Updates About Penn State Scandal UPDATED 6/12: PSU has spent $45.9M on scandal

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Replacement Gopher said:
"recruiting is unaffected". Really? PSU has had no negative impact to recruiting from this? C'mon man. In the words of DPO, that is silly and absurd.
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They have a top 15 recruiting class. They are recruiting better than they did under Joe Pa. Would you care to point what part of that suggests they are being negatively affected? Unless you're saying they'd be a top 10 or top 5 class without the scandal, I fail to see where any part of O'Brien's first recruiting class (thus far) would count as negative.
 




I think Penn State should do the Big Ten a big favor and impose sanctions keeping them off the big stage for a few years. I don't want them playing in prime time this year in a conference title game or representing the conference in a BCS Bowl Game.

I think two years would be enough. Right now they are a pariah for the conference. PSU could buy some goodwill by self imposing sanctions while this mess is being cleaned up. Maybe a new regime focused on character that attempts to reconcile with the victims rising up from this tragedy in a couple of years will be a story people can embrace.

Bottom line, I think the NCAA sanctions is a tough sell, but The Big Ten taking action if Penn State doesn't is necessary. Another important note that needs to be considered is that this is the same regime including Paterno, that provided Rene Portland cover when she went on a witch hunt "outing" gay players and railroading their careers. She was embraced until the national media went after her. There are real culture issues at Penn State.
 


akgopher said:
I think Penn State should do the Big Ten a big favor and impose sanctions keeping them off the big stage for a few years. I don't want them playing in prime time this year in a conference title game or representing the conference in a BCS Bowl Game.

I think two years would be enough. Right now they are a pariah for the conference. PSU could buy some goodwill by self imposing sanctions while this mess is being cleaned up. Maybe a new regime focused on character that attempts to reconcile with the victims rising up from this tragedy in a couple of years will be a story people can embrace.

Bottom line, I think the NCAA sanctions is a tough sell, but The Big Ten taking action if Penn State doesn't is necessary. Another important note that needs to be considered is that this is the same regime including Paterno, that provided Rene Portland cover when she went on a witch hunt "outing" gay players and railroading their careers. She was embraced until the national media went after her. There are real culture issues at Penn State.
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Pretty much agree.

Self imposed sanctions by Penn State is the best way and I would be surprised if that didn't happen.

An NCAA official stated there was no evidence of NCAA infractions at this time.

If there were to be sanctions imposed by some outside organization I would be much happier if it were the Big Ten as opposed to the NCAA.
 


akgopher said:
I think Penn State should do the Big Ten a big favor and impose sanctions keeping them off the big stage for a few years. I don't want them playing in prime time this year in a conference title game or representing the conference in a BCS Bowl Game.
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akgopher is absolutely correct in the fact that Penn State should impose penalties on themselves. That is what should happen to show that Penn State is truly repentant about what happened there. But skipping postseason games for 2 years is a slap on the wrist - they should shut down the football program for a year or two.

Here's another call for the death penalty for Penn State, from a writer in Pittsburgh nonetheless:
http://triblive.com/sports/2194460-74/paterno-football-freeh-penalty-death-ncaa-penn-state-kovacevic-child

Read the whole thing - he addresses the silly arguments that it's unfair to punish the current players & students and the weak arguments that NCAA rules don't cover this, but perhaps his strongest argument is this:
"Look at it this way: This cover-up of horrific crimes was aimed at making sure Penn State could continue to PLAY FOOTBALL. A failure to address football leaves the very goal of the cover-up indefensibly intact."


Penn State completely lost institutional control. The entire leadership of the school, the athletic department and the football team was involved in this football scandal. The football team should be punished commensurate with the magnitude of the offense.
 

Golden Elephant said:
weak arguments that NCAA rules don't cover this
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Not weak at all. Incredibly strong, in fact. If the NCAA sanctions based on current information, they are 100% making it up as they go along.

Golden Elephant said:
football scandal
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Not a football scandal. Has never had anything, at all, to do with football.

Golden Elephant said:
The football team should be punished commensurate with the magnitude of the offense.
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Just plain silly. Hey, let's tack a couple of years onto USC's punishments because O.J. Simpson murdered some people.
 



The cover up gained a competitive advantage on the field by keeping the D-coor., keeping the image of PSU and recruiting intact. Paterno had all the power in Happy Valley and the other stooges did what ever Paterno told them to do. Why would a grown man, McQuerry, run and tell Jo Pa about the shower scene vs.beating Sandusky senseless on the spot, then calling police on his cell and requesting an ambulance? Paterno put the program, himself and the school ahead of the victims. The taxpayers of the state and PSU will pay for this on many levels for Years to come. How many other FBS football power schools are in small communities where the head ball coach is the law? Quite a few actually. Alabama, Va. Tech., ect, ect.
 

