For those who do not know when the NCAA gives a college athletic team the death penalty it means the team is barred from competition for at least a year. The last time a major college football team got the death penalty was Southern Methodist University in 1987 for repeated violations which included boosters giving money to athletes.
That is what the NCAA needs to do. To Penn State that is.
Covering up a child sex abuse is much worse than a booster giving money to an athlete. Or an employee committing academic fraud so a basketball player can stay eligible, which happened at the University of Minnesota during the mid 1990's. Or lack of institutional control at Miami.
Federal law requires that an educational institution report any sexual assaults on campus. Obviously the 2001 incident where Mike McQueary caught Jerry Sandusky raping a boy in the shower never got reported. That should be worthy of the NCAA's attention.
As a college sports fan I never liked the NCAA. Brian Bosworth as big as an ass he was at Oklahoma was right. The NCAA and it's member schools makes millions off these student athletes (or should I say athlete-students) yet will penalize a student if they transfer or someone buys them a burger. If Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz was sitting in his office eating a pizza and QB James Vandenberg walks into his office and Coach offers him a slice, it would be a violation.
The NCAA needs to grow a pair and slap Penn State with the biggest penalty possible. If they don't then they are just as big a pussy las Joe Paterno, Tim Curley, Gary Schultz, Graham Spanier, and Mike McQueary
Penn State deserves a death penalty of at minimum - 10 years. The administration that protected Sandusky deserves serious jail time.
ReplyDeleteMuch as I agree that Penn State should suffer some major ramifications from this prolonged episode, it seems to be inappropriate to put the penalty onto young athletes who had nothing to do with it.
ReplyDeleteI'd rather Penn State be required to place all football profits for the next 2 years into a fund that provides assistance to victims of pedophilia. That way you make Penn State suffer, and not a bunch of innocent young people. Hell, if you think about it, isn't that what Sandusky was doing, hurting a bunch of innocent young people.
Penn Pedo State football should get the death penalty, all scholarship athletes should be able to transfer without losing eligibility. Penn Pedo State should as part of the penalty pay the scholarships all the signed athletes are entitled to, unless another school they transfer to does. No football at Penn Pedo State for 10 years.
DeleteThere are probably more Penn Pedo States out there, the NCAA needs to use Penn Pedo State and their coverup to set an example of appropriate penalties for people who obviously have no morals.
I agree that a penalty is required. Future young athletes should be dissuaded from attending Penn State.
ReplyDeleteIt's possible that somewhere a university pres / AD, is faced with either covering up or going public with something. Perhaps not child molestation, but maybe sexual harassment, rape, battery, any number of bad things. They weigh the risk of being caught to the cost of being caught. If the price of being caught is low, why not roll the dice and try to cover it up?
Covering up a crime and not doing any time is a crime itself.
If PSU had reported Sandusky to authorities in 1998 like they should have (or even earlier if you read through some of the statements by other coaches interviewed about Sandusky showering with young boys prior to 1998), they would have had some bad press for sure by having a standing coach involved in child molestation, but they would have at least handled it correctly and would likely not face any sanctions from the NCAA beyond some additional monitoring. But since they egregiously went out of their way to cover this activity up, they failed to protect any other children from being molested, and failed to uphold ethical standards of conduct. That should be enough to bring the NCAA into a full investigation and appropriate sanctions. IMO, since PSU committed these ethical violations merely to cover for their athletic department,PSU deserves the death penalty.
The crime was so much worse than buying a house for an athlete, or a bagful of cash....
NCAA bylaw 19.5.2 - (g) Prohibition against specified competition in the sport (including, but not limited to, postseason competition, invitational tournaments and exempt contests or dates of competition, such as foreign tours or contests in Alaska or Hawaii), particularly in cases in which:
(1) An involved individual remains employed at the institution;
(2) A significant competitive advantage resulted from the violation;
(3) The violation reflects a lack of institutional control, failure to monitor a program, or a violation of the cooperative principle set forth in Bylaw 32.1.4;
(4) The violation includes findings of academic fraud; or
(5) The institution is a repeat violator (as defined in Bylaw 19.5.2.1).
No other case in history can be compared to this obnoxious violation. This is the mother of all "lack of institutional control" issues.
Sandusky was found guilty of repeatedly raping ten children. Nine of those children were raped after 1998. NINE victims who bravely came forward. There could be more. Everyone involved in the cover-up are equally accountable for the rape of those nine children.
DeleteAnd how could Sandusky´s wife, Dottie, not have known? I don´t buy her story. He was raping her son!
The eyes of the world are on the NCAA. Their only option is to give PSU the death penalty. Current PSU students on athletic scholarships should be given the option of transferring to another school without penalty.
