Not nearly the same way football was with JoePa and football.
You’re totally wrong, and here’s why:
You’re thinking of it in terms of what Paterno did, but not how he did it. To you, a win is set in stone and should not be erased from history. But let’s say Paterno had all his players juiced during those wins, would that affect your view of him as the most successful coach? What if they bribed opposing teams to throw the game?
Having Sandusky on the staff is exactly like cheating to win, because if he wasn’t part of the coaching staff and helping Penn State win those games, the outcomes would have been different. What the NCAA is doing is vacating the wins of Paterno based on the fact that the coverup assisted him in cheating on the games. This one aspect of their punishment has nothing to do with Paterno’s moral failings, or the universities coverups, but everything to do with the quality of the teams put forth on the field. Without the coverup and Sandusky, their record would have been different. Taking away Paterno’s wins is a reflection of that, and rightly so
And for the record, I do think cheaters, once caught and proven, should have their accomplishments taken away. If you cheat to win, then get caught, then you never won because the playing field wasn’t level.
I have similar views for baseball players who juiced. They could not have set their records without steroids, so basically their wins are forfeit. Its nothing to do with the character of the players or their morals and everything to do with them influencing the game by cheating. That’s why I don’t mind if drug abusers, alcoholics, and men who beat their wives still have homes in the Hall of Fame. Those actions did not help them win, and so their wins, however distasteful, aren’t tainted.
Paterno helped to cover up a child molester for 14 years in order to use his skills to recruit and coach kids who went on to win games. Those wins are undeserved
Man, I’m glad I went to a school that was more than a one-trick-pony like Penn State. Maybe they can use this time to develop some other aspects of their university.
If they cheated in some way to affect the on product on the field you would be right. However, their actions, at best, on have a tenuous connection to the football product.
The wins being docked were not when Sandusky was a coach.
Nonsense. If Sandusky had been arrested in 1998 or '99, Paterno would have likely still been coach during the intervening years, and would likely have won as many games. There is zero evidence, and no likely rationale to argue the coverup helped them win games.
He didn’t cheat, nor did he do anything to make the paying field “unlevel”. He broke the law and acted like a shitty human being. If we find out tomorrow that the Phil Jackson raped a woman, and the Lakers GM paid her off, should Jackson’s wins be vacated? Should the Lakers be kicked out of the NBA, or should they lose draft picks? Of course not.
I was not thinking of where it comes from, more like where it goes to.
Yeah, because their academic record sucks. No one would come to PSU otherwise if not for the football program.
I guess being from Central PA myself I could be biased, but I think they just killed a town. Everyone involved deserves prison, for life if they where hiding abuse. The downside is, all the Penn State did that was good (THON a huge charity etc) I feel are also going to be harmed. And that is sad.
I just hate to see the town join the rest of central PA in financial distress. But we welcome State College to the city manager form of government.
Hey, that’s the impression that the fans are giving off in response to the whole incident. Heck, my alma matar gets some great student-athletes despite not offering athletic scholarships.
Yes, because this is what they purposely gambled and accidentally lost. Not just Sandusky’s job, or Paterno’s record, or their own jobs, but the safety of young children and the players scholarships and the future of the program and the businesses in the local community.
The actions of the football administration decided that ALL of these things were worth putting on the line for the sake of PR, and they simply lost the bet. If you bet everything and lose, you lose everything, not just the stuff that won’t hurt too bad.
So if your neighbor gambled and lost your house you would be okay with that? That’s the problem I am having with this punishment.
But no-one is “shutting down” Penn State. They are being severely punished. Let’s not use hyperbole. There will be a Penn State football team to watch in Happy Valley next season (albeit one that will not be anywhere as competitive as the those before the sanctions). I will wager that tens of thousands of PSU fans will tailgate, stay in hotels, eat in restaurants, and the like for the next four seasons.
As far as I know, there isn’t an equivalent to the NCAA for Enron or NASA. Government doesn’t quite have the same scope as the NCAA; as we know, government’s intervention is in the form of the criminal justice system. If Enron belonged to an association of energy producers and they sanctioned them, that would work, and same for NASA. My point was that those in charge either explicitly or implicitly created a culture where morality took a backseat to image and wins.
And if you don’t think the cover-up relates to football, you’re not thinking this through. Joe Paterno himself was one who always discussed the importance of life lessons outside of sports. There was an opportunity for moral leadership by Paterno and all of the high level administrators, and to teach every young man a lesson and provide an example of what to do when you discover wrongdoing in your midst. It would have likely affected the perception of Penn State for a while, perhaps distracted the team. Who knows? Maybe it would have been enough of a distraction to lose a few games. But the example and lesson would have no doubt made those players and coaches better men, especially with a leader like Paterno decisively taking a stand to excise Sandusky and stand up for the kids he raped.
I don’t know about you, but I would like to think that a football program at an academic institution has more of a soul than Union Carbide or Enron.
The reports that Paterno would routinely eschew or reject punishment from the vice president of student affairs in favor of his own quite frankly shows how out of balance things were at Penn State. Universities have organizational charts, and I’m quite sure that it goes head coach –> athletic director –> president. A head coach does not outrank a vice president, and while it would have been fine if Paterno wanted to add additional sanctions beyond those levied by the VP of student affairs, that would be fine. But by substituting his punishments with those which would have been assigned to any other student, Paterno only added to the sense of exceptionalism of the football program.
The problem is that your analogy doesn’t make since.
The people in charge of the school entered into a cover-up to protect Sandusky. They were found out, and now action is being taken against the school.
