The NCAA penalties against Penn State University have been criticized as unfair by some, especially Nittany Lions loyalists who contend the sanctions hurt people completely unconnected to a child sexual abuse scandal and its cover-up.
The fines and restrictions are indeed harsh. Student-athletes who chose Penn State to compete at college football’s highest level will not be able to play in a bowl game; the NCAA banned the team from playing in any bowl for the next four seasons. Funding other Penn State sports will become more difficult for the university; the NCAA fined the school $60 million, the equivalent of one year’s football revenue. Former Nittany Lions football players will see some of their greatest moments erased, at least statistically; the NCAA vacated 112 of Penn State’s victories amassed from 1998 to 2011 — the era during which former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky raped and abused young boys, while university officials turned a blind eye to spare the program’s prestigious image, according to an eight-month investigation led by former FBI director Louis Freeh.
Punishment will be felt beyond Sandusky, convicted last month, and his superiors who — according to Freeh — chose not to report Sandusky to law enforcement authorities in order to protect the reputation of the football program built by legendary coach Joe Paterno. The spillover of those penalties is unfortunate, but the NCAA crackdown is necessary.
To change a culture of “hero worship and winning at all costs,” the NCAA had to make Penn State pay a high price.
That price will be high. Penn State football will not rise to its past state of glory for quite some time. In addition to its four-year bowl ban, $60 million fine, and vacated victories, the university also was stripped of 20 scholarships per year from 2014 to 2018, and limited incoming recruiting classes to 15 scholarships (rather than 25) for the next four years. The NCAA also prohibited Penn State from cutting its other sports programs in response to the fines. And, the Big Ten Conference (which added Penn State as a member in 1990 in a mutually beneficial business transaction) announced Monday that PSU would forfeit its cut of the league’s bowl revenue sharing, about $13 million, a sum that would then be donated to child protective charities.
The NCAA stopped short of its ultimate sentence, the “death penalty,” which would have shut down the program indefinitely.
Though the horrible inaction of Penn State brass, including Paterno and the top university officials, warranted such a dramatic punishment, the penalties inflicted by the NCAA may produce the intended results. “Football will never again be placed ahead of educating, nurturing and protecting young people,” said NCAA President Mark Emmert.
Penn State may actually learn that lesson, though some in Happy Valley — the ironic nickname of the secluded location of that campus — remain in denial of the scandal’s broader implications. It is questionable, though, that other big-time football and men’s basketball powerhouses will change the culture on their campuses. Can NCAA officials say, with a straight face, that football or hoops is not, in actuality, the unstated top priority at many of its most elite member schools? The football or men’s basketball coaches out-earn the university president at many schools. In fact, nearly 40 assistant coaches at Football Bowl Subdivision schools (the NCAA’s top level) are paid at least $400,000 a year, according to the U.S. Department of Education. That figure illuminates skewed priorities in major-college athletics.
Starting this fall, Penn State will have to operate its football and other athletic programs in ways more familiar at NCAA colleges that scramble to make ends meet. Those schools either lack the means or the desire to base their institution on a foundation of a football or basketball program. Perhaps the Penn State sanctions will deter other universities from sacrificing their moral compasses for wins, ticket sales and inflated legends.
Editorials
EDITORIAL: Will others learn lesson from Penn State’s price?
Let’s hope NCAA has established deterrent
- Editorials
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EDITORIAL: Waging the ‘readiness’ campaign
Almost every Hoosier who starts college intends to finish. Unfortunately, those who arrive on campus unprepared in key academic areas are far less likely to fulfill that aspiration.
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EDITORIAL: Insult to an independent press
Distrust of government secrecy has been elevated to an exceptional level with the disclosure the Justice Department covertly examined two months of Associated Press phone records to determine who leaked details to the AP about a foiled terrorist plot.
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EDITORIAL: Noteworthy in the news: Dashing finish for the Sycamores
It’s always thrilling to see Indiana State University’s athletic teams do well in high-level competition, and two specific teams rose to impressive heights last weekend in the Missouri Valley Conference outdoor track and field championships.
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EDITORIAL: Better monitoring needed to prevent local environmental messes
The nasty, hazardous messes lurking in the community raise a bottom-line, red-flag question. Could these environmental problems have been monitored and, thus, prevented?
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EDITORIAL: Memo to U.S.A.: You can ‘SPPRAK’ just as we do in Vigo County
Our kids, truly, are ‘Making a Difference’
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Some words in praise of boring government — Indiana’s
A conservative Republican governor has super majorities in both branches of the legislature. One might suspect such one-party government leads to major changes in public policy. This did not happen in 2013 in Indiana.
