Should the Penn State football program get the death penalty?

The Game Room
101

(I’m posing some hypotheticals here, and it’s not meant to put down PSU or elevate Texas - where I work and my alma mater. It’s more of a thought exercise about “how would this play out here?”)

There is something worrisome about the level of influence that Paterno had at PSU. Texas is equally as crazy about football, but the minute something untoward surfaces in athletics they clean up their house pretty quickly. I think Paterno had been there too long - and the emails from administrators basically figuring out how to cover their asses to save Sandusky and the football program are stomach-turning.

One of Mack Brown’s top assistants (and I guy I used to deal with at least a few times a year) was accused of sexual harassment a few years back. The university investigated, he was terminated. Open and shut. I just can’t imagine why when the first inkling of something awry in Sandusky’s behavior didn’t result in his immediate termination. Excepting all considerations of humanity except football, was Sandusky that great of a coach that people would tolerate a pedophile in their midst? I can see how the longer he continued the harder it became to get rid of him, but have we not seen this movie a million times? The cover up is always worse than the crime (sanction wise, I can’t imagine much more horrible than what happened to those children).

I think PSU needs the banhammer big time, both for what the coaching staff and administration failed to do, what they did to enable Sandusky, and to demonstrate for the billionth time that if you’ve got a cancer - it’s your job to cut it out. Don’t let someone else discover it. Furthermore, if you’re a PSU fan, can you really stomach football right now? It would make me ill if I knew that my program’s success came at the price of child rape, and that people knew about it and let it continue for wins and bowl games. It’s not like Sandusky was a temporary presence and left. He was there the entire time and everyone who was anyone (i.e., his bosses) knew about it.

I’m trying to think about how this would play out at Texas. I think it would be much different. Most people see Mack Brown as a benevolent figure, but I can’t see students rallying around him the way PSU students rallied around Paterno. I think this has to do with tenure - there is such a thing as staying too long. Paterno became bigger than the university itself, which simply can’t happen.

I think the days of the coach 'til you die are gone. Bowden and Paterno will be the last to be allowed to hang around that long.

102

Just to add, I don’t think Texas or any other Division 1 top-tier program is whiter than white. I’m sure we could find something untoward if we looked around. But extended practices, maybe someone getting benefits when they shouldn’t, pale in comparison to what happened at PSU - and worse, it’s now been proven that this was known and covered up.

I am a little confused by the “not the death penalty, but worse than the death penalty” rumor circulating. SMU has never fully recovered from the DP, and Miami’s and USC’s shenanigans didn’t provoke the NCAA to put the smack down. It’s sort of like the nuclear option - they already detonated the weapon on one program and they know it’s too powerful to use.

I think part of the penalty will be the usual TV/scholly ban. Which won’t hurt PSU that much - they’re PSU, and once the penalty is lifted, they’ll come back a lot quicker than SMU. Pennsylvania is a great football state, and PSU is the 800 lb gorilla in the region. Who wouldn’t want to rebuild a great program? So it has to be more - prohibitions on postseason, some kind of supervision of the coaches - something like that which would make the job very unappealing?

Like SMU, I figure that the players will get the opportunity to finish their eligibility elsewhere.