The Freeh Report Exposed The Entire Jerry Sandusky Scandal

Realer talk: no

For what? For pointing out its dumb to economically cripple a region to punish people who were not involved?

I get that you want to send a strong message and show how seriously you take the issue, but the people responsible for this are A. in prison B. dead C. Soon to be in prison. Every person even marginally involved in the affair is never going to have a career in sports or academics again. The school has done a complete purge.

The Death Penalty makes no sense in the bounds of NCAA punishment, and its ridiculous to demand it simply because you want to show how serious you are.

Why not shut down the university and burn down State College? That will REALLY show them that what they did was wrong.

Penn State should be allowed to go to any and all bowls and BCS… However, the football program needs to be under strict nonprofit rules and revenue giving to victim rights organization and child abuse out reach. Kind of like how the tobacco companies have to pay for all the anti-smoking campaigns

Right, that was exactly my argument.

Can you justify the death penalty for Penn State on any grounds other than “I’m really mad you guys.”

Because here’s some news. We’re mad too. Fuck it, we’re madder than you. We were betrayed by someone we idolized. Our administration allowed children in our community to be hurt, and then they covered it up. We have a black mark on ourselves, our community, our shared history, everything.

And so what? You want to cripple an already impoverished reason for what? What do you gain other than a false sense of moral superiority?

Do you think punishing 100,000 innocent people makes up for what happened? Do you think doing this will somehow make it never happen again? That this will be some kind of deterrent?

How did the football program cover it up? It’s not like this was common knowledge among team officials. It was known by one assistant coach, one coach, and the athletic coordinator.

I would understand demanding the death penalty if this was a concerted cover-up by the football program. If this was something widely known by officials and kept secret, you would be right. But this was not something that was known by the program. Hell, even the vice-provost under Spanier did not know about it. There was a cover-up by powerful people, but it was not a cover-up through the football program.

I mean, read the Freeh report. He specifically outlines that this was a failure of the university at an adminstrative level. This was high level university officials, unmonitored by the board, making a decision to handle a serious allegation internally.

Also, this is not about “losing our football.” This is about total economic devastation. The entire region is more or less held up by the university, and football is a big part of that. You are talking damage to State College, Lewistown, Altoona, Hollidaysburgh and any other city in the region.

Death penalty talk is ridiculous. It is not like Penn State athletes were having parties in the locker room this was not an NCAA incident this was a criminal incident and the black eye Penn State has will do more damage than anything the NCAA can throw down. My earlier comment has more to do with the fact that Penn State continued to profit for over 10+ years after covering up the first incident.

That former comment may be more emotional than rational because we are discussing the decisions of 5-6 people who not only covered up the crimes but profited from the cover ups and there doesn’t seem to be a punishment sever enough for those who profited from the cover up.

You still haven’t explained how punishing the team, which wasn’t involved, the current staff, which wasn’t involved, and the community, which wasn’t involved, is an effective or justified use of the Death Penalty.

USC, Ohio, Miami, SMU… all those had to do with NCAA violations. While I am sure that the NCAA should and does look down upon the rape of small children, they have no right to pass down judgment on this matter, that is for the courts.

The NCAA has “a lack of institutional control” catch all: [sports.yahoo.com]

The NCAA can bring the hammer, and has done so for much less at OSU, USC and even Boise State. Penn State will get sanctions, at the least. Probably not the death penalty, though, as it is a non-competitive infraction. SMU was paying players to pay for years, which results in a competitive advantage. This is different in that covering up for a sicko fuck pederast is morally repugnant, but does not effect competition.

Further clarification: The “lack of institutional control” rule places the obligation on coaches and athletic administrators to monitor the program for NCAA violations AND illegal activities by the players/staff. Basically, the administrators and coaches cannot play dumb and say “I didn’t know” or help to cover up criminal activity. This came up with the Baylor men’s basketball team when one ex-player killed an active player and the coach tried to distance himself from the ex-player and the crime. The NCAA can do what it wants with it. They probably won’t give out the Death Penalty because it killed SMU football. SMU got it for paying players for years and years, which directly affected competition. This doesn’t effect competition, so they will probably find that the legal system h as done enough.

The only big recovery I can see coming to Penn from this is if they man up and own up to this a new degree program designed for people wanting to go into abuse counseling and child psychology. If they run and hide from this it will always haunt the school.

Axissillian, how in the world do you read the report and come to the conclusion that the Football program was “not involved” or “innocent”? The coaching staff and administration KNEW a man was raping children and not only did nothing, they took steps to hide it from the public *so they could continue to play football*. The Death Penalty is more appropriate in this case than it was for SMU, that’s for damn sure.