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Neil Barofsky Could Have Told Us That PSU Was NEVER Getting The Death Penalty.

By: Repair_Man_Jack (Diary) | July 23rd, 2012 at 01:00 PM |

RESIZE: AAA

Bonfire of The Vanities

I’ve never quite reached the level of alienation in my contrarian ideology where I turn into an individual like Heath Ledger’s Joker character. I’m not quite able to just want it all to burn. Thus it makes me stop and take a breath when someone I like and respect blogs that “I didn’t become a conservative to defend our glorious social order. In fact, I wanted to destroy it, because it is broken.” Yet there are times when the only way to fix our system and clean out the lies and dishonesty is to drag forth a squealing sacred cow and butcher in plain view of a horrified public. As much as I hate to think this; perhaps Savonarola had a point.

We recently had an excellent opportunity to do just that with Penn State football. RS. Colleague, Jeff Emanuel suggested we give them the death penalty. Sadly, as we read below, we missed the opportunity to send our corrupt and decadent society a clear and painful message.

It typically takes the NCAA months to complete a case against a school. Since this only took a few weeks, many believe that PSU has agreed to whatever punishment it is about to be handed.
UPDATE #1:
The sanctions: A $60 million fine, four-year bowl ban, scholarship reductions of 10 per year for four years, all wins since 1998 have been vacated, and five years probation. All current players will be allowed to transfer schools without sitting out a year. So basically, the NCAA went as far as it could without giving the school the death penalty

(Ht: Business Insider)

Somewhere Special Inspector General, TARP, Niel Barofsky is laughing and saying and saying “I told you so!” Perhaps in his new book Bailout. And if so, it is only just and accurate that he rub our noses in it. Sport frequently mirrors life, and if what Niel Barofsky alleges in a recent New York Times article is the Gospel truth, Jerry Sandusky is better metaphor for modern American leadership than any of us would like to admit. Note the depressing similarity between what Barofsky was told below and how the NCAA handled PSU’s football program above.

“The common refrain went like this,” Mr. Barofsky writes. “There are three different types of I.G.’s. You can be a lap dog, a watchdog or a junkyard dog.” A lap dog is seen as too timid, he was told. But being a junkyard dog was also ill-advised. “What you want to be is a watchdog,” he continues. “The agency should perceive you as a constructive but independent partner, helping to make things better for the agency, so everyone is better off.” He also learned, he says, that success as an inspector general meant that investigations come second. Don’t second-guess the Treasury. Instead, “focus on process.”

This is the classic whitewash mentality. The bureaucracy sends a few scapegoats off to the desert wastes. The people are fed a show trial to assuage their anger. The process remains just as corrupt, the game just as rigged, and the society just as decadent as it was before the massive volumes of **** hit the oscillating rotary device. As long as the walls are cleaned and repainted and the room no longer stinks nobody really cares.

To borrow another Batman metaphor, you could understand exactly how someone like Barofsky could get seduced and turned into “Two-Face.” Perhaps this is why I watch the stock markets open in the toilet this morning and an evil part of my being smells the smell of victory. I lose on this deal just like a lot of you do as well. It’s just that I somehow am willing to give it up and endure it like a splitting hangover on the first day of Lent. Maybe the coming recession will have a positive silver lining if it makes us change our ways and become a more virtuous society instead of the Too Big To Fail Nation we are right now.

Tags: Barofsky, Bonfire of The Vanities, Corruption, evil, NCAA, PSU, ruin, TARP

COMMENTS

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wintermute

They’ve also given the players the ability to leave and play immediately somewhere else. There is going to be an exodus. 4 years of no bowls, less scholarships, and no talent. Thats not a death penalty, but its at least a decade long exile. It essentially accomplishes the same thing.

I feel really bad for all the penn state students and athletes who had absolutely nothing to do with this. The only Penn state program that brought in more money than it spent was the football program. Its going to really hurt their athletics unless they can compensate elsewhere.

I would probably feel different if I was personally affected by the crimes. Id probably be calling for the entire institution to be burned to the ground.

kipling

The punishment does not fit the crime.
avgjo

your sympathy is ‘all the penn state students and athletes who had absolutely nothing to do with this.’

I don’t know, I just have trouble right now getting past the kids whose lives were ruined by Sandusky.

wintermute

I cant imagine a punishment severe enough for the people who are responsible for this.

Are all gun owners responsible for Aurora? Absolutely not.

Are all Penn State students responsible for Sandusky et al? No way. However, something needed to be done.

Repair_Man_Jack

I tend to believe the more collatoral damage there is and the more noise it makes the better. People then better understand that the institutional behavior that went on to cover for Jerry Sandusky will not be totlerated no matter who else gets burned. It better sends the message that evil will not be permitted.

http://www.nathanjmartin.com Nathan Martin

That we know how the victims feel. If ANY of the victims love their college football team like I love my Cornhuskers. This just devastated them. Only liberals pretend to fully understand someone else’s desires and use the rule of law to enforce that ideal. As of this comment…NO ONE has asked any of the victims what they wanted. Great. This just made the NCAA $60m richer, the university incapable of paying a settlement to the actual victims, and spoiled juries for future prosecutions. Hope you enjoyed the bloodlust. I fear the victims lost. Not to mention NO ONE who was involved with this is still at Penn State!

avgjo

anyone here pretending to know fully how these people feel. We feel outrage, and that is enough to justify many of the sentiments that you seem to take issue with. God forbid that outrage, or action upon it, be stifled by the argument that only those who are actually offended can prescribe punishments. Were that the case, there’d be next to no vestige of justice on earth. Often, the only advocacy for victims comes from others who are outraged on their behalf. Victims are often chosen for their vulnerability and inability to effectively respond.
Repair_Man_Jack

For PSU to be playing at all is loss for decency. This program should have been completely shut down. Let the NCAA deal with the collatoral damage. I could care less about how anyone feels. I care more about whether we send a strong enough message to people who take over traditional institutions that they are still accountable.

