# Rick Reilly: Penn State deserves the death penalty for Sandusky **URL:** \ **Category:** The Game Room\ **Created:** [July 15, 2012, 2:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rick-reilly-penn-state-deserves-the-death-penalty-for-sandusky/628271 "2012-07-15T02:20:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 12
**Author:** ![Zeriel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/58956e/32.png) [@Zeriel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zeriel)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2012, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rick-reilly-penn-state-deserves-the-death-penalty-for-sandusky/628271/221 "2012-07-18T20:00:13Z")
> [@astorian](#): > > You think other Athletic Directors at other colleges are going to say, “I don’t mind risking prison, but… the NCAA death penalty? THAT’S too scary for me!” That’s what I don’t get, along with the concept of Paterno sitting in his office, going "I got eyewitness word of a sexual assault by a member of my team on a child. If I go public with this, PSU’s reputation in the NCAA as a clean program that punishes its own will be pushed to greater heights. Whereas, if I keep it quiet, if it ever comes out we’ll have the world calling for our heads on pikes, and the only net benefit is that one of my old buddies who’s NOT going to be the next head coach gets to hang around the athletic buildings unimpeded for ten years. I’d better not go public, then, FOR THE GOOD OF THE TEAM." There are a lot of weird motives for behavior being thrown around in an effort to justify squashing PSU’s football program and/or the university itself, s’all I’m saying. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2012, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rick-reilly-penn-state-deserves-the-death-penalty-for-sandusky/628271/222 "2012-07-18T20:01:26Z")
> [@Zeriel](#): > > That’s what I don’t get, along with the concept of Paterno sitting in his office, going "I got eyewitness word of a sexual assault by a member of my team on a child. If I go public with this, PSU’s reputation in the NCAA as a clean program that punishes its own will be pushed to greater heights. Whereas, if I keep it quiet, if it ever comes out we’ll have the world calling for our heads on pikes, and the only net benefit is that one of my old buddies who’s NOT going to be the next head coach gets to hang around the athletic buildings unimpeded for ten years. > > I’d better not go public, then, FOR THE GOOD OF THE TEAM." Why do you think they didn’t go to the police? ---
**Author:** ![Zeriel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/58956e/32.png) [@Zeriel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zeriel)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2012, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rick-reilly-penn-state-deserves-the-death-penalty-for-sandusky/628271/223 "2012-07-18T20:27:52Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > Why do you think they didn’t go to the police? As I said in post 214: > [@Zeriel](#): > > Paterno would have been embarrassed for himself (to have not noticed sooner) and on behalf of his old friend. The administration would have been embarrassed to admit that their golden god of football was wrong about one of his senior staff members. > > So to protect their egos or their buddies or both, they ended up selling the campus and the football team up the river. I think it’s a case of a bunch of old, overly-privileged guys thinking they can shuffle a problem around and just handle it within the old boy’s club. I can imagine Paterno sitting around thinking “Well, ol’ Jerry wouldn’t do that kind of stuff to a kid. I’ve had dinner at his house. This must just be leftover hysteria from all the stuff they’re accusing the Church of.” I can imagine Spanier and the admin sitting and thinking “Paterno is a god around here, if we mess with him the Trustees will jump all over our shit unless we are 100% assured of being right. We’ll let him handle it however he wants to handle it. See–he said Sandusky will never be head coach, Paterno must have dealt with him quietly and it’ll all be better now.” What I can’t imagine is anyone in full command of their reason honestly thinking “if we hide this, it’ll be overall better for the institution and for football, in the climate of handling child abuse that exists in 1998-2012” ---
**Author:** ![Bosstone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/22d042/32.png) [@Bosstone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosstone)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2012, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rick-reilly-penn-state-deserves-the-death-penalty-for-sandusky/628271/224 "2012-07-18T20:38:26Z")
Fine. That doesn’t really explain why nuking the program is such a bad idea, though. Maybe people will be less inclined to try to keep it within the old boys’ club if it’s known that trying to gloss over it brings a vastly harsher penalty than immediate investigation. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2012, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rick-reilly-penn-state-deserves-the-death-penalty-for-sandusky/628271/225 "2012-07-18T21:01:48Z")
