Penn State is FUDGED

[Doppleganger]

You've probably heard the story, as it's been circulating since last Fall, but a brief time-line of events

Penn State was one of the most lucrative and successful college football programs ever, and that legacy was crafted by Joe Paterno, the head coach of the team and a College Football Hall of Famer.

However, Paterno once had a coach named Jerry Sandusky who, over the course of a decade, raped 10 young boys in his locker room. Paterno and his staff covered up the felonies for years until news erupted last Fall. They hid the crimes because the school was fearful of the impact such a scandal would have had on the football program and its revenue stream.

In the wake of the reveal, Paterno was fired, and he died earlier this year watching his empire crumble, and earlier today the killing blow was delivered to the sports program.

Football wasn't terminated, but the sanctions issued by the NCAA are pretty intense:

-4 year ban on Bowl games/post-season play
-$60M fine (victim lawsuits will be incoming as well)
-10 fewer scholarships for the next for years
-retroactive absolution of all wins from 1997-2009 (under Paterno)
-players can transfer to other universities automatically

The "death penalty" would have been abolishing the program outright, but that would have had negative repercussions on the Big 10 football conference. These sanctions are more akin to "life without parole" because the school won't be able to attract talent or field a winning (let alone competitive) team for 4 years, and has to live with the shame and disgrace of what they allowed. The damage is so immense, it would take a decade or two for the program to recover if it can.

...

Source.

[Talon87]

I think the NCAA was worried that the so-called "death penalty" (can't play any games for one year) would have been far too lenient a penalty given that they issued the same penalty for far less in the past. I don't think there's any denying that the "death penalty" option would be far preferred by Penn State's football staff, their fans, and their students to the actual punishments dished out by the NCAA. $60 million alone in fines in addition to victim litigation is rather suffocating as it is. College football brings in the dough like nobody's business but because it does that I doubt that Penn State had saved up that much money for a rainy day like this. (Rainy day? More like monsoon season!) Normally it'd be doable for them to try and make that money over the course of the next 5-10 years through their football program's ticket sales; but with their football program de facto disbanded for the next four years (the loss of athlete scholarships and the invitation for the athletes to transfer to other universities if they so desire will all but see to it), it means that Penn State has no source of football revenue with which to offset these damages ... meaning the $60 million will have to come from other sources, notably:

• student tuition and other undergraduate fees
• funds allocated to the university's research labs
• other university funds and scholarships

The NCAA is basically sending a huge, loud, declarative statement to all college faculty and sports programs nationwide: DO NOT ATTEMPT TO COVER THIS SORT OF THING UP. AS BAD AS IT MAY BE TO GO PUBLIC WITH IT, IF WE CATCH YOU, YOU WILL BE IN FOR FAR, FAR WORSE. It's like saying "If the cost of admitting you goofed is $1, then the cost of trying to hide it but getting caught is $1,000,000." It's such a heavy punishment that no college football staffer -- or college faculty member period! -- is going to withhold information they may have about a coworker's felonious activities. Had Paterno not died earlier this year from cancer, it seems almost certain that the university would have let him go, sending a statement to all their other employees -- "if we catch you doing something similar, don't bother coming back to work tomorrow."

Then again, I took a look at Purdue's revenue report from 2010 and ... it looks like Purdue has a gross annual value approaching $4 billion. So maybe $60 million is nothing and Penn State will be able to "easily" shrug it off and I am so so wrong.

[phoopes]

As someone who lives in Pennsylvania and has been a Penn State football fan for life, I have some mixed feelings about this, and the whole case in general. Because Dopple has only provided a few details, here's the full timeline for everyone interested.