People keep throwing around the phrases "lack of institutional control" and "competitive advantage" as though they pertain to the NCAA in this case. They don't. When the NCAA has issued punishments for these infractions before, they are directly and 100% related to NCAA violations, not breaking the law. "Lack of institutional control" as it pertains to the NCAA means the compliance department, and those they report to, willfully ignoring and/or encouraging non-compliance with NCAA code. It does not mean aiding and/or abetting a criminal. "Competitive advantage" means giving a player/coach/football staff member benefits and/or perquisites that are directly in violation of NCAA rule, i.e., payment of cash/gifts, grade manipulation, etc. It does not mean keeping a player or coach rostered and/or employed because they broke the law. Maintaining the employment of a serial pederast is not an NCAA violation. Sorry.
 

I tend to not have a clue about whether or not the NCAA, B1G, or the Vatican will be futher involved. The only thing I have a strong opinion on is that Jerry Sandusky had better pray for Solitary Confinement during his entire prison sentence.
 




Dr.Don said:
I tend to not have a clue about whether or not the NCAA, B1G, or the Vatican will be futher involved. The only thing I have a strong opinion on is that Jerry Sandusky had better pray for Solitary Confinement during his entire prison sentence.
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LOL. A guard will have a bad day, forget to lock a door and Sandusky will get a "Dahmer" dirt nap. He won't last 18 months.
 

Coolew01 said:
http://espn.go.com/blog/ncfnation/post/_/id/62859/psu-fans-stay-loyal-to-joe-paterno

Are all/most PSU fans this delusional? If so I have lost all respect for their program. Disgusting worshipping a guy that allowed that crap to go on.
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It's times like this where people just need to take a step back and really take it all in. It seems that some are not doing that. They're so set on defending Joe and the school, instead of thinking about the kids that got taken advantage of.
 

dpodoll68 said:
Not a football scandal. Has never had anything, at all, to do with football.
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If you are talking only about what Sandusky did and the crimes he commited, you are absolutely 100% correct that it has nothing to do with football.

But, in my opinion, that what JoePa, the AD, the president and the vice president at PSU did to cover Sandusky's deeds and making sure they didn't get reported to the proper legal authorities had a lot to do with football and trying to preserve the PSU football program's reputation.

In many cases, we are told that the coverup is worse than the crime. No way is that even remotely possible here. But the coverup is still extremly bad and will probably justify its own punishment. And one could make the argument that punishment of the coverup could be by partially done by the NCAA if they determine that the coverup was done mainly to benefit the football program.
 

Didn't Tressel coverup and lie about a far lesser scandal at OSU which the NCAA took action on? Paterno and the others covered it up and perjured themselves to the grand jury.
 

Penn State and the Paterno defenders aren't even close to seeing the peak of this. Wait until the criminal and civil litigations begin. I'm predicting one of the administrators will cooperate and offer a candid account about the discussions that led the cover up. Then everything we've considered up to now will appear as child's play.

The big picture here is that these actions have allowed Joe Paterno and the University to get into the crosshairs of the national media who aren't football fans or have a built-in bias towards the image of Joe Pa and the virtues of Penn State. They are getting gutted by journalists looking for truth and now we found out that Joe Pa wasn't even a good person and Penn State is a sick institution. The Rene Portland scandal should have tarnished the glimmer, but the aura of Paterno bought him the benefit of doubt with the general public.

Now I see another problem coming Penn State's way. There are going to be a lot of faculty members, trustees, regents, even presidents of Big Ten schools who aren't football fans or suffering from a preconceived bias of affection towards lovable Joe Pa, who are going to make some noise and view it as ludicrous when their schools travel to Happy Valley to play or roll out the red carpet when they host the Nittany Lions.

This is going keep evolving and the reactions towards the program will have a life of their own if Penn State doesn't step up on its own.
 

popeyoung5 said:
Didn't Tressel coverup and lie about a far lesser scandal at OSU which the NCAA took action on? Paterno and the others covered it up and perjured themselves to the grand jury.
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The OSU players broke multiple, specific NCAA rules. Tressel broke multiple, specific, NCAA rules. All the NCAA has on PSU at this point is to shoehorn it all into rule 10.1 under the ethics clause.

Perjury to a grand jury is a criminal offense. It has nothing to do with the NCAA. As I said, if the NCAA wants they could find a way to use rule 10.1 to go after PSU for the cover-up.