> [@Zeriel](#): > > I can imagine Spanier and the admin sitting and thinking "Paterno is a god around here, if we mess with him the Trustees will jump all over our shit unless we are 100% assured of being right. T I don’t believe they refrained because they were afraid of making Paterno look bad or messing with him. I get the sense not everybody in the university’s leadership was happy with how entrenched and powerful Paterno was anyway, and the Freeh report criticizes the board of trustees for becoming a rubber stamp for Spanier, so I doubt he was afraid of their judgment. These people had a ton of power at the school. > [@](#): > > See–he said Sandusky will never be head coach, Paterno must have dealt with him quietly and it’ll all be better now." They never thought Paterno had dealt with it on his own, and they’ve sworn up and down that Sandusky’s retirement in 1999 had nothing to do with the abuse allegation from 1998. As suspicious as his early retirement and generous pay and privileges look, no evidence to the contrary has emerged. And of course even if they’d believed Paterno took care of it, they found out in 2001 that they were wrong and they still didn’t go to the authorities. > [@](#): > > What I can’t imagine is anyone in full command of their reason honestly thinking “if we hide this, it’ll be overall better for the institution and for football, in the climate of handling child abuse that exists in 1998-2012” In hindsight it always sounds ridiculous to imagine something like this could have stayed a secret, but not everybody gets caught. John Edwards thought he could still be president even though a newspaper found out he was cheating on his wife. Sandusky’s actions stayed quiet for more than a decade after the 1998 investigation and he was probably abusing children for several decades before that. Even though he was investigated in 1998, it took 10 more years before a parent told the right person about her suspicions and the investigation got going. I really think Paterno and Spanier and the others didn’t think the public would ever find out. It’s hard for me to think of a better explanation for the fact that these four people didn’t tell anyone else with authority at their school or the police. I think it means something that the janitor who saw another incident of abuse figured he would be fired if he went to the athletic department or school leadership. ---
**Author:** ![Aizle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f19dbf/32.png) [@Aizle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aizle)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2012, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rick-reilly-penn-state-deserves-the-death-penalty-for-sandusky/628271/226 "2012-07-18T21:54:30Z")
> [@Zeriel](#): > > I have done no such thing. PSU Athletics pays its own way, and contributes money back to PSU (via the expedient of paying student athlete scholarships out of the athletic revenue.) > > Most university athletics departments do not pay their own way, and suck money out of their institution’s general fund. > > Indeed, and in the case of PSU you are wrong–the Athletic Department contributes back on the order of $10 mil a year, in the form of scholarships. > > That’s a net of +$20mil better than the median bowl-caliber school’s athletic department, in terms of the effect on the university’s general fund. > > I love how you accuse me of moving the goalposts, then move them yourself in the same post. > > :rolleyes: Obviously we disagree on what contributing to the university means, but we seem to agree on the facts. PSU makes a profit, which most universities don’t, but that money goes into supporting athletic scholarships, not other university programs or infrastructure outside of the athletics department. I’m assuming we can agree there, right? My assertion is that being self supporting and using any profit you have to further enhance your own program isn’t “contributing money back to PSU”. It’s just perpetuating it’s own program. ---
**Author:** ![mlees](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba8739/32.png) [@mlees](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mlees)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2012, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rick-reilly-penn-state-deserves-the-death-penalty-for-sandusky/628271/227 "2012-07-18T22:07:32Z")
I hope this isn’t much of a highjack, but I’m wondering about the early retirement of Sandusky. I assume the theory is that Paterno convinced Sandusky to retire early, instead of hanging on to the job and trying out for the head coach job whenever Paterno decides to leave. This was due to the incident(s) that got reported to Paterno about Sandusky’s criminal activities. But… why grant him continued access to Penn States facilities? (Sandusky continued to use the facilities to groom his victims, if I recall.) Would it have looked too strange to cut him loose completely? ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2012, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rick-reilly-penn-state-deserves-the-death-penalty-for-sandusky/628271/228 "2012-07-18T22:32:05Z")
> [@brickbacon](#): > > You provoked this. Deal with it. Ah, yes. Your rudeness is my fault. Good show, old chap! ---