http://www.nathanjmartin.com Nathan Martin

just fine. Justice is not meant to send a message…it is meant to be just. The NCAA had no authority to do what it did under their bylaws. The court system is still working to punish those responsible. This is just a semblance of vigilante justice. Who at Penn State had anything to do with this? The answer is NO ONE. If accountability is what you desire then hold the people accountable. Justice is never served by randomly punishing people whom the majority of the media chooses to punish.
Jerry Sandusky will never see the light of day.
Paterno died a broken man.
The President and Athletic director are likely to see jail time.
The media who overlooked this in 1998…get nothing.
The DA who overlooked this in 1998…gets nothing.
You aren’t looking for justice…you only care about revenge with some piling on for good measure.
Melody Warbington (rwm52)

of the victims and their families than how Paterno died. I have to wonder if your opinion would be any different if you’d had a child abused by one pervert and covered up by a host of selfish, cowardly men (and I’m being kind and decent in my description).
JSobieski

“I care more about the victims and their broken lives than your gun rights”.

Emotions should not trump logic, particularly the logic of punishing people who have no culpability.

Punishing people with no culpability is like kicking your dog because you had a bad day at work.
Repair_Man_Jack

The NCAA has very little in the way of moral suasion over the institutions that get a cut out of it’s spoils. There is no deterent effect here whatsoever. The only lesson to learn here is don’t get caught.
Melody Warbington (rwm52)

I made a very specific point about the guilty parties, specifically in response to Nathan’s comment that Paterno died a broken man vs. the lives of the victims. Paterno was culpable.
JSobieski

Nt
Melody Warbington (rwm52)

no text
barleycorn

“Either we are a nation of laws, or a nation of emotion. Despite the ugliness of this situation, I know which I prefer to live in.”

Well put. I agree totally.

And furthermore I won’t be shocked if the “Freeh report” ends up being substantially discredited down the road a ways. It looks and smells like a rush job.
barleycorn

Was a reply to another post down thread.
Repair_Man_Jack

If it prevents someone else from doing what PSU did or if it makes the other 10 or 15 D1 programs hiding something equally sick or insane quietly clean up their acts than sending a message has a positive deterrent effect. Punishing cirme is supposed to make other potential criminals think twice.
http://www.nathanjmartin.com Nathan Martin

to deterrance. I accept that. I see your point. However, there is far from ANY evidence that this is anything but related to a very specific set of circumstances at one institution. I just feel for the thousands of people who will be negatively affected because of the decision of a select few.

And trust me. I hope nothing but ill will towards those who are guilty. (While we don’t have all the facts yet) From what I see, I am fine with even the tarnishing of a dead man’s name.

I think guilt by association is wrong. I think the NCAA had no authority to do what it did (by definition, that is vigilante justice). I think this cheapens the justice system that we do have to deal with the civil and criminal issues of Penn State.
Repair_Man_Jack

I don’t see anyone other than the people controlling the money spigot (BCS, NCAA) having any power to impact this at all. The state of PA won’t do a thing. The Feds will claim a convenient lack of jurisdiction. Only the loss of revenue ever gets a college atletic deptartment to ask ethical questions.
macbookben

Tulane University’s chancellor during the 1985 basketball scandal involving fraternity members who paid key players in cocaine to shave points during big Metro conference contests, fired all the coaches and scuttled the highly rated program. He just got up on the podium and said Tulane is ending its program. And he shut it down. No hemming, hawing, or waiting for convictions or NCAA sanctions. Just shut it down. At the risk of his own future at Tulane, Dr. Kelly manned up and did the right thing.

I know this does not share the magnitude of the PSU cover up, but Paterno squandered his only opportunity to do the right thing

Melody Warbington (rwm52)

that everyone who was involved in the cover up is gone from Penn State?

And are you implying that the victims love Penn State so much that they might be more devastated by the NCAA sanctions that hurt their beloved team than by the abuse they suffered at the hands of adults who were supposed to be trustworthy? This is not a parent/child relationship where a child often still loves the parent in spite of abuse suffered. And since we’re talking about children, I sincerely doubt they developed the rabid love of a fan who puts the team ahead of common decency.

As for the money, $60M (equivalent to the annual gross revenue of the football program) is to be paid into an endowment for prevention and victims of child sexual abuse. How exactly does that enrich the NCAA? Further, paying a fine in no way incapacitates its ability to pay a settlement to the victims.

http://www.nathanjmartin.com Nathan Martin

On the endowment. I missed that.

My point is that the football program is the major moneymaker for the University. It is now crippled for at least 10 years. This will go well beyond just the football program. Non revenue sports are the ones that will feel the real bite. Especially if the university is held culpable (which I expect).

As to the victims. I am saying that I don’t know. Neither does anyone. No one has bothered to ask. There are just a lot of assumptions. When it comes to child abuse victims, we shouldn’t assume we know what is best. Often sports or rooting for a team is a way of healing. We shouldn’t just assume. I have long been a strong advocate for child abuse victims. I, for one, feel that Jerry Sandusky should be eligible for Capital Punishment.

According to the Freeh report, as I read it, all the major players in the scandal have been removed or are gone. (Not extensive, poorly written, and with a lot of gaps mind you)

I suppose I am in the minority because I don’t feel Penn State athletics are synonymous with child rape. Sorry. I think it is a stretch. Just as I didn’t see the Catholic church as synonymous with child rape. Leftists are the ones who paint with such broad brushes and try to stain whole institutions with the sins of a few. I don’t feel that is right or just. I guarantee the fans of Penn State wouldn’t have put up with this. Neither would the professors. Or the coaches in other sports. To punish an entire institution for the sins of a few is guilt by association. Which I am pretty sure is not an American tradition.

The_Gadfly

Yes, there is a whitewashing going on, and yes it is all about money. But as was the case when the information about Sandusky was being buried from site, it isn’t actually Paterno or the PSU football program per se that are doing it. It is the NCAA, the President of PSU, and the PSU Board of directors.

