Posted on 07/24/2012 8:44:32 AM PDT by Former Fetus
Innocents always pay for others’ sins, it has always been thus.
>> The school officials are the ones to blame for all this.
Primarily, yes, of course. But *anyone* who knew and looked the other way shares blame.
No one is in closer proximity to the coaches than the players. And news makes its rounds in a locker room environment. With as much of Sandusky’s evil as was going on, over as many years, it’s naive to believe that *all* of the players were ignorant of it.
>> Sandusky was a defensive coaching legend
Defensive legend, eh? I’d have guessed he’d be a receiver coach, especially the tight ends.
>> Penn State left the Paterno name on the library as a constant reminder to keep quiet while you’re in there.
ROF quietly LMAO.
“In the News/Activism forum, on a thread titled NCAA and Big Ten sanctions imposed against Penn State , MrEdd wrote:
And you also oppose the biblical principles of restitution and amends, by your posts on this ...”
Hardly. This forced charity does not provide restitution to Sanduskys victims. It amounts to liberalism. You like it OK.
“Punishing Penn State is one thing. Punishing the students is wrong. Those football players won their games in the past. Don’t take that away from them.”
So, in your version of reality, the incompetence, lack of integrity, or immorality of the leaders and the actions that spring from all of that never redound to other ‘innocent’ parties?
There are no innocent parties at Penn State.
Penn State was built by football, and it created a cult of personality around Paterno. From 1998 on, they decided that a child rapist should not only not be reported to police, but that he be allowed to continue to use the facilities, run his foundation, etc - all for the ‘greater good’ of all the innocent students and programs at Penn State University.
The NCAA botched this by not imposing a 3 year ban on football there. They should have sowed salt in the gridiron there at Happy Valley (how ironic - Happy Valley). Every single other violation from here on out will be compared to this one, and this one screams out for being made an example, which it wasn’t.
The message should have been this: “You fail to come clean at minute zero of learning about the commission of felonies within your program and you will no longer have a program. Forget the students, children age 10 being raped in Penn State University properties with the full knowledge and tacit approval of everyone from the Head Coach, Athletic Director, President is prima facea evidence the institution is now longer viable. NCAA Football cannot and will not be used to sustain something so patently evil.”
They got off light. Let’s look at the financial penalty alone. They only have to forfeit a single year’s football revenue. A tort lawyer would successfully argue that the decision not to report Sandusky was made to protect revenues from 1998 forward. Conservatvely, a penalty of $600 disgorgement could be made BEFORE discussing punitive damages - all revenues protected by the crimes (multiple failures to report, all felonies).
I’ll tell you what happened here - politicians got involved and leaned hard on the NCAA to ensure PA didn’t take an economic hit in the collapse of the economy of State College, PA. “You make it hard on us, and we’ll start screwing with your business model in ways you don’t want to contemplate.”
Some of the same guys passing around 10 year olds and foundation functions were the same guys who brokered this deal.
Some of the students and fans are claiming, “They did this without a full and formal investigation! How unfair!” They also should be careful of what they are wishing for, since nobody - nobody - seems to be calling out for that investigation. Not the college, the NCAA, politicans, locals running for office, national pols on either side of the aisle - nobody.
It’s because the evil lurking under the hundreds of slimy rocks in that town will be enough to make a pig vomit.
Penn State ought to be having another foundation pedophile gang bang in celebration of the fact they got off as light as they did. The punishment should have been far, far worse than it was.
It is also apparent we aren’t going to get any integrity from the NCAA anytime soon. They are making way too much money.
So your contention is that the charities will be screening the people they help to make sure none of them were abused while at the Second Mile?
Prove your contention.
The fine is bogus, you’re talking about essentially 12 million a year for five years, for a University that has a total endowment of $1.7 Billion (that’s with a ‘B’)
Of course the civil suits are coming, and I suspect that will take a much larger bite out of that endowment.
It's no accident that an NCAA which took YEARS to complete its investigation of Reggie Bush has somehow reached a conclusion in the Penn State case without even looking at the big-money boosters that were closely associated with Sandusky and his 'charity' [sic]. In the ultimate display of corruption, Penn State is paying off the NCAA to the tune of $60 million to end this whole investigation, with the caveat that Penn State keep its football team on the field so that they can generate the revenue to pay off the NCAA bribe.
The guilt has now spread to the NCAA who has now cashed in on Penn State's desire to prevent more information from coming out. I will bet that Penn State eagerly accepts the $60 million fine and does not appeal. The fix is in. Not only should the entire Penn State campus be razed, but so should the NCAA in Indianapolis.
I’ll tell you what happened here - politicians got involved and leaned hard on the NCAA to ensure PA didn’t take an economic hit in the collapse of the economy of State College, PA.
I don't think that the NCAA needed any politician to "draw a picture for them" when it came to economic impact. Just the thought of a 107,000 seat stadium sitting idle speaks volumes.
