That’s perversely similar to how I feel about it, myself. All this blather about an “enabling culture” is basically bunk in my eyes.
An enabling culture is one like you see in professional sports wherein it is known that players got up to bad shit (see Roethlisberger) and the culture/fans still support the fuckers.
In the case of PSU, it’s not even a significant minority locally in State College that is die-hard on the “Paterno did nothing wrong” bandwagon.
The fans had no idea what was happening. Yes, Paterno cultivated an unbelievable image and used it his advantage, and yes, some stupid fans stuck up for him even after it was clear he’d done nothing to stop the abuse (and before it became clear he’d falsely told the grand jury he didn’t know about the earlier allegations.) But you’re blaming the wrong people, and you can’t do much of anything about fans who behave irrationally. They did something stupid in making Paterno an idol and buying into his image, but they did not make this happen.
I’m not sure that I entirely agree with this. It seems to me that the fans (and particularly the deep pockets alumni), though they certainly didn’t enable Sandusky, and maybe not Paterno, you might say they did so for Curley, Schultz, and Spanier. They elevated football to such a high plateau that these guys, not even part of the football program, felt driven to protect it at all costs. The fans and alumni made the Lions synonymous to Penn State in the minds of the executives, which certainly swayed their decision making capability.
Perhaps ‘enabled’ isn’t quite the right term for it, but I’m failing to come up with a better one. If you have a suggestion I’d like to hear it. Maybe ‘motivated’?
I listened to Pat Jones (former OSU coach, not tOSU) immediately after the penalties were announced. He went through the same thing when OSU was put on probation. He doesn’t think that many players will leave but that losing 10 scholarships per year is a big freakin’ deal.
IMHO, they should have taken away TV rights as well but then, PSU probably won’t be good enough to be on TV much anyway. As I said before the NCAA announced, this was not worse than receiving the death penalty and I don’t think any college would have taken a 1 year ban over this.
I see that the Big10 has piled on and said that PSU won’t be able to play in their championship game (what championship game?) and won’t share bowl revenues. The former wasn’t going to happen no matter what and is therefore a ceremonial sanction. The latter cost them about $13 million according to CNN. Money is going to be tight in Happy Valley for some time to come.
I think that’s unfair. The team was synonymous with the school because it was successful and at least in part, because the success of the team raised the profile and the endowment of the school. Paterno and Curley (a Paterno guy - he had nominal authority but evidently did not have much power where the coach was concerned) and the administrators kept the fans and alumni in the dark. They weren’t “swayed.” They made a conscious decision not to jeopardize their jobs and the prestige and revenue of the school. The fans and the alumni are not responsible for that. They may have contributed in some way to a culture in which the football team almost ran the school, but it’s not the responsibility of the fans and alumni to make sure the school is run properly. Fans are not in positions of leadership. Some alumni can be, but most are not. I think it’s an extreme example of passing the buck to say that the president and VP of the school were pressured by the supporters of the team. Are we supposed to believe that if the school didn’t have so many fans, everybody would have done the right thing and called the cops or child protective services? I agree they did not want to mess with the fan support and alumni donors, but I don’t think you can wag your finger at those people and say “You know, if you hadn’t bought so many tickets and made so many donations, we could have told the cops about the guy raping children!”
Anyone who thinks the NCAA sanctions aren’t substantial doesn’t know much about college football. Penn State football will be crippled for at least a decade. The loss of that many scholarships is huge. Current players can also transfer anywhere with no penalty. A four star QB has already withdrawn his commitment to Penn State, with more surely to follow. I’ll be suprised if Penn State wins a handful of Big 10 games (if any) in the next several years. They will struggle to even compete for quite a while.
Did you guys read the account of Central Mountain High School literally supplying Sandusky with victims? About the local police and DA declining to pursue cases?
Many people who had no official connection to Penn State whatever were instrumental in, yes, enabling Sandusky’s crimes. I don’t know how else you can describe it. And I don’t know how else you can explain it, except by saying that the culture of the whole community surrounding Penn State (not every person, but the zeitgeist) was warped.