1969: Jerry Sandusky hired as a defensive coach on the Penn State staff.
1977: Sandusky helps found The Second Mile, a group foster home that helps children with dysfunctional families.
1994: A boy that the grand jury called "Victim 7" meets with Sandusky through The Second Mile. He told the grand jury that he has a "blurry memory" of showering with Sandusky.
1998: Penn State police and an investigator from the State Department of Public Welfare interviewed Sandusky. No charges were filed, and Sandusky promised to stop showering with children.
1999: Joe Paterno, head coach of the football program at Penn State at the time, told Sandusky he would not be the next head coach. However, Sandusky would be allowed to keep special privileges, such as using team facilities, after he retired.
2000: A janitor witnessed Sandusky having oral sex with a young boy, known as "Victim 8" during the trial. The janitor told coworkers and his supervisor, but no one allerted the authorities.
2002: Penn State assistant coach Mike McQueary told Penn State officials (including head coach Joe Paterno) that he had witnessed Sandusky having sex with a young boy in the shower.
2009: An investigation is begun by the attorney general of Pennsylvania after a boy told authorities that he had been touched by Sandusky over a four-year period.
2010: Sandusky retires from The Second Mile.
November 5th, 2011: Sandusky arrested and faced 48 criminal counts in court.
November 7th, 2011: Penn State's athletic director, Tim Curley, and vice president for finance and business, Gary Schultz, step down from their positions. They face charges of perjury for not allerting police of the allegations of Sandusky's acts when they were brought to their attention.
November 8th, 2011: Joe Paterno fired.
January 22nd, 2012: Joe Paterno dies.
June 11th, 2012: Sandusky's trial begins.
June 22nd, 2012: Sandusky found guilty on 45 of 48 counts for molesting up to 10 boys over the course of 15 years.
July 12th, 2012: The Freeh Report was released. Louis Freeh is the former director of the FBI, who was hired by Penn State's board of trustees to investigate what happened. One of the main things brought up was the fact that school officials covered up the scandal by not reporting what they knew.
July 23rd, 2012: Penn State hit with sanctions.

I'll provide my actual reaction to this later. Right now, I'm still processing what happened and don't know what to think.

EDIT:

For Talon: $60 million was decided on for the fine amount because that is about what Penn State's football program brings in per year. It's a steep price to pay for any university.

[Talon87]

One of the problems seems to be, and this applies arguably to everybody who came to know about it (from the janitor and McQueary to Paterno and their higher-ups), that nobody felt it was appropriate to call the police and get them involved. "Let's keep this in-house." Maybe the janitor was too uneducated to realize that this was a criminal matter that warranted police involvement. Maybe the football staff were too naive and felt, "Well all I have to do is report it to my higher-up. He'll be the one to call the police!" But it looks like, by your flowchart, in 2002 at the latest the police should have gotten involved (again, following their involvement in 1998 ). Instead it took seven years before the attorney general became aware of what was going on. This in 2009, and only then because a victim came forth, not because anyone at Penn State notified the police.

One of the problems I think in this country, and I'm surprised to see it apply to people over twice my age but I guess that just speaks to how far back the habit goes, is that parents instill in their children such a sense of taboo when it comes to calling 911 or the police that people are very hesitant to do it even when to an outsider it's pretty clear that this is a case which requires police involvement. When you're a kid, everyone tells you "DON'T CALL 911 UNLESS IT'S ABSOLUTE EMERGENCY! " They tell you it so often -- parents, teachers, caretakers, and surrogate parental figures on television (think Mr. Rogers or LeVar Burton) -- that it's ingrained in you at a very deep level from a very early age. "I should only call 911 when I am absolutely certain the situation warrants it." And then what happens is, people by extension become afraid to call the police ("because calling the police is the same as calling 911! ") unless they've witnessed something which they're sure warrants a 911 call. I think that's the problem you see in that gap between 2000 and 2002, and I think it's the same problem you again see in the gap between 2002 and 2009: someone witnessed child molestation firsthand but didn't think to call the police, figuring it would instead be proper protocol to let their boss know and to let their boss make the decision about calling the police. Like a game of hot potato, the obligation of calling the police and letting them know "HOLY SHIT I JUST SAW THIS GUY FORCING A LITTLE KID TO !@#$$%%$%#$ HIM OFF! " passes from one person to another until finally someone puts the potato down, usually someone very high up, and the phone call is never placed because everyone in the chain assumes that either someone beneath them (minus the guy on the one end of the chain) or else someone above them (minus the guy on the other end of the chain) is going to do it.

[Firewater]

I think of it as this, I agree that punishment had to be dealt for this, if not only for what Sandusky did, but for the corruption in the Penn State program. I at the same time have some pity for the people not involved, I don't count the football players because they get to keep their scholarships/can move, while admittedly not being able to play in a bowl is a little dissapointing, but I feel bad for the rest of the facility, I applaud the NCAA for not allowing Penn State to dump money by kicking people from scholarship, I do wonder for the rest of the student body, like how much will they lose out from the millions that this scandal will cost them (less services, higher tuition, etc.)

I think that killing the football team alone would have sufficed, not doing something that cripples the entire University and the student body not affiliated. (and not the players themselves, just Penn State's program).

[Itzatrap]

Too much bad blood in the program, they deserve to basically be shut down. Feel sorry for the people that now have to change their lives because of it but hey, it's not anywhere near as bad as what everyone involved in this mess did, including the students that defended Paterno by him not speaking up about Sandisky, to the monster himself.

[Muyotwo]

I don't claim to be an expert on many things, but I do know a whole hell of a lot about college football, so I'll try to explain some things.

