Does anyone here feel recreation is not part of a well-rounded person?
Recreation is getting a group of people together, grabbing a ball, and playing a game. Big-time college sports has nothing to do with creating well-rounded individuals.
If it had worked, it would have been of benefit. Things would have kept rolling right along. It did not work. In any event, I am not getting your point. At this time, in these conditions, failure of the NCAA to give Penn State the death penalty will be seen as a slap on the wrist for protecting a child rapist, and they will be tainted with the Penn State scandal.
It worked for more than a decade. Tickets were sold, alumni donations were made, and Paterno, Curley, Spanier and Schultz continued to draw their salaries. And of course it worked great for the guy who abused at least eight or nine children over those years. This probably goes without saying, but new accusers are coming forward to say Sandusky abused them in the '70s and '80s.
It’s simple. You’re proposing to punish several tens of thousands of people for the actions of a very few, and you’re proposing to do so using an organization whose rules do not cover the situation at hand.
At this time, in these conditions, the NCAA giving Penn State the death penalty would be seen as political grandstanding, as this scandal did not benefit the football team in any way, shape or form. If Sandusky was an active coach while it was known and there was a coverup going on, I would agree that the NCAA would be correct to get involved. At the time there was a coverup going on, Sandusky was a retired guy who hung around the athletic buildings. (I cannot stress enough that, as much as you can fault the behavior of Paterno and the admin staff following the 2001 report, the 1998 report was deemed nothing to worry about by an independent state-level investigator–that we know that is false doesn’t necessarily reflect on the judgement of the PSU administration as much as the following incidents do)
Actually, indepedent of the Penn State issue, this actually makes a lot of sense to me.
Whether we are talking about people or oranizations, what you SAY your values are means shit. What you spend your time and money on is where your values lay.
Were it at all possible, I’d love to see someone issuing fines to all of them (including Paterno’s estate) in the amount of “the sum of every paycheck they drew since the second report”.
You have very few productive posts. You asked for a word to make some weak jab at me. I gave it to you. If you can’t understand the definition, that’s on you.
No, it’s correct. Engineering is not mentioned. Feel free to highlight where it says “engineering”. That said, you are missing the initial point. I said if Paterno was the dean of engineering at a school where engineering was highly valued, nobody would suggest they close their engineering dept. Now, others responded that was because universities HAVE to have an engineering dept., even thought that is clearly false. And no need to focus on engineering. Feel free to substitute the classics dept., sociology dept., or the African studies dept. Not recognizing that football is an integral part of many universities on par with all those other academic fields is just be willfully blind to the evidence in front of us.
This is where you are wrong. Football is not just entertainment. Referring to it as such in order to minimize it is just showing your bias. At this point, a football is a vital function of the university because it helps the university function. If it weren’t, they wouldn’t spend the money they do on it. There is a reason many coaches make more than deans, and it’s because they perform a more vital and appreciated function to the university. You don’t have to agree with that, but universities across the country do.
Not if eliminating football makes it more difficult to exist as in institution in the same state. Again, if it’s so apparent that football is just an extracurricular, something for entertainment, why do the universities spend so much on it? Do they not understand their mission?
Basically. I am saying a mission statement is just rhetoric if their budget undermines it to a large extent. If you want to know how a school views itself, and what it’s mission is, look at how they allocate their resources. When LSU, or USC pays their coach several times more than most of their deans, you have a pretty clear indication who they think is adding more value, and who they value more. Their mission statement is always gonna have bland boilerplate about how they want to educate everyone because that’s what mission statements say. When they build stadia at the expense of labs and classrooms, or when they sign multimillion dollar contracts with coaches, while hiring fewer and fewer tenure track professors, it’s pretty clear where their interests and priorities lie.
Which, of course, doesn’t necessarily mean your priorities aren’t completely whacked.
Lessee, we got one set of innocents who may suffered because of Joe Paterno and his cronies’ response to Sandusky … the kids who might get raped by other coaches in the future because other Paternos covered it up … and another set of innocents who may suffer because of Joe Paterno and his cronies’ response to Sandusky … the Penn State football fans. Whose interests should I give more weight to? I wonder …?
Then scandal may not have, but the cover-up did, as has been pointed out, for about a decade. And I think the “political grandstanding” thing is way off base. If there is ANY topic that has a unified opinion among liberals and conservatives, Republicans and Democrats, it’s that child rape is wrong and covering it up is wronger. Not even the Catholic Church could get out from under THAT steamroller … and neither will Penn State.
The coaches and atheltic dept. personnel who did the cover-up were active. Yes they were. Way too active.