Or it could be that Erickson is outright pretending the board doesn’t exist:
“Lubrano told the Harrisburg Patriot-News that the Board of Trustees was not consulted about the agreement of sanctions with the NCAA. Penn State President Rodney Erickson signed the agreement, but according to Lubrano, it was a unilateral decision from his office — an office that is supposed to report to the Board of Trustees in an official capacity.”
Certainly the revenue of the school is partially dependent on donations, endowments, bequests, what have you. They get this money largely because of the reputation of the school and the football program. I’m not saying the fans and donors knew anything about it, or were in positions of leadership (though large donors frequently are in positions of power, with or without an official role in the institution). What I’m saying is that the execs motivation was to keep fans and donors in the dark, and keep the revenue flowing, and keep the reputation of the institution and the football program intact.
What would be the worst possible consequences for the school had they reported the 2001 incident as required? Some personal embarrassment for Paterno, perhaps, but the real potential damage was to recruitment of both athletes and students, and to taking a big hit in their fundraising activities. In the Freeh report there is a reference to a note one of them made (don’t recall which one) that reporting Sandusky could open up a “Pandora’s box”. I think whoever made that note was concerned, and rightfully so, that Sandusky could have been molesting children at Penn for many years previously.
And I think that consideration ultimately factored into their decision not to report. They realized that it could end up looking like they had been harboring a child molester for 20 years. And since men are now showing up and claiming Sandusky molested them in the 70s and 80s, it appears there may be some truth to this.
I wonder – and I really don’t know the answer to this – did the Freeh investigation look at any documents or ask any questions about Sandusky’s activities prior to 1998? The report timeline shows he was hired in 1969, and the next item is the 1998 accusation. I wonder if there is anything there – suspicions, accusations, whatever. My guess is that they didn’t go back nearly that far for a lot of practical reasons, like there wasn’t a convenient cache of archived email to search through, and lots of organizations shred their paper files after 5 or 10 years. And an investigation back that far may well have been beyond the scope of Freeh’s charter from the school.
He may have directive already in hand to make whatever calls he needs to make. And since boards usually meet at most monthly (and often quarterly or even annually), he and other CEOs usually have the power to act as they see fit between board session, excepting those issues where the board has already given a specific directive. That’s what Presidents do – they generally make all the executive decisions and count on their boards to back them up.
Also, in cases like this in the aftermath of a big scandal, it is not uncommon to bring in an executive “hit man” – someone who kicks ass, takes names, and takes the heat for the controversial decisions. Erickson may have been hired just for this reason, and he may be gone in a year or two, taking much of the blame with him. I don;t know if this is the truth, and if it is Erickson doesn’t even have to know about it – they can tell him to do whatever he sees fit, and pull the rug out from under him once he’s done making the tough calls.
This is literally a bad description. And yes, I understand that people thought Sandusky’s character was above reproach because of his association with Penn State and because of his charity. They were wrong and naive, and the fact that victims were actively discouraged from coming forward is just horrifying. Suspending the football team wouldn’t cure that. For most people, this scandal cured that. For those who can’t believe Penn State and Paterno did anything wrong, I don’t think anything can be done. But I don’t think it’s the NCAA’s place to punish people for being naive or for being overly enthusiastic about a football team. I do think it’s in their power to punish schools and teams for doing things wrong, and that’s what is happening here.
And I have said that that those were among the factors that motivated them to do what they did - along with protecting their jobs and their reputations and the reputation of PSU (which relates back to the team and the money). So we’re not disagreeing about their reasons. But I don’t think you can put the blame on the donors and the fans. After all, the coverup suggests the administrators believed the fans and alumni would be unhappy and might buy fewer tickets or give less money if this news came out. It’s not like they had no choice because of the money involved. They decided that keeping the money flowing and the tickets selling was more important than taking any other steps that would have stopped a child abuser and protected his future victims.