**Author:** ![ScarletNumber](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c0e974/32.png) [@ScarletNumber](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ScarletNumber)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2012, 11:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rick-reilly-penn-state-deserves-the-death-penalty-for-sandusky/628271/229 "2012-07-18T23:16:18Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > Just for the sake of comparison, I present [the 2003 Baylor U. basketball scandal](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baylor_University_basketball_scandal). Very short version: after one player murdered another, and the head coach told his players to lie to the police so he could convince everyone the murder victim had paid his way to school by selling drugs. In fact, the coach had violated NCAA rules by paying that player’s tuition (and the tuition of another player) because the school was out of scholarships. They didn’t get the death penalty, but they were hit with severe sanctions and the coach was, for practical purposes, banned for coaching in the NCAA for 10 years. Baylor let its players transfer and many of them did. Remember that someone died at Baylor. No one died at Penn State. Therefore the death penalty is too harsh. I like the idea of the school being limited to an eight game conference schedule. That way its opponents aren’t punished by losing a game. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2012, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rick-reilly-penn-state-deserves-the-death-penalty-for-sandusky/628271/230 "2012-07-18T23:34:06Z")
> [@ScarletNumber](#): > > Remember that someone died at Baylor. No one died at Penn State. Therefore the death penalty is too harsh. The death penalty has nothing to do with actual death. It’s just a nickname. Baylor didn’t get the death penalty either, and the school was not punished for the murder of Patrick Dennehy. The murder was a criminal act by one person. They were punished for the recruiting violations, for the loss of institutional control, and (I think) the criminal behavior of their coach. There are plenty of differences between the two scandals, but it’s an interesting semi-recent comparison. ---
**Author:** ![Typo\_Negative](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/typo_negative/32/484_2.png) [@Typo\_Negative](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Typo_Negative)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2012, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rick-reilly-penn-state-deserves-the-death-penalty-for-sandusky/628271/231 "2012-07-18T23:47:06Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > Exactly. If the NCAA death penalty permanently cripples Penn State football, then that’s a very clear signal to other schools – don’t protect your athletic program by covering up child rape, or your big time sports program will be crippled in such a way so that it might never recover. Serious question: You don’t think that the shitstorm of bad publicity, potential crippling lawsuits, legal fees and possible jail time hasn’t sent that signal already? If Penn State continues to play football, you think other schools will think they got away with it? Count me in with the folks who say no to the death penalty. It punishes a lot folks who aren’t guilty of anything, and doesn’t mean jack to the people who _are_ guilty. The number of guilty parties here is very small. And they deserve _all_ the sorrow that’s coming to them. But no one else does. ---
**Author:** ![Mince](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ecd19e/32.png) [@Mince](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mince)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2012, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rick-reilly-penn-state-deserves-the-death-penalty-for-sandusky/628271/232 "2012-07-18T23:50:05Z")
> [@ScarletNumber](#): > > Remember that someone died at Baylor. No one died at Penn State. Therefore the death penalty is too harsh. No one died at SMU either, at least not related to their infractions which lead to them receiving the “death penalty” in 1987(?). The NCAA would never mete out judicial punishment for a criminal act. They mete out administrative punishment for rule violations, including the unfortunately named “death penalty.” So you do not need someone to die for the NCAA to award a death penalty; you just need serious and pervasive, possibly repeated violations. I don’t think PSU deserves that because there were no “rule” violations regarding the playing of football. ETA: Or what **Marley23** said. I responded before I read [pronoun] response. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2012, 12:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rick-reilly-penn-state-deserves-the-death-penalty-for-sandusky/628271/233 "2012-07-19T00:33:14Z")
You know, when criminals are punished by jailing them, their families often suffer great privations. They lose the company of their loved one, any income they might have generated, and if they want to visit their family member in prison, it means long trips and invasive searches. The INTENT may not be to punish the entire family, but the EFFECT is still there. Of course, we still mete out punishments to criminals despite the suffering of their families because we recognize that if we didn’t we might not be able to jail many criminals at all. Isn’t the situation with Penn State exactly the same? Could the NCAA mete out punishment to ANY athletic program if the suffering of the businessmen who depend on the program and the fans who enjoy it had to be taken into account? ---
