Penn State Punishment Open Thread--UPDATE: NCAA Punshment--$60M Fine, Lots of Scholarships

Personally I don't think Penn St will get the "Death Penalty" but they will get the NCAA sanctions version of a Pile Driver on a steel chair

If something like this had happened under Bo Schembechler, there would've been a not-insignificant portion of the fanbase that refused to ever accept his complicity. It's unfair to judge a group by its craziest parts.

(And to the obvious retort - "Bo never would've let this happen" - the same has been said repeatedly of JoePa. Hero worship is hero worship, and it's hard to suddenly 180 your opinion of someone you've deified for a generation.)

I think that exclusion from the big ten goes way beyond football and even sports. I'd support revoking their btn/tv/bowl money for 3-5 yrs though.

I mean im not sure exactly what is included with the "Death Penalty"  in college football so I could be wrong but I feel like just stopping play for one season and moving on would be better for PSU than these penalties put together. I guess my mentality would be rip the Bandaid off instead of slowly pull it.

Local talk radio out of Harrisburg (yes I'm in the area today) is claiming that Penn State is going to self-institute two years of the death penalty.  These are just radio yokels, mind you, but they may have a line inside the administration, I don't know.  File it under rumor for now, but a rumor close to State College.

The criminal courts, and the civil courts, are perfectly capable of handling this situation. The NCAA, in meting out this punishment, is actually going outside its authority, outside its own process, and allowing it's chairman to act as judge, jury and executioner. The NCAA does not have, nor has ever, nor has even ever claimed, that it has the authority to mete out punishments for moral transgressions at member institutions. Emmert is going outside every aspect of due process and acting alone, based on his horror at the Freeh report--which has NOTHING to do with either legal due process, or the NCAA's own due process. This is my opinion, but it is also the opinion of a former NCAA chairman of the infractions committe, quoted here:

http://espn.go.com/college-football/story/_/id/8188629/penn-state-nittan...

"The former chair, who has been involved with the NCAA for nearly three decades, said he couldn't use his name on the record since the case could come before him and the committee he still serves on in an appeals process...

"This is unique and this kind of power has never been tested or tried," the former chair said. "It's unprecedented to have this extensive power. This has nothing to do with the purpose of the infractions process. Nevertheless, somehow (the NCAA president and executive board) have taken it on themselves to be a commissioner and to penalize a school for improper conduct."

The chair said that the NCAA is choosing to deal with a case that is outside the traditional rules or violations. He said this case does not fall within the basic fundamental purpose of NCAA regulations."

of punishing current players and coaches for the transgressions of those before this is just that, a problem.  It is one of the problems that this Penn State scandal, truly the perfect storm of college athletics, is bringing to light.  College sports, football in particular, has become so big that it is collapsing under its own weight, it is truly too big to fail, but also too big to support itself.  In some ways, this, a scandal "that has nothing to do with sports" has everything to do with the culture that college football has created.  By deciding to proceed against Penn State with a debilitating measure, if that is indeed the case, Emmert is essentially declaring that there is something intrinsicly cancerous about big time college athletics, so cancerous in fact that it lead directly to actions that the individuals involved would not have taken in its absence. 

Penn State needs to be punished, but I have to say that in the scope of things, this is a sad day for me personally because I enjoy the product that is put of the football field on Saturdays.  I think this is the start of major reform that will eventually lead to college football looking a lot different than it does right now.  In the wake of what took place inside Penn State, I cannot and would not argue with it, but it is still a sombering prospect.

Sorry but how does sanctioning "the entire university" avoid harming the students? And what powers do you imagine the NCAA has that it can sanction "the entire university"? Or do you just mean other parts of the athletic department in addition to football? In which case, shouldn't we distinguish between Penn State athletics and Penn State as an academic institution (since the blurring of those lines is part of the problem here in the first place)?

That's nearly as bad as the Paterno family thinking they now get to speak for the victims.