Obviously what happened at PSU is orders of magnitude worse. It also isn't covered under the fully explained NCAA rules (just the vague catch all rule). I'm not sure why people have such a hard time understanding that both of those things can be true.
 

dpodoll68 said:
People keep throwing around the phrases "lack of institutional control" and "competitive advantage" as though they pertain to the NCAA in this case. They don't. When the NCAA has issued punishments for these infractions before, they are directly and 100% related to NCAA violations, not breaking the law. "Lack of institutional control" as it pertains to the NCAA means the compliance department, and those they report to, willfully ignoring and/or encouraging non-compliance with NCAA code. It does not mean aiding and/or abetting a criminal. "Competitive advantage" means giving a player/coach/football staff member benefits and/or perquisites that are directly in violation of NCAA rule, i.e., payment of cash/gifts, grade manipulation, etc. It does not mean keeping a player or coach rostered and/or employed because they broke the law. Maintaining the employment of a serial pederast is not an NCAA violation. Sorry.
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So if the officials at a school conspired to kidnap an opposing star player, would that be a legal issue or an NCAA issue?

If the officials at a school conspired to destroy another team's stadium so that the game had to move to a neutral site, would that be a legal issue or an NCAA issue?

If they hacked another schools system and changed players' grades so that they would not be eligible?

What if they poked holes in every condom owned by a female on a rival team in an attempt to try to get her pregnant so she couldn't compete next year? Or replaced her birth control pills with Tic Tacs?

The reason that the ethics clause is somewhat open ended is because it is impossible to forsee all the possible ways that a school could try to gain a competitive advantage.

The fact is that there was a conspiracy within the school administration to commit a crime for the sole purpose of providing advantages to the football team.

I really believe that makes it an NCAA issue. That doesn't mean I'm pushing for the Death Penalty - I don't think that is appropriate. But I do believe the NCAA does have a place to levy punishment.

Regardless, I believe PSU will self penalize and the NCAA will make a statement saying they are satisfied with the penalties without specifically saying whether they would have applied penalties. That will allow the fans who want blood to be at least partially satisfied (some people will not be satisfied without the Death Penalty, which I don't see happening), without forcing the NCAA to make any sort of landmark rulings.
 

popeyoung5 said:
The cover up gained a competitive advantage on the field by keeping the D-coor., keeping the image of PSU and recruiting intact. Paterno had all the power in Happy Valley and the other stooges did what ever Paterno told them to do. Why would a grown man, McQuerry, run and tell Jo Pa about the shower scene vs.beating Sandusky senseless on the spot, then calling police on his cell and requesting an ambulance? Paterno put the program, himself and the school ahead of the victims. The taxpayers of the state and PSU will pay for this on many levels for Years to come. How many other FBS football power schools are in small communities where the head ball coach is the law? Quite a few actually. Alabama, Va. Tech., ect, ect.
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popeyoung5 here is exactly correct. This is what dpo & goaupher don't seem to understand. I fully agree - and I think most people would agree - that if it was just a coach molesting kids and it was discovered and reported, then let the criminal justice system deal with it. This is not even close to that.

dpo, your argument about OJ is a good place to start, but your analogy fails on many levels. Let's say OJ at USC was murdering people. For analogy's sake, we'll say he went on to become a grad asst then asst coach instead of the NFL. Asst coaches witnessed the murders, reported it to the head coach, who reported it to asst ADs, ADs, who notified the VPs & the President of the school. Rather than report this to police, the head coach told the President & VPs to shut up and not report it. They did, and OJ went on to murder many more people over the next decade plus. Apparently, then the NCAA would then have to say "Well, we don't have anything in our rulebook that talks about covering up murder, so nothing we can do about it."
 

Golden Elephant said:
popeyoung5 here is exactly correct. This is what dpo & goaupher don't seem to understand. I fully agree - and I think most people would agree - that if it was just a coach molesting kids and it was discovered and reported, then let the criminal justice system deal with it. This is not even close to that.
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How about Gary Pinkel? He had a DUI. He broke the law. Missouri is fully aware of this, and continues to keep him employed in spite of it. Should they have NCAA sanctions?
 

dpodoll68 said:
How about Gary Pinkel? He had a DUI. He broke the law. Missouri is fully aware of this, and continues to keep him employed in spite of it. Should they have NCAA sanctions?
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Did Missouri school leaders cover it up to protect their athletics program?
 

