.
George Stein
July 23rd, 2012
1:37 pm
As a Tech man, I’m not one to defend UGA very much. HOWEVAH, to compare the traffic tickets, weed smoking (omg college kids smoke up!), or suspended license nonsense there with child rape blows my mind, PSU alum. Unreal.
5150 UOAD
July 23rd, 2012
1:38 pm
Browncoat
July 23rd, 2012
1:32 pm
PSU Alum, child rape doesn’t seem to bother you, just that PSU has been hurt…….
===============================================
So Sexual Assault in the White House doesn’t bother you?
Nothing happened to Clinton for Monica Lewinski but if it happened to a CEO he would be in jail.
phil
July 23rd, 2012
1:38 pm
People look the other way when this happens every single day….
This ain’t an isolated series of incidents. Granted, most are hidden a bit better than this apparently, but child sexual abuse is a rampant problem across the country and around the world.
We’re human beings, after all. Sad, isn’t it? Look at Dean posting above….it obviously happened to him too, and surely others that post here all the time.
The Grinch
July 23rd, 2012
1:39 pm
PSU Alum
July 23rd, 2012
1:37 pm
But Penn State officials knew of the abuse and did nothing but cover it up. Get a life! Better yet, move back to “Happy Valley”.
Ray
July 23rd, 2012
1:39 pm
@ Well
Go back to page 2 you basically called me an idiot trust me and which I know I’m not, and many UGA fans aren’t idiots themselves their actually pretty nice people. We’re just like any other college got your stupid people that go too far, and you cool people that would let you hang out with them.
Well
July 23rd, 2012
1:40 pm
“Penn State did not rape those children. A retired former coach did. He has been punished. The entire school should not be.”
YOUR SCHOOL COVERED IT UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Geez man, you are in serious need of help if you can not see through your rose colored glasses.
“You rednecks just keep perpetuating the stupid stereotype.”
PSU, you are a classless jerk.
Well
July 23rd, 2012
1:40 pm
“So Sexual Assault in the White House doesn’t bother you?”
Your lack of common sense bothers me.
blue
July 23rd, 2012
1:40 pm
The NCAA is NOT ever going to use the death penalty again. I think I even heard the president of NCAA a few years back say that when Alabama was in some trouble.
Resident Georgia Fan
July 23rd, 2012
1:40 pm
PSU Alum: You should have saved some of your energy for looking into to Coach Joe Paturnover”s corrupt reign. Hitler Paterno Stalin … yeah that sounds right.
The Grinch
July 23rd, 2012
1:41 pm
5150 UOAD
July 23rd, 2012
1:38 pm
Sad but true. However, I guess a lot of guys look at another guy getting a blow job by a girl over half his age is something to be envied, however, there’s nothing much worse than child rape.
JSS
July 23rd, 2012
1:41 pm
POAD…
Arthur Blank is a CEO and he’s not in jail! A settlement check is a helluva drug!
Enemas for Easter
July 23rd, 2012
1:41 pm
And the winner for the most retarded post goes to:
5150 UOAD
July 23rd, 2012
1:38 pm
Browncoat
July 23rd, 2012
1:32 pm
PSU Alum, child rape doesn’t seem to bother you, just that PSU has been hurt…….
===============================================
So Sexual Assault in the White House doesn’t bother you?
Nothing happened to Clinton for Monica Lewinski but if it happened to a CEO he would be in jail.
Browncoat
July 23rd, 2012
1:41 pm
5150 UOAD
July 23rd, 2012
1:38 pm
So Sexual Assault in the White House doesn’t bother you?
Nothing happened to Clinton for Monica Lewinski but if it happened to a CEO he would be in jail.
What is wrong with you? Who mentioned the White House?
Big Crimson 75
July 23rd, 2012
1:41 pm
Grinch — how bout when he had to take a dump in the 1 st quarter a few yrs ago!!
Classic — watching the old man “run” across the field during the game!!
He definitely piled on the wins.
I’m assuming Bobby will retain the record now.
another voice
July 23rd, 2012
1:42 pm
“Football will never again be placed ahead of educating, nurturing and protecting young people,” Emmert said.
Right!
Was Emmert speaking of Penn State only or the NCAA and every institution of higher education which is a part of that association? One has to assume that by educating, nurturing and protecting young people he is speaking not only of young persons who are victims of sexual abuse but that football will never again be placed ahead of the education and nurture and protection of students and student atheletes at all of the member universities and colleges of the NCAA as well.
While this is a first step in that endeavor (certainly where PSU is concerned) what will be the future steps taken by the NCAA in regard to all other schools with football programs?
Wet Willie...keep on smiling
July 23rd, 2012
1:42 pm
Feel bad for all the current PSU players and coaches. Must be total confusion around the football building right now.
