NCAA source: unprecedented penalties against Penn State Monday
NCAA source tells CBS News athletic assn. will announce "unprecedented" penalties against Penn State, football team http://cbsn.ws/QnwOzy
NCAA to hold press conference on #PennState Mon at 9 a.m. ET. Live coverage from @InsidetheNCAA & web stream link avail tmrw.
UPDATE #1:
- Reports that PSU will not fight the penalties. Points to deal between PSU and NCAA.
RT @djoneshoop PennSt will NOT appeal NCAA's decision, I've been told. Speed of decision/lack of contention pts to a deal betw NCAA & PSU
UPDATE #2:
- Yahoo Sports NCAA Angel of Death Charles Robinson reporting penalty of multiple bowls and crippling scholarship losses.
Charles Robinson @CharlesRobinson
Penn State penalty: multiple bowls, crippling scholarship losses & NCAA Prez is levying it w/ no in-house investigation http://tinyurl.com/btmywbn
UPDATE #3:
- CBS Sports reporting massive fine in penalty.
@McMurphyCBS: Penn State will be fined b/w $30 million to $60 million, sources told @CBSSports http://cbsprt.co/O8tNRq
RT @djoneshoop PennSt will NOT appeal NCAA's decision, I've been told. Speed of decision/lack of contention pts to a deal betw NCAA & PSU
What a mess he voluntarily stepped into.
http://bwi.rivals.com/showmsg.asp?fid=36&mid=156453793&sid=890&tid=1564…
A new twist: now their own university president is viewed as one of the villains.
Brutal. Would crush the program
There is no way it is that harsh. That would destroy the team for a decade.
Given that they covered up Sandusky for 14 years (if not longer), I really don't feel any sympathy.
The NCAA never took the death penalty out of the rulebook. Their spokesmen just said that they didn't expect to levy it again. But they never expected a scandal of this magnitude to occur.
well, outside of that, absolutely nothing.
First, we don't know that this will actually cripple the program for decades to come. You're assuming that based on the SMU thing. But SMU did not have a history of success before it started cheating, and it was not admitted into the Big 12 when the SWC collapsed. PSU has a huge fanbase, much more of a history of success and will presumably stay in the Big Ten. It's apples/oranges.
Secondly, it wasn't just four men who knew this "secret". It was at least seven - McQueary, his father, and the janitor, too. And there probably were plenty more besides them. Think the victims never told anyone in the community what Sandusky was doing to them? I think we're going to eventually find out that the cover-up involved far more people than has been reported.
I've always been confused with TV bans. Michigan doesn't play PSU this year so it doesn't really matter this year, but does that ban the game from being televised in the other team's market as well? Doesn't Michigan have some crazy streak of televised games that would be broken in 2013?
I do care about the victims, obviously. Two thoughts:
- My post said that it was a pretty minor inconvenience to me, but there are others it would hurt a lot more. I assume part of Ohio University's recruiting pitch is talking about playing big names out of conference that a potential players friends and family can watch; making them play a game they'll lose without the benefit of being in the national spotlight isn't very fair to a university that apparently didn't enable a violent sex criminal. The fairer thing to do is cancel the game and allow OU to try and find another game against Michigan, OSU, whoever.
- Taking your post to a logical next step, let's slap a bowl ban on everyone this year. It can be a message to all universities that sports programs are not that important when it comes to human rights issues.
It can be argued that the Big Ten deserves some punishment. They have benefitted from PSU's success. Aside from PSU simply being one of their members, they also bought into the Paterno personality cult. They granted PSU an unfair scheduling advantage over UM and OSU to get them to join. They named their championship trophy after Paterno. That's pretty much the equivalent of erecting the statue, a tribute quite out of place for a current coach. The Big Ten can kick PSU out or stay associated with them and share a bit of their punishment, their choice. As far as their smaller non-conference foes, aren't they mostly in it for the guaranteed payday, not the TV exposure?
If Auburn got a tv ban would any of us think the SEC was being treated unfairly?
I cannot disagree with this more. What was the Big 10 supposed to have done differently? Everyone bought into the image of PSU and you never heard anything different for the last 20 years. We were all fooled but I have no idea how you see the conference at fault? Were any conference higher ups implicated in any way?
This is an embarassment for Penn State. Period.
Maybe if they had vetted PSU more carefully they would have spotted problems regarding institutional control of the football program. Maybe not. Buying into the image was a mistake, avoidable or not. Admitting PSU was the biggest decision the Big Ten had made since when, maybe its founding? Given what we know now, it's possible they could have done a much better job.
Giving PSU concessions, (byes before the OSU game the first two years, byes before the UM game the first four years) and putting their current coach's name on their most prestigious award were mistakes.
I couldn't disagree more about the embarrassment. I feel it myself and I think it's a pretty common emotion around the Big Ten. We've benefitted financially from having PSU in the conference. To some extent those seem like ill gotten gains. While I don't think any punishment should be aimed directly at the Big Ten, punishments aimed at PSU that also cause a little collateral pain to the Big Ten seem fair enough.
If the Big Ten decides to keep PSU will it be out of loyalty? Have they really earned that loyalty? Or will it be that in the long run Penn State brings in more revenue than any likely replacement? If the Big Ten makes that kind of decision based on money, some lost revenue and less television exposure are reasonable costs.
The only person involved in the cover-up that was there at the time was Joe Pa and Sandusky. While Joe Pa was important he was viewed as a highly respectable guy. We tried to hire him in 68. Did joe take his program's status too seriously? Yes. That was obvious wen he demanded the byes, which should never have been allowed. However, demanding a competitive advantage in now way signaled that 6 years later there would be a cover-up that involved people who hadn't even joined PSU yet.
I don't think any program would get a TV ban these days.