Just to add, I don’t doubt that some of Penn State’s appeal was the perception that it was a squeaky clean program. How many recruits decided to attend Penn State because of its reputation - the assumption that the staff, starting with Paterno, saw to it that any bad apples or miscreants would not be part of the program? How many blue chippers chose PSU over Ohio State or Michigan based on the reputation of Paterno and the program, giving PSU a competitive edge? Well, they were lied to. Of course, if Paterno and the administration sat down in 1998 and said, “Look, we’ve discovered that someone we trusted has abused that trust and harmed young men, and we are removing him from any association with our program and cooperating with authorities,” that would have been living up to that promise.
One of my fraternity brother’s cousins played at PSU - RB Eric McCoo. He told me how proud the family was that he was a scholarship athlete at Penn State - not Miami or USC or Oklahoma. The fact that he was at Penn State under Paterno meant something. I wonder what he makes of all this.
Coaches, ADs, and presidents have to make incredibly difficult choices all the time. Mack Brown sat a number of Texas’ best players for a bowl game several years ago for violating team rules. Bobby Stoops kicked out his all-everything quarterback, Rhett Bomar, when he was discovered working a job that violated NCAA rules. Woody Hayes and Bobby Petrino were fired by their ADs for misconduct, which likely hurt those teams’ ability to compete (granted, both scenarios would have been hard to cover up). I don’t know if these firings and benchings were out of fear of NCAA punishment if they weren’t meted out, but nevertheless, the right thing was done. If Paterno had dealt with Sandusky in 1998 as soon as the allegations were out there - it would simply have been a dark time in PSU’s history, and doubtless we would be using how Paterno handled the situation back then as an exemplar of moral leadership.
It’s such an irony that it happened under his watch. If this went on under Barry Switzer at Oklahoma, we’d be disgusted, but probably not shaken to the degree that we are knowing this about Paterno. And even more ironically, Switzer had some of the most prophetic and perceptive comments on this whole sordid situation in November:
[QUOTE=Barry Switzer]
Having been in this profession a long time and knowing how close coaching staffs are, I knew that this was a secret that was kept secret. Everyone on that staff had to have known, the ones that had been around a long time. I’ll tell you how it happens – it’s the American sports phenomenon. I’ve seen it happen all my life; we’ve made coaches and players and athletes more than what we are. It’s what happens in American sports. Because of that, they’ve gotten away with more than they should have.
[/QUOTE]
Damn. I’m a burnt orange Switzer hater, but I have to give him some respect for that insight.
If keeping my house depended on his gambling skill, that’s the risk I took along with him (and how could my neighbor bet my house otherwise?). I’d be pissed that he made a stunningly immoral bet, but that doesn’t get me out of the loss.
Look at this this way, if you go to vegas and bet everything on red and lose, your landlord still expects you to pay the rent yes? But if you don’t have any money left then you can’t pay the rent and the landlord loses out because he willingly connected his income to yours.
Nobody gets out of this one with their shirt because everyone agreed to place their shirt on the table.
Just how many scholarships is Penn State losing? I’ve seen several people mention 20 on here, but I’ve seen reports of 10 elsewhere.
This is a good point.
Sanctions should only be handed down in cases where every member of the team, every coach, and all incoming freshman conspired to commit some crime.
Anything short of that is preposterous.
Fair enough, but let’s also not pretend this punishment wasn’t meant to cripple the football program, and by extension, the university.
I am nowhere near as confident as you. Sports attendance is generally correlated with the skill of the team on the field. There is no way a team that puts together a number of losing seasons in a row will have the same draw as a successful one.
This happens naturally in any large organization or group. This is why people don’t snitch in urban areas, and why corporate scandals happen all the time. PSU is not unique in any cultural sense. It’s only because there is a popular football program, with a tenuous connection to the scandal, that people can glom onto that we are even discussing this.
For example, have you read about the sex-abuse cover up scandal at The Citadel?
How much of call do you hear for The Citadel’s board and president to resign? When can we expect Freeh to investigate?
The loudest voices you hear calling for PSU’s head are those who think football “culture” is a problem anyway. Finding an excuse to chip away at is just gravy. Few people would be paying attention if Paterno was the Dean of Sciences, even if he had done the same stuff. Nobody would suggest telling PSU they need to forfeit Biology scholarships either. They would be saying that guy did some questionable stuff, rather than that football coach, and the football culture that enabled him, need to be punished. They’d focus on what he did rather than what his job was.
Plus, punishment of this kind will not get rid of institutional bias towards self-preservation or coverups. Those tendencies will exist because it’s, in part, what allows groups or institutions to function well.
Why?
Do you have a cite for this?
Penn State is losing a total of 20 scholarship slots per year for four years (reducing the annual allotment from 85 to 65). For each year, 10 of those 20 must be initial scholarships (reducing the annual allotment of initial scholarships from 25 to 15).
The troubling thing to me is that the majority of the people being punished by these sanctions (students) were probably 8 to 12 years old during the 1998 and 2002 incidents. They were pretty much the same ages and Jerry’s victims.
Players? Those that could/would have receive PSU scholarships will certainly get them elsewhere. The number of elite college athletes being punished here is precisely zero. In theory, somewhere in the country, 20 marginal Division II players per year won’t get scholarships at all. I suppose it would have been nice for the NCAA to let 20 schools at that level have one extra slot apiece.
Student fans? Yes, they will be “punished” by having a less-competitive team at their school. :rolleyes: I can only hope that’s enough to make them consider the possibility that there might be more important things–to escape the rut that their elders couldn’t.