**Author:** ![doreen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/858c86/32.png) [@doreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doreen)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2012, 12:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rick-reilly-penn-state-deserves-the-death-penalty-for-sandusky/628271/234 "2012-07-19T00:37:07Z")
> [@Typo\_Negative](#): > > Serious question: You don’t think that the shitstorm of bad publicity, potential crippling lawsuits, legal fees and possible jail time hasn’t sent that signal already? If Penn State continues to play football, you think other schools will think they got away with it? But they will have, won’t they? Sure, Paterno got fired a few months earlier than he had already agreed to retire , and a few other people lost their jobs. But Penn State will continue to play football , and to my mind, the fact that people are worried about the loss of the football team is but a symptom of the culture that allowed this to happen. Someone in one of the threads (maybe this one) asked what if it happened in an engineering department. And the answer is, it never would. Because for this to happen, you needed more than a Sandusky and a Paterno. Even Spanier and Curley weren’t enough. You also needed a board that was a rubber stamp for the president so that the president felt he could conceal information from the board , a stadium that sold out every week, money coming in from licensing and TV deals , alumni who might cut off their contributions and students who might riot if the head of the program was fired. You need a culture that allows the head of the program to be more powerful than the president, and the Board and perhaps even more powerful than the governor. And engineering departments , or drama departments and even baseball teams don’t have that. > [@](#): > > Count me in with the folks who say no to the death penalty. It punishes a lot folks who aren’t guilty of anything, and doesn’t mean jack to the people who _are_ guilty. The number of guilty parties here is very small. And they deserve _all_ the sorrow that’s coming to them. But no one else does. The number of guilty parties may be very small- but the number of people who contributed to the culture that allowed it is very large. ---
**Author:** ![Idle\_Thoughts](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/838e76/32.png) [@Idle\_Thoughts](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Idle_Thoughts)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2012, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rick-reilly-penn-state-deserves-the-death-penalty-for-sandusky/628271/235 "2012-07-19T01:17:09Z")
> [@Zeriel](#): > > Please stop being stupid. This is not the forum for these kinds of posts, so cut it out. Not warning, just a note. ---
**Author:** ![Zeriel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/58956e/32.png) [@Zeriel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zeriel)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2012, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rick-reilly-penn-state-deserves-the-death-penalty-for-sandusky/628271/236 "2012-07-19T01:33:59Z")
> [@Bosstone](#): > > Fine. That doesn’t really explain why nuking the program is such a bad idea, though. Maybe people will be less inclined to try to keep it within the old boys’ club if it’s known that trying to gloss over it brings a vastly harsher penalty than immediate investigation. Nuking the program is exactly the same idea as un-chartering your company, firing all the employees, and selling off all its assets, because a VP took a sex tourism trip to Thailand and the CEO covered it up. If that happened, you’d expect the board of directors to clean house, or the shareholders to clean house on the board, right? You wouldn’t expect to punish an entire corporation for the personal peccadilloes of a tiny fraction of the officers, right? I’d feel differently if this benefited the program in any meaningful way. It’s clear from the reactions of the majority of PSU students and alums that an early revelation would have made them happier than no revelation at all and certainly happier than this current situation–PSU students, like anyone else, like feeling that their group is superior, and “we shine light on evil people and punish them appropriately” is a good feeling to have. ---
**Author:** ![Zeriel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/58956e/32.png) [@Zeriel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zeriel)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2012, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rick-reilly-penn-state-deserves-the-death-penalty-for-sandusky/628271/237 "2012-07-19T01:36:18Z")
> [@Idle\_Thoughts](#): > > This is not the forum for these kinds of posts, so cut it out. > > Not warning, just a note. Acknowledging that, but I was directing that insult against people who weren’t SDMB members– > [@Zeriel](#): > > As an aside, **to the two dumbshit students I saw** with a tent and spotlight “defending” the Paterno statue on my drive to work today: If PSU gets unreasonable/unjustifiable institutional sanctions, it will be because morons like you are newsworthy and are what people are seeing of the institutional reaction. **Please stop being stupid**. –for my own clarification, is that against the rules in Game Room now? ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2012, 1:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rick-reilly-penn-state-deserves-the-death-penalty-for-sandusky/628271/238 "2012-07-19T01:45:44Z")
> [@Zeriel](#): > > Nuking the program is exactly the same idea as un-chartering your company, firing all the employees, and selling off all its assets, because a VP took a sex tourism trip to Thailand and the CEO covered it up. No, actually, if you want to get technical, “nuking” the program just means NCAA will refuse to do business with them anymore. It’s more similar to **brickbacon’s** corrupt apple salesman scenario: if I run a business, and I discover one of my partner businesses has engaged in horribly corrupt practices, I might say, “See ya, dudes,” and cut them out of my partnership ring. ---
