They were also not a good progam to begin with, and their only real period of success being directly related to cheating.
They received a 1-year ban and home games were banned the second year. The second year was therefore partially self-imposed.
The SMU penalty dwarfs this penalty (except for the fine). SMU was also banned from television, had limitations on the number of coaches they could hire, limited scholarships, extended probation, etc.
Ignorance fought, thanks. Yes, this is the way it should be, and I can see that it is the right thing to do in this case for those student-athletes.
The vast majority of universities don’t field a “competitive” football team *ever *and they manage to survive.
According to NCAA spokesman: Penn State could not be handed a similar penalty. Per NCAA rules, the death penalty is only available as a punishment when a team has additional violations while they are already being sanctioned.
Penn State was not under any type of sanctions.
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Normally, you are right - but in this case, the NCAA did something I am pretty sure is unprecedented when its official report mentioned a head coach by name (rather than saying something generic like “The head football coach”) when it said that Penn State had to remove the vacated wins from Paterno’s record. Almost certainly, it was to make sure that there is no “official” recognition of Paterno as the “winningest NCAA football coach” or the “winningest NCAA Division I/I-A/FBS football coach”; if the school bookstore so much as sells a T-shirt saying that he is, then the NCAA can claim both a violation of the agreement and a violation of the probation.
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The Big 10 announced that, for the next four years, Penn State’s share of the conference’s BCS money will be donated to charities. Then again, I am hearing rumors that alumni and booster donations are increasing sharply.
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The scholarship restrictions apply for four years, but don’t take immediate effect. The “first counters” (freshmen and JC transfers) drop starts in 2013; the “total” drop starts in 2014.
Yes, but who has any scholarships available? Remember, there is no such thing as a partial scholarship in FBS football.
The NCAA did say that it is considering letting schools take Penn State players on scholarship in violation of the limit this season, but must correspondingly have fewer than the maximum number of scholarships next season (so a school that has 85 now and gives two scholarships to Penn State transfers for 2012 is limited to 83 for 2013).
Here’s something that few sources have mentioned: there is a winner in all of this - Penn State’s non-football sports programs. One of the conditions is, none of the school’s non-football programs can have its expenditures reduced or eliminated to help pay the $12 million/year fine. Don’t expect to see a press conference announcing that, “for unreleated reasons,” the school is terminating its, say, baseball and softball programs.
Meanwhile, who’s going to be the first to start selling, “Joe Paterno - winningest college (don’t use the ‘NCAA’ trademark) football coach if you include wins vacated for reasons not involving ineligible players”? Of course, the school’s on-campus bookstores can’t sell them, but what stops a textbook store that’s just off-campus from doing it on its own?
I think a bit much is being made of the “suffering” by the innocents/students. What exactly is this horrible attrocity they must bear? Oh, right, the football team probably won’t be very good for a while.
Do you have a link to that quote? My understanding was that the bolded part was a widespread assumption among fans and commentators because of the SMU circumstances, but was not a rule as such. In fact, the repeat-violator rule of 1985 works the other way–it requires the “death penalty” in such cases; it doesn’t set minimum conditions before the penalty can be given.
I can see alumni and booster donations increasing over the past few months as a knee jerk reaction about Penn State being ‘picked on.’
But, fast forward to November 2014 and the only win has been against Northwestern. Does, “What have you done for me lately?” take hold and donations being to really dry up as well?
Nothing, of course. Which is why I think that this particular penalty really means nothing at all.
Exactly. It’s not like there aren’t hundreds of other football teams that people can root for, if football is what they care about.
For me, the perfect example of this is all the businesses in Happy Valley that are going to take a huge hit. They didn’t have anything at all even remotely connected to the scandal, but they’ll take their portion of the brunt.
Exactly. But those people must pay the price, so the sanctimonious NCAA/media/mob can pretend to have its revenge on the late Coach Paterno, who had the temerity to die before his pound of flesh could be extracted.
Obviously. Thank you for getting it.
But this whole thing has been an absurdly hysterical witch hunt from the start, so a joke of a decision like this hardly surprises me. What a clusterfuck and horrific overkill this is. The SCHOOL didn’t abuse those kids or fail to act swiftly and severely enough. ONE guy did it and a handful either covered it up or failed to do all they could. So based on that, let’s burn the entire school including the players, other coaches, students ad nauseum at the stake? And at the front of the line is STILL Paterno. Firing him was bad enough; now they want to take away wins? Including wins that occurred before he even knew anything about this? Screw you NCAA.
I’ve been basically neutral about Penn St over the years but always admired how they won without tolerating crap from players, which is more than schools like Miami, Fla St, Ohio St, Nebraska (and on and it goes) can say.
This is a joke. Dear NCAA: go fuck yourself. I will never support you in any way in terms of collegiate sports. I have attended my last college game of any kind.
To all Penn St fans, I am sorry for you and for this witch hunt. Careful, don’t admit you’re a fan or they might just pull out a gun and shoot you too. :smack:
The community’s veneration of Paterno certainly aided his ability to dictate the scandal being swept under the rug.
Yeah, but those programs are used to not fielding a competitive football team. Tell a millionaire he has to live in a shanty for 4 years, see how he responds, then tell a homeless family they *get * to live in a shanty for 4 years and see how they respond. Compare.
Hey! Northwestern’s gonna kick their ass! You take that back!
Is this supposed to make people feel sorry for Penn State fans? Is Mitt Romney writing your posts?
O yay let’s turn this into a political digression. :rolleyes:
Course that’s not what he did, but let’s not let facts get in the way of a highly emotional witch hunt. Burn baby burn!
It’s only a witch hunt when there aren’t real witches around. PSU is a target-rich environment.
Actually, I believe that the current penalties against Penn St. mitigated the collateral damage about as much as they could have been. If a 2 year death penalty had been instituted, it would have been far worse. At least now there will still be games being played.