Monday, July 23, 2012

THERE ARE A THOUSAND HACKING AT THE BRANCHES OF EVIL TO ONE WHO IS STRIKING AT THE ROOT:  This isn't enough: a fine of $60M in football revenue (one year's worth) from a University with a $2B endowment to go "into an endowment for external programs preventing child sexual abuse or assisting victims and may not be used to fund such programs at the university," no bowl appearances for four years, ten fewer initial and twenty total fewer scholarships per-year for the next five years (and allowing mass transfers out), symbolically vacating the wins from 1998-2011 ... this is all big, and will impair Penn State's ability to run a football program, but I fear it does nothing to change the culture of a university where janitors were terrified of reporting a child being raped in their showers.  Only closing down the football program for 2+ years would have done that.  Dave Zirin:
[Today's] decision will of course gut Penn State athletics. It will also create a siege mentality among PSU alumni causing a rush of donations that, I bet, will make up the difference in a week. It’s a farcical public relations move that distracts the public from actually holding to account those responsible for protecting Sandusky. Former FBI director Louis Freeh had said that the root of the problem was the “culture of reverence” for football. Penn State did more to confront this “culture of reverence” by taking down their statue of Joe Paterno on Sunday than Mark Emmert did today.
Added: The full NCAA-Penn State consent decree (pdf).

43 comments:

  1. I think the NCAA is still enormously skittish about the "death penalty" because of how it wound up basically obliterating not just the SMU football program, but the entire Southwest Conference.  The Big 10 is obviously in a much different (and more stable) position than the SWC was, but they don't want to harm other schools.

    Do we know what the Penn State football television revenue looks like?  If the fine isn't at least equal to the amount of football TV revenue incurred from 1998-2011, it should be increased to at least that amount.

    ReplyDelete
  2. The Pathetic Earthling10:20 AM

    I'm sure they could find another school to fill in that slot.  And, also, tough shit.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Duvall10:55 AM

    Big Ten could replace Penn State with one phone call if they had to.  Rutgers would leap at the chance, for one. 

    It's pretty clear that these penalties were carefully crafted to look as tough as possible without creating even a slight inconvenience for the other athletic departments of the Big Ten, or their television rightsholders at ESPN and Fox.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Of course, what the Big 10 really wants is Notre Dame.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Watchman11:00 AM

    I think the NCAA should require the Big Ten (with its twelve teams) to rename the two divisions.  How about Abusers and Enablers?

    ReplyDelete
  6. ChinMusic11:20 AM

    Criminal charges and civil suits are where Penn State should be penalized for its culture that lead to these abuses.  The NCAA cannot levy penalties that can make up for the wrongs of Penn State and any penalities from the NCAA punish the innocent players, coaches and students far more than the wrondoers.  The NCAA has a hard enough time enforcing amateurism and play on the field without trying to also regulate and punish illegality and criminal activiities off the field.  Leave that to the people who are already equipped to deal with crime and its effects.  This is a bad day for the NCAA as a governing body.  In its rush to appease public opinion by coming down hard on Penn State, it has done neither.  Instead, it has just drastically expanded the scope of its governance.

    ReplyDelete
  7. The Big 10 has no interest in a 3rd rate program like Rutgers though.  There's no value to them (except maybe expanding their cable network footprint).

    There's too much money at stake for too many people to eliminate Penn State football.  And money is the name of the game for big time college athletics.  It's an extremely disgusting business.  And I'm a huge sports fan and college sports fan.  But I find major college sports to be increasingly abhorrent, because at least in the ranks of professional sports the business of it is acknowledged.

    This penalty is about as severe as the NCAA was going to get.  And it does effectively destroy Penn State as a major program for the foreseeable future, as no college recruit with options is going to go to a school that can't play in a bowl game for his entire career.

    The only way this changes the culture at Penn State is if the sanctions are enough to make them a bad program for a decade or more.  If you don't win, people stop caring and the culture becomes less important.

