Jim from Saint Paul: alywa: So what?

Ok. Whatever you do for a living gets shut down for tomorrow.

You now have to move to find work with the same amount of money. Except of course you have a house you can't get rid of.

Good luck.

Going by that logic, nobody should ever get punished for what they did if there are innocent parties who might be negatively effected.

MugzyBrown: 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

You lost me when you called Columbus Ohio a small college town. Its the 16th largest city in the nation.

I'll agree with this when we learn why 3 police agencies, the county DA and state prosecutors have to explain why they buried the 1998 case and let the grand jury case languish for 3 1/2 years. Lots of people outside the athletic offices knew about this, and a lot of them weren't PSU people.

exick: MugzyBrown: 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.

The NCAA can't send people to jail. And unfortunately, sometimes NCAA sanctions against a program end up hurting people that weren't involved with the bad behavior (see: every college football scandal ever). But considering how hard the NCAA has come down on programs that did things that weren't even illegal, they have to hit Penn St. even harder.

Not illegal but against NCAA rules means the NCAA should punish.

Illegal but not against NCAA rules means the NCAA should not punish.

Not a hard concept.

born_yesterday: alywa: 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.

No matter what excuse they use not to $hut P$U down, this will show to the world what an utterly corrupt and revolting institution the NCAA is. Free Shoes? That's a paddlin' Coverup child rape? But...but...think of the children!!!



Um, people already know that......for instance, Miami, Florida, Oregon, Cam Newton....the list goes on and on. I also think this story has more to do with the university as a whole, than just their football program. I'd much rather see a ban on federal funding for a few years, than a loss of a stupid sports team.

dragonchild: But let's compound ad hominem, reductio ad absurdum and hypocrisy into one giant package of fail.

OK, so NOW you're talking about shutting down FARK?

This is getting out of hand!

How many times has the Death Penalty been used? And for what?

/not an NCAA guy.
//Figure NCAA fans will have that kind of knowledge handy.

Queensowntalia: No, it really, really ISN'T OK to overreact by killing a tick with a nuclear warhead.

Apparently this is the most powerful institution there, as everyone is saying to kill it will kill everything. So I'm not sure you can label them a "tick" in this case. They're a dictatorship that committed crimes and covered them up. Then lied about it all.

Nukes may be in order.

Queensowntalia: What's the point of nuking the entire site from orbit?

Revenge?

Revenge has no place in the legal system, people, as much as you'd like to rip everyone in Pennsylvania apart with your bare hands and feed them piecemeal to a pack of hungry badgers. Goddamn people and their daring to live in Pedovania and stuff.

Penalize the football program and anyone involved in the shenanigans and let everyone else move along with their lives. Anything else is overkill driven by mindless rage.

No, it really, really ISN'T OK to overreact by killing a tick with a nuclear warhead. That's just farking stupid. Why spread suffering any more than one has to?
I'm beginning to realise it's not about justice. It's about satisfying the losers and the dweebs who have proclaimed themselves to be far too intelligent and sophisticated to enjoy that opiate of the unwashed masses that is sport.

So it's not enough to put a pedo and his friends in jail; they have to finally get payback on all those jocks that treated them so badly in high school. They can't even bring themselves to give any kind of respect to the players who had nothing to do with it. They deserve that respect for their hard work putting Penn State on the map (in a good way, unlike this case ... ).

kwame: alywa: I actively helped him cover up

Oh see there's your problem. I'm going to assume you knew nothing about it. We'll even assume your boss and a couple of coworkers knew about it. We're still going to fire you and your coworkers and shut down your place of business.

turns out that if you work for a company that is involved in a decade plus criminal conspiracy you may lose your job. that's how it works. sure the secretary didn't know she was working for a mob front company, but when the fbi busts up the office she's going to lose her job. the but but but the money is a weak and sad excuse. to quote michael weinreb, a penn state alum who's parent both work for the university:

It is absurd, of course, to presume that the work of a cancer researcher will ever win more public attention than the exploits of a football team. Society is not structured that way, and the beauty of the Grand Experiment is that it seemed built to work around that flaw, to use football to impact the greater good. It is clear now that the most powerful leaders at my university perverted that cause, and if it takes a temporary shutdown or de-emphasis of the program to right that wrong, those of us whose primary concern is the integrity of this university we held dear will accept that. Anyone who doesn't - and anyone who is more concerned with the lasting legacy of a football coach than that of the institution itself - is just furthering the lie. The Grand Experiment is a failure, and the entire laboratory is contaminated, and there is no choice but to go back and start all over again.

