ESPN: Paterno's vacated wins restored!

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per Mike DeCourcy of Sporting News: Return of Joe Paterno's wins is the hollowest of victories

Some of the sanctions imposed were rolled back last summer as a sort of “good-behavior” gesture, including allowing the Nittany Lions to participate in a 2014 bowl game. Nearly all are now gone as the result Friday of the settlement of a lawsuit filed by Pennsylvania state senator Jake Corman.

“Today is a victory for due process,” Corman declared. “Today is a victory for the people of Pennsylvania. Today is a victory for Penn State nation.”

He got all that wrong, of course. This wasn’t a victory for anyone, except those who somehow cared what happened to Paterno’s victories. He’s got them back now. If that gets anyone through the day, heaven help them.

http://www.sportingnews.com/ncaa-fo...-sandusky-scandal-college-football-penn-state

Go Gophers!!
 

Why doesn't the NCAA go after all the programs that have been involved in a host of sexual assault and other criminal allegations and chose to cover them up over the last 30 years or so. Notre Dame, FSU, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Va Tech are among institution with a history of such behavior (http://www.motherjones.com/media/2013/12/college-football-sexual-assualt-jameis-winston). Yet, I don't remember any NCAA investigations into these incidents. They maintain a competitive advantage by sweeping wrong doings under the rug right? The arbitrary element of Penn State being penalized based on how uneasy the crimes are to stomach is what I have issue with. If it involved players raping a coed or something like that and the athletic department enabled this to go on, the NCAA would have been nowhere near this case. I dare anybody to tell me that this isn't analogous.
 

station19 said:
The NCAA should not have got involved.

I'm amazed some people believe they should.
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Do you agree that the cover up had one sole purpose and that was to protect the football program? And do you also agree that the sport of football is sanctioned by the NCAA? This is as clear cut as it gets. The NCAA had an obligation to punish them.
 

Gophers7NatTitlesBadgers0 said:
The arbitrary element of Penn State being penalized based on how uneasy the crimes are to stomach is what I have issue with. If it involved players raping a coed or something like that and the athletic department enabled this to go on, the NCAA would have been nowhere near this case. I dare anybody to tell me that this isn't analogous.
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I'll take that dare. The examples you use aren't analogous for the simple reason that they all involve the more difficult burden of proof of CONSENT. Jerry Sandusky was dealing with children on campus, in the facilities, in his home, where consent is not a factor. There was no real difficulty in proving Sandusky guilty - dozens of victims/witnesses, pages of damning testimony, etc. This was hardly a he-said / she-said situation. This was a chronic pedophile using his connections and contacts to keep his activities covered up 10+ years that resulted in the shattered lives of many young boys. The scale alone perpetrated by one man (and his enabling network) is not analogous.

I'm not standing up for the schools you mentioned, nor the behavior of the athletes who have been implicated in these college rape accusations. And I wouldn't be opposed to NCAA investigation in cases where the university or local authorities aren't doing their due dillegence. But to say these are comparable incidents is nonsense. And for the record, if a university like FSU or Notre Dame have a chronic problem with rape-cover up, then by all means the NCAA should attempt to get to the bottom of the situation. Especially when local authorities seem to be complacent or complicit.

Side note: Note that Mother Jones article did not raise the story of ex-Gopher and felon Dom Jones. That's because the Glen Mason and the U did the right thing, and dismissed him from the team immediately. Would be nice to see more schools put football aside to do the right thing.
 

Gopher Bandanna Guy said:
Side note: Note that Mother Jones article did not raise the story of ex-Gopher and felon Dom Jones. That's because the Glen Mason and the U did the right thing, and dismissed him from the team immediately. Would be nice to see more schools put football aside to do the right thing.
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I agree with everything in your post except one thing. It was Brewster who kicked Dom Jones and the three other players off the football team. Mason was fired about 9 months before the rape occurred.
 


Gophers7NatTitlesBadgers0 said:
Just in. Paterno is the winningest coach in Major College Football again. NCAA restoring his 111 vacated wins.

http://espn.go.com/college-football/story/_/id/12179571/joe-paterno-112-wins-were-vacated-restored
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Good thing - the NCAA penalties were insanely overboard. It was a criminal matter involving a handful of people, all of whom have paid the price. Punishing a vast number of people over a generation was a massive overreaction on the part of the NCAA.
 

While I think the NCAA did have a role to play in this with regard to the actions of one of its members, I did not like the taking away of victories from eligible students. Victories should only be take away when ineligible students are used....still waiting for UNC to lost 18 years worth of victories in basketball and football for the largest cheating scandal in the history of college sports. What's that you say NCAA? Hello...is this thing on? Frauds.
 

With the wins restored...all we'll hear now is that nothing ever occurred and all the denial will continue....sickens me.
 

Stan said:
"A great victory"? Wow.

<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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That's the Penn St. way. They are more worried about football and records than what happened to those kids. The real 'great victory' was when Sandusky was sentenced.
 