Though I agree with Talon that the Death Penalty would have been less severe than what Penn State actually received, saying that they issued "the same penalty for far less" in the past is not entirely accurate. Yes, Jerry Sandusky's actions were deplorable and the worst that college football has ever been associated with (not necessarily the worst coverup ever pulled in all collegiate sports, what with the former Baylor Men's Basketball coach attempting to cover up a murder of one of his players which was perpetrated by another of his players), but it could easily be argued that Penn State's football program is being punished for actions that have very little to do with the football program. Yes, Paterno and the Penn State administration performed despicable actions, but from the perspective of the NCAA they only committed one major violation (which was a bit of a stretch, really)- Lack of Institutional Control, and the fact that Penn State was not a repeat offender meant that it was not actually eligible for the death penalty. Though the offenses committed by SMU (the only football program to ever receive the death penalty) were nowhere near as awful as those committed by Penn State, its status as a repeat offender as well as the LOIC charge were what eventually brought the NCAA down on it. If the NCAA had tried to give Penn State the death penalty the university would have appealed and won.

I'll also answer one of Talon's other assertions that Penn State will have essentially zero football revenue for the next few years: No, they'll still have plenty. The only way Penn State would have been boned in this regard would have been if they had been kicked out of the Big Ten conference as a result of the scandal. As that did not happen they will still have the Big Ten's multiple TV contract tie-ins pouring into the coffers, as well as ticket revenue for their home games (yes, the fans are still going to go see the Penn State football program- there was actually a stretch in the early 00's where Penn State was pretty darn awful but they still averaged 110k a game) which will mean Penn State will still remain profitable. The Big Ten has ruled that they won't be given a share of bowl revenue for four years, and that they will instead donate Penn State's share to child abuse charities (nice work Big Ten), but that's only 13 million over four years, which is not too crippling for a program that was the second most profitable in the NCAA last year.

As for what I personally think would have been the right punishment in this case- I would have had Penn State fire everyone in the upper echelon of their athletic department, as well as every employee who concealed Sandusky's actions (To my knowledge this has already been done). I would have struck Paterno's wins since 1998 from the record books (which was also done) and increased the fine significantly (but allowed it to be paid over a longer length of time). And finally, I would have instructed the university to hold an awareness game once a season in perpetuity- where the proceeds (Ticket sales, concessions, parking etc.) goes to charities for victims of child abuse. That way those who are innocent in the Penn State program (the students, fans, alumni and players) wouldn't have to suffer the crippling of one of their grief/distraction outlets, while the game would serve as a reminder of what had happened and honor the victims. I think that would be the fairest way to handle things.

Though really if one of the victims told me that Penn State not playing football for a year would do anything to make him feel better I'd shut that fucker down in an instant.

[Sneaze]

As Muyo said, people are still going to attend home games, especially since (and I live in PA and can say this is the honest truth) there are MANY people who attend the college's home games who have literally no idea about the scandal. Ignorance is a very big thing on this issue, you'd really be surprised.

[phoopes]

Originally Posted by Sneezey12

As Muyo said, people are still going to attend home games, especially since (and I live in PA and can say this is the honest truth) there are MANY people who attend the college's home games who have literally no idea about the scandal. Ignorance is a very big thing on this issue, you'd really be surprised.

I'd disagree here. I too live in PA, and everyone knows about it. However, people are pulling a "LALALALA, I CAN'T HEAR YOU," and are completely avoiding the subject altogether in a lot of cases. But yes, Penn State will still sell out most games. We'll definitely still support the team, especially since it's been said that many of the core juniors and seniors will still stay around. However, there are definitely temptations, like Silas Redd (running back and arguably best player on the team) being "recruited" hard by USC.

[Talon87]

That's unfortunate for Mr. Redd to be placed in such a position. He's probably going to get some crazy-good offers from USC, and joining USC is all but a guarantee that he'll be in a bowl game, something the Nittany Lions can't promise him between now and when he graduates. Do you give up your chance to play in a college bowl game? or do you stay loyal to the program and the fans that supported you in the first place? Really shitty decision to have to make that reeks of LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers a few years back.

[Sneaze]

>phoopes

Your part of PA must be fairly different than my part. Granted, I do have the people who are "I CAN'T HEAR YOU", but most people go to the games just for something to do and don't keep up with the news in general to know about the scandal (which is pretty sad considering how long it's been in headlines)

[Doppleganger]

Originally Posted by Muyotwo

If the NCAA had tried to give Penn State the death penalty the university would have appealed and won.

Penn State signed an agreement before the sanctions that they'd not appeal a sanction no matter what it was.

