When I posted that, it was my conclusion. Now, I have a link for you from one of your prior assistant coaches who alleges the same thing. Here are his exact words:
Here’s the link:
http://mattpaknis.blogspot.com/
Bumped because of Sandusky’s recent conviction and the release of the report detailing the complicity of Paterno and the Penn State football program.
In another thread I stated by opinion that all of college football should get the death penalty.
Since this is here, I’d like to say that some arguments from the other threads and current developments have changed my mind —I would say now, yes, Penn State should get the death penalty.
I say no, *only *because it was criminal, not football, behavior.
Didn’t answer this poll earlier, as I was on the fence. But in light of the Freeh report - yes, kill it for a year or two. The PSU football program needs the strongest shock possible to its collective culture.
I’d argue that A) Paterno already being implicated, ousted, and dead is already the strongest possible shock, and B) Penn State will continue to administratively be highly supportive of the Athletic Department so long as the Athletic Department continues to be a net moneymaker for the school (which is not, apparently, all that common.)
I voted for the death penalty.
This was a systemic breach of trust and involved the football program’s leaders.
But, given the fact that the NCAA is (in my opinion) a corrupt and venal organization, it is quite likely that the penalty will be less than what I think is appropriate.
Nope. I think the death penalty would be an even bigger one and is appropriate at this point. Also at this point I don’t think NCAA can do anything less without looking like gutless wimps.
Of course. This isn’t even the first scandal at Penn State ( i.e. Rene Portland ). But the death penalty very nicely solves that problem by devastating the athletic income stream, temporarily ( maybe long-term ) weakening athletic influence in a avowed academic institute. Hopefully long enough to shock everyone into being a bit less blindly reverent in the future.
Sucks for the university and the wider community, but sometimes a little cauterization is necessary.
Nuke 'em. Sow salt, etc. PSU deserves to be eradicated.
I’m sure the tens of thousands of active students and uncountable alumni who had no idea this was going on until you did are just going to be brimming over with respect and gratitude for how fairly and rationally you’re handling the situation.
As soon as you can explain to me exactly how this scandal helped the football team’s NCAA ranking or involved breaking any NCAA rules, I’m sure the NCAA will happily come in. Otherwise, they’ll just look like goddamn bandwagon-jumping morons for punishing a program that’s healthy (in the NCAA sense) for non-football related offenses.
The NCAA death penalty at this point would be like burning your employer’s building down because one of the older on-their-way-out VPs got caught doing sex tourism and the CEO tried to cover it over.
Punishing an entity for crimes unrelated to the health and well-being of that entity remains silly, pointless, and wildly unfair to the rank and file folks who are not involved and do not deserve to be affected by something they had no knowledge of.
Except that the main argument is that it is the popularity of the football program – ie, the fact that the general public, students, alumni, and locals alike all love the program to the point of irrationality – that permitted the crimes to occur. It’s entirely sensible to reason that if the program is so popular that it’s allowing corruption and criminality to go unchecked, it’s no longer healthy to allow the program to continue. It’s not as if you can tell the fans to stop loving the program so much.
You can’t say it’s unfair to the team and the fans when they were the ones who enabled this to happen.
The school is also very popular, and I have yet to hear anyone demand that that their accreditation be revoked.
Except it wasn’t really that. Joe Paterno, simply due to his own personal attributes in the running of the football team, would have had the ability he did (that is, to exert personal control over disciplinary matters involving the athletic department) whether or not the team was as beloved as it is. This was a bunch of old boys protecting their old friends–whether JoePa found reports of Sandusky’s actions unbelievable, or whether he was trying to protect his program’s reputation from tarnish, nothing about that is the fault of the students playing in the program, nor of the employees from coaches to janitors who didn’t know anything.
And, as sitchensis says, should we also disaccredit the university because of complicity in the highest ranks of administration? Anyone can see how silly THAT would be.
I previously voted, “No, things are bad…” Knowing what we know now, I do think PSU should get the NCAA’s version of the death penalty (and maybe worse, but I haven’t given it much thought), but I don’t expect that to happen. There are too many people making big money now. The B1G would see some problems with its finances, I’m guessing, if they are back down to 11 teams even for 2 years, so they would suggest PSU just get massive penalties, but still be allowed to field a team. If the B1G doesn’t get what it wants, then that will just be one more step toward the power conferences potentially breaking away from the NCAA. Sure, PSU may not be able to go to a bowl, but another B1G team will takes its place in the hiarchy. I expect the school to become, on the field, a Minnesota-level or Indiana-level punching bag for the next 5 years or so.
I still stand by saying the current players should be allowed to transfer immediately without a penalty, and whatever actions are taken, assuming PSU continues to have a football team, its admittance standards for players will probably need to be as high, if not higher, for the “average” student.
It was the prestige and glamour of the Penn State football program that made it possible for Joe Pa and friends to cover up Sandusky’s child rapes. Anything less than the death penalty would be a way of saying, “That’s OK, we understand … child rape is not a big important thing like college football.”
Depending on how deep the corruption goes and how much people are willing to excuse it, I don’t think disaccreditation should be out of the question. I don’t believe it does go that far, no.
I would actually liken this to police departments whose culture and leadership generate intense corruption. In certain cases, it may well be that no police department is better than leaving it in place, at least as a temporary measure until a new chief and new policies can be instated. And a football program sure as bloody hell isn’t as important as a police department or university.
I know for a fact that corruption of this serious kind doesn’t extend into any of the academic departments staffed by my friends and relatives (in positions ranging from “post-doc” to “Dean of”).
What it boils down to is this: I’m fine with (and adamantly for) gutting the administration staff of both the university itself, the university police department, and the athletic department. As the cover up caused no appreciable gain to the athletic department (hell, Sandusky retired after the first incident, as I understand the timeline) there is no reason for the death penalty to apply there.
I am very against doing anything to the university that would affect the rank and file employees, students, or student-athletes. They didn’t do anything wrong, and to the extent the cover-up was benefiting anyone, it was benefiting the personal reputation of Joe Paterno, who’s dead anyway.
I won’t deny I’m closely tied to the university–but at the same time, Spanier is an honorary member of my fraternity, I was there to initiate him, and I will be there when we have our first business meeting of the new academic year to move to expel him.
I also voted No back in November as well, but now would pick one of the middle two options. I stand by my vote at the time, based on the information at the time, but based on the more recent information, the Death Penalty is appropriate.
One of the main reasons I am against punishing the university or football program directly: I read in the news today that the student super-football-fan group known as “Paternoville” has officially changed their name (to “Nittanyville”, IIRC), and will be doing fundraising for the Center For Abused Children and Penn State Hershey Children’s Hospital.
The rank and file at Penn State (barring the relatively few idiots who protested Paterno’s firing before all the facts were public) are on the right side of this issue, and appear from where I sit (two miles from campus, in fact) to be making amends as an institution for the sins of their extinguished former luminaries.