**Author:** ![Bosstone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/22d042/32.png) [@Bosstone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosstone)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2012, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rick-reilly-penn-state-deserves-the-death-penalty-for-sandusky/628271/239 "2012-07-19T02:05:48Z")
> [@Zeriel](#): > > I’d feel differently if this benefited the program in any meaningful way. What do you mean by “this”? The cover-up? It’s been established that PSU enjoyed about a decade of benefiting from a clean image as opposed to suffering from the ding to the reputation outing Sandusky in 98 would have done. That’s _why_ there was a cover-up in the first place! The football program was too important to the school to risk that hit to the reputation. Now it’s too important to penalize. What we have here is a claim that the Penn State football program is too big to fail. Fuck. That. ---
**Author:** ![brickbacon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/898d66/32.png) [@brickbacon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brickbacon)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2012, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rick-reilly-penn-state-deserves-the-death-penalty-for-sandusky/628271/240 "2012-07-19T02:09:37Z")
> [@Evil\_Captor](#): > > Of course, we still mete out punishments to criminals despite the suffering of their families because we recognize that if we didn’t we might not be able to jail many criminals at all. > > Isn’t the situation with Penn State exactly the same? Could the NCAA mete out punishment to ANY athletic program if the suffering of the businessmen who depend on the program and the fans who enjoy it had to be taken into account? It’s not the same at all. Families of criminals are _indirectly_ hurt when the criminal is punished. You are suggesting hurting the families _directly_ in a futile attempt to further punish the criminal. > [@doreen](#): > > Someone in one of the threads (maybe this one) asked what if it happened in an engineering department. And the answer is, it never would. That was me in this thread. Here is my question to you. How do you know that? There was another recent case at the university of [Michigan](http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-penn-state-michigan-sex-allegations-20120715,0,3797163.story) in the pediatric emergency department where child porn charges were initially not reported to the authorities. > [@](#): > > Here in Ann Arbor, in December, federal prosecutors charged Stephen Jenson, a resident physician at the University of Michigan hospital studying pediatrics, with possession of child pornography. > > Yet **a co-worker had reported seeing the child porn six months earlier**. The co-worker briefly caught a glimpse of what she thought was child pornography on a computer Jenson had been using in a medical residents’ lounge. She told a supervisor, who then told another supervisor, who told another official and so on and so on, until **at least eight Michigan employees knew about the child porn allegations.** > > After a series of misunderstandings and confusion over who was responsible for the case — and a lack of clear evidence beyond the woman’s allegation — no one reported Jenson to the police. So here is another, slightly less egregious case where things were not reported. At Miramonte Elementary in Los Angeles, two teachers, one of whom had been accused of improprieties with children over the course of two decades, but was allowed to keep working. It was recently discovered that the [Citadel](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christine-pelosi/citadel-leaders-who-cover_b_1090935.html) covered up abuse allegations. > [@](#): > > What they knew: a camper told the Citadel that 4 years before, school alum and counselor Skip ReVille invited two campers into his room, showed them pornography and engaged in sexual activity. > > What they did: although the Citadel counselor’s acts are chargeable as felonies in South Carolina the Citadel chose not to tell police. Citadel had their general counsel investigate, they found a clean background check, no other allegations, and they accepted ReVillez’s denials. ReVille went on to molest 5 children and sits jailed for those offenses. His attorney says he’s sorry. Why are you so sure this couldn’t happen in any dept.? The Citidel and Miramonte Elementary are not known for their football teams and rubber stamp board of trustees. > [@doreen](#): > > Because for this to happen, you needed more than a Sandusky and a Paterno. Even Spanier and Curley weren’t enough. You also needed a board that was a rubber stamp for the president so that the president felt he could conceal information from the board , a stadium that sold out every week, money coming in from licensing and TV deals , alumni who might cut off their contributions and students who might riot if the head of the program was fired. You need a culture that allows the head of the program to be more powerful than the president, and the Board and perhaps even more powerful than the governor. And engineering departments , or drama departments and even baseball teams don’t have that. You don’t need any of that as evidenced by the fact that similar things happen elsewhere without any of those things. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rick-reilly-penn-state-deserves-the-death-penalty-for-sandusky/628271.md?page=11) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rick-reilly-penn-state-deserves-the-death-penalty-for-sandusky/628271.md?page=13)