IAmRight: nd 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.

According to the Free report it sounds like he did though. They mention janitors who knew what was going on but didn't report it because they feared for their jobs. They mention the higher-ups ready to report it back in 2001 but deciding against it after discussing the matter with Joe-Pa. Sounds like they were worried he would ruin their careers as well.

The culture was football above all else and that is why they deserve the death penalty.

Queensowntalia: What's the point of nuking the entire site from orbit?

Revenge?

Revenge has no place in the legal system, people, as much as you'd like to rip everyone in Pennsylvania apart with your bare hands and feed them piecemeal to a pack of hungry badgers. Goddamn people and their daring to live in Pedovania and stuff.

Penalize the football program and anyone involved in the shenanigans and let everyone else move along with their lives. Anything else is overkill driven by mindless rage.

No, it really, really ISN'T OK to overreact by killing a tick with a nuclear warhead. That's just farking stupid. Why spread suffering any more than one has to?

I see. Raping children is a but a tick compared to the PSU football program.

The problem at PSU, along with many other Div 1 football programs, is that the university, the AD, and the coaches (as well as the boosters) have completely lost perspective over what is important. In order to protect their football program from embarrassment, PSU hid the rape of children and shielded, in fact enabled, a child molester. It would not be revenge, it would be justice, and an example to the other programs around the country that have lost perspective of what is truly important.

Unfortunately NCAA by-laws don't cover such egregious, despicable, unspeakable behavior. Happy to see that YOU'RE ok with it.

nmiguy: Another cop out. Then the NCAA is doing the SAME thing Penn State did.

I think that's a bit of a stretch. The folks at Penn State who had knowledge of this allowed it to occur without trying to put a stop to it. The NCAA, in this case, has no power to prevent it from happening -- it's already finished.

They used the Penn State football program, and facilities to set up a corporation that existed to find and facilitate the rape of under privillaged children. There is litterally nothing more monsterous they could have done without adding "to death" to the end of that sentance. The NCAA is a joke. If they don't exist to keep standards, if they cannot agree that enabling the rape of children isn't among those standards, then I'm forced to conclude that they are a trust with no purpose but to unfairly profit from the undercompensated labor of other young people.

This isn't even a difficult choice. The death penalty for Penn State is the absolute minimum. They may take comfort that ending their relationship with Penn State and forcing them to go independant probably will prevent at least a few instances of violence in the coming years. Their instinct to sweep it and associated fallout under the rug and pretend it wasn't significant and didn't happen is the exact same failure as demonstrated by those at Penn State. It's an abdication of leadership and simple humanity. That lack of integrity got children raped.

Wait, people are equating the well being of a sports program to the well being of a university?
Jesus H. Christ on a Stick! Get you farking priorities straight people. Universities aren't about football, they're about being institutions of higher learning. Yale, Harvard, Cornell, Princeton, Dartmouth, and Brown don't have killer football programs and they sure a fark aren't hurting because of it.

Equating the quality of your education to the quality of a bunch of guys tossing a ball around on a field is moronic to the point that it doesn't even deserve to be explained. Penn State would do better to get the death penalty and focus on academics again, rather than a game that simply doesn't matter in the big picture, and they'll be able to create a new "world class" program that actually accomplishes something.

asmodeus224: Jim from Saint Paul: alywa: So what?

Ok. Whatever you do for a living gets shut down for tomorrow.

You now have to move to find work with the same amount of money. Except of course you have a house you can't get rid of.

Good luck.

Too big to fail...also too big to be held to accountability

Gotcha

/enjoy your blood money

I was abused as a kid so I am getting a kick out of your attitude. Believe you me, I read about this stuff and it just makes me NUTS.

I am also over the majority of the pain and hurt it caused me over the years and can say I want to see the people in charge that helped this happen be taken out. I do NOT want to see innocent people getting hurt because of things THEY HAD ZERO CONTROL OVER. Enough innocent people have been hurt. Don't punish others for things they couldn't have known was happening.

Gut PSU. Take away asstons of scholarships. Let people leave PSU with no 1 year wait period. The fan base (and therefore the money alot of people who are not a part of PSU LIVE on) will stick around till things get better.

cfreak: IAmRight: nd 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.