Sports are becoming too big in this country.
http://instruct.uwo.ca/kinesiology/378/files/essays/sport.pdf
An EB White essay published fifty years or so ago.
Sports are not too big in this country. Chart? Chart.
| NFL | $11B | [13][14] |
| MLB | $7B | [13] |
| NBA | $3.8B | [13] |
| NHL | $3.3B | [15] |
| MLS | $0.28B | [16] |
That's a total of about $25 billion per year. I copied and pasted from wikipedia. If it's wrong, I'm wrong. But I doubt it's off by anywhere near enough to make my point invalid.
What's my point? Well, do you know how much was spent on nasal spray and inhalers last year? About $35 billion. So unless you think that nasal spray and inhalers are getting too big for the country, sports are not getting too big for the country.
Also, this argument is Malthusian in the sense that it comes up every few years/days/minutes and every time it's just not so.
Sorry, but I'm reading a book that makes a Malthusian argument right now, so my head was primed for wall-banging frustration grrrrrrrrrrrrrr mode.
for a year or two is going to tend to look like a cop-out.
these sanctions are true does anybody think the Big Ten would kick them out of the conference?
because they would be a whole lot less valuable for at least 10 years.
Will be interesting to see how many questions are asked to coaches and players this week? Even though NCAA is moving fast to make this happen, the questions will go on all year and then, if there is a suspension, once the team returns to the field.
Well to be fair, a lot of the reply's on that post were calling the OP an idiot
The leadership agreeing to sanctions that cripple the football program for a decade is a reasonable price to pay if it gets you closer to they day when "child sex scandal" is not the defining characteristic of your university. The next step is probably to fork over 100 million to quickly settle the lawsuits. Fighting any of this only drags out the scandal and does further damage to the school. One would hope the schools leadership has figured out.
You deserve more than +5 for this. Good perspective and I hope you are right.
I hope it eventually trickles down to the student/alumni body. Currently, a lot of them seem to see the new administration as the new enemy, who isn't willing ot stand up for their school. It's sick to read their comments. I was curious for a while, but now it's just gotten too out of hand.
dennisdoddcbs Penn State is about to become one of those patsies Joe played in the indy days -- if that. Column coming.
PSU needs to be kicked out of the B1G if the penalties are as harsh as some are suggesting. It will just drag down the whole confernece and lead to a lack of competative balance. And they deserve it.
My opinion on the proper punishment has somewhat changed after countless stories about Penn State (and I thank various commentators, including posters here for that). Although I originally wanted to see a "death penalty," I believe that may be unduly harse on the Happy Valley community generally. I do support scholarship reductions and a two year postseason ban, however.
My position has always been that the cover up of child rapes is just as much a football failing as institutional failing. In my opinion, it is almost impossible to separate the football program from the cover up of the child rapes. The only way to adequately punish the football program for permitting the culture is to penalize the program itself. The remaining three stooges will get punished criminally. There also will be hefty settlements to pay. However, Penn State could gladly pay the settlement tomorrow and pretend that nothing ever happened and that Camelot still exists.
The NCAA and college football fans generally should expect some baseline for ethical conduct. In my opinion, looking the other way with Penn State would basically be the antithesis of what amateur athletics should be all about.
It involved a competitive advantage. They knew that their football program would be seriously harmed in recruiting and fundraising if Sandusky's crimes came to light, so they covered them up.
I really don't care if it provided a competitive advantage or not. Just because a member institution follows rules with respect to recruiting doesn't mean that it should automatically be allowed to be part of the NCAA, or in Penn State's case, beyond NCAA punishment. Like most things in life, nothing should be considered a birth right rather than a privilege. There should be a baseline of ethics that is followed by all member institutions. And yes, I would say the same thing about Michigan if the shoe were on the other foot.
Years ago I was a law student and I was going through a tough time, and I starting drinking, hard. It wasn't intentional, it just kind of happened, but I had a couple of weeks where I was getting drunk way too often. The pressure of law school was getting to me and I was dealing with it in the worst way possible. One afternoon, when I was reasonably sober, I realized that I was losing my self control over this, and if I didn't find a way to get it back, there was a serious risk that something really ugly was going to happen. The awful fact was, at that moment in time at least, I couldn't handle my liquor.
So I gave up alcohol for a month. Stayed away from bars and parties. Concentrated on my studies. It was awkward, but I stuck with it. And it gave me time to deal with my problems and get my priorities straight.
Penn State is, if anything, even in a worse position than I was. I was afraid of something bad happening -- as it was I managed to avoid any serious legal or academic trouble. In Happy Valley, well, something awful happened, and it happened because Penn State's administration couldn't deal with the pressures and temptations of running a major college football program.
I doubt that the NCAA will impose the death penalty, and I'm not sure they should. I do think it would be in Penn State's best interest to suspend their football program for a year. It'll give them a year to focus on their academic programs, and to take stock of what went wrong and begin to undo the damage they have caused.
After a month, I had my head straightened out. I rejoined my friends (most of whom were reasonably sober people -- kinda like the Big Ten in that way.) and I could go out and have a couple beers without making an ass of myself. I had my head straightened out: I was a law student enjoying a few beers, not a boozehound who happened to be in law school.
After skipping a year of football, I think Penn State, top to bottom, will be more likely to think of itself as a college that sponsors a football team, rather than a college that was created by a football team.
That would be my advice to Penn State. Let it go for a year. Get your heads straightened out. Yeah, it'll be awkward, and your teams will suck in 2013 and 2014, but if the NCAA's sanctions are anything like what we've been led to expect they're bound to suck anyway. So let it go for a while. You can bring the team back when you've got your priorities straight and you can handle the pressures.
One of my law school buddies put it best: a little self-discipline goes a long way. It's time for Penn State to discipline itself.