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Thread: Penn State Penalties
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07-23-2012, 12:27 PM #25Regular 1st Stringer
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Re: Penn State Penalties
I think the penalties are appropriate and well conceived. They're punishing the University for inappropriate oversight. The 2012 PSU players still get to play (although without a bowl game) and they'll get their scholarships. The Student Body still gets to attend the games. How are they being punished? No student currently at PSU will have less than what they would have without sanctions.
The football team in the next few years may not be as good, but who's to say they would have been anyway.
By not giving the death penalty for football they also spared the community. Without the revenue brought in from football weekends to hotels, bars and eating establishments, the town would have lost some mom and pop businesses no doubt. These sanctions preserve them.
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Re: Penn State Penalties
Im saying if you ask who has the all time hits record, its still pete rose. Whether his feelings are hurt or not isnt really what im getting at. Paterno is dead. Theyre punishing a dead guy in a way that doesnt even matter. to me he doesnt have 298 wins, he has 409, the ncaa using some white out doesnt change that they won those games. the players that played in those games im sure feel the same. you cant take that away and i hate when they act like something didnt happen in retrospect. theyre basically doing the same thing Paterno did by ignoring reality/history, obviously with less dire consequences.
-JAB
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Re: Penn State Penalties
JAB, my first reaction was also surprise about vacating wins. But after thinking about it, I understand.
This is not about punishing the team for on-field advantages it unfairly created (at least not direct advantages).
But it is about punishing the university for its idol-worshiping of the football team -- so dearly that leaders overlooked horrid behaviors inside the football complex to protect the program's reputation above all else.
In that sense, I've been arguing the football program needed to be knocked off the altar, so it almost doesn't matter the nature of the punishment, as long as it causes the program to repent. The football program needed to suffer in order to repent--and it really doesn't matter what form punishment is given, so long as it's strongly felt.
Notice I said football program, not football team.
The program really encompasses the entire PSU community, it appears, including trustees, students, academic leadership, et al. If this was only about the team, no one outside the players and coaches would care about punishing the team. But this punishment is being felt by just about everyone associated with the university. They are all intertwined with football -- and that's sort of the problem here.
I'm still amazed to hear PSU supporters call into the radio to say that they are witholding judgement until all he facts are out, and maybe Joe will still be exonerated because technically the Freeh report talks about "the coach" and maybe that isn't really Paterno he meant to point to. They are circling the wagons around the legacy of the man, but all this is so much bigger than any single person. This is about the program, not the individuals who are already out the door, or off the planet.
This morning I heard Keith Mills on the radio bitching about how the football team should not be punished. He argued that everyone directly associated with the team who had a hand in this is gone, so there is no reason to punish the team in any way.
He allowed the idea that the university should still be punished...but not the team. He also questioned what in the world you expect to achieve by punishing the team, because it is unfathomable that another pedophile episode will ever occur again inside the locker rooms.
He doesn't get it.
It's not about preventing future pedophilia. It's about preventing future idol-worship of the football team. To accomplish that, you have to take away that which makes the PSU football program prestigious -- money, recruits, records, TV appearances. The Big Ten already joined the fray and fined PSU $13 million -- their take of bowl money.
Mills' argument that the responsible individuals are gone, and therefore justice is served is so, so bogus. It was never really about the individuals. It was about the culture, as Mark Emmert so correctly stated in referencing a football-first culture, over and over as he explained the NCAA's rationale for putting the football program into limp mode. “Penn State can focus on the work of rebuilding its athletic culture, not worrying about whether or not it’s going to a bowl game.”
My point is that this is not about individuals -- Joe, Curley, Spanier, Schulze, McCreary -- you can't just replace these men with new ones without addressing the overlaying culture at PSU that caused them to act so unethically and dishonestly. You can't have a football program that is so important to the institution that so many otherwise supposedly good men would compromise their integrity so badly. Because the next set of men might just do the same.
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Re: Penn State Penalties
An intersting factoid:
With those wins vacated, Mike McQueary, the former Penn State coach who witnessed Jerry Sandusky sexually abusing a boy in the shower, is the last Penn State quarterback to lead the team to a winning record.
McQueary was Penn State's quarterback from 1994-1997. In 1997 McQueary took the football team to a 9-3 record and the Citrus Bowl.
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07-23-2012, 12:53 PM #29
Re: Penn State Penalties
Where I think you (and T) are wrong is you are talking about this punishment as if it was designed to correct the behavior of PSU.