Okay, you got me–just as soon as you can explain how those victims are helped by randomly smacking around innocent people who happened to be unknowingly associated with the same institution as the criminals who hurt the victims.
I mean, that’s what I’d want, if I were the victim of a horrible crime.
“Hey, we punished the perp and his accomplices.”
“Great!”
“Now, because some moron named Rick Reilly isn’t satisfied, we’re going to punish fifty thousand random people who weren’t aware of the conspiracy, because some guy on the internet thinks it’s obvious that the conspiracy was somehow aimed at helping them all out.”
“Wait, what?”
Wow.
Think I’m done here.
Just answer the question, because if it doesn’t list the one example of an academic program likely picked off the top of the poster’s head then the entire argument falls apart. It’s the poster’s fault for not clearly stating “engineering or other academic programs that may or may not be engineering.”
Really gotta think of that stuff in advance. Apparently.
I think you guys are overlooking something important: without Penn State, we can’t have a conference championship game.
…What?
This is as far as I’ve read in the comments so I don’t know if anyone has the same thought as I. I agree 1000% with the above but I don’t think it goes quite far enough. They (the culture at and surrounding Penn State) are obsessed not just with the reputation of the football program but with Saint or perhaps god Paterno. Otherwise, why did this not come out until just after he was credited with one more victory than Eddie Robinson? I agree that the penalty needs to be scorched earth for that football program and everything and everyone associated with it including those clueless trustees. And take away every single one of the wins that Paterno was credited with after 1998. He doesn’t deserve the record for more than one reason. I used to respect Penn State but no more. No reputation or record is worth the ruined lives of children. So incredibly despicable.
The only thing that gives me pause is that the earnings from the football program likely fund many other non-revenue sports at Penn State. However, ultimately their mission is the education of students, not athletics.
Well, of course not. A person who claims to be a devoted parent while spending no time with their child and not putting any more than the bare minimum into raising them, while spending countless hours and thousands of dollars on some hobby, loves their hobby more than their child. That’s just how it is; what they say is a lie, what they do is truth. Doesn’t matter if it’s right or wrong; your values are where you spend your time and your money.
(Anyone who wants to nitpick and argue the details of how someone budgets, you’re in the wrong thread.)
In any event, I again has to suggest that the NCAA needs to have a different set of concerns here. The notion that the crimes in question were not related to football is not, really, the issue. What matters is the reputation of the NCAA, for what it’s worth, and that reputation will be considerably stained if nothing is done. The NCAA represents over a thousand schools. Even if you grant Penn State is more valuable from a business perspective than most of the others, the needs of the 100+ other schools outweight Penn State. They’ve disgraced themselves, thoroughly polluted their good name and the name of their football team, and the NCAA would be entirely right to refuse to allow that disgrace to pollute the NCAA and its membership.
Whether that is fair or not to students at Penn State is, frankly, just one of those things in life that sucks. If I get fired from my job because I disgrace my company and they want to further part of me, how is that fair to my daughter? It’s not, but that’s noy my employer’s problem. It’s MY problem.
As to how this will affect Penn State, I got news for you, folks: if the Penn State football program isn’t killed, they will be more strongly supported by the student body and the alumni than ever before. You heard it here first and don’t you believe otherwise for a second; if there continues to by football at Penn State they will get more donations, more fundraising, more support. If the school isn’t punished and is allowed to keep on running a football business there will be a rally around the team the likes of which will amaze you. The statue of Paterno will be removed only over the dead bodies of rioting Penn State students; the alumni will fall all over themselves sending more money and praising the new-but-not-really-new guard; within a few year history will slowly begin revision to recast Paterno as a hero and stigmatize the victims. I mean, villains can be recast as heroes with amazing speed; how many cities have monuments and statues to Robert E. Lee, traitor?
Only if the program is killed will there be an honest reckoning.
I almost overlooked your very little What? Otherwise, I would have said Tough Shit.
Applauding RickJay.
One example of why you are right is the lady who I heard on College Sports Nation on Friday who said that the alums and students NEED football to continue in order that THEY can heal. Is she kidding me; the STUDENTS and ALUMS need to heal??? What about the victims, of which there are many more than those that have come forward thus far?
I mean, it’s beyond even that. He seems to think that when they refer to “education” and “research” and “teaching,” they’re referring to specific departments, and that “engineering” isn’t one of those departments mentioned, so the mission doesn’t cover things like, say, engineering education, engineering research, and teaching engineering.
Dude needs to learn about hyponyms.
An old boss of mine said it best (I believe he was quoting someone else): “If your compensation plan and your business plan are not aligned, then your compensation plan is your business plan.”