<p>The following is repeated for the “NCAA should not be involved in this because no recruiting violations were uncovered” crowd:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>And for those blathering on and on and on and on about how sanctions which harm “innocents” who were still in grade school when the offenses were committed are patently unfair, please read the paragraph below as many times as it takes to sink into your heads. I mean, really, are we going to insist that if a program gets away with disgusting behavior long enough that they should somehow be immune to consequences because the violators have been long gone? So, I mean, just make sure not to get caught for as long as possible, so that once discovered, you can say, “well, too late for you.”</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>When SMU was given the death penalty for looking the other way while boosters paid players, all but 3 of those players were off having happy days in the pros or in post college life. The current players, students, and fans had nothing to do with with it. How many of the people blustering on about the collateral damage here gave two seconds of thought to those affected by the SMU penalty? Especially given the fact that your JoePa publicly applauded the “unprecedented” punishment given to SMU, it boggles the mind, really.</p>
<p>Actually I think the tension is less about PSU vs. all the other big unis as many of us have no particular interest in the specificity of “which” uni this is and more about reconstructionists vs. the deconstructionists. I personally found the “cult” and “Kool-aid” posts particularly amusing.</p>
<p>Yes, that has got to be one of the more bizarre arguments against sanctions that I’ve heard so far. So, if your peripheral school community is small, you are protected against severe sanctions, no matter how egregious the violations, where if a school located in a large community commits the SAME violations, their punishment may be very, very severe. Shakes head…</p>
<p>" The NCAA sanctions for Penn State were unprecedented for impacting the students who were not involved"</p>
<p>Why do you keep saying this, momofthreeboys? Sanctions against a program always impact students and others not involved. You and cosmic fish keep acting as though this is unprecedented. Innocent SMU and USC football players were hurt by sanctions.</p>
<p>As well as students and fans of those programs, and of every other athletic program which has ever faced severe sanctions. Repeating over and over that this is unprecedented does NOT make it so.</p>
<p>^^Because of the financial ramifications. Now, I certainly have no idea if the U can “cover” these fines without impacting the educational mission, and I’m not sure if the town deserves the potential “collateral damage”, no one really knows how this will play out. But personally I thought they were extremely heavy handed with the fines considering this was a problem with the administration. To me there is a world of difference between taking away “wins” and telling athletic teams they can’t play in bowl games and taking away athletic scholarships and telling a college they have to pony up millions and millions and millions of dollars. But others will argue that the fines were fair so the magnitude of the fines is just my personal opinion. Presumably no institution would “agree” to the NCAA sanctions like this unless they had crunched their numbers and had confidence they could cover the fines. As outsiders, I have to give them the benefit of the doubt on that one.</p>
<p>Their very quick capitulation indicates to me that they knew that financially they were fine…either that, or they really wanted no more scrutiny about how long this had been going on. Maybe both.</p>
<p>The administration being involved should have (and probably did) resulted in MORE fines, not less. Because the NCAA fines are about policing the institution, and who is in charge of the institution? Yeah. The administration.</p>
<p>The “we shouldn’t punish the institution because it will hurt innocent players” argument doesn’t make sense. If the company I work for violates EPA regulations, the entire company gets fined, not the three people in the administration who decided “let’s violate EPA regulations!” or “Let’s cheat our investors!” or “Let’s pretend there’s an energy shortage and ratchet up prices, even though there is not an energy shortage!” So if I am an innocent worker in Payroll, I could get effected by this as the company cuts back on other areas in order to pay the fine. But fining the entire company makes sense; if you blame individuals, the institution can throw a couple people under the bus and then continue Business As Usual. </p>
<p>IMO the players have been offered very generous options and a lot of freedom to pursue other schools–something someone working in a nine-to-five job who was effected by fines would certainly not have.</p>
<p>I think it’s possible to have a big enough mind to support the NCAA sanctions and still feel sorry for the people who will suffer collateral damage through no fault of their own.</p>
<p>And I do think it should be possible to discuss the specifics of the sanctions without being labelled as a supporter of child molesters. Nobody likes to be called a kool-aid drinker–but I assume that nobody likes to be called a member of a lynch mob, either.</p>