    ReplyDelete
  8. bristlesage11:32 AM

    Yeah, this is more-or-less my thought: this whole thing is above the NCAA's pay grade and out of its jurisdiction.

    ReplyDelete
  9. I'm not sure I'm comfortable with the idea of giving the NCAA the authority to bankrupt a state university.  It seems to fall a wee bit outside the scope of their mission.

    Speaking as a Penn Stater, I agree with Zirin's conclusion: the goal should be pulling the management and oversight organizations out by the roots, and bringing those responsible for the coverup to justice.  Those steps should rightfully be taken by the university's alumni, and by the taxpayers and legislature of the state.  Spanier is out; Paterno is dead; Curley and Schultz are awaiting trial.  That's a start.  I don't really believe that Corbett or Rendell will ever be properly investigated or punished, because Pennsylvania is a lot like Chinatown when it comes to some things.  But that's not the NCAA's concern, nor is it their job.

    Personally, I still think the University should be broken up and subsumed into the wider state university system.  Each campus can go its own way, along with the professional schools.  University Park can return to its roots as a land-grant agricultural college, perhaps with some traditional liberal arts thrown in.

    And I can assure you that this alumnus has no plans to support any "siege mentality" fundraising.  Quite the opposite, in fact.  For now, I'm stuck with this pile of sweatshirts and this diploma.  Any takers?

    As to the conference:  why would they want Notre Dame, when they already have the Vatican of the Big Ten?

    ReplyDelete
  10. isaac_spaceman11:46 AM

    I don't think the point of the NCAA's action is to punish Penn State.  I think the point is to say to other schools that the consequences will be severe.  That Penn State can survive this without permanent damage is not really that big an issue.  Administrators at other schools are not going to focus on survivability.  Instead, the NCAA has given them an argument in future discussions.  Let's say that information comes to the coach and the administration concerning danger to persons outside the program from persons inside the program.  In the past, the discussion might have involved a "what's the worst that can happen" calculation, and a balancing of the employment risk to administrators against the potential harm to the football team.  Now administrators can say "disclosure is in the best interest of the program," aligning the interests of the program with the employment interests of the administrators (and, incidentally, the interests of the potential victims, which sadly aren't part of the discussion).  The point of the penalties to Penn State is to eliminate the program-vs.-administrator conflict in a way that favors disclosure. 

    Also, 10 scholarships a year is not meaningless.  I suspect it will be harder for Penn State to weather that than USC, especially if the NCAA greases the skids for transfers. 

    ReplyDelete
  11. Whatever the formal jurisdictional issues are, Penn State agreed to this.  I just don't see how a punishment which would be limited to the individuals involved could work the cultural changes needed.  It's WE ARE [pause] PENN STATE, not ONLY THE PERPETRATORS DIRECTLY INVOLVED ARE ... 

    ReplyDelete
  12. Jeremy11:47 AM

    And if people think the football culture at PSU is any different than at other bigtime programs than they are fooling themselves.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Jeremy11:48 AM

    And if people think the football culture at PSU is any different than at other bigtime programs than they are fooling themselves.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Jeremy11:48 AM

    And if people think the football culture at PSU is any different than at other bigtime programs than they are fooling themselves.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Jeremy11:50 AM

    And if people think the football culture at PSU is any different than at other bigtime programs than they are fooling themselves.

    ReplyDelete
  16. Anonymous11:59 AM

    Well, because 11 of the teams didn't have anything to do with it?

    ReplyDelete
  17. MidwestAndrew12:07 PM

    I was a Penn State/Paterno apologist, largely because I respected Joe Paterno and because my great grandfather (before he died 3 years ago) was one of the biggest Penn State fans/supporters I knew and had such a devotion to the school. But as more information has come out, the more I have questioned why I made excuses for these people. The more and more information that has come out, the less and less I have defended them or wanted to defend them. Now, I'm sorry and sad. I'm sorry I spent any energy caring about them. I'm sorry I spent any time at all making cheap excuses and explanations to my friends and others. I'm sad the statue is gone, but it's the right move and should have been done sooner. I'm sad for the current players because of these sanctions, but I'm not as sad for them as I am for the victims. I'm sorry it took me so long to get to this point. And now I have one more emotion: I'm mad that the punishments aren't harsher.

