Penn State punishment, NCAA a little harsh

Jul 262012

By Kaitie Huss
July 26, 2012

The NCAA issued a punishment to Penn State on Monday involving a $60 million fine and a four-year postseason ban. The punishment also includes the loss of multiple scholarships and a removal of all football victories from 1998 to 2011, invalidating the football legacy put in place by Joe Paterno.

“The culture, actions and inactions that allowed them to be victimized will not be tolerated in collegiate athletics,” NCAA president Mark Emmert said, according to an article from the New York Times.

While it’s important to send a strong message to other schools and administrations about the seriousness of this situation, eradicating the victories earned under Paterno punishes those beyond the realm of the scandal. It impacts years of Penn State graduates as well as the future of the university as an academic institution.

As a disclosure, I’ve grown up with Penn State. Because I lived in Pennsylvania for most of my childhood, I was constantly surrounded by the college. My mom along with five of her ten siblings all attended the school and had it not been for out-of-state tuition, I would have been a Nittany Lion too.

As a kid, I remember the football games being an all-day event: tailgating with family friends, watching the Blue Band practice for the halftime show, sandwiching myself between my parents on the bleachers inside a sold-out stadium, fearful that if I even stood to adjust my blanket I would surrender my seat.

Even after coming to CSU, I was still incredibly proud of being part of the Penn State community, even it was merely through association. This scandal however, has made me hesitant in my support to the point where I’m cautions about wearing my Penn State sweatshirt outside of my apartment.
I talked to some of my family members who did attend State College about their own sense of pride in the University.

“You can’t defend it,” my uncle Greg, a PSU alum, told me over the phone. “You don’t want to wear the clothing because you don’t feel like getting involved in it. And then you if you speak out to friends, then you put yourself on the side of a child molester.”

While this association is unwarranted, it’s somewhat of a reality Penn State fans and alumni are forced to consider.

It’s for this reason that I find fault with the NCAA judgement to disqualify the football wins made under Paterno’s coaching. This punishment strips the honor of students and alumni who were uninvolved in Sandusky’s actions, adding salt to a wound already created. It goes beyond the administration responsible and targets the PSU community.

That being said, I do believe it is a community that is resilient and can eventually move forward with time.

As Cael Sanderson, PSU wrestling coach, tweeted Monday, “Penn State is much bigger than the actions of a few. Take medicine. March forward.”

Penn State punishment, NCAA a little harsh

About Kaitie Huss

Journalism and Technical Communications Major

Posted by Kaitie Huss on July 26, 2012 at 6:31 pm Opinion Tagged with: kaitie huss, NCAA, penn state, sandusky, sex scandel Add comments

http://www.facebook.com/theinvertedpyramid David Marckres

Dear Ms. Huss In your letter, I find no words of compassion or understanding. Lives were destroyed. Sandusky was openly aided and abetted by the PSU leadership and your main concern is that some of the “alumni” are going to lose some football wins and the town’s real estate values might fall. Further, your letter makes it sound like this was the action of only a few people. President Graham Spanier and Senior V.P. Gary Schultz, who were condemned by the Freeh Report haven’t gone to court. Athletic Director Tim Curley and Cynthia Baldwin, counsel for PSU (who was accused by Spanier of guiding the PSU leadership down this unfortunate path) neither were charged. You’ll never convince me that only a few individuals knew. The cover-up continues. In the Freeh Report it was stated that in January 2011 even as the scandal played out, Paterno negotiated the fattest contract of his life ($5.5mil.). That is scum to me. Paterno and his family should have had their fortune taken from them and distributed to the victims. He should been charged while still living. Sandusky will get his in prison. It’s either solitary confinement or some punk will make “his bones” by murdering him. This isn’t justice, it’s a sick joke. In closing, you believe the punishment is too harsh for the lives that were destroyed. I don’t and it was nowhere near bad enough. If you‘d known about it what would you have done? I think the answer is in your letter.
PennStater

Mr. Marckres, you fail to see the whole picture of this argument. The way that I read this article is that you stripped honestly earned wins from innocent former football players as well as prohibiting innocent current football players to fulfill their dreams of playing in a few games. This I believe is wrong (not the whole fine by either the Big Ten or the NCAA or what comes to those involved). I’ve often heard that this entire mess comes with collateral damage, figuratively speaking, and albeit this sort of thing happens with some NCAA sanctions, but it shouldn’t be warranted here.

This is a criminal trial and had nothing to do with competitive advantage/loss of institutional control that the NCAA has jurisdiction over. You could argue: But Paterno, Curley, etc. were all still coaching/ ruling the team/school from 1998 on. Shouldn’t that be competitive advantage enough? What about a loss of institutional control? The answer here is no. If you read the NCAA bylaws on loss of institutional control it only has to deal with upholding and enforcing NCAA bylaws. What bylaws were broken? I didn’t see any. If the NCAA wants to strip the school of a few wins, then they should have stripped every single win from the 1970s on…including 2 national titles which Sandusky helped to coach. Now wouldn’t that be absurd? Honestly, the polarization of the public on what would “correct” the problem in the general public’s eye now would be to shut the school down and never hear about it again or do nothing…but neither are right here either. You see where I’m going? We’ve unjustifiably added more “victims”of Sandusky and maybe a few others to a growing pot of sorrow and confusion and escaped from keeping the scope on the victims.

At this point, I believe the “victims” have obtained justice in that Sandusky is going to jail for his crimes. The others, like you put, have not been formally charged or indicted. The Freeh report by it’s definition is a report of findings and opinions, not definitive absolute facts. It is not a jury verdict nor a list of formal charges from our judicial system. If the courts choose to push forward with more trials, then I would be more than happy to open up my beliefs toward justice against the people harboring and helping him. Until then, I think these victims have obtained justice for the time being (until charges are brought to others).

If you look at what spawned the whole decision, it was the media. Media outlets like newspapers, radio shows, ESPN/CNN/MSNBC/etc, all pushed the NCAA to make a hasty decision. Now, the NCAA stated that the Freeh report was even more in-depth than something they could carry out. I believe this is rubbish since the NCAA has it’s own roots in the federal government. Using a more credible source such as FBI or themselves instead of a third party would have been more rational and more logical to base their findings. Even Freeh’s own investigators are critical of using their report and not their own as the basis of their decisions according to a few articles. Even look at how the same Freeh team investigated FIFA’s ex-president Qatari Mohammed Bin Hammam which ended up getting him banned. That got overturned because of insufficient evidence. Could the same be said here? Perhaps.

In closing, the punishment was unjustified by an organization that had no grounds to trod on criminal trials without formulating their own investigation or trial. I believe that there are certain things that you can do to not make more “victims” in this case and the NCAA failed to recognize that course of action. They were pressured by the media to bring the hammer down and destroy a culture. Destroying a culture, especially like the one at Penn State, will never happen (look at how people came out to praise the team on the first day of practice) when the population isn’t eradicated in one fell swoop.

I’m a proud Penn Stater myself and really hate this whole situation on both sides of the coin.

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About Kaitie Huss