You're spot-on about football building the University. One Paterno bio refers to the University being a "cow college" when Paterno arrived as an assistant in the early '50's. Considering the University's history as an agricultural school, that's pretty accurate.
“There are a lot of sick, deluded “sports lovers” posting to this thread. I dare say they think of themselves as “conservatives,” but in their misplaced priorities and grotesque immaturity, they reveal themselves as anything but.”
I totally agree with you there. Over the past couple of days I’ve read numerous threads on FR about this subject and it turns my stomach at the posters who do anything they can to defend the football program at Pedo state. It seems that so many are so in love with the game that they don’t see a problem with letting those run the programs have a little pedo fun as long as they keep winning.
To those who keep saying that the students and others are the victims here, get over it. The school admins did a bad thing and you can’t punish them without it having an effect on everyone. It’s like in war. When the war is lost you can blame the generals, but the private is just as punished when the war is over.
When a corporation is found to have done illegal things and it’s punished for it’s behavior that punishment effects every employee from CEO on down to the janitor of the company. It might not be fair, but you can’t just let those who are responsible off the hook just because their power effects so many under them.
I'm no lawyer, but I would guess that Penn State has no grounds to file a lawsuit here. Yes, might say that the NCAA is "punishing the innocent" by imposing these penalties today on an entire football program and not just on those who participated in the scandalous activities. But it's really no different than the Exxon employee who loses his job or faces a pay cut, or the Exxon shareholder who sees a diminishment in the value of his shares, long after the fact when the company loses a civil lawsuit over the Exxon Valdez incident.
An organization is responsible for the actions of its members -- plain and simple.
Sorry edd. I find your posts irrationale. Good luck.
Bull —— The players HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH IT - past or present or future - and they are being HURT for nothing that they did ... it is WRONG...
You’re probably right, however I can’t see in my mind’s eye how the whole sanction’s meeting went there at the NCAA. Institutionally, the NCAA is obligated to look backwards to ensure some sort of consistency going forward.
This Penn State mess dwarfs any other mess the NCAA has had to deal with, ever. Felonies, sex crimes, threats and intimidation, political maneuvering by elected officials - all to protect NCAA football revenue, ultimately.
How the meeting lasted longer than five minutes is beyond me. “Kill it, and make sure it doesn’t survive the sanction - period. We can’t, for one minute, leave the impression we put future earnings over the victims here.”
One can only conclude that the bucks trumped the victims here big time. For once, I hope a phalanx of flesh-eating attorneys end up suing the foundation and the university out of existence. I hope its done after they prosecute the various institutional heads, janitors, coaches, and others that new about this and failed to report.
If I weren’t a more suspicious person, I’d begin to think the sanction had a more subtle undertone to it:
“Pedophilia, in the great scheme of things, and in light of how we feel about homosexuality, isn’t all that bad. In fact, the NCAA going forward would consider a blatant pattern of institutionalized booster emoluments for players with the university’s knowledge more generally eligible for the ‘death penalty’ than the patterns of offenses at Penn State.”
I’m not saying that’s the message the NCAA was sending, but I also haven’t heard anyone, anywhere ask the question either. Would such a thing - SMU style behavior that earned SMU the death penalty - is that more or less deserving the death penalty in 2012 than Penn State’s actions do?
More succinctly, “If Penn State doesn’t merit the death penalty, what pattern of behavior would in 2012?”
I guess that’s the overall politics I’m talking about. The NCAA is so profitable, not just to the NCAA, but to the cities, counties, and states in which the NCAA operates. I would think the amount of politics would rival closing a military base in that location, at the very least.
It’s why I suggested, but do not know, that there must have been very intense pressure put on the NCAA around Penn State getting the slap on the wrist that they did here.
It’s “Too Big to Fail” writ large. Just like a bank bailout, nobody likes it but most can be persuaded to go along because the practical alternatives are even less attractive.
What we can’t know at this point is how badly the PSU program is going to be impaired by year 3 or 4. It’s going to hurt, badly.
PSU’s QB recruit just jumped to Michigan, BTW.
In the long run, I think it will be healthy for PSU. Now, all Board Members should resign and have a clean sweep. Fire “Dr.” Mann too...
PSU plays a lot of their pre-conference schedule against Div-I FSC Teams (formerly Div I-AA). If it weren’t for that huge stadium, it might be nice to see PSU join their ranks with a scaled-down football program. In a few years they might even get to play in a real championship tournament.
But then I have been disgusted with Div I Collegiate football for years. I appreciate the Ivys, the military academies and the Div II schools for what they attempt to do with their programs. They’re not perfect either (Harvard accusing Penn of ‘loose academic standards’ for football players, and quasi-athletic scholarships). Seems almost quaint.
Agree with you on the Michael Mann thing. That is one professor who should have been investigated by his university.
:-) sure-as you wish
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