    ReplyDelete
  18. I'm not upset about the harshness of the NCAA punishment.  If anything, I worry that the NCAA's action will work to dampen enthusiasm in Pennsylvania to make the reforms that are necessary.  It's too easy now for apologists in the Legislature to block investigations and reforms that might help restore the University to something resembling proper management and oversight, arguing that "the University's been punished enough already."

    I agree that more punishment is needed.  I just don't think the NCAA is the body that should be doing it.

    ReplyDelete
  19. There are reforms that are required as part of the consent agreement, things specifically recommended by the Freeh report.

    ReplyDelete
  20. isaac_spaceman1:09 PM

    I don't know why this would be outside the NCAA's jurisdiction.  The problem was that the university subverted its academic and community mission (which the NCAA at least touts as its own mission) to the perceived interests of its football program (an NCAA program).  This wasn't the NCAA assuming jurisdiction over some completely unrelated matter, like a dispute between a professor and a non-athlete.  It was the NCAA addressing a problem arising within one of the NCAA's two core functions:  regulating the relationship between a competitive sports program and its member institution (the other is regulating competition between member institutions). 

    If one views the NCAA as having jurisdiction solely in the second of those two areas (regulation of competition), then, yeah, I guess. But that ship has long sailed.  The NCAA routinely suspends players for illegal conduct.  The NCAA regulates the use of drugs other than performance-enhancing drugs.  It punishes coaches for things like drunken driving and institutions for things like sexual harassment.  I don't see why the NCAA can't say to its members that putting people in danger to avoid bad PR for the football program will get you punished.  Because, frankly, I won't complain the next time a school gets in some trouble for covering up for or enabling a Christian Peter or a Jerramy Stevens. 

    ReplyDelete
  21. Anonymous2:12 PM

    If any of you down south happen to run into Bobby Bowden in the, say, next couple of months, could you please slap the shit-eating grin off his face. I'm sure it will still be there for at least the rest of the year.

    --bd

    ReplyDelete
  22. ChinMusic3:10 PM

    I think you might be thinking of the NFL.  I can't recall (though it doesn't mean it hasn't happened) an instance where the NCAA, rather than a conference or school, has suspended a player for off-the-field criminal activity unrelated to issues of amateurism.  (The NCAA does test for and suspend for use of stret drugs, but the purported justfication is that use of street drugs while engaging in athletic competition is unsafe.)  Nor have I ever heard it suggested that the role of the NCAA has anything to do with regulating the relationship between a school and its sports program (again, beyond the issue of amateurism). 

    ReplyDelete
  23. GoldnI3:28 PM

    There are plenty of criticisms to be made about the NCAA--their rules and standards are arbitrary, their processes are opaque, and as Dave Zirin has noted several times, they really are part of the problem of the "culture of reverence" for college football.  However, they do have the right to punish a school that has completely ceded institutional control of its athletic department--which was the ultimate reason why SMU got the death penalty.  When one word from the head coach can halt an investigation in its tracks, then yeah, I'd dare say Penn State had no institutional control.

    These penalties will barely scratch the surface of the culture of reverence.  But you have to start somewhere, and since Penn State has clearly indicated that football and money stand above all else, then it's a decent place to start.

    ReplyDelete
  24. Watchman3:29 PM

    I agree with all.  All of the school that didn't pockets tens of millions in extra revenue because of Penn State should be exempt.

    ReplyDelete
  25. Joseph Finn3:53 PM

    Well, ChinMusic has basically said it far better than I was planning to. This is a matter for the FBI and Department of Education and the NCAA is just playing into it's reputation as a purely punative organization (and no, the NCAA should not be punishing players for illegal acts any more Roger Goodell should).

