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Murphy’s Law, written by Barbara Murphy, appears monthly in The Golden Times. The column represents the opinion of the author and is not necessarily the opinion of the publisher.
NCAA’s Sanctions Of Penn State
Are Punishment Of The Innocent
Since when did it become OK to punish the innocent for the crimes of the guilty?
I’ll tell you since when — since July 23, 2012 when the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) ruled that all of Pennsylvania State University as well as its football teams past and present should suffer for the criminal conduct of those on the University staff who covered up crimes of convicted child sexual abuser Jerry Sandusky. Mr. Sandusky was a former assistant football coach at Penn State.
Based on former FBI director Louis Freeh’s scathing report about the University’s handling of the Sandusky case, the NCAA fined Penn State $60 million, banned Penn State from post-season bowl games for four years, and reduced by 10 the number of football scholarships the school can award each of the next four years, among other penalties.
Most shocking of all, the NCAA also vacated all Penn State football victories from 1998 through 2011 — that’s 111 victories — so that the late Joe Paterno, the school’s head coach for 46 years before his dismissal last November, no longer ranks as the winningest coach in major college football history. (Coach Paterno died of cancer shortly after his dismissal.)
Penn State accepted the NCAA sanctions and said it would not appeal. The assumption is that the University feared the NCAA would ban all football at Penn State (for up to four years) if it fought the sanctions. If that assumption is true it is a crying shame and a blemish on American democracy. Until now, the right to appeal has been sacrosanct. Penn State should have appealed because the NCAA sanctions punish people who did nothing wrong and had nothing to do with the Sandusky scandal.
By banning bowl games for four years, the NCAA is sabotaging Penn State’s entire football program. Gifted players will elect to go somewhere else — at least one already has — and those who stay with Penn State can hardly be expected to play their best if their team has no chance to play in a bowl game. The sanctions against bowl game participation will be a constant reminder of the Sandusky scandal and it will stigmatize Penn State’s football players as people somehow connected to that scandal — even though no players past or present were involved.
This sanction and the $60 million fine imposed on Penn State will hurt the University financially and the injured will include every student on campus. Education at Penn State will be adversely affected by the loss of this money. Courses could be dropped, experienced professors dismissed and other extra curricular activities besides football could be curtailed or eliminated altogether.
Like Penn State’s football players, the students and professors had nothing to do with the Sandusky scandal.
Wiping 111 Penn State football victories from the books to destroy the legacy of a dead coach is both cruel and witless. Those games were played and Penn State won them — fairly. The victories belonged to the players, not to coach Paterno. The young men who won those games should not have to swallow the nonsense that the games never existed and all their hard work was for nothing. What was done to those players was a brutal exercise in psychological abuse.
I’ve had people tell me that the NCAA was right in what it did because of the shameful coverup of Mr. Sandusky’s crimes and because an example must be set that would destroy the idea that football is “too big to fail.” Again, I point out that the Penn State players and other students at the University had nothing to do with the Sandusky scandal.
I think you can set a frightening example of why such crimes should not be kept secret by prosecuting to the fullest extent of the law the people who actually participated in the coverup.
Louis Freeh is a distinguished public servant but I’m disturbed that the NCAA acted on the basis of one man’s report. I want the real offenders tried by a jury. If convicted, I want them to spend the rest of their lives in jail. That example would certainly dissuade anyone from trying to coverup Sandusky-style crimes in the future.
*
Barbara Murphy, 79, writes about controversial issues each month.
Are Punishment Of The Innocent
Since when did it become OK to punish the innocent for the crimes of the guilty?
I’ll tell you since when — since July 23, 2012 when the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) ruled that all of Pennsylvania State University as well as its football teams past and present should suffer for the criminal conduct of those on the University staff who covered up crimes of convicted child sexual abuser Jerry Sandusky. Mr. Sandusky was a former assistant football coach at Penn State.
Based on former FBI director Louis Freeh’s scathing report about the University’s handling of the Sandusky case, the NCAA fined Penn State $60 million, banned Penn State from post-season bowl games for four years, and reduced by 10 the number of football scholarships the school can award each of the next four years, among other penalties.
Most shocking of all, the NCAA also vacated all Penn State football victories from 1998 through 2011 — that’s 111 victories — so that the late Joe Paterno, the school’s head coach for 46 years before his dismissal last November, no longer ranks as the winningest coach in major college football history. (Coach Paterno died of cancer shortly after his dismissal.)
Penn State accepted the NCAA sanctions and said it would not appeal. The assumption is that the University feared the NCAA would ban all football at Penn State (for up to four years) if it fought the sanctions. If that assumption is true it is a crying shame and a blemish on American democracy. Until now, the right to appeal has been sacrosanct. Penn State should have appealed because the NCAA sanctions punish people who did nothing wrong and had nothing to do with the Sandusky scandal.
By banning bowl games for four years, the NCAA is sabotaging Penn State’s entire football program. Gifted players will elect to go somewhere else — at least one already has — and those who stay with Penn State can hardly be expected to play their best if their team has no chance to play in a bowl game. The sanctions against bowl game participation will be a constant reminder of the Sandusky scandal and it will stigmatize Penn State’s football players as people somehow connected to that scandal — even though no players past or present were involved.
This sanction and the $60 million fine imposed on Penn State will hurt the University financially and the injured will include every student on campus. Education at Penn State will be adversely affected by the loss of this money. Courses could be dropped, experienced professors dismissed and other extra curricular activities besides football could be curtailed or eliminated altogether.
Like Penn State’s football players, the students and professors had nothing to do with the Sandusky scandal.
Wiping 111 Penn State football victories from the books to destroy the legacy of a dead coach is both cruel and witless. Those games were played and Penn State won them — fairly. The victories belonged to the players, not to coach Paterno. The young men who won those games should not have to swallow the nonsense that the games never existed and all their hard work was for nothing. What was done to those players was a brutal exercise in psychological abuse.
I’ve had people tell me that the NCAA was right in what it did because of the shameful coverup of Mr. Sandusky’s crimes and because an example must be set that would destroy the idea that football is “too big to fail.” Again, I point out that the Penn State players and other students at the University had nothing to do with the Sandusky scandal.
I think you can set a frightening example of why such crimes should not be kept secret by prosecuting to the fullest extent of the law the people who actually participated in the coverup.
Louis Freeh is a distinguished public servant but I’m disturbed that the NCAA acted on the basis of one man’s report. I want the real offenders tried by a jury. If convicted, I want them to spend the rest of their lives in jail. That example would certainly dissuade anyone from trying to coverup Sandusky-style crimes in the future.
*
Barbara Murphy, 79, writes about controversial issues each month.