NCAA Fines Penn State $60M, Issues Four-Year Bowl Ban

[Kaelin]

http://football.realgm.com/src_wiretap_ ... _bowl_ban/

According to an ESPN article, the $60m fine (approximately one year's revenue from the football program) will go towards organizations assisting children of sex abuse, and those organizations will not be under the university's control. The school also loses 20 scholarships, and athletes in the program will be allowed to transfer without penalty. Wins from the last ten years will also be vacated.

It's hard to name a price on something as horrible as child sex abuse and its systemic cover-up, but the penalty here is very substantial. From a monetary perspective, the school is paying up one year's of revenue (pre-scandal) and will obviously lose more indirectly from the additional penalties placed on the program. This is no slap on the wrist, and the ability for athletes to transfer means *they* don't have to bear the burden for the crimes committed by those in charge. Whether the penalties are enough is still another matter, but on first blush, this ruling seems legit.

[cochiseuofm]

The ruling is definitely legit and it is incredibly, but fairly, harsh. Penn State is going to be fielding a garbage team for four years - that is pretty much guaranteed. The loss in scholarships and ban on bowl games will hurt their recruiting to the point where they'll have to build around rejects from other big schools and walk-on students. Like I said in another thread, this is basically setting the school back a decade...it's meant to allow the school to rebuild their athletic department and mentality from the start again. As they should be doing.

And in addition to this, don't forget that the men involved are all, or mostly, going to jail. Paterno may have even faced time if he didn't pass away, and at the very least his legacy is forever destroyed.

And all for what...to protect a pedophile? I still can't believe a group of grown men were so gutless and self-serving that they just let this go. I can't believe that an assistant coach who saw Sandusky raping a kid didn't just beat the hell out of him at that very moment. How can you live with yourself, knowing you let a monster stay in the open?

[CablexDeadpool]

I hate this punishment...

This is a criminal investigation, NCAA overstepped their boundaries.

How the f*** are you gonna take away football wins, the University didn't cheat, didn't play ineligible players.

The athletes, fans and the new coach are being punished.

Jerry Sandusky is in jail, Joe Paterno is dead, I believe the presidents and execs of Penn State have been fired and probably going to jail.

Penn State already took that statue down.

Penn State already been shamed publically, Penn State is gonna be sued out the ass.

This punishment was over done, might as well give it the death penalty.

[cochiseuofm]

The NCAA punished Penn State because it put its football program over the well-being of kids. The problem with college athletics as a whole is that winning means too much, coaches are unscrupulous and seem without morals. They recruit like their lives depend on it and have incredible amounts of pressure to win games. It leads to them making bad personal choices, like JoePa did, and the NCAA needed to set an example that it is not OK in any sense to set your priorities that way.

The athletes are not being punished BTW...they can all choose to leave Penn State without sitting out a year or also choose to keep their scholarships without even having to play football. The fans are being punished, yes, but I'm sorry this is a lot bigger than the fans. There are plenty of college students who go to schools without great football programs, plenty of fans of teams who have to watch a bad product on the field.

And yes it sucks for the coach but that guy is still making a big salary to coach so hard to feel too bad for him either. He is in a no-lose situation now, if he does OK to well he will be heralded as a great coach, if he does bad people will be like well what did you expect.

This isn't the type of scandal you can just whitewash - it requires a total change of culture which unfortunately can only be fostered by having these sort of restrictions set on the team. And yes, I do think the NCAA was right to vacate the wins for JoePa too.

[craig01]

The penalties are harsh but the residual effect may take the PSU program 10 years to recover from.