    ReplyDelete
  26. isaac_spaceman4:01 PM

    The NCAA regulates the relationship between athletes and schools through the penalties for low graduation rates, which effectively requires the students to meet not just an objective minimum but also the schools' individual minima for graduation.  If you put that into the "amateurism" category, and you call smoking pot out-of-season an on-field safety issue, you're stretching the definition of those two things beyond any real meaning.  The fact is that the NCAA is not only concerned with competition and amateurism; it also at least pays lip service to the student-athlete ideal, and works to promote that ideal (or, more accurately, to promote the perception of that ideal). 

    But the larger issue, and one that the NCAA absolutely must deal with (whether you consider it an expansion or not) is that, in this instance, a bunch of people who are regulated by the NCAA (a coach and some administrators with supervisory authority) decided to protect somebody who was using NCAA activity and NCAA facilities to harm outsiders.  The administration acted the way it did (illegally, that is) because Sandusky was a football-program insider with the support of the head of the football program.  That makes it a football problem, which makes it an NCAA problem. 

    ReplyDelete
  27. isaac_spaceman4:05 PM

    <span>The NCAA regulates the relationship between athletes and schools through the penalties for low graduation rates, which effectively requires the students to meet not just an objective minimum but also the schools' individual minima for graduation. If you put that into the "amateurism" category, and you call smoking pot out-of-season an on-field safety issue, you're stretching the definition of those two things beyond any real meaning. The fact is that the NCAA is not only concerned with competition and amateurism; it also at least pays lip service to the student-athlete ideal, and works to promote that ideal (or, more accurately, to promote the perception of that ideal).

    But the larger issue, and one that the NCAA absolutely must deal with (whether you consider it an expansion or not) is that, in this instance, a bunch of people who are regulated by the NCAA (a coach and some administrators with supervisory authority) decided to protect somebody who was using NCAA activity and NCAA facilities to harm outsiders. The administration acted the way it did (illegally, that is) because Sandusky was a football-program insider with the support of the head of the football program. That makes it a football problem, which makes it an NCAA problem. </span>
    <span></span>
    <span>Also, nobody's fooling themselves that the culture is any different at other schools.  But the other schools didn't protect a child-raper, and maybe now they won't if it ever comes up.  </span>

    ReplyDelete
  28. ChinMusic5:21 PM

    Form the world of unintended consequences, what happens to the lost scholarships?  Do some other schools get to give out more scholarships?  Or did the total number of available football scholarships in the country just get reduced?  In other words, if I wanted to be overly dramatic, could I say that 10-20 extra football players in grades 8-12 will have to pay for college rather than play football because of what Sandusky and his PSU cronies started doing 6 years before these kids were born?

    ReplyDelete
  29. Melissa R5:22 PM

    Question for the lawyers out there...is there a cap on the dollar amount the victims can get from a penn state lawsuit because it is a state institution?

    ReplyDelete
  30. That's unclear right now -- it may be that schools awarding former PSU players scholarships now may have fewer to offer later.  But I do believe the overall pool is reduced.

    ReplyDelete
  31. Duvall7:16 PM

    It's technically true that the overall pool of scholarships has been reduced, but it's fairly common for schools to give fewer than the maximum number of scholarships allowed.  So it's unlikely that any player would be denied the opportunity to get a scholarship somewhere because of this.

    ReplyDelete
  32. isaac_spaceman8:27 PM

    I just fundamentally disagree with that.  Sandusky got an extra 15 years to molest children because of his football connections, and Paterno/PSU protected Sandusky and endangered people because of football, and Nebraska used all of its influence to prevent Christian Peter from getting prosecuted for twice raping a girl because of football.  If the NCAA makes that stuff possible, the NCAA needs to try to make it less possible.  In fact, the influence of powerful football institutions on local law enforcement makes NCAA action in egregious cases even more important. 

    Incidentally, the FBI doesn't have jurisdiction over most local crimes, and DOE can't do anything unless it can establish that the environment on campus rises to the level of sex or race discrimination. 