If Josh Adel went to Richard Pitino and told him that a Gopher assistant was actively selling thousands of pounds of weed to local youths, and it confirmed Pitino's suspicions, and he kept it a secret for 11 years.......The NCAA shouldn't get involved??

Terrible, and obviously completely hypothetical example (although it would be much better than what happened at PSU), but I fail to see any logic in the argument that the NCAA shouldn't be involved.

Can a coach (Roy Williams) simply say he didn't know and avoid NCAA penalties?

Actions have consequences, at least they did. No more.

The NCAA has a code of conduct. If coaches cheat in recruiting, they presumably get punished. A University systematically covers up child rape and the NCAA says "this is out of our jurisdiction"?
 

GopherinPhilly said:
While I think the NCAA did have a role to play in this with regard to the actions of one of its members, I did not like the taking away of victories from eligible students. Victories should only be take away when ineligible students are used....still waiting for UNC to lost 18 years worth of victories in basketball and football for the largest cheating scandal in the history of college sports. What's that you say NCAA? Hello...is this thing on? Frauds.
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While I wish the NCAA hadn't gotten involved, the idea is that had there not been a coverup, all the negative publicity would have driven away a lot of the recruits that won them those games.
 

die hard gopher said:
While I wish the NCAA hadn't gotten involved, the idea is that had there not been a coverup, all the negative publicity would have driven away a lot of the recruits that won them those games.
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One must contort and assume to draw such a connection between the "cover-up" (which was more approximately "negligence" rather than a true cover-up) and any sort of competitive advantage that should vacate wins, or even warrant any sort opinion on the matter from the NCAA. Meanwhile the NCAA turns a blind eye to police reports and investigations that scream rules violations are happening elsewhere that led to a DIRECT competetive advantage.

This is why the NCAA exposed itself as a sham of an organization in the Paterno matter. This was not their business. And meanwhile their business is ON FIRE and they are doing nothing about it.

At the time, at least, the organization had lost its focus and turned into a meda/ pop-culture lynch mob, and absolutely nothing more.
 




Hypothetical for those of you who say this had nothing to do with football. A mythical southern school with a coach who used to coach in the Big Ten wins the conference championship and their 13-0 team is the top seed in the playoff. To blow off some steam before bowl practice starts, the head coach takes the staff on a weekend jaunt to the Caribbean. They rent the same kind of boat the Vikings did eight years ago. The following week video emerges of the antics on the boat. It is al over the Internet and it is graphic. The University decides to sit on their hands because they really want this title. The conference backs off because they haven't had a team reach the title game in three years - echoing the school they indicate that they'll "wait for the process to run its course". In the interim the two lead advertisers threaten to cancel their contracts with the NCAA if these coaches are involved in the playoff and President Obama, Mitch McConnel, and John Beohner indicate that they'll pursue the revocation of non-profit status if no action is taken. Should the NCAA suspend any of the coaches? Or should they sit idle because no rule has been violated and no football advantage gained?
 

I don't understand the argument that the NCAA should not become involved in criminal matters. I agree where there is no attempt by a school to cover up a crime to keep a player or coach eligible, the mere fact that a player or coach has been charged with a criminal offense should not be a matter of NCAA concern. But where there is a cover up to protect the school or one or more of its sports programs, or where the school seems indifferent to the criminal behavior, I think that is quite a different matter, and that's my view of what happened at Penn State. Joe Paterno did not want to lose a valuable member of this staff, and he did not want to have the reputation of Penn State football tarnished. So he tolerated the intolerable for what was it, 11 years? How many children could have been spared an unconscionable experience had Paterno been less concerned with Penn State football and more concerned about what is right. And what has occurred to justify restoring his victories or to permit Penn State to lift early the ban on Penn State's participation in post season play. Program good behavior? Minnesota since the Clem Haskins academic fraud scandal has, to my knowledge, been well behaved, but we haven't had any games restored. And what about the discrepancy thus far in the NCAA's treatment of Minnesota's academic fraud, which was limited in time to a couple of years and in scope to a limited number of players in one sport, and did not involve totally fictitious classes, in comparison with 18 years of academic fraud at the University of North Carolina that included its entire sports program and totally fictitious courses. I'm not aware that the NCAA is even contemplating any sanctions in that case.
 

beatles said:
Do you agree that the cover up had one sole purpose and that was to protect the football program? And do you also agree that the sport of football is sanctioned by the NCAA? This is as clear cut as it gets. The NCAA had an obligation to punish them.
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No
Yes
No
No

Why do you place so much importance on football and the NCAA? We have a judicial system to handle crimes against society. The NCAA is to enforce rules of recruiting, organize tournaments and make sure student athletes are really students.

Our society has a system to protect us against criminals of wrong doing....................................................................and it ain't the NCAA.

So sad you believe football and the NCAA is more important the our criminal justice system.
 

If the NCAA stands for nothing, WHAT IS THE POINT OF HAVING A NCAA? Dissolve it .

