Penn State has been in a spot of bother over this whole “willfully ignoring that their assistant coach was raping at risk boys in the school showers” thing. This weekend the statue of Joe Paterno was removed from outside the football stadium. This morning the program’s punishment was handed down by the NCAA and boy is it a doozy.
TMZ reports:
NCAA President Mark Emmert just announced PSU will be BANNED from bowl games for the next 4 years. The NCAA will also vacate all PSU football wins from 1998 to 2011.
The elimination of PSU wins will have a dramatic effect on Joe Paterno’s all-time carer win record. In fact, he will lose 111 total wins from his record — dropping him BEHIND Florida State football legend Bobby Bowden and Alabama’s Bear Bryant. Paterno will go from #3 all time to #12.
Penn State’s football team will also have its football scholarships reduced from 25 to 15 per year for the next 4 years. All PSU football players are allowed to transfer out of the school to any other school as soon as possible while keeping full eligibility. [Ed: At least one has already chosen to do so.] Football players are also allowed to quit the football team and keep their scholarships while continuing to attend the university in pursuit of a degree.
The PSU athletic program will be on probation for 5 years. The NCAA said it reserves the right to launch an investigation into individuals to impose even more sanctions, if necessary.
The $60 million fine is equivalent to the football program’s gross revenue for 1 season. The NCAA said the money “must be paid into an endowment for external programs preventing child sexual abuse or assisting victims and may not be used to fund such programs at the university.”
The NCAA said it considered the “death penalty” (the elimination of the school’s football program for 1 season) but decided the punishment it chose will have a deeper impact in changing the culture at Penn State. “By perpetuating a ‘football first’ culture that ultimately enabled serial child sexual abuse to occur, the Pennsylvania State University leadership failed to value and uphold institutional integrity.”
I know there has been a lot of division on this site in the past week, but can we put our differences aside today and agree that raping children, or ignoring the fact that children are being raped, is a bad thing? You would think that would be an easy decision to come to, but for some reason otherwise intelligent people at Penn State thought it was a tricky one.
