The End of Penn State Football

As with many of the most heavily covered sports stories, I feel compelled to post about Penn State and Joe Paterno even though I don't really want to.  At this point, it would be a lot easier and more comfortable for me to try and forget about the horrible things that have happened on and around the Penn State campus over the past several years and focus on the happier side of sports.  Given the fact that the story is all over SportsCenter and every sports website this morning, however, I probably need to weigh in with my two cents.  After all, what kind of lesson would I be setting for my young readers (assuming I have any) if I ignored every unpleasant issue - especially one that deals with the treatment of children?

As you've likely heard by now, this weekend Penn State decided to take down the Joe Paterno statue that formerly sat outside of Beaver Stadium, the school's football facility.  In my opinion, this was undoubtedly the right move.  As Jesse Palmerly eloquently put it this morning on SportsCenter, the Paterno statue formerly stood for Penn State's dominance on the football field and was a monument to one of the greatest coaches in the history of college football.  After the unfolding of the Penn State scandal, however, the statue had become a symbol for everything wrong with the university's athletic department, morphing into a lightning rod for controversy.  Had the school allowed the statue to stay up, it would have sent the clearly inappropriate message that sports success trumps human rights, and the scandal would have taken away from any future athletic or academic accomplishments by the school.

Now that the statue is down, the next step was the announcement of the unprecedented punishments levied by the NCAA against the Penn State football program.  While the school did not receive the dreaded "death penalty," the school did get "a $60 million sanction, a four-year football postseason ban and a vacation of all wins dating to 1998" in addition to a loss of scholarships.  As much as I think the Penn State staff involved in the child abuse scandal deserve to be punished, I'm not sure I think these athletic penalties send the right message.  According to a source, the anticipated penalties are "considered to be so harsh that the death penalty may have been preferable."  Is this the proper course of action?

Before we jump to the seemingly most popular conclusion - that the events at Penn State were so horrible that any punishment is justified - we need to think through the likely impact of these athletic sanctions.  First off, there's the issue that these penalties will be levied "without the due process of a Committee on Infractions hearing," which is highly unusual and arguably inappropriate.  Moreover, though, there's the issue of who will be most negatively impacted by the NCAA penalties.  Whereas the NCAA should be trying to punish the people most directly involved with the scandal, I would argue that a loss of scholarships and bowl appearances will mostly hurt innocent bystanders.  Current and future players who had nothing to do with Jerry Sandusky will have their college careers derailed.  The residents of State College, PA - many of whom depend on the football program to boost the local economy - will have their lives negatively impacted by the local economic slowdown sure to follow the implementation of the penalties.  The $60 million penalty will have financial ramifications on the school's entire athletic department, not just the football program - especially when you consider the loss of football-related revenues almost certain to follow the sanctions.  The Penn State football program is effectively destroyed, and a lot of innocent people will go down with it.

If the Penn State scandal involved recruiting or athletics in some direct way, I'd be all for sanctions.  Once schools break the NCAA's rules, I believe that they deserve to be punished and should have any improper advantages reversed.  But to me, the Penn State scandal is so much bigger than anything having to do with sports and the NCAA sanctions send a message that terrible crimes can be righted by destroying a football program.  Not only do these NCAA penalties mainly hurt people that were in no way attached to the Penn State scandal, but they also suggest that things can be made right for the affected children by taking scholarships, bowl appearances and dollars away from a football team.  I'm all for prosecuting the accused Penn State staff to the fullest extent of the law, but in my opinion the NCAA sanctions are a huge step in the wrong direction.  Just as sports success doesn't trump human rights, sports penalties shouldn't be used to make up for human mistreatment.