The way Paterno coached and led his team WAS what student athletics is meant to be. Making him out as the Machiavellian mover and shaker who masterminded the cover up is an outright lie.

I don’t say this because I’m a Penn State Alumnus who loves football. I actually don’t care for the game. In fact, when I was a student there I despised the game, and came with a general hatred for all jocks. I never went to the games. In addition to all of those aspects, I was an arrogant anti-booze advocate and the tailgating seemed to be just another excuse for fans and students to get drunk. But as chance would have it, I wound up being housed in the dorms with the football players. And even then I learned to respect the football players. Not because they were in my face, but because they weren’t. They were respectful of me even though I didn’t particularly deserve it. And when we were discussing classes, they were right there with me, working on the same study questions I was. They learned that from Joe. And frankly, that was probably worth more than anything else the university may have tried to teach them.

As for the severity of the penalties, they’re probably worse than the death penalty for State College. It isn’t a normal community in the way we tend to think of communities. It’s economy is far different. When I attended there were maybe 20,000 local residents including university staff who lived there. The student population ran between 32,000 and 35,000, And on football weekends there were always 100,000 people in the stands. You can’t really fly into State College, the airport is too small and flights too infrequent. And there were basically two roads in, one from the western part of the state and one from the eastern part of the state. If you come from the east, the signs about Penn State football traffic started about 100 miles from the stadium. State Troopers were called out to direct traffic from at least 50 miles away. All those people ate in the restaurants, shopped in the stores, and went to the bars after the games. Many of those businesses are marginal in the best of times let alone in the current economy. With the NCAA penalties, they’re pretty much toast. The quality of life for the town and the students WILL suffer. And not a damn one of them had anything to do with covering up what Sandusky did. Those people were Schultz, Curly, and Spanier but that’s not where the focus is now is it? No, they were cowards hiding in the shadows of anonymity, but people like you and Jeff are all too willing to let them throw Joe Paterno and the Penn State football program under the bus to distract from their misdeeds, their failed leadership, and their crimes. What happened to those kids shouldn’t happen to anybody. But if you want to stop it from happening, you have to focus on who did it. And letting the NCAA distract you with “record penalties” because their cash cow would otherwise be in danger won’t get it done.

Next93

The Penn State attocity grew out of a national culture that places far more emphasis on collegiate sports than on collegiate academics. Anyone who’s ever been on a college campus knows what really goes on; “student” athletes who can barely read are being admitted over better students, enrolling in “warm body” majors, turning in pretend papers for guaranteed passing grades. At the end of four of five years they’re handed a diploma that means nothing but is identical to the diploma of students who worked (and paid!) for thiers.

The colleges (including the SERVICE ACADEMIES!) are debasing the one thing of value that they actually offer the tuition-paying students, the integrity of the academic process. Without that, every diploma ever issued by the institution becomes $100,000 worth of scrap paper. And every college with a D1 porgram is complicit in what amounts to theft by fraud from its own alumni.

It’s probably not a surprise, but I don’t buy into the “innocent player” angle. Every single D1 player is where he/she is because they enthusiastically bought into this system and worked hard to become a part of it. They made it to D1 because they were more than willing to turn a blind eye to the perversion of the educational system from junior-high on up, they knowingly accepted thier status as the local golden-child, and they looked forward to acheiving god-like fame and fortune that the system brings to the small percentage who make it to “The Show”.

How many of these “student” athletes you’re so worried about would have sacrificed thier own careers to turn in Sandusky? We’ll never know, but I find it hard to beleive that if the Penn State janitors weren’t willing to risk a $30,000 a year job, any of the actual beneficiaries of the football program would have been willing to risk a potential career in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

So, it you have an IQ in the low 80′s but have been admitted (for free!) to a prestigious school because you can reliably shoot from the 3-point line, and this penalty somehow inconveniences your aspirations to rise to the next level of this rotten system, I’m not sure I can work up the tears for you.

JSobieski

What evidence do you have to support the conclusion that a player who decided to join PSU in 2010 is morally culpable for covering up the action of a child molestor/rapist?

That is a strong accusation to make based on absolutely nothing.

Are college athletes admirable for getting watered down educations in pursuit of an athletic dream of pro sports? No. But that doesn’t make them worthy of punishment.

Repair_Man_Jack

You have to hammer corruption if you ever want it to go away. Give it an excuse, give the serpents another rock to crawl under and it continues to abide. The NCAA failed to adequately punish PSU because their football program will still take the field in the near term. That fact right there is an offense against basic decency.

JSobieski

to the house of the neighbor—you won’t want me to object?

Most neighborhoods are distinct legal entities in a way that a football program is not.
Next93

The current players didn’t know what was going on, but they DID know enough not to ask questions, and they were fine with that. They’re there to take advantage of the corrupt system. If they have to be inconvenienced, that’s too bad.
JSobieski

This is precisely why I am still arguing this issue. In hindsight, we are holding at least the tangential people to the standard of “well, they heard some rumors” as actual knowledge of a crime.

Do you want to live in a world where a janitor has to repeat every rumor that they hear?

Until the story broke, a relatively small group of people had any real knowledge of anything that anyone had seen.

The list of people with direct knowledge is even smaller.

Unless you count hearing a rumor as knowledge.

Next93, someone in your neigborhood is abusing children.

So . . . what are you going to do about your knowledge?

You say you aren’t sure that its true?

Or are you just an enabler?

A current player at PSU has less knowledge of Sandusky’s activities than you have (statistically speaking now) that there is child abuse going on in your neighborhood.

It is easy in hindsight to just throw PSU into hades, but what about the next story of someone whose life is ruined by false accusations?
Viet71

no text
JSobieski

and if people want to attack the buildings, trademark, uniforms, etc. they can create a bonfire for their own satisfaction.

