UPDATED: News services report Paterno statue gone; PSU to suffer “unprecedented” penalties

I think this is the right decision.  Joe Paterno, normally so focused on developing his players’ academic and personal lives as much as their athletic skills, lost sight of what was right and just in his misplaced concern for the PSU program.  Now his reputation is irredeemably marred, the program he gave his life to is in a shambles and the lives of everyone associated with this tawdry episode are scarred.

Doing what is right might bring short-term pain, but it avoids long-term catastrophe.

NCAA poised to hit PSU with “unprecedented” penalties.

Frankly, I’m not sure what jurisdiction the NCAA has in this matter. It seems to me this should be left to the civil and criminal courts. The former will likely issue financial judgments steep enough to bankrupt Penn State; the latter will likely deal harshly with those criminally responsible.

Just shut it down for a year.  At least.  I don’t care about what they do with keeping kids on scholarship or not.  I’m an alum of a Big Ten school so it will hurt my alma mater some, but they need to get their collective crap together.  I just can’t see how they can do that with an active program.

Keeping the JoePa statue where it is would be a long-term reminder both of his accomplishments, and of the Sandusky incident.

Since high-level administrators were apparently deeply involved, I’m sure they want to get rid of the statue so that there won’t be such a visible reminder.

I would let it stay.

If I were the NCAA, I would not take any action that would punish the current football players, who are presumably innocent. (I wonder whether some past players knew what was going on.)

I’m sure there must be appropriate ways for the NCAA to make a very strong statement, other than depriving these young people of the chance to play college football at a high level, and for some to prepare themselves for an NFL career.

This should be about rehabilitation, not vengeance.

I think the death penalty has too many unintended consequences; I doubt we will ever see it again. 

What happened at Penn State was tragic, but only a few were “in the know”.  I thought the penalties were about right.

Very sad that some people lost sight about what is really important and allowed innocent children’s lives to be ruined to protect a moster.

the virginian

The NCAA has authority because the programs and universities give it authority, and it has grown in power and influence ever since. Basically, the big programs get off (usually…not always) while the smaller programs get axed. Also, political correctness plays a big role in their decisions. If Penn State had hired a homosexual or Latino coach, their penalty would have probably been less severe.

So, the NCAA has announced a $60 million fine, among other actions.

That should start a major feeding frenzy among the lawyers. I’d guess they’ll go berserk, trying to get a court order to freeze payment of the fine, since the fine otherwise would presumably be paid long before any of the inevitable civil suits come to trial.

I wonder what financial resources Penn State would have. They will be drained dry.

I would be very surprised if Penn State’s football program ever recovers from this. Even after the fines, the lawsuits, the publicity and shame, etc., now that the Paterno legacy has been removed from every PSU obelisk (and I guess it had to be), what does the program now have to draw on to bring in financial resources and big high school recruits? If Alabama went through a scandal like this today, its program would probably survive to compete another day. But if it had gone through this towards the end of the Paul Bryant years, the program would have been crippled and Tide football would only be a shell of what it is today.

I was living in Dallas when SMU received the death penalty in the late 1980s, relating to a recruiting scandal that also involved the then-governor of the state.  I recall watching when a local tv station broke the story.  SMU’s football program has never fully recovered, although it is now in the best shape it’s been in for a long time.  But it has taken 25 years.