It is much, much more broad than that. The message to OSU, and to Oregon, and to Ole Miss, and to USC and to Notre Dame and Maryland and Duke and Miami, is that the culture around your football program may not be such that people are hurt because of the paramount sanctity of your football team.
The message is not just to PSU, and certainly not to Paterno's heirs or the PSU players, but to all the NCAA programs: If you allow people to be sacrificed to protect your team, we will hit you so hard your program will be on its knees.
*You* may not care that the wins were stripped away, but that's you. If they were my wins, I would care.
edit:
Ninja'ed by Shas.
Anyway. You might read my post and think "If the message was to schools *other* than Penn State, it's not fair to punish Penn State this severely." To which I respond "It was the Penn State community in which janitors could not go to the authorities for fear of losing their jobs; it was the Penn State community in which high ranking administrators could not conduct their own business in their own departments without freedom from interference by Joe Paterno. It was the community and the culture which made this tragedy possible; it needs to change and to heal and this is the beginning of that process. A slap on the wrist would have encouraged a continuing culture of willful ignorance when it comes to problems in or near the football program."Last edited by festivus; 07-23-2012 at 01:18 PM.
Festivus
His definitions and arguments were so clear in his own mind that he was unable to understand how any reasonable person could honestly differ with him.
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Re: Penn State Penalties
Well, I guess this thread is dead now.
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Re: Penn State Penalties
I dont think were talking about the same thing. Youre talking about the feeling of having those wins taken away, i get that, im saying you cant take them away because they already took place. You cannot rewrite history no matter how much you want it to not be true. Those wins happened and unless theres a time machine and they go back and suspend them beforehand its not going to change that. I have no problem with the punishment in anyway, i just dont think thats an actual punishment, taking the wins away. To me its pointless and is the only thing they did thats retrospective and this should be about moving forward and preventing this kind of thing in the future. things that punish them now and in the future. The wins does neither, imo. i think they still need to do more with the people that are guilty still, including mcqueary who is the only person thats actually witnessed it happen and still did nothing. I dont know how that guys walking around let alone sleeping at night.
-JAB
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07-23-2012, 03:46 PM #32On The Practice Squad
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Re: Penn State Penalties
I am first a foremost a PSU fan. This is a very dark day. The NCAA essentially killed the program for at least 10 to 12 years. PSU will not be able to compete for at least a decade. A one or two year death sentence would have been preferable. The NCAA has essentially gut-punched hundreds of thousands of fans, all the players and recruits, and the new coaching staff - none of who were involved in the wrong-doings. PSU's "culture of football" is not different than scores of other major universities. It's just that four or five a-holes who were high up made an egregiously bad decision and they all need to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. The NCAA needs to find a way to start punishing the guilty and not the innocent. Meanwhile, schools like Syracuse that have similar ethical issues happening continue on unnoticed.
This is my opinion and I understand that many will disagree. I think the punishment should have focused more on setting up charitable contributions with football revenue (which they have done to an extent), using the situation for something positive instead of detrimentally affecting those not involved. It's going to be very rough watching most of the roster transfer and our commits moving on.
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07-23-2012, 04:06 PM #33
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07-23-2012, 04:13 PM #34
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07-23-2012, 04:46 PM #35
I don't see that being the necessary logical conclusion at all.
I do however see the necessary conclusion being that the NCAA retains the right to sanction any University based off of the wrong doing of any individual(s) associated with the program.
The example of this ruling could really put the NCAA in some precarious positions in the future.Last edited by Sirdowski; 07-23-2012 at 05:16 PM.
“Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.”
–Eleanor Roosevelt
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07-23-2012, 08:16 PM #36
Re: Penn State Penalties
The football program should not be running the athletic department, the university, and maybe the local authorities.
This was an environment in which three people - two janitors and one assistant coach - *knew* what was going on, and all three chose to go to the football authorities, or remain silent, rather than the traditional authorities.
The culture was sick, and the culture had to change. At PSU, yes, and maybe elsewhere also. Now they know.
Isolating the handful of people who actually knew what was happening is missing the point, and would encourage Boards of Trustees everywhere to see no evil and hear no evil and know that as long as they don't know what's going on, it'll be ok.Festivus
His definitions and arguments were so clear in his own mind that he was unable to understand how any reasonable person could honestly differ with him.
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