How? Without the knowledge or permission of parents, they verbally and physically facilitated him picking up students from school–whom he then raped. They were willfully blind to incredibly suspicious behavior, and they discouraged victims from speaking out. What else do you want them to do, hold the kids down for him?
I wouldn’t see it as punishment so much as a correction, a treatment for sports at Penn State and elsewhere. The NCAA is supposed to be the custodian of the “values” of the culture of collegiate sports.
The official NCAA rationale for not imposing the “death penalty” said,
I think that the “not severe enough” part is bullshit; they could have shut down football for a year or two and followed that with everything else here. But you notice that they explicitly acknowledge the “cultural” issue.
As was essentially done for SMU. They had no football, and then they had the years of lost scholarships, no bowl games, probation.
As far as I can tell he abused one student from that school, not several, and I think your use of the word “supplied” makes it sound like they knowingly allowed him to abuse the student (which of course they didn’t).
They were certainly blind to it, their actions were incredibly stupid, and their discouraging comments to the family of Victim 1 were even worse. But I don’t see the evidence they were willfully blind as opposed to being naive, gullible, and maybe star-struck. And again, how do you think keeping the Penn State football team off the field for a year would fix this? It sounds to me like you’re finding Central Pennsylvania collectively guilty here.
By which you mean discouraging fans from being stupid. That’s far outside the NCAA’s power.
I haven’t disputed that there was a cultural problem, but as you can see from the quote, they’re talking about the sports and administrative culture at Penn State, not for in the state of Pennsylvania or State College and the surrounding area as a whole. They don’t have the capability or the responsibility to stop people from being stupid about their football teams. They do have the responsibility and the power to make sure schools police their athletic departments properly, and that’s what they tried to address here.
PSU might be better off voluntarily suspending the team for this season, at least. Their decent players will mostly be gone, the remaining low-talent ones stand a real risk of injury if they actually play against the big boys, their revenue will be way down and probably below the expenses of even a cut-back program, and they’d be simply an embarrassment to the school in many ways.
Between these predictions (PSU is doomed. Doooooomed. Doom doom doom doom.) and the ones from the other half of the people I talk to (The NCAA sanctions are useless on their own, I bet we’ll see $60mil in extra donations from enraged alumni by the end of the year.), I’m starting to think most of y’all are putting on a comedy piece for my benefit.
Players are going to get hurt, the team will be decimated and will probably forfeit half of their games.
At the same time donations will be at a maximum allowing PSU to have the best facilities in the nation within 1 year.
4 star recruits will flock there because they can play right away and facilities will be incredible. The team will then be stacked.
My prediction: NC in 2 years.
Most college football analysts that I’ve heard are saying Penn State football will be irrelevant for at least a decade. I see no reason to doubt this.
Which would be quite an accomplishment considering they’re not allowed to play in the post season until 2016.
No. They’re toast. No top prospect is going to commit to Penn State knowing they have no chance to play in the post season. Top recruits want to go to bowls, they want to be on TV and get interviewed in front of the nation, they want to lift championship and bowl trophies and get showered in admiration and gifts from sponsors. They don’t want to play 12 games then go home.
Any current member of the Penn State football team that could get a starting job at a contending school will be transferring out at the first opportunity. Over the next year (depending on if there is a time limit to how long players can transfer without consequence) the Penn State roster will be picked clean by vultures. Left with only players not good enough to get playing time at a competitive school
By 2015 they’re going to be a shell of a program. Yeah, the Nittany Lions have their chest puffed up now, but money tends not to flow quite as liberally after you’ve won 9 games in 3 seasons. People are going to say, “What the hell am I donating money for? To raise my priority ranking for bowl tickets we can’t even go to?” They’ll be able to play for bowls again, but any top recruit is going to ask, “So tell me coach, what does Penn State have that Ohio State doesn’t?”
Jimmy Johnson (NCAA Championship and 2xSuper Bowl winning coach) agrees. Tweeted earlier today…
[QUOTE=@JimmyJohnson]
Penn St penalties Wow! ..their program will be no better than Div 2 for many years..
[/QUOTE]