Originally Posted by Sneezey12

Your part of PA must be fairly different than my part. Granted, I do have the people who are "I CAN'T HEAR YOU", but most people go to the games just for something to do and don't keep up with the news in general to know about the scandal (which is pretty sad considering how long it's been in headlines)

If they don't know now, they'll find out when opposing team's fans throw up flyers like "PENETRATION STATE" or "PENETRATION STATION".

[phoopes]

Don't forget about the fantastic Pedophile State. Seriously, the NCAA sanctions aren't going to be the only thing setting us back. The awful reputation that Penn State is getting for this (though deservedly so) is going to act as a repellent to potential recruits for years.

[Talon87]

Yeah, the program is fucked, just like Doppel said from the very start with the thread's title.

[Sneaze]

So, glancing at a news paper just now, State Farm is pulling their ads from Penn State, and General Mills is considering doing the same.

[Doppleganger]

So, I was talking with BPK about the Bill Cosby case and stumbled upon a little-reported revelation that football is more important than human rights violations.

Niiice.

[phoopes]

Originally Posted by Doppleganger

So, I was talking with BPK about the Bill Cosby case and stumbled upon a little-reported revelation that football is more important than human rights violations.

Niiice.

Restoring wins is a silly thing to be upset about. Considering what happened in the Sandusky scandal never actually affected what happened on the football field, stripping wins from the record books was a dumb way to punish Penn State anyway. And besides, even though the wins were taken away from the record books, millions of people witnessed those games either in person or on television, so the wins still would have existed in the memories of those people. Overall, even though restoring wins made the headlines, that's not the most important part of all this.

Under the new settlement, the university has agreed to commit a total of $60 million to activities and programs for the prevention of child sexual abuse and the treatment of victims of child sexual abuse.

I wouldn't exactly call the above putting football above all else.

[Doppleganger]

By Penn State's admission, $60M is a drop in the bucket and an easy way to put the Paterno scandal out of sight and mind. Punishment should not have been compensated for in money, because money was the primary driving factor in suppressing the scandal in the first place. The fact that fans care about the wins is good evidence that those wins mean more to people than money ever did.

[Muyotwo]

I'd say the Paterno scandal will remain on the minds of Penn State no matter what the "win total" may say for reasons like this.

Before:


After:


The actions that Sandusky performed were evil in its most base form, and all of those that had any part in hiding those actions (and allowing those actions to continue) are the scum of the earth as well, but those who were in power at the time are either fired or dead. As for the wins... eh, I'm of two minds about it. It's not quite like the WWE a fake, but individual sport where when they had an issue of unconscionable evil occur and simply chose to wipe him from the record books. It's harder in football- sure, Paterno's lack of action was incredibly wrong, but there were 80 kids on each of those teams that played and won each of those games, and to pretend that it didn't happen because of the actions of the one in charge doesn't sit right with me. Maybe my feelings would be different if Paterno were still alive, as it would be a way to hold him accountable for his inaction, but he's past the point where we can do anything to him other than sue his estate. If vacating the wins would help the victims in some way, I'm all for it, but I don't see how the NCAA saying that Paterno didn't win as many football games as he did is going to help anyone with closure. Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems like a very small thing to be worried about in the lives of these kids.

[phoopes]

Originally Posted by Doppleganger

By Penn State's admission, $60M is a drop in the bucket and an easy way to put the Paterno scandal out of sight and mind. Punishment should not have been compensated for in money, because money was the primary driving factor in suppressing the scandal in the first place. The fact that fans care about the wins is good evidence that those wins mean more to people than money ever did.

Just because $60 million is a "drop in the bucket" for them doesn't change the fact that it's a ton of money going towards helping victims of the exact crimes Sandusky committed. The university is actually helping people wiht the money, so I don't get the criticism. And just because fans care about the wins doesn't mean they don't care about the victims. I'm in agreement with Muyo, I'm not so sure wiping a football team from the record books is going to give anyone closure. The money is all that's needed in my mind. Any punishment given to the football team is punishing college kids that had nothing to do with any of this.

[Shuckle]

Originally Posted by Doppleganger

By Penn State's admission, $60M is a drop in the bucket and an easy way to put the Paterno scandal out of sight and mind. Punishment should not have been compensated for in money, because money was the primary driving factor in suppressing the scandal in the first place. The fact that fans care about the wins is good evidence that those wins mean more to people than money ever did.

I'd rather have the fine be a drop in the bucket rather than such a significant amount that tuition spikes.

It's like smearing shit all over the McDs bathroom because they don't pay their workers enough. The person responsible for cleaning it up isn't the person you're trying to attack, it's the person you're trying to help.