FILE - This Oct. 24, 2011 file photo shows NCAA President Mark Emmert speaking during the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics meeting in Washington. Emmert says he isn't ruling out the possibility of shutting down the Penn State football program in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal. In a PBS interview Monday night, July 16, 2012, Emmert said he doesn't want to
"But what about the kids?" the Penn State supporters ask, as their worry lines become more deeply engraved in their disbelieving faces.
"What about the innocent kids? They didn't ask for this! They don't deserve to have bad things happen to them!"
Sadly, as was the case with far too many Penn Staters in the 14 years that Jerry Sandusky turned their campus into his own perverted playland, the outrage being expressed is not in defense of childhood sexual abuse victims.
No, the kids these people are so concerned about are the Nittany Lion football players. You know, the 18-, 19- and 20-year-old "kids" who could be in for some sad times in the place they know only as "Happy Valley."
The "bad things" that could happen to them include the suspension of the football program at Penn State. That's right, the program that is so proud of announcing itself to the world as "We are ? " might very well have to edit their chant to, "We were ? "
In the wake of the scathing Louis Freeh report released last week, detailing the systematic cover-up and concealment of Sandusky's serial rape of children in and around the Penn State football facilities, the calls are growing louder around the country for the "death penalty" to be imposed on the program.
Now, if the calls were coming merely from disgusted fans, disappointed columnists and loud-mouthed talk show hosts, the threat of a complete football shutdown at State College might not mean much. When such penalties are entertained by the president of the NCAA, however, even those trying to shut their eyes and plug their ears in a feeble attempt to make the entire scandal disappear snap to attention.
"I don't want to take anything off the table," NCAA president Mark Emmert told PBS this week, when asked about possible punishments for Penn Stained University. "I've never seen anything as egregious as this in terms of just overall conduct and behavior inside a university and hope to never see it again."
Emmert was loathe to compare the Penn State situation to the one involving Southern Methodist University in the 1980s, which remains the only NCAA member institution to have all football operations at the school suspended for an entire season or longer.
SMU lost its entire 1987 season because of repeated recruiting violations, and after losing more than half of their scholarship players, who were allowed to transfer to other schools without penalty, was unable to field a team in 1988. Continued...
The once-rising Mustangs program returned in 1989, but as a shell of its former self with a group of undersized, under-talented players, and the inability to recruit better ones thanks to a 55-scholarship reduction over four years, also imposed by the NCAA.
The death penalty decimated the SMU program for more than 20 years, and it is only now starting to recover.
Penn State's punishment must be worse.
Much, much worse.
Opponents of the proposed death penalty at PSU argue Sandusky's crimes did nothing to give the program a competitive advantage, and such a severe NCAA punishment is not warranted. SMU's recruiting scandal, much like USC's improper payments to star players and their families that have them serving a four-year probation, were intended to make the football team better. Penn State's scandal is a criminal matter, they argue, and off-limits to the collegiate governing body.
They're wrong.
While Joe Paterno's teams didn't gain an on-field advantage from concealing Sandusky's sickening pattern of pedophilia, the program itself was allowed to keep its reputation intact, keep the top recruits coming to campus, and most importantly, to keep the cash machine humming.
The Freeh report detailed how Paterno, the head Nittany Lyin' himself, conspired with the university's athletic director, president and vice president to conceal Sandusky's activities, as well as the first investigation of Sandusky dating to 1998. The purpose of their behavior, the report concluded, was to "conceal critical facts relating to Sandusky's child abuse from the authorities" in order to "avoid the consequences of bad publicity."
Certainly the good publicity that was protected by their activities benefitted the program and the university as a whole.
In 2011, Penn State's football program generated a profit of more than $53 million. Assuming similar profits every year since Paterno was first told of the investigation of Sandusky for child molestation in 1998, the program has taken in nearly $750 million in that time frame. Continued...
It's blood money.
Every penny.
If Paterno or any one of the university leaders had done the right thing and reported Sandusky to the authorities, who knows how many of the convicted pedophiles victims may have been spared his abuse.
Instead, they chose to keep the program running, for the sake of football and profit.
Now they must pay the price.
Shut them down, Mr. Emmert. Shut them down right now. And make their penalty more severe than the one dropped on SMU. Make it as severe as the crimes they concealed, and by extension, supported. Shut them down for five years, and when the last remnants of enablers have long departed State College, let them try and build again.
Sure it will be tough on the existing players, who have committed no crimes and have nothing to do with this.
So what.
Ohio State's existing players had nothing to do with Terrelle Pryor, Boom Herron and the rest of the tattoo boys, but they don't get to play in a bowl game this year.
It's called collateral damage. Continued...
Let the Penn State kids transfer elsewhere.
The worst possible charge that can be levied against a university is called "lack of institutional control", and it warrants the harshest possible penalty.
If ever the definition of that charge fit anywhere, it fits here.
This university couldn't control its football program, or its head coach. And little children suffered for it.
Shut them down, Mr. Emmert.
Shut them down now.
Source: http://www.news-herald.com/articles/2012/07/18/sports/nh5739576.txt
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