<p>It seems to me that it’s worth thinking about whether NCAA sanctions incentivize the improved behavior we’d like to see. As bclintock (I think) pointed out, it’s common for the sanctions to punish the institution (with all the collateral impacts), while the coaches and players who committed the wrongdoing are long gone and pay no penalty at all. So does this scare coaches at other institutions and make them behave better? Maybe it does. If, after its period of punishment, PSU ends up as a typical big-time university football program, with a powerful but not god-like coach, is that success? What element of this sordid tale will make officials at other colleges think twice about covering up a scandal like this? Is somebody going to say, “I’d better not protect this child molester–we might lose our bowl bid”–? Well, maybe they would.</p>
<p>I think the sanctions make little sense. Basically, Penn State will be playing Big 10 schools with a team not up to the job. Those players, young men, who will be taking those spots are likely to get hurt. Many of them will be rushing for what they see as an opportunity. Better they had just made the school close down the program for a period of years. This is just putting other young men in the line of fire, and yes, LasMa, students who were not one bit involved, knew or cared naught about football are being very much impacted.</p>
<p>Good friends of ours have a daughter at Penn State, as do family members. Maybe one out of the bunch took football into consideration in picking the school. They are at Penn State because they wanted a state university experience, and this is their state school. They preferred the bucolic and small town feel over Pitt and Temple, both very much city schools. Yes, this does impact them, and they never went to any Penn State football games, nor do they care for the sport, and would have gone to the school if the football team were not there. People do consider Penn State for reasons other than football, you know. But now it has defined the school. Anyone going there has been affected and with PA cutting funds to education as it has been doing, this will impact the academics and other parts of life in the school as well.</p>
<p>If I were a judge, I might impose a different fine on a guy with no family and a guy with a lot of children to feed, for the same crime. In some countries, traffic fines are pegged to your income–you pay a lot more if you’re rich–so everybody feels the same impact of punishment. So I see no problem in taking the broader impact of a punishment into account in crafting it. You might decide that you need to do it anyway, and it’s just tough luck for the people who have to suffer through no fault of their own. But I don’t see the point in pretending that they won’t suffer, or that it’s through no fault of their own.</p>
<p>Ideally, someone would say “I’d better not protect this child molester because children are being hurt.” Bur I suppose “…because I might lose my bowl bid” is better than nothing.</p>
<p>I agree Hunt. And I think that NCAA felt the same way. That is why they did not impose the “death penalty” (which I think is a horrible term anyway!!). </p>
<p>And I do think that everyone feels for those that are innocent, but considered collateral damage. It could have been much worse, though. I am glad that the NCAA considered the community/ students/ players in their decision.</p>
<p>I don’t think anyone was pretending that local merchants wouldn’t suffer, or that they didn’t feel sorry for them. I think what was being objected to was using them as a shield so as not to lose our precious football games without which life isn’t worth living. It’s worth noting that the death penalty would be far worse for them.</p>
<p>But there are many crowing that because there is a broader impact, that the sanctions are unfair and should not have been imposed. With that logic, no program may be sanctioned, therefore all sports programs may just do whatever they want, hurt children, pay players, cheat, etc., because the NCAA or whichever governing body to which they answer cannot reign them in without “hurting innocents.”</p>
<p>I support the NCAA sanctions, because I think they might incentivize some schools to assert more institutional control and oversight, and resist a football coach from amassing too much power.
But I don’t think they would really matter too much in any individual’s decision on whether to protect a child molester–what has already happened to the people who did that should be sufficient. Sandusky’s going to jail, Paterno’s reputation is trashed, and the other three execs may go to jail–and even if they don’t, their names are mud and they may get sued for every penny they possess. Do the NCAA sanctions add much? Again, I don’t think so, except perhaps for a more general incentive to improve institutional control.</p>
<p>
Who? On this thread, the strongest defenders of PSU have only said that the sanctions should be somewhat less for some of these reasons, not that they shouldn’t have been imposed at all.</p>
<p>Good question…do you believe the administration/athletic department/coaching staff at PSU will ever again harbor and protect a pedophile? I believe they won’t, therefore the answer to your question would be yes.</p>
and maybe folks will stop insisting that it’s all about “image”.</p>