i'm sorry but PSU needs to have it's football program completely shut down. THAT should be the Paterno legacy. that school needs a time out.

If the NCAA doesn't impose the death penalty, I will have hard time ever believing they have any authority or control over college football again.

I've heard 2 arguments against the death penalty.

1. The current players and coaches had nothing to do with the Sandusky situation.

So what? The institution not only lost control of their minions, they actively covered up their heinous crimes. This way of thinking would pretty much eliminate any punishment for schools unless the action was caught right then and there. Reggie Bush? He was in the NFL making millions and farking a Kardashian while USC suffered. Eric Dickerson was outrunning defenses and buying as many gold Trans Ams as he wanted by the time SMU received the death penalty. If we used this line of reasoning, corporate crime would have no repercussions if the offending management / employees were dead or fired. Just like the SEC needs power on Wall Street, so too does the NCAA in dealing with college sports.

2. It would be economically devastating for the area to lose the revenue created during football season.

This is an unfortunate reality. The guy who owns the restaurant, the woman who owns the gas station, the company who owns the hotels... yes they will be hurt. Businesses will close, families will have to move, etc. So what? What if a physician who employs 20 people is caught for massive medicare fraud and abuse of patients. Should he or she be allowed to stay in business due to the chain-reaction of bad events that will befall his or her employees? What about the businessman who gets a DUI and is charged with reckless endangerment after severely injuring a jogger while driving under the influence? Does he deserve to not go to jail and lose his job because it will be economically painful for his family. They will probably lose their house, have to move, etc.

Actions and inaction have consequences. In this case, the very people who were making hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars for the university and community were actively covering up and enabling the rape of children. If there is a more horrendous crime I don't know what it is. Those children are irreparably broken... they will never get back to where they should be. Their lives will never be made whole again. The people who had the power to make it stop did nothing... actually, worse, they covered up and squelched any attempt to make it stop. When big people fail to act, it hurts many. Such is the responsibility of being in power. Heavy is the crown...

Let it burn.

Why are we talking about giving the death penalty to the football program and not to the assholes who let this happen?

Just sayin'.

alywa: So what?

alywa: Let it burn.

I look forward to your resignation once you discover someone at your job committed a felony.

Yeah let's punish the whole university for the actions of a few men.

Want to send a message? Then Curley and Spanier and Co should go to jail for a good 10 years. That will send a message.

Shutting down the football program punishes players who had nothing to do with it, coaches who had nothing to do with it, all of the other sports programs that had nothing to do with it, the student body who had nothing to do with it and all of the businesses in the town.

Maybe they should execute all of the kids in the 2nd Mile program too, just to really send a message.

dragonchild: As for why the football program deserved the death penalty, the silence was fostered by a culture that the football program is too important. Anything that important that involves a bunch of guys running around on a grass field needs its importance put in its place.

Did you ever say "too big to fail, too big to exist"? This scandal was Penn State's "too big to fail". Paterno's legacy, PSU football, coaching jobs, everything was deemed too important to do the moral thing.

Then why not shut down every major football and basketball program? That's what the NCAA should do.

Weaver95: i'm sorry but PSU needs to have it's football program completely shut down. THAT should be the Paterno legacy. that school needs a time out.

Agreed.

I'm sure that people watching this unfold are going to say "You know what? if they don't get the death penalty, I'm totally down for suppressing evidence of pedophilia. Being fired, disgraced, and possibly jailed is such a small potential punishment!"

No, continue pretending that tons of kids need to be booted out of scholarships and tons of people who didn't know have to lose their jobs out of some completely disproportionate outrage mostly stemming from the fact that you hate college football. It's weird how the report shows that, upon the initial incident, all of the original charges were ignored by police and institutional leaders whom are now fired and facing jail time, not anyone associated with the football program.

And for you idiots who claim Paterno controlled the entire university, what do you think Paterno would've done if the university president went to the board of trustees and said anything about Sandusky's pedophilia? At the point that anyone outside of the power structure knows, there's no tenable position Paterno can take and there's no realistic threat he can make to anyone that would keep him and his program from being discredited as much as they have been since the news broke.

But hey, continue your irrational hate parade and lack of critical thinking skills because you're mad at college football.

Ned Stark: Weaver95: i'm sorry but PSU needs to have it's football program completely shut down. THAT should be the Paterno legacy. that school needs a time out.

The school should be closed, and all the degrees it issued should be voided.

their academic programs didn't cover up decades of kiddie rape. the football program, on the other hand, should be purged with fire.

Shut down the program? That's a bit much, as the current players and staff had nothing to do with what happened ten years ago.

However, that statue of Paterno needs to be sold for scrap and melted down...and don't even think of naming the stadium after him.

wyltoknow: HotWingConspiracy: So basically, the NCAA will signal that if you're gonna fark up, fark up BIG. Like, decades long child rape cover up big. You'll be fine.

No no, just make sure the coverup is good enough that you have the school/area dependent on your success. Then they can't shut you down, you're too important from all the coverups you did! Ta-da!

yup, 'too big to fail' works for college football, just as it did for wall street.

Maybe because the other ones aren't fostering a culture of accepted child rape?

You don't think the culture at Ohio State, or Nebraska, or any other small college town with a huge football program could lead to similar behavior?

This has nothing to do with PSU or football, it's about any large institution and people. People always protect themselves first. Institutions always protect themselves.

If the Director of the FBI and some of his deputies did this, would we shut down the FBI?

Removing the football progam does not send a message other than so stupid vengence against innocent people.

Maybe we should throw the victims in jail for not coming forward in time

kwame: I look forward to your resignation once you discover someone at your job committed a felony.

I'm trying to follow your line of reasoning here.

Let's say a coworker committed murder or rape... if it was isolated that wouldn't involve me, nor would my company have to shut down. Let's say he raped a woman at work, and I actively helped him cover up, or buried the investigation. That is a different beast. Let's say he owns the company, or was the CEO, and we institutionally tried to cover up the crime. That's even a bigger problem. In fact, it's conspiracy at that point.

When you're in charge, you are responsible to many people. Families. Corporations. Communities. Responsibility is required of those to whom great power and reward are given. The brass at Penn State failed to live up to their responsibilities.

Weaver95: their academic programs didn't cover up decades of kiddie rape.

The university president and university police did, even before anyone else in the football program knew about it. The janitors never reported it, either. I see no one actually read the report.

spentmiles: I don't think they should shut the program down, however they should have to play every game for the next fifteen years one man short on both offense and defense.

Have you been watching them the last few years? They play like that anyway.

/so ready for this talk to be over
//every time you think it's done, something else happens