    ReplyDelete
  33. isaac_spaceman8:32 PM

    Does anybody really give a shit that what would otherwise be the 10 worst scholarship football players in the classes of 2016-2019 will have to pay for college, if they go at all?  Yeah, a handful of terrible players are going to fall off the end of the bench.  So what? 

    ReplyDelete
  34. They will never get us.

    ReplyDelete
  35. Benner10:47 PM

    That explains in part why Penn State isn't fighting this. They can't anyway, but the NCAA is the heavy bringing about the needed change, not Erickson.

    The punishment is fair, mostly. I don't like vacating the wins because Penn St. did the academics and recruiting stuff a lot better then most schools, and the notion of kicking them out of the big 10 wrong. (simply put, bowden can shut the fuck right up.) They earned their way into the comference because of the stuff that Paterno did very well before he, well, did things that necessitated all the scorn he's received. The people who depend economically on penn St, from motel operators to other athletic programs would have been hurt too much by the "death penalty," and as there are at least questions as to the NCAA's authority, it cant push its luck,mreally. Anyway, a bona fide NFL prospect might want to play for O'Brien.

    The other view is any punishment is too lax, and yet too strong given that everyone directly responsible is dead, in jail, or probably going to jail. So, if the punishment is somewhat superficial, but or feature?

    ReplyDelete
  36. Joseph J. Finn12:50 AM

    The Big Ten also wouln't want a third-rate program like Notre Dame (and Notre Dame has no intention of sharing their NBC money while that's still rolling in for some inexplicable reason to a school that shouldn't even be allowed to play in the lack-of-a-playoff-playoff that's coming up).

    ReplyDelete
  37. Joseph J. Finn12:55 AM

    No jurisdiction over most, but this is a clear violation of the Clery Act requiring colleges participating in federal aid programs to report on crime data on or near their campuses.  The DOE is currently investigating Penn State. 

    ReplyDelete
  38. Duvall9:53 AM

    You're overestimating the Big Ten's willingness to choose football prowess over TV money, as well as the options available to the Big Ten.

    Why should Notre Dame not be allowed to play in the crypto-playoff, assuming that they qualify?

    ReplyDelete
  39. Rebecca11:00 AM

    I went to a high school where a lot of those terrible players come from, so yes, somebody gives a shit about them. Because otherwise those guys end up in Afganistan or looking for manufacturing jobs that don't exist anymore.

    Also, having seen a lot of guys go through college football, the only people it's any good for are the guys that are good enough for the NFL, and the guys that are so bad that they never see the field. Everybody in the middle sees serious reprecussions in terms of physical, social and/or academic health.

    ReplyDelete
  40. Nigel from Cameroon2:06 PM

    Of course it's not enough, but, really, nothing could be.

    For all practical purposes, Penn St football is done. It will never again be a top program-- and I don't mean just the obvious and direct affect from the scandal itself. But these penalties hammer the program's resources: money and players. PSU no longer has enough of either to be an effective, top-notch program.

    I do not believe PSU will dip into its general endowment to cover the team's finacial losses.

    ReplyDelete
  41. Nigel from Cameroon2:07 PM

    What a ridiculous and overly broad statement.

    ReplyDelete
  42. Adlai3:20 PM

    Incentives!

    ReplyDelete
  43. Adlai6:27 PM

    I managed to delete the much longer entry I just wrote, so, in brief, how can we justify big-time college sports at all? Most don't actually bring in money (and at those that do, my understanding is that the money tends to stay in athletics); at too many places, the "student-athlete" model is tilted way too much on the athlete side; and what does any of this have to do with education? Maybe I'm just sour that humanities faculty earn a tiny (tiny tiny) fraction of what coaches make, that football totally distorts athletic funding under Title IX, leading to all sorts of complaints about the ladies, and that stories about athletes and sexual assault tend to reflect poorly on schools. And yes, I am sour about that. But are students really being inadequately educated at Caltech and the University of Chicago? 

    A useful blog - University Diaries (margaretsoltan.com) does invaluable work covering college athletics. It's not pretty.

    ReplyDelete