Jefferson Davis Hogg
July 23rd, 2012
1:43 pm
@GTBob. ” The lack of institutional control clause basically gives the NCAA free reign on anything they feel like. Anything can fit in that clause. Would you be ok with it if the NCAA gave UGA the death penalty for their recent discipline problems? Would that not fit into lack of institutional control?” totally different situations Bob. No, no university can controll what a student athlete or any other student does or what trouble them as individuals get into off campus or on. This can’t be policed by anyone besides the kids themselves and know one gains any extra benefits to the football program because a kid gets kcked off a team for smoking pot or whatever else. On the other hand, PSU had total control of this situation, or lack of control depending on how you look at it. Everyone from President Paterno, or the labelled president, chancellors and everyone in between who knew of these happenings and chose to cover them up!. These are the people in charge of institutional control, not a few athletes that choose to get into trouble off campus. Kids being molested and the whole staff at PSU knowing of it and choosing not to say a word about it for all thes years just to protect the PSU football program constitutes lack of institutional control andI’m just sad that the punishment was even this light
Well
July 23rd, 2012
1:43 pm
“Go back to page 2 you basically called me an idiot ”
Lying is not nice, Ray. First, you claimed that I called you an idiot and then you say that I basically called you an idiot.
“many UGA fans aren’t idiots themselves their actually pretty nice people.”
I’ve met a few of them and then when I wear my schools hats/clothing, I get called names etc. I went to Athens for a game and some UGA kids started throwing bottles at me and my friends. The fun part is that I actually got a hold of one of them and sent him to the dentist.
dean
July 23rd, 2012
1:43 pm
Sorry PSU Alum. You get no sympathy from me. It was an INSTITUTIONAL COVER UP WITH ONE GOAL—>PROTECT THE FOOTBALL PROGRAM.
What do you not understand? Please enlighten me if I’m “not getting it”.
The Grinch
July 23rd, 2012
1:44 pm
Big Crimson 75
July 23rd, 2012
1:41 pm
LOL!!! I remember seeing a clip on that. He runs across the field just before the first half ended. He came back in the second half and had a different pair of pants on. Guess he didn’t make it in time.
Buckeye
July 23rd, 2012
1:44 pm
I’m sure the news made for a better day in the slammer for sandusky- NOT
They out to put sandusky and holmes together – a match made in hell.
Fan of Schultz
July 23rd, 2012
1:44 pm
looking forward to reading another story by schultz on this same subject matter 3 weeks from now.
seems to be his M.O. to re-hash old stories as new ones several weeks later.
JSS
July 23rd, 2012
1:45 pm
Mark Hurd is not in jail… Look him up…
PSU Alum
July 23rd, 2012
1:46 pm
Well
July 23rd, 2012
1:40 pm
“Penn State did not rape those children. A retired former coach did. He has been punished. The entire school should not be.”
YOUR SCHOOL COVERED IT UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Geez man, you are in serious need of help if you can not see through your rose colored glasses.
“You rednecks just keep perpetuating the stupid stereotype.”
PSU, you are a classless jerk.
Real tough guy huh? You all are so worked up, yet you routinely have relations with your sisters. This is the south.
Tumbledown
July 23rd, 2012
1:46 pm
Let us try to understand PSU Alum and all those others who are connected to Penn State. Unfortunately, they derive some of their identity with Penn State and undoubtedly elevated Paterno to some mythical god-like state in their minds. All of that has been destroyed. Their school has been severely sanctioned, and I am sure all those Penn State people feel like a part of them has been attacked and sanctioned.
Hopefully, in time, the Penn State alums will understand that their football program and university had to be punished severely. Children were sexually molested on campus by a former football coach. The powers that be (including Paterno) covered it up, all the time allowing Sandusky to use the football facility as some sort of honorary professor. The rights acts by the right people at Penn State in 1998 would have prevented a ton of suffering.
I hope all people realize that NOBODY, especially a football coach, should be elevated to god-like status. These coaches and their sports programs should never be worshiped, or else these problems will continue. The Penn State situation is a cautionary tale for us all.
Bammer
July 23rd, 2012
1:47 pm
JoePa has been a fraud for years. He hasn’t been any kind of a coach for years, yet sat up in the booth just to scavenge wins to push him past Bowden. We went up to Happy Valley last year (thankfully a couple weeks before this all broke) and I watched JoePa a couple times thru my binocs up in his box. He had no headset on, wasn’t calling any plays, and no one even really spoke to him to ask “What do you think we should do on third-and-long here Coach?”
Ray
July 23rd, 2012
1:48 pm
@ Well
I’m saying you might as well had said that cause it was implied. Never mind though in your own little world you didn’t call anyone names.
As idiot fans though that happens at every school.
JSS
July 23rd, 2012
1:48 pm
POAD is OK in his way… Unfortunately he is going to go to his grave obsessing over the presidency of William Jefferson Clinton…