I am more concerned about singling out the guilty than I am motivated to punish people who had nothing to do with anything besides believe the same lies about Paterno that many of us at RS believed.

PSU’s Board has been replaced. So has the coaching staff. Flush out the individuals in the athletic department, and you are talking about an institution that doesn’t have any of the people involved in the coverup.

That is what I would do–investigate the hell out of it.
Viet71

no text no text
JSobieski

if you mean about PSU, I gave you my answer.

if you mean about someone saying “X is molesting kids”—I would evaluate the context of the statement (was the person serious and as the person a serious person).

I would ask the person making the statement what evidence that they have.

I would make an assessment as to whether the assertion could be confirmed or not. For example, if I knew the child I could look for signs of abuse.

My point is however that we become forced as a society to report every allegation of abuse repeated as part of some rumor, society and individuals will be harmed.
Based the answers to the above, I would either do a little digging myself, report it to the police, or forget about it.
Viet71

Engineering and law.

Tell me: what was your favorite math course? your favorite physics course? your favorite law course?

I liked analytic geometry. Heat and thermodynamics. Contracts.

Just wondering.
JSobieski

were the last time something in s science/technology class seemed beautiful to me).

Favorite law course? Either contracts or constitutional law.

Favorite physics course? Anything that didn’t have a lot of electromagnetic field stuff in it.

It is an odd thing that what I really enjoyed as so closely related to something I didn’t like. Needless to say, I didn’t graduate with an EE degree.

Anyway, thanks for not taking things personally. I enjoy a good college dorm room type debate, but I know it can rub people the wrong way.

tnfriendofcoal101368

a country club (NCAA) disciplining another member (Penn State) for harming it’s brand. I agree that all such disciplines harms the institutions and current players not rule breakers but the members have the option to withdraw from the country club and they don’t for whatever reason.

JSobieski

you might feel a bit put upon, don’t you think?
tnfriendofcoal101368

more than I wanted to protest the penalties, I serve the penalty if not I leave the club. If I think the penalties violate my rights; I leave the club or sue. Penn State could leave the NCAA and give up the money they make as a member of the Big 10 and BCS if the penalties were too egregious or sue the NCAA. Spanier, Curley, Schultz and Paterno knew what happened in that locker room in 2001; they chose to cover it up. In the NCAA’s membership’s opinion, this violated the membership agreement between Penn State and the other members and damaged their brand as such Penn State pays the penalty in accordance to the bylaws of the agreement. If Penn State disagrees with this judgement, they are free to leave or sue. Their choice is clearly to comply with the penalties.

I just don’t see where the penalties are a moral outrage. Did the NCAA have the ability under the membership agreement to punish the university (clearly)? Did Penn State accept the penalties without a fight (yes)?

It’s not a situation where you violated my property rights – I’d have you arrested and then sue you. Much different than a disagreement over whether by your inaction – you damaged our country club’s reputation.

Tbone

and college athletics. They can’t appreciate that the majority of them work incredibly hard to participate and maybe excel in their sport and also manage to get a degree.

Every week millions of fans attend collegiate games on all levels and enjoy supporting their school and having a good time. Some people just hate that because they consider schools exist to educate. Yet they went on spring break and puked their nerdy guts out. But that was ok because they were “students”. Go figure.

JSobieski

If this was a coverup for illegal gambling or a non-sexual assault, I don’t think the reaction would be the same.

People want someone to pay for child rape, but the culpable parties aren’t at PSU anymore. So the anger gets taken out on primarily on people who are 100% innocent (alumni, fans, players, and students).

I did some looking at the RS archives re: the reaction to giving Arthur Andersen the “death penalty” for their Enron accounting malfeasance.

It would seem that the majority of RS took a different position back then on organization/collective punishment
acat

They’re just farm-teams for the NFL.

I bear the athletes no ill will, but the system is corrupt and in need of a change.

Mew
Tbone

Less than 2% of college players ever play an NFL game. Actually, consider the numbers. College football generates far more revenue than the NFL. It is a big business and no more or less corrupt than other big businesses. In fact probably less. If a VP at Ford molested kids and the CEO & Chairman were found to have covered it up, the corporation would have faced no sanctions that would impact its business as much as these NCAA sanctions are going to hurt PS.
acat

The Science programs won’t suffer.
The Math Department will continue.
The English Department will be fine.

Who suffers?

Instructors in the “special” courses and a football program that’s got nada to do with education?

Not seeing the problem here.

Nobody promised Penn State the right to go on making money selling football.

Mew
Tbone

PSU will see a significant drop in general fundraising. Some will result from the scandal, more will result from the sanctions.

Look, I don’t have any affection for PSU and as for corruption, universities are, after governments, the MOST corrupt organizations in the Country. The fact that administrators covered up these crimes is not surprising. I can assure you had they been perpetrated by a high profile faculty member, they would have been covered up as well.

I am just commenting on the hysterical blaming of the importance of athletics as the cause for the coverup and the demonizing of athletes in the process.
acat

Of the proposals I’ve made, none blame the athletes.

All blame the administration of the football program and the administration of the university that let it become “a large football stadium with a college attached”.

Death penalty to the program, let the players transfer, Penn State has to keep paying for their scholarships.

Death penalty to program management, all replaced, program now administered by the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Where did the athletes get harmed in either .. any more than they’re being harmed now by being associated with Penn State?

Mew
acat

Hat tip to RWM52 for posting this.

If a corporation with a healthy culture had the same level of proof that Penn State had that one of their officers was a pedophile, he or she would be fired. Period. “Security will clean out your desk, accounting will mail your check. Security, throw this person out of the building.”

Yes, there are unhealthy corporate cultures where this may not happen, where cover-ups go on .. but they are the exception, not the norm.

Penn State is the exception, and requires exceptional changes.

Mew
Next93

Yes, they work hard. There are plenty of pipe fitters and piano movers who put in a lot of physical labor and try to become better at what they do. They’re not awarded college degrees for free if they get through 5 years without getting too injured to work. Not even degrees in “warm body” majors with pretend assignments and automatic passing grades.

