Penn State Sanctions

[HighBeams]

Well, the decision about what sanctions to levy against Penn State has finally been announced. Are they too harsh? Are they not harsh enough? What do you all think?


http://www.azcentral.com/sports/coll...e-scandal.html

NCAA hands out punishment for Penn State in sex scandal

27 comments by Eric Prisbell - Jul. 23, 2012 08:06 AM
USA Today



NCAA President Mark Emmert issued a landmark ruling Monday morning, crippling Penn State's ability to compete on the field for years to come by banning the football team from bowl games for four years, reducing initial scholarships to 15 a year for four years and fining the school $60 million.

Emmert also stripped Penn State of all of its wins between 1998 and 2011, meaning that former coach Joe Paterno is no longer major college football's all-time winningest coach.

Emmert said suspending Penn State's program for at least one season was considered. But, in the end, Emmert sought sanctions that would not only punish but force Penn State to begin to "rebuild its athletic culture." Emmert sought to minimize the damages to innocent individuals.

"This is an unprecedented, painful chapter in the history of intercollegiate athletics," Emmert said during a news conference at NCAA headquarters in Indianapolis.

The ruling was precedent-setting because Emmert bypassed usual investigation protocol and instead turned to the NCAA executive committee and Division I Board of Directors for the authority to punish Penn State after its child sex-abuse scandal.

The report by former FBI director Louis Freeh concluded that senior leaders at Penn State, including former football coach Joe Paterno, concealed information that could have stopped Sandusky from preying on young children. Emmert relied upon the findings of the report, which he said was more exhaustive than any NCAA investigation in memory.....(Continues)

Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/sports/coll...#ixzz21SgoJfPP

[Titus]

Hard to say what a fair punishment should be. $60 mil fine. What will they do with that money? I hope it will go toward programs that help victims of sexual abuse.
Should the school be held responsible, or only the indivduals who should have but failed to take action? I don't really know. I think there is an opportunity here to build a model program that could guard against this sort of thing happening again.

[HighBeams]

This is one of today's opinion polls from Fox:

Are the NCAA penalties against Penn State sufficient for the crime?

No. Penn State deserved the 'death penalty' of losing its football program.

Not sure. Does this in any way help the victims?

Yes. For once, the NCAA did the right thing.

The most prominent opinion was the question about whether this helps the victims. I agree, Titus, that something should be done by Penn State to support victims of sexual abuse. I'm not sure, though, what $60 million would buy for the victims. I would not place much faith in the majority of that money actually being used for helping victims. Of course, neither do I place much faith in the NCAA's ability or desire to use that much money for much of anything but their own plans.

I'm also bothered by how this decision is hitting the students at Penn State. The wrongdoing was not theirs; it belongs to only a handful of people at the top. I personally don't see the sense in decimating an entire university for the crimes of only two or three officials. It wasn't for the sake of the educational programs that bad decisions were made. It was for a single sports program--football. Who's responsibility was it that football became such a sacred cow anyway? How many of those participants will be making a career out of football? It certainly is not a fair decision from the standpoint of the football players, who were also innocent of this horrible crime.

And let's not forget that this problem wasn't just wrong decisions about unfairly giving Penn State an athletic advantage over other universities, like the scandal that netted SMU a death penalty. This was an horrific felony crime against innocent children, who were specifically chosen because they had little to no adult protection from this monster. The adults who knew even of the allegations years before should be getting hefty jail sentences for their decision to ignore the problem for the sake of their sacred cow. But they won't.

[historyb]

Well, the decision about what sanctions to levy against Penn State has finally been announced. Are they too harsh? Are they not harsh enough? What do you all think?


http://www.azcentral.com/sports/coll...e-scandal.html

I think it's just to much. An overreaction, they aren't just punishing the coach and school but the students. I don't even like football but this is just madness

[Unclaimed Treasure]

It is true that the current students at Penn State are innocent of the wrongdoing and may suffer some of the consequences.

The key sentence is: "rebuild its athletic culture." I've worked in Universities, although none with the stature of Penn State. I've felt the pressure to give a passing grade on an abysmal failure of a test simply because the student involved was a football player. Keep in mind, these offenses occurred over a period of decades. The sports programs at major universities are not just the purview of the school. There are literally hundreds of win-crazy alumni contributing hundreds of thousands of dollars to these programs just so the school can bring home a trophy. While the majority of those donors were unaware of what was happening, I'm sure the largest donors, who would have been regularly feted by the university and included on a lot of "back stage" stuff had an inkling. But the "win at all cost" culture that they helped support would have also kept their mouths closed as long as Paterno was winning. Now, if he had been losing, Sandusky would have been thrown to the wolves almost immediately.

Sure, the students will be unhappy, but they will not really be harmed. If they are in football for the fame and glory, they will apply somewhere else. If they are not in it for those reasons, they will still be able to learn the basics of the game, play on an intramural schedule and get their degrees in coaching or sports medicine or teaching degrees in physical education without any difficulty. If the students are not sports majors, nothing changes. In fact without the distraction of football, perhaps some heretofore unnoticed pre-med genius or theater arts standout or superlative poet or novelist just might receive the kind of attention that will make his or her career.

When I had ovarian cancer, the surgeon removed the tumor...and it was massive...40 pounds. But he also removed some healthy tissue and organs in order to prevent a recurrence of the disease.

These punitive measures may seem draconian, but with the sports culture that was so deeply embedded in the administration, faculty, and alumni organizations, some of the good tissue must be sacrificed to completely eliminate the disease.

[Titus]

Perhaps I'm being judgmental, but I think what the NCAA is doing is giving the appearance that they are concerned about this in college sports. What are they really going to do to make sure this is not happening elsewhere?

[HighBeams]

Perhaps I'm being judgmental, but I think what the NCAA is doing is giving the appearance that they are concerned about this in college sports. What are they really going to do to make sure this is not happening elsewhere?

Yes, this goes back to the question about what the NCAA is going to do with the $60 million fine. I really doubt any substantial amount will go to programs for sexually abused children. (I know, I'm not a very trusting person sometimes.)

[Martok]

A bit late I guess for comment but I support the sanctions. Those in a position to do something proved that the football program was more important than the abused children, so they should be made to pay.