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EDITORIAL: Doc’s prescient prescription
Viewed through a 2013 prism, Doc Bowen’s response to the AIDS epidemic looks merely prudent, routine.
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EDITORIAL: Education remains worth the cost
Within the next few weeks, each of the local colleges will have conducted graduation ceremonies. A few days later, a different Class of 2013 will don caps and gowns for commencement — the seniors at five Vigo County high schools. It is still a smart, worthy aspiration for those high school grads to replicate the achievement of those college students by earning a higher-education degree.
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EDITORIAL: Good news for downtown
For decades, it seems, downtown Terre Haute has been in the throes of change
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EDITORIAL: Overall, state budget step in the right direction
For average Hoosiers uninterested in political point-scoring, the budget crafted by the Indiana Legislature inspires only muted, if any, fanfare.
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EDITORIAL: The lessons of organ donation
The range of emotion surrounding life-saving transplantation of a vital organ is extreme. It is the ultimate “good news-bad news” scenario.
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READERS’ FORUM: April 26, 2013
• Pence’s tax cuts benefit wealthiest
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EDITORIAL: Noteworthy in the news
This does not qualify as a surprise in any way. But the Wabash Valley’s response to widespread flooding of recent days has been nothing short of impressive, even inspirational.
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EDITORIAL: Still waiting for the jobs reward
The forces in control of Indiana government for most of the past decade need to show some results to Hoosiers in one primary category.
Good-paying jobs. -
MARK BENNETT: Littered with irony: Why do people callously discard their trash, and who are they?
Though they aren’t acknowledged by the U.S. Census Bureau, there are basically two demographic groups of people … Those who would dump their old toilet on the banks of the Wabash River or a rural roadside. And those who wouldn’t.
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EDITORIAL: Doing the dirty work to clean up tossed trash
A first-of-its-kind, coast-to-coast project to remove litter from U.S. roadsides brought the Pick Up America crew through the Wabash Valley two years ago.
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EDITORIAL: Keep school security a local issue
The decision to provide armed security inside a schoolhouse should be made locally.
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EDITORIAL: Noteworthy in the news
Indiana’s parks need your help.
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EDITORIAL: The return of terror
Emotions today remain strong and raw in wake of Monday’s terror bombings near the finish line of the Boston Marathon.
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EDITORIAL: A solution to distracted driving … stop it … now
You’ve got to stop. You know you do it. It’s a miracle you haven’t caused a tragedy already.
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EDITORIAL: ‘Women of Influence’: 2013 selectees have given much to their communities
For the second year, United Way of the Wabash Valley has teamed up with local sponsors to select and honor a group of women who have made outstanding contributions to their communities, professions and families.
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EDITORIAL: Noteworthy in the news: A new honor for our veterans
A commendation goes out today to state Rep. Clyde Kersey, a Terre Haute Democrat who led the charge this week in the Indiana House of Representatives to pay tribute to the nation’s Purple Heart recipients.
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EDITORIAL: Shifting view on marriage
One could argue, as many have, that Sen. Joe Donnelly did the right thing last week when he dropped his support of government-sanctioned opposition to same-sex marriage. It wasn’t a radical move, considering most Democrats have now made the switch.
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MAX JONES: The American Newspaper: Changing? Yes. Dying? No way!
It happened again this past January when all those “looking at the year ahead” stories started popping up on Internet “news” websites and broadcast “news” programs. Under a provocative headline reading something like “Five industries/businesses doomed to tank in the coming year,” there it was, a prediction based on an unsubstantiated “expert” analysis that the newspaper industry will continue in 2013 to suffer its slide into oblivion.
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EDITORIAL: A chance to change our bad cultural habits
The sight of diligent, eager young people dragging trash out of the Wabash River wetlands is both inspiring and sad.
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EDITORIAL: Maintaining high standards
Standards
It’s the raging buzzword in education circles these days. Everyone insists that higher standards must be met. Anything less is, doggone it, unacceptable. -
Noteworthy in the news
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EDITORIAL: Crack down on dumpers
There is a reason it’s called “illegal” dumping. It’s against the law. And there is a very good reason illegal dumping is against the law.
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Season of Day 2s arrives
Calendars in Cincinnati contain one extra holiday — Opening Day, traditionally the first Monday in April.
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Congress fails to recognize problem of education costs
Who hasn’t gotten this message yet? The cost of a college degree has become unaffordable for a wide swath of middle-class America.
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