According to the Free report it sounds like he did though. They mention janitors who knew what was going on but didn't report it because they feared for their jobs. They mention the higher-ups ready to report it back in 2001 but deciding against it after discussing the matter with Joe-Pa. Sounds like they were worried he would ruin their careers as well.

The culture was football above all else and that is why they deserve the death penalty.

There was a good article on Grantland that focus on what the author calls "The Great Experiment". Interesting read

Fark you Penn State.

They need to be punished for allowing this shiat.

I have friends who will be heartbroken over the Football program being shut down, but that's nothing compared to being anally raped by that giant creep Sandusky and his farked up, misshapen yellow choppers.

I'm disgusted by the whole thing, and it now makes sense why Paterno kicked off so quickly, he knew what he did and that it would eventually come out.

MugzyBrown: 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.

Taking away a stupid f**king moron game with a little pointy ball is a "punishment"?
Sounds like whiny-assed white people problems.

cfreak: The culture was football above all else and that is why they deserve the death penalty.

PSU totally lost perspective, and those that argue for the sake of the program and all the "good" it does have lost it as well. There's always collateral damage when a criminal is punished. That's one of the things someone should think about before committing a criminal act - who else their behavior will affect. That's part of the deterrent effect of punishment.

And please don't tell me about all the elite athletes that PSU "touched"; if PSU never existed, they would have gone on to LSU, Alabama, USC, and done just as well or better.

MugzyBrown: 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.

So according to your logic, we should never punish any school for any infraction because the punishment always ends up hurting the folks that had nothing to do with it.

/facepalm

pueblonative: alywa: 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.

And let's say you are a regular employee at that company where the cover up took place. You had nothing to do with what happened. Under your scenario, you still take the hit. No job no money no nothing. Same goes for the football players. Even if you let them transfer immediately some are not going to find the scholorships (or you bump out a kid on that roster who would have had his scholarship were it not for a scandal that happened on another campus).


The football death penalty is the only death penalty that kills the witnesses as well as the condemned. Much better to make them pay the next 15 years of profits to the victims.

ever heard of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC? how about Enron? companies go out of business all the time because there were un-forgiveable top-down problems

Parmenius: I'll agree with this when we learn why 3 police agencies, the county DA and state prosecutors have to explain why they buried the 1998 case and let the grand jury case languish for 3 1/2 years. Lots of people outside the athletic offices knew about this, and a lot of them weren't PSU people.

Because Penn State and its football team were basically more powerful than them.

MugzyBrown: Mrs.Sharpier: Because actions have consequences and if you do evil shiat in a civilized state you should expect punishment.

So what evil shiat did the field hockey team do?

It's a ban on a specific sport.

The death penalty is the popular term for the National Collegiate Athletic Association's power to ban a school from competing in a sport for at least one year. It is the harshest penalty that an NCAA member school can receive.

It has been implemented only five times:

The University of Kentucky basketball program for the 1952-53 season.[1]
The basketball program at the University of Southwestern Louisiana (now the University of Louisiana at Lafayette) for the 1973-74 and 1974-75 seasons.
The Southern Methodist University football program for the 1987 and 1988 seasons.
The Division II men's soccer program at Morehouse College for the 2004 and 2005 seasons.
The Division III men's tennis program at MacMurray College for the 2005-06 and 2006-07 season

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.

Do you even know what it takes to get a program shut down? Numerous football violations, not some old pervert farking boys, those are criminal matters and will be dealt with directly.

The NCAA only killed the SMU program after they were proven to have been paying players and then even told to stop they kept up the payments.

And its unlikely to ever be used again since even the NCAA admits the over estimated its effect.

fireclown: How many times has the Death Penalty been used? And for what?

5 times overall. once in football. for a long standing pay to play scheme at smu. as in they were told to stop paying the players, but they had a payroll to keep and didn't stop. good book on it if you can find it. "a payroll to meet." it went pretty much all the way to the governors office.

Ed_Severson: nmiguy: Another cop out. Then the NCAA is doing the SAME thing Penn State did.

I think that's a bit of a stretch. The folks at Penn State who had knowledge of this allowed it to occur without trying to put a stop to it. The NCAA, in this case, has no power to prevent it from happening -- it's already finished.

They knowingly have an institution that covered up serious crime. If they allow that institution to continue its program it is like Penn state allowing Sandusky to continue his illegal proclivity. The NCAA KNOWS Penn state committed a crime and they do NOTHING about that? The cycle must be broken. Mature reasoned adults know they have a responsibility to punish criminals and not allow criminal behavior to continue.