Relatively few of these pipe fitters spend thier spare time vandalizing thier workplace and/or engaging in petty (and sometimes not-so-petty) crimes against the other pipe fitters. And when they do, they don’t get a free pass because, well, they’re pipe fitters.

I do think that the purpose of colleges is to educate. That’s not why I diislike college (or high school) athletics. I dislike them because the PSU scandal didn’t surprise me.

In my second high school, we had a football coach who was infamous for putting “the moves” on teaching assistants and, yes, students, and all turned a blind eye. In my time as an undergrad, I watched our “student” athletes get away with all manner of infractions that we lesser mortals would have been crucified for (up to and including sexual assault), and I watched our college administration try to shut down the student newspaper for reporting on one. Three years ago, I watched a young man intentionally maimed in a high school football game by a team that had inflicted three similar, life changing injuries in previous games.

No, the idea that some people put football success above basic human decency doesn’t surprise me. What surprised me was that it took this long for the rot to show itself.
Ausonius

The Marx Brothers movie from 80 years ago (!) shows the boys going to the local speakeasy (an illegal bar, for you young’uns out there: Prohibition of Alcohol nationally was in effect) to recruit football players, because, as Zeppo points out, a college can’t survive without a good football team, and for a good football team you need good football players…

…who were available down at the local speakeasy!

A satire of course, but ringers even 80 years ago were not unknown.

The country is drunk on sports, along with other things.
Next93

At least Groucho was honest enough to pay his ringers.

The present system of “student” athletes who spend five years in college without even knowing where the academic buildings are has turned ALL of the players into pros in all but name (and, conveniently for the college, in paycheck).
Ausonius

It will not happen, but so many abuses could be cured if college football were divorced from the NFL and de-emphasized.

Too much tradition is now present, and has been in place for decades, as “Horse Feathers” indicates.

Maybe we can have BIG BRObama put a tax on college football!!!
http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens

.

Next93

Holding up a baby in the line of fire and yelling “what about the CHILDREN!” isn’t terribly effective when the baby is a hulking 220-lb 20year-old who spent years trying to BE in the line of fire.

The current players at PSU are knowingly and much-more-than-willingly part of and are benefitting from a system that’s now been proven to place it’s own good above basic human decency. It’s niave in the extreme to think that they made it to a D1 team without knowing at least that much, even if they didn’t know the particulars of what was going on at PSU before they arrived.

In any case, to take an action that might force thier personal gravy-train to take a detour isn’t a “punishment”.

JSobieski

What does it mean to “know” that kids have been abused?

See it with your own eyes?
Have someone tell you?

If #2, how do you distinguish between something that is mere rumor and something that requires investigation.

It is so easy in hind sight to assert everyone and their cousin (except for Next93 of course, because Next93 had no reason to know anything was wrong) “knew” what was going on.

You through around culpabilty like candy at halloween.
Next93

Did the present players know what Sandusky was doing? Of course not. Only a perfect fool would even assert that, and you don’t stike me as a perfect fool.

Did they know that the right people in any D1 program can get away with ANYTHING, provided they were viewed as irreplaceable by the Powers That Be? Yes. There’s no way on earth they didn’t know that by the time they reached that level of play. Did this fact bother them enough to stop them from being eager and devoted members of the program? No. Now that they know whaat happened at PSU (and, in all likihood, is going on on other campuses), will they decide that they no longer want to be part such a corrupt and vile system? No, of course not.

Are their careers completely destroyed because they have to change to a different program, possibly one that doesn’t offer them the perqs and privileges they’d get at PSU? Once again, No.

They can go to another campus where they’ll be treeated like boy-kings and the Powers That Be will ignore anything that might threaten The Program because PSU has proven that it can be done. They’ll end up loosing a couple of weeks of practice, and move on.

That’s a lot more than I can say for the real victims of the PSU football program, who are a lot less culpable in all this than the “student” athletes you worry so much about.
Tbone

If so, at what level and were you any good at it?
acat

Seriously?

Mew
Tbone

I was never a soldier. That doesn’t mean I can’t have an opinion on war but it does mean I have no idea what it takes to be a soldier.

As you can see below, Next93 has some serious issues with athletes to the point his opinion of the system is as worthless as he was to the swim team, evidently.
Next93

First, it’s none of your business, but I’ll play along:

1) In my first high school, I excelled in a sport that’s unique to inner-city ares. It’s called “outrun the sociopath who wants to beat the crap out of you because you ansered a question in class”. We’re hoping to have it made into an Olympic sport the next time the Olympics are in Chicago, Detroit, or Brooklyn. Come to think of it, if they ever hold the Olympics in one of those cities, it’s be more a matter of audience participation than spectator sport.

Oh, and no, the sociopaths weren’t on the football team. Pretty much by definition, sociopaths don’t play games with rules, particularly games where edged weapons aren’t allowed.

2) In my second (suburban) high school I joined the swim team because I was trying to get into one of the service academies. On a good day I was incredibly mediocre but I wasn’t there to set records. For the record, I got the nomination but was bounced on a medical.

3) I had absolutely no interest in playing at the college level because I was working my gluteus off trying to get an engineering and a math degree. But I watched as the full-ride hockey players (and the half-ride lacross players who were actually the alternates to the hockey team) vandalized the campus, abused female students, and basically got away with any kind of behavior off the ice that suited them, while taking “business” classes that carried an automatic “C” if (a) you played hockey and (b) your body temperature could be brought up to 98 degrees without lying in the sun on a warm rock.