Better yet, any politician with any fortitude, gut it. Strip it of all it's "power". Taxpayers of Pennsylvania are paying for child rape. But, God forbid some poor kid at Middle Tennessee St. gets a ride home from an assistant coach. Blow this farce up!
 


If there is a hell, Joe Pa is in it for the part he played and he and his good buddy Sandusky can spend eternity down there together hugging it out.
 

My views on this have been aired out as well, so all I'm going to say is this:

Either this wasn't an NCAA matter and the penalties were to harsh, or it was an NCAA matter and the penalties were grossly inadequate. There is no middle ground.
 


balds said:
The NCAA has a code of conduct. If coaches cheat in recruiting, they presumably get punished. A University systematically covers up child rape and the NCAA says "this is out of our jurisdiction"?
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If the NCAA is going to do nothing to UNC after decades of organized academic fraud to sustain athletic eligibility, then the NCAA's entire foundation is a fraud. Not surprised that they caved to PSU, who still don't think that they did anything wrong.
 

badgergopher said:
Hypothetical for those of you who say this had nothing to do with football. A mythical southern school with a coach who used to coach in the Big Ten wins the conference championship and their 13-0 team is the top seed in the playoff. To blow off some steam before bowl practice starts, the head coach takes the staff on a weekend jaunt to the Caribbean. They rent the same kind of boat the Vikings did eight years ago. The following week video emerges of the antics on the boat. It is al over the Internet and it is graphic. The University decides to sit on their hands because they really want this title. The conference backs off because they haven't had a team reach the title game in three years - echoing the school they indicate that they'll "wait for the process to run its course". In the interim the two lead advertisers threaten to cancel their contracts with the NCAA if these coaches are involved in the playoff and President Obama, Mitch McConnel, and John Beohner indicate that they'll pursue the revocation of non-profit status if no action is taken. Should the NCAA suspend any of the coaches? Or should they sit idle because no rule has been violated and no football advantage gained?
Click to expand...

Of course the NCAA should suspend the coaches who were involved. I am all for punishing people who have actual complicity in bad activity.
 

vagopher said:
I don't understand the argument that the NCAA should not become involved in criminal matters. I agree where there is no attempt by a school to cover up a crime to keep a player or coach eligible, the mere fact that a player or coach has been charged with a criminal offense should not be a matter of NCAA concern. But where there is a cover up to protect the school or one or more of its sports programs, or where the school seems indifferent to the criminal behavior, I think that is quite a different matter, and that's my view of what happened at Penn State. Joe Paterno did not want to lose a valuable member of this staff, and he did not want to have the reputation of Penn State football tarnished. So he tolerated the intolerable for what was it, 11 years? How many children could have been spared an unconscionable experience had Paterno been less concerned with Penn State football and more concerned about what is right. And what has occurred to justify restoring his victories or to permit Penn State to lift early the ban on Penn State's participation in post season play. Program good behavior? Minnesota since the Clem Haskins academic fraud scandal has, to my knowledge, been well behaved, but we haven't had any games restored. And what about the discrepancy thus far in the NCAA's treatment of Minnesota's academic fraud, which was limited in time to a couple of years and in scope to a limited number of players in one sport, and did not involve totally fictitious classes, in comparison with 18 years of academic fraud at the University of North Carolina that included its entire sports program and totally fictitious courses. I'm not aware that the NCAA is even contemplating any sanctions in that case.
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The obvious distinction between what happened under Haskins and what happened at Penn State is that the Gophers were playing those games with players that should have been ineligible due to the academic fraud taking place. Penn State was not playing with ineligible players.

I am all for Paterno getting the wins back. The entire situation is disgusting and Paterno's legacy has been tarnished beyond repair just for his association with Sandusky no matter how much of what was going on he was actually aware of (which of course we will never know). But in this case I still see a difference between this being a criminal vs. a football issue and have not felt that the NCAA should have been as involved as it was. The people responsible are being punished by the legal system as they should be for the criminal acts that took place. The school was dragged through the mud and will always have this associated with them but from a football standpoint they really don't deserve to be punished at all at this point.
 

We should dissolve all the governments in the world and put the NCAA in charge.

No one or no group can guide any organization or society as well as the NCAA.

Then :drink:
 




Reading some of these opinions, I'm reminded of the old car salesman saw is that it's easy to convince those that want to be convinced.

We see it in all areas of life. People who really get into politics are like this. They Want To Believe. I see the same denial in those who want to believe that this had nothing to do with protecting the image of Penn State and the football program and by extension recruiting and donations, etc.

C'est la vie.

Now the PSU/paterno defenders can have their trophy back? It should look something like this:

joepa2.jpg

And here is my ode to the deaf, blind and dumb at Perv State

joepa.jpg
 

Unregistered User said:
Starting just after the 2:00 mark.

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Thanks for posting this video. It pretty much sums up everything that needs to be said along with what phillygopher had to say about Joe and Jerry spending some quality time together in a place much warmer than happy valley.
 

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