Golden Elephant said:
popeyoung5 here is exactly correct. This is what dpo & goaupher don't seem to understand. I fully agree - and I think most people would agree - that if it was just a coach molesting kids and it was discovered and reported, then let the criminal justice system deal with it. This is not even close to that.
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I understand what he's saying fully. I'm simply pointing out that there are no NCAA rules besides 10.1 that cover what happened (and even 10.1 only covers it b/c it is so broadly worded as to be applicable to almost anything). If you disagree then please go ahead and cite the rule I'm missing.

As for a competitive advantage...what happened at PSU doesn't fit the NCAA's written rules for competitive advantage, doesn't fall under their rules about compliance and enforcement, doesn't meet their written standard for Lack of Institutional Control. That's just how it is. You don't get to just pretend otherwise because you really want them to step in.
 

In my opinion what happened at Penn State is the very definition of Lack of Institutional Control, if it's not then what is? Also Emmert in response to a question on sportsnation in January mentioned the Lack Of Institutional control and ethics regarding the situation. Is it what happened at Penn State unethical?
Here is the def: ethical - conforming to accepted standards of social or professional behavior;
 

SDGopherFan said:
In my opinion what happened at Penn State is the very definition of Lack of Institutional Control, if it's not then what is? Also Emmert in response to a question on sportsnation in January mentioned the Lack Of Institutional control and ethics regarding the situation. Is it what happened at Penn State unethical?
Here is the def: ethical - conforming to accepted standards of social or professional behavior;
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It is clearly unethical based which is why rule 10.1 is in play. But your personal definition of LOIC has no bearing on the matter.

Here is how the NCAA defines it:
A lack of institutional control is found when the Committee on Infractions determines that major violations occurred and the institution failed to display:

- Adequate compliance measures.
- Appropriate education on those compliance measures.
- Sufficient monitoring to ensure the compliance measures are followed.
- Swift action upon learning of a violation.
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- Item one is compliance measures. This means does the school have the procedures and processes in place to make sure they follow NCAA rules. Since what happened isn't expressly against NCAA rules there is no way for PSU to have compliance measures for it.
- Item two is education about those measures. You can't educate folks on measures that don't exist b/c there are no NCAA rules which require them to be in place.
- Item three is about monitoring. In other words, did the compliance job do enough to catch rules violations. Since nothing in the PSU scandal constitutes an explicit rules violation it's kind of hard for the compliance team to do anything about it. It's not the compliance team's job to deal with child rapists and those who cover for them. That's the job of the police.
- Item four is timeframe of acting upon a violation. Obviously PSU fails any measure of timeliness given that there was a coverup. But the NCAA doesn't care about just timeliness, they care specifically about timeliness with regards to a violation. And there was no explicit rule violated in this case. Since you could argue that rule 10.1 was violated this one could conceivably still be in play. But the NCAA would have to contort their process in a completely new way to make it happen.

Did PSU lack institutional control by your definition or my definition (or the legal world's definition)? You're damn right they did. Did they under the NCAA's definition? No.

The rules are what they are and that's the framework you work in. Anything else would mean that the NCAA is even more of a banana republic than it already is.
 

Everything I just said aside, I have no doubt the NCAA could probably do whatever it wishes, it's own rules be damned. But as I noted, that's not what an accountable and respectable organization does.

If you want the NCAA to make up the rules as they go in this case then you forfeit the standing to ever complain about any penalty the NCAA issues against the U or any other school moving forward. Because if it's ok to make up the rules once, it's ok to do it again at any time they choose. By definition, every thing the NCAA does automatically becomes right. Why? Because they said so. Rules say it's not right? Too bad, we can change them at any time and retroactively punish you.

There is a reason that behavior is not allowed in the legal system.
 

In this scandal just like Watergate, Monica Lewinsky, John Edwards the attempt to cover up the crimes is going to open Penn St. for serious problems.

Be thankful Clem and Dienhardt didn't get busted trying to cover up Gangelhoff.
 

akgopher said:
In this scandal just like Watergate, Monica Lewinsky, John Edwards the attempt to cover up the crimes is going to open Penn St. for serious problems.
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Exactly. It's not like any one individual or PSU as an institution are going to "get away" with anything here. There are criminal prosecutions still coming, civil lawsuits from every angle that will cost the school millions and millions and millions, and the Dept of Education will be investigating the school's failure to comply with the Clery Act and could hammer PSU with an end to federal student aid (among other penalties). Doing that would cripple PSU.
 

SDGopherFan said:
Did Missouri school leaders cover it up to protect their athletics program?
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BTW, under an expansive reading of rule 10.1 they wouldn't need to. Pinkel's unethical behavior in driving drunk would be enough.
 

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