And PSU should take Joe Pa´s statue down.
Unfortunately Penn State will be regarded as "too big to fail" and be given a pass on all of this because, well you know, it happened so long ago. I can guarantee you this is why they kept that senile piece of shit Joe Pa roaming the sidelines at 107, he was keeping all the secrets. Any fool could see this asshole could barely walk and talk, say much less coach football. I hope you rot in hell Joe Pa
ReplyDeleteI believe the motive for the cover-up is worse. I believe a monster was enabled to systematically rape children so that Joe Pa could become the winning football coach in history. The lid wasn´t blown off this story until after he broke the record.
DeleteThat tells me everything I need to know about PSU.
Bingo!
DeleteAlthough I'm not willing to condemn the entire university. However the cult-like "Joe Pa" worship coming from most PSU students and Alumn (at least it seems like most) makes me ill.
I can't understand how they ever got kids to play there in the first place. Penn St. has always been about nothing more than Penn St. They run those kids out there in generic black and white uniforms, no logo, no mascot (I guess they can't figure out exactly WHAT a nittany lion really is) and the kids aren't even allowed to have their names on those atrocious generic uniforms. That would all take away from Penn St. and when it comes to Penn St. it always has been and always will be all about PSU
ReplyDelete(I guess they can't figure out exactly WHAT a nittany lion really is)
DeleteI didn't follow PSU football even when I was a student there and lived in campus housing across the field from Beaver Stadium. But Penn State *does* have a mascot and even an original taxidermied Nittany lion (tacky as that may be)--the school is in the Nittany Valley, and the mascot is named for the mountain lions that once roamed there.
YES there are more victims! The prosecution had another 10 or so lined up to testify, if needed. How about the ones who cannot bear to come forward?
ReplyDeleteRemember at the outset of this appearing in the papers: there was some other big shoe rumored to be able to drop later. And the rumor that Sandusky was part of a child-sex ring, offering boys to big donors on those big trips. I hear zero about both of those rumors, perhaps related to ea other, perhaps not. And then we have the loose end of the suspicious disappearance of the lawyer a few yrs back, along with his laptop disc drive. I guess they succeeded in hushing all that up. Just like the verifiable story of RFK Jr stiffing Mary Kennedy for court-ordered money she was due and payment of legal bills (also ordered by the court to be paid by RFK Jr). It appeared once in the press and is not mentioned any more.
I bet Freeh knows the status on all the Paterno stuff. I bet he will write a book later. Like Steve Schmidt -- saving the key details for that.
As a Penn State alum, I'm very ashamed of and appalled by both Paterno's and the school's actions. I agree that the death penalty from the NCAA would be appropriate, and for more than one year. I concur that athletes should be allowed to transfer without losing their scholarships or positions, if possible. I absolutely agree that the school should dedicate football proceeds to sexual abuse victims. (Especially given Freeh's findings and the pending civil suits, the school will be contributing involuntarily anyway, but I think they ought to contribute voluntarily as well.)
ReplyDeleteI think Joe Paterno's statue should come down. As a student, I only ever heard good things about Joe Pa even from people who despised the athletic program. And by good things I don't mean how many games he won, but how much personal integrity he had, how much he did for the university, how dedicated he was to academics as well as athletics, etc. Now all of that is revealed to be a facade, a gloss that covered a dark, rotting, toxic secret. I would much rather have attended a school with a megalomaniacal asshole coach who refused to tolerate sexual abuse. I think many alums would agree.
I know people claim that the actors in the "scandal" (travesty, crimes) were concerned about the school's "reputation" and donations. But I think it was both criminal and short-sighted to cover for Sandusky. Did they really think it would never get out? Didn't they think that behaving with openness and integrity, as soon as they heard the allegations, might have harmed the school in the short run but would also have earned people's respect? Now the school may never recover.
Please, though, don't refer to it as "Penn Pedo State." The administration f%%$ed up in unforgivable and heinous ways. But most of us who were students there had no clue, and no way of knowing, about the sexual abuse. Most of us would have called the police, left the school, campaigned for Sandusky to be fired and investigated, protested against the cover-up, and/or dared Sandusky to meet us in a dark alley late at night. The administration and athletic heads covered up his crimes and should be held criminally and civilly liable. Most of us did not and would not have covered for him. I am tired of feeling like I need to apologize for or be ashamed that I went to Penn State because of the actions of a few powerful assholes.
Penn Pedo State.
DeleteI don't know what the proper punishment is but I do agree that every single person involved in the cover-up should spend time in jail for a very long time.
ReplyDeleteThe children that pos molested will never be the same. He's destroyed them. And Penn State allowed it. They will never recover from this and their name will forever be connected to a vile, sick predator of children.