So in case you’re about to engage in armchair psychoanalysis, no I don’t feel threatend by college athletes,I didn’t then, and I’m neither homophobic or a closet homosexual. I’m not compensating, and just in case you’re wondering, I liked my father and I don’t have an Oedepus complex. As I mention downthread, I have a real problem with a system that institutionalizes a sepcial set of rules for the “special” people, because it leads to exactly the kind of corruption that we’ve seen at PSU (as well as a million or so lesser examples).
jimmyg

I think you gave yourself away with the “boy king” phrase you have used throughout your rants. Your comments are not really about Penn State, it is about your dislike of college football players generally, and the opportunity it gave you to talk about your dislike of football players on a message board.

It might be a cathartic experience for you to explain what led to your dislike of college football players. I could guess, but that would not be fair to you.
Next93

So do I take it from the ad-homenim attacks that you’re run out of intelligent arguments and are attacking me personally?

Ok, so here’s the deal – I think that any system that allows one group of people to operate under a special set of rules that don’t apply to the rest of us is fundamentally un-American. I admire people like Bill Gates, who’ve earned thier own money and live like kings. And I don’t particularly care about people who’ve inherited a ton of money and live like kings (Paris Hilton). What I DO mind is people who’ve managed to carve out (or been handed) some special status that lets them get away with behavior that’s prohibited to the rest of us.

I dislike college and high-school athletes in general because they’re held to a different standard than the rest of us. They’re admitted to colleges that wouldn’t consider them based on intellect, handed scholarships that could have been used to put a real scholar through school, and given a degree that looks JUST LIKE the one that the real students get.

Yes, I understand that they’re very good at playing a children’s game. And in a sane world, that would be sufficient to get them a job pushing a broom somewhere and dreaming of the glory days. Instead, they’re taking up resources that a real student could have turned into a cure for cancer or whole new industries.

While we’re at it, I dislike rich Massachusets politicians who commit felonies and instead of going to jail, are sentenced to life in Congress. I dlislike Congresscritters who pass laws that _only_ apply to “we (little) people”. I dislike Presidents (Clinton) who get away with behavior that would get any other executive branch employee fired, if not jailed. I dislike the European aristocracy because they actually BELEIVE they’re entitled to a separate set of laws. I dislike trial lawyers who get laws passed to make it easier and more lucrative to sue people. I dislike corporations who use lobbyists to get protectionist laws passed. I dislike unions who…well, I just dislike everything about the unions.

Any other personal questions/attacks or can we get back to the topic at hand?
Next93

You are correct in saying that it’s not just PSU for me. It’s the whole college athletics system, and the high school system that feeds it. But you’re wrong that it’s just football. It’s the whole smash, football, basketball, hockey, lacrosse, swimming, you name it. I want to see a day when I can take the quotes off the term “student” athletes and get the colleges focused back onto education.

The corruption that comes from having different standards for the “student” athletes is like an undersea mountain range; you might be able to see the highest peaks if the conditions are right, but you have no way of seeing how many more there are or where they might be. You just know that there are a lot of them, and some of them are going to be very big.

I realize it’s a complete fantasy, but love to see this scandal grow into the impetus that forces D1 sports to be “spun off” by the colleges into the NFL farm league it already is in reality, and get rid of this whole rotten billion-dollar tail that’s been wagging the dog for far too long.
10ab

Have any rage left for the cheerleaders? I think your personal feelings might be blurring your judgment.
Tbone

loser.
JSobieski

In many ways I agree with you that student-athletes in the context of money sports is a joke. I disagree with you that all student-athletes fit in those categories, particularly with respect to sports that aren’t money makers.

Still, you have to admit that you are basically using the PSU debacle as an opportunity to partake of your desire to club all college sports at all schools.

Kind of like a WH chief of staff who made a comment about not letting a crisis go to waste.

There is no reason to single out a Freshman football player at PSU in a different way than a Freshman football player of UofM, MSU, or any non Big Ten school for that matter.

Conservatives believe in individual rights, so don’t you feel a bit awkward in your desire for certain subsets of people to be treated not as individuals, but instead as members of a class of people?
jimmyg

Your entitle life would have been different if their were no college sports scholarships. You would have been admitted and attended your choice of schools and attended that school for free.Your life would have been different but for the fact that these schools have college sports and offer athletic scholarships. I can understand why you will spend the rest of your life pondering why these schools did not recognize your talents, and offer you admission and a scholarship to your dream school, while that same school gave scholarships to an undeserving athlete.

I have some advice for you, that has probably come too late for you, you cannot count other peoples money.
proudmarinemom

expressed for athletes held to a different academic standard extends to those in the arts? My daughter auditioned and was accepted to a top university based on her performing arts achievements and her demonstrated talent. A friend with a higher SATs and a higher GPA (who did not audition) was rejected. Is that unfair? Can’t the College of Visual and Performing Arts make recommendations to the Admissions office based on its own goals for building the prestige of the performing arts program? Not condoning handing out passing grades like candy to students who can’t write a paper, but isn’t encouraging a young person to develop their talents a reasonable goal of higher education?
proudmarinemom

should read, “encouraging young people to develop their talents”

The_Gadfly

And at Penn State they don’t. They go to real classes and get real degrees. Okay, many of them are in business or communications, but they are real degrees and they go to classes with non-athletic students who are pursuing those degrees because they are real. That was Joe, all Joe. Maybe the fact that this keeps getting lost in the current narrative is what hacks me off the most. Joe built the program the NCAA says they want schools to build, but they won’t defend the program he built and hold only the bad apples accountable.

6eorge Jetson

that he had a tremendous* impact on academics at Penn State as a whole.

In addition to the athletic pursuits of the Big Ten schools, the Big Ten member institutions (plus the Univ of Chicago) form a research consortium off the field.

Penn State has risen about 20 spots in academic rankings since joining the Big Ten in 1993.

*One of Lloyd Carr’s favorite words

wintermute

tell that to the women’s rowing team or some other program completely dependent on external revenue. Your entire point is only applicable to football and basketball. Nobody playing lacrosse or volleyball or swimming applies to your limited argument.

Viet71

It surely was not unrelated that PSU removed the statues on Sunday and did not receive the DP on Monday.

Part of the fix is to mislead the public. “Unprecedented” penalties. How about essentially meaningless penalties.

Four years, and PSU will be fully back in the football business.

Meantime, they wind up in the middle of the Big Ten pack.

unclefred

The impact of dramatically reduced scholarships and the bowl ban will leave PSU with a shell of a football program. At the top of NCAA div-1 football, recruiting is the lifeblood of a program. High school players seek to go to the school that seems likely to give them the best shot and are very unwilling to take a chance on a damaged program if they have other options.

For all practical purposes, PSU’s ability to recruit is dead for at least 5-6 years and it will take 5-6 years after that for them to rebuild.

As for the middle of the Big Ten pack. It’s hard to project the 2012 season because most of their starters are likely to stay. Lots of underclassmen will be transferring. The 2012 LOIs for their incoming freshman class has been rescinded. Watch for most of them to look for a new school. Most of the 2013 class commits will decommit. In 2013 PSU will be very lucky to beat Indiana and it’s going to get worse as the lack of recruiting adds up.

Tbone

nt
Next93

This only counts as a penaty if you place the quality of one football team above all measures of human decency.

I keep hearing about how “sports builds character”, but I’ve yet to see a working example.

JSobieski

10-12 years of bad football for people involved in covering up a horrible crime? Not a penalty

10-12 years of bad football for people who had nothing to do with covering up the crime and had no knowledge of it? Needless penalty.

There is a reason why Republicans have historically been against the corporate death penalty. I wonder if anyone will look back to their own thoughts on Arthur Andersen?

http://archive.redstate.com/story/2004/10/27/95043/120

Change the crime and the perpetrator—and RS flips sides

acat

The sports team can remain in the dome, but they will henceforth be a farm team for the Pittsburgh Steelers, who will bring in their own management team.

The rules are simple. Penn State keeps all the players, but none – zero, nada, nobody – of the staff.

Mew
JSobieski

If you want to fire the janitors who knew about the rumors and did nothing? Fine.

The hammer of justice strikes best when it is focused on the target.
acat

Except the players, who should now be under the management of the Steelers.

Let’s call a farm team what it is.

Mew
Viet71

The fact Joe P. was for many years the most powerful person at Penn State speaks to the role the whole institution (board, alums, everyone) gave to the football program.

Unlike the criminal court, which focuses narrowly on allegations of criminal conduct, the NCAA rightly looked to the way the tail wagged the dog.

Not a case of criminal justice here, JSob. Rather an educational institution seriously out of whack and needing some serious reform.
acat

All the punishment does is to create a vacuum.

Mew
Viet71

Was trying to engage JSob about his notion of collective guilt.

PSU won’t reform. Four or five years is a short time today. The wealthy and powerful alums will see to that. Today’s clock speed will see to it.

There will be a hiatus. And then look out. Penn State will have paid its debt to society. In the public mantra and perception.
tnfriendofcoal101368

to dig out of penalties half this harsh and they had the same deep pocketed, rabid fan base. Of course, eventually those deep pockets convinced Nick Saban to come to Alabama and with the scholarships restored – the program was rebuilt. You are correct in saying Penn State will rise from the ashes but it’ll take a decade at least (about the same time as the death penalty).

The main difference with the death penalty is the program will be making money hand over fist the next four years. Competitive – on the field product long term – little to no difference.
Melody Warbington (rwm52)

and the comparison to Alabama (Roll Tide!). Taking into consideration “why” Penn State has been sanctioned, I honestly can’t imagine any parents who would wholeheartedly encourage their child to go to Penn State except as an absolutely last resort. In contrast, sanctions handed down as a result of recruiting or other violations aren’t viewed through the same lens, i.e., unless similar abuse were happening at AL, kids will always want to play there. I’d say that’s true of most colleges, especially in the SEC. Even with the problems TN has had the last few years, some kids will want to play for the Vols, regardless of the fact that we’re rebuilding and they may not be part of a winning team.
Melody Warbington (rwm52)

that one of those 4 coaches, Mike Price, was fired by Alabama before he ever coached a game because he was caught having a drinking binge with a bunch of strippers. No cover up. No excuses. Bad role model. Poor choices. Fired and good riddance.

Arkansas handled the Petrino situation in much the same way. Fired him.
JSobieski

If everyone responsible for the problem is kicked out (and the board and coaches are already gone), isn’t that the reform you are looking for.

What IS Penn State? It is a group of people that change over time.

Why not focus on the people who engaged in bad conduct?

Why the desire for collateral damage?

The Board is gone. The coaching staff is gone. Who precisely are you targetting?

The innocent, that is who.
runner12

NT
Next93

1) Being forced to watch bad football is a penalty???? You can’t find a different team to root for? We’re talking about an institution enabling serial child rape, and you’re worried about “penalizing” fans by making them watch bad football?

2) The very fans you’re worried about penalizing were the final enablers of this attrocity. Do you think that the Penn State administration would have hesitated turn Sandusky over to the authorities if the football team had as many fans and boosters as the women’s floor hockey team? Come to think of it, maybe making them watch thier beloved team get drubbed for a couple of decades is good idea.
Repair_Man_Jack

pitched a drunken riot. They didn’t riot because their Def Cord was a child molester. They rioted because they didn’t want PSU to be punished and mess up their good time. That grosses me out to the point where I think this entire program needs to be shut down for five years and not play a single game for that span.

Viet71

n/t

inletghost

I would add that an additional way the PSU situation reflects society as a whole is in the aftermath. It’s almost routine by now and (with a few minor variations) it always goes something like this:

The scandal is exposed (sexual, financial, political) in the media. Outrage ensues, Resignations commence. A report or a commission is ordered. Some secondary players may be jailed. A new law or regulation may be implemented. And then….well thats about it isn’t it?