I think the NCAA should terminate the football program for some years and issue NEW policy that applies to all teams regarding its employees, players etc the same way the Catholic Church had to make operating changes in the wake of their sex abuse scandal.

It's interesting to read so many comments about shutting down the football program will effectively shutter the school, which is ridiculous. (The settlements in the civil suits, however, will indeed cost tens of millions of dollars.)

This scandal and cover-up happens BECAUSE OF the football program. It happens because of the stature of Paterno and Sandusky and the football program. To save face, to save credibility, to save the cash cow of football. Look at it this way: If children are being repeatedly rape by an English professor at Penn State, do they cover that up? Or do they alert the authorities? Are the police called the instant Spanier is notified? YES, OF COURSE THEY ARE. Penn State gets bad publicity for a week, but the administration are hailed as heroes, or at least commended, for bringing a pedophile to the police. So why is football different?

Ed_Severson: The NCAA, in this case, has no power to prevent it from happening -- it's already finished.

NCAA sanctions are always after the fact. The point of the sanctions is to "encourage" other schools from doing the same thing. Without doubt, there are dozens of programs around the country that similarly have lost perspective over what is really important. The death sentence can have no better application than at PSU.

Wait a minute. Your football program and it's staff was found directly responsible for covering up the farking of children for decades. Hmmmm, yeah 6 mos. probation, reduce some scholarships, that seems fair.

Jesus, if this doesn't deserve the dismantling of a program that was corrupt in just about the worst way possible, what does?

This cry baby attitude like "DON'T PUNISH EVERYONE" is so pathetic.

If a child's parents murder someone, both parents will go to jail. Sorry kid, your parents committed a crime, you go stay at a foster home now. We don't go "oh that's not fair!! Let the kid have his mommy!!"

kwame: alywa: So what?

alywa: Let it burn.

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

This doesn't seem like an apples to apples comparison. It would make more sense if you said something like "I look forward to you being out of work when they shut down your company for aiding and abetting felons for more than a decade."

Ranger Joe: 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..

Victim 1 for molested four years ago. I don't know all the facts, but i'd presume its likely ol man 'Dusky was molesting all the way up until the story broke.

MugzyBrown: Mrs.Sharpier: Because actions have consequences and if you do evil shiat in a civilized state you should expect punishment.

So what evil shiat did the field hockey team do?

that's the brilliance of the death penalty. it can be applied to an individual sport, say football. the field hockey team can just keep on keeping on. and if you're going to claim but, but, but the money football generates. well, i hate to break it to you, but plenty of universities lose money on athletics. some even do so willingly. penn state could too. and they have 1.7-1.8 billion, with a b, endowment so they've got the cash to spend. the football program was too powerful, the death penalty will solve that.

Weaver95: Nickninja: So what you're saying is that because a few people farked up royally, that is justification for ruining the nfl chances of every player and practically bankrupting an entire town.

yes. zero tolerance. the entire country needs to know that the consequences of ignoring over a decade of rape are severe. if we give PSU football a free pass...what lesson will that teach? that hey, it's ok to ignore immoral/unethical/illegal things because you're 'too big to fail'. is that how we run our country now?

the entire PSU football program needs to go. all of it. burn it down to the bedrock. After it lies fallow for a couple of years then it can rebuild from scratch.

Why stop there. This went up to the president of the school and the board of trustees. Clearly the entire school is tainted so let the whole thing lie fallow for a few years. Yes a few professors will lose their jobs and some kids their chance to study but that's collateral damage for you.

IAmRight: 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.

I love college football. It's my favorite sport in the whole world. I watch as much college football as possible...I even like Penn State, and always liked Joe Paterno. I don't think this incident is "death Penalty" worthy from the NCAA because I don't think the NCAA has the power over matters like this.

But you're making yourself look foolish with this continued Charade that Joe Paterno wasn't the most powerful man at Penn State. He was. Everyone knew he was, and every time a new report comes out, it becomes even more evidence and supported that he was. You're making a fool out of yourself for pretending otherwise while calling everyone who disagrees with you on this obvious matter an "idiot."

WhoIsWillo: The three Division I cases are all here: Link

Thanks. There is some great stuff in there. The most interesting is the charge of "loss of institutional control"./