I just hope that the majority of fans and alum are actually sane on this matter, and it is just the psychotic fringe that keeps getting the press. I mean, if this had happened at Michigan, I'm sure the vast majority of us would be as appalled as ever, but would there be a small, select group who would act the same way as these outspoken PSU people? With literally millions of fans, I would imagine some crazies would emerge (we have seen this before, obviously).

I was watching local news (Harrisburg) this morning and they were on campus and in the three student interviews they showed, two of them thought the statue coming down was necessary and  that penalties were necessary. 

While students and fans are of course not responsible for JS crimes, their astonishing capacity for denial is a relevant discussion point. It illustrates the main problem at PSU: the majority just do not seem to get that football being bigger than everything is what led to the cover-up.



Whether or not we or any outsider can affect or influence the culture of another fan base is irrelevant to whether or not it is worthwhile to discuss it. The needed cautionary lessons to be learned from all have to do with the warped values and priorities that give the football coach enough de facto power to intimidate administrators out of reporting serious crimes to the proper authorities - and ultimately that comes from the fan base.

I had a sense of unease regarding the talk of punishing fans' behavior, and you put your finger on it.

In any case it's not like any amount of punishment is going to turn those fans around; if anything they'll just double down on their persecution complex.

The school should be punished for what the school did (and failed to do.)

Brash immorality is one of the few things worth getting upset about. That is exactly what many of these PSU fans are perpetuating through their denial of facts.

That being said, punishing people through punishing the football program is arguably the wrong thing to do. But how do you punish the program or university without also punishing the fans and students, if only indirectly? Public universities and the football programs which reside within them are ultimately propped up by the thousands if not millions of students, alumni, and fans, along with the rest of the state's citizenry. In every NCAA sanction, the fans are the ones who are ultimately punished in some form or another.

For me it all comes down to one basic point:

Victim 1 was forced into witness protection when he spoke out agaisnt Sandusky and by extension PSU football.  Throughout the trial (and possibly even now) a pair of State Troopers are kept on hand for quick response if someone locates Victim 1 and follows through on a threat.  

To step back for a moment.  Penn State has always been cultish, I grew up in the area and always looked down on them for that.  However prior to this scandal I was always live and let live.  In fact I enjoyed the tears their cult like nature produced when they lost to Michigan year after year.  

Then the scandal, the flipping new trucks and rallies on Paterno's lawn were bad but undergrads do dumb things.  However the whole community just seemed to get stupid.  Victim 1 ends up in witness protection, when Paterno dies they paint a halo over his head on that mural (painted out post Freeh Report) because to a large part of the communty he's still Saint Paterno.  People talk about honoring Paterno, not about helping the victims.  The Paterno family starts releasing statements in which they speak for the victims and no one ever tells Scott and Jay Paterno to try shutting the hell up.  Nothing is done to make the victims feel comfortable about coming forward since the adults in the community are busy doing things like portraying Paterno as a saint.  There are those adults who likely didn't agree with Saint Paterno, but they weren't very vocal.

Some people clear got it.  Someone in the University had ingerity and hired Freeh to do his report.  They did eventually pull the statue down.   The problem is no one ever confront the community above.  You don't see some high official coming out and telling people "You are making victims of rape afraid to come forward" or "All Paterno had to do was walk McQueary over to the police station and tell him to tell the officers what he saw".  the PSU community never shows a willingness to purge that cultish group whose mindset was really the one that make the entire coverup possible and results in a victim of child rape hiding a safe house somewhere because some PSU superfans are pissed at him.  A sizable section of the PSU fanbase is directing their rage at their victim and their support at someone who helped over up child rape.  PSU wouldn't confront those people and force them to demphasis football, so now the NCAA will.  I hope the NCAA does a good job.  

yes i do because it is that exact mentality that allowed what happened at penn st to occur. punishing the school is the right thing to do. if that means that ohio st gets a cake walk to the big title game every year and every big school loses 2m in revenue it is still the right thing to do. there are things bigger than football at play. so yes, i am still eager to punish penn st.

Do the right thing, then deal with wherever the chips land later.

Go to Penn St?