Penn St student athletes are innocent bystanders who now have to re-do their lives on the fly thanks to the school’s “leadership”. But so were the laid off employees of-for example- Countrywide Mortgage or Lehman Bothers. And while former Penn State President Graham Spanier (chief enabler/cover up artist of Jerry Sandusky) enjoys his retirement pension, so do Angelo Mozilo (Countrywide) and Dick Fuld (Lehman Bros).

You can make a very persuasive argument that all three of the above ought to be in jail instead of playing golf at the nearby Country Club. But that’s just how these things go-for every oneJeff Skilling there are 20 John Macks. For every Rod Blagojevich there are 20 David Wu’s.
barleycorn

Count me as unimpressed with the entire production.

The NCAA is essentially in business to enable and fully exploit the very corruption they are presently so aghast over. Then when the pot bubbles over they rush in, not to punish wrongdoers, but to LIMIT the damage to those that have been exposed so that all the other malefactors across the nation can continue to rake in the billions.

In a perfect world collage football would be burned to the ground and rebuilt as merely another sport such as volleyball.

I shall not hold my breath.

Next93

Let’s all stop pretending that there is such a thing as a “student athlete” in D1 schools. They’re professional athletes who spend fully as much time in practice and travel as the players in the NBA or NFL, the only difference is that they don’t get paid. Yes, there are a few who manage to fit real classes and real degrees into thier schedule, but the vast majority are working on pretend majors like Sports and Leisure Studies because there’s no way that they could make as much with a real degree as they’ll make in just a few working years if they can just make it to “the show”.

So here’s an idea – remove D1 sports from college campuses, form a semi-pro league and sell franchises to the colleges, Pay the players a real salary, and offer free tuition to any player who really wants to pursue a degree. And that offer should stand for life, so the athletes can go back and get a work-worthy degree after they blow out that ACL at 25 and are told they can never play again.

barleycorn

Institutions of higher learning should not be in the business of running multi-million dollar sports programs. While this is problem number 12,398 that this nation faces it is sadly emblematic of the larger issues.

Jerry Sandusky could only get away with his behavior for umpteen years because our culture allowed him to. Our society is rotten through and through and slides farther into a morass of blind mindless evil every day.

Viet71

College sports today ARE all about money, at least major men’s sports at Division I.

It pains me to accept this, but I know it’s true.

I’d keep B-ball; it’s still a sport. Football — I could take or leave it. I’d just concede the national title to the S.E.C. and let it go at that.
Repair_Man_Jack

Bingo! Someone finally got the point of the diary. If our authorites, whatever they are in this case are so intimidated by the mob and so compromised by the dollars that they can’t even shut down a freaking football stadium a few Saturdays in the Fall, forget about EVER fixing SS, Medipander of the $Trillion budget deficits. This reminds me of what Rome was probably like after 350 A. D.

CincoSolas_del_Bronx

1) 1662 fewer years of preceding history against which to measure success/failure probability of policies/behaviors
2) 0.001% of the immediate accessibility of populace to entirety of Holy Scriptures and commentary thereon relative to now
Repair_Man_Jack

Which is why it’s stillcalled plumbing, even when the pipes today are frequently made of PVC.

nepanyrush

The NCAA death penalty has to do with repeat violators only. NCAA rules stipulate that there needs to be a second major violation within five years of being on probation. PSU has never had a major violation nor been on probation.

Plus, this posting already notes: “basically, the NCAA went as far as it could without giving the school the death penalty.” Already it is unprecedented action. Did you read the punishments. They are very, very substantial. Why angry about those serious sanctions?

There also is an element of rashness. Freeh’s report was just issued. The former President of PSU today is adamantly claiming “the report is full of factual errors and jumps to conclusions that are untrue and unwarranted.” Why did the NCAA have to rush. Other than for Sandusky, the court system has not yet examined the violations of the PSU officials.

I understand you want a strong message, but for four people’s error you want to harm and put out of jobs all the innocent people involved with the program. .If I am working for a major business where a top official turns out to be a horrific pedophile and another administrator knew this and didn’t report this, does this mean they should close down the business and everyone should be out of a job even if they didn’t know anything?

Wanting to kill the program is not justice. It is letting emotions call for rash action.

unclefred

As conservatives/republicans, we, in theory, believe in private contracts. Under the contracts that govern the relationship between the NCAA and the colleges and universities, the NCAA does not have the power to do this to PSU, for this inicident.

Look I understand that children were grievously harmed. That does not allow a private institution to breach the contractual boundaries between it and its member institutions.

Further the legal process is far far from over. Everyone needs to take a deep breath and wait for the ultimate resolution, probably 3-4 years down the road.

I am not defending PSU, but this action is both legally unsupportable and premature.

This is far more about the NCAA who has seen its relevance eroded as conferences make their own media deals, attempting to curry favor with a public that has not liked them much, than any notion of justice.

I make no excuse for the actions of three or four individuals at PSU. The civil suits that PSU will face will make $60 million look like pocket change. This is NOT a NCAA issue. This is in the arena of the legal system and it should stay there. Allowing the president of the NCAA to grandstand is a very bad idea. Either we are a nation of laws, or a nation of emotion. Despite the ugliness of this situation, I know which I prefer to live in.

gekster

The NCAA has no juristriction over this.
They have nothing to do with criminal cases,
and I think they just want to be relevent.

runner12

As Jsob has been stating throughout this discussion, collective guilt punishments are hardly conservative. The efforts should be focused on those specific individuals who covered this up and allowed this to go on. For this reason, I could not support the death penalty for PSU. It may make us feel better emotionally, but is is not just.

I feel the NCAA’s punishments that were handed down today were just and adequate. Where I disagree with you slightly is that it was rushed. From what I have read, the NCAA has been looking into this matter for quite some time. They just opted to use the Freeh report (that was commisioned by the University) versus spending a year and tons of money to commission their own through the infractions committee. Basically they used PSU’s own internal review of the matter.
Repair_Man_Jack

I’m sure both towns had a few nice young gentlemen who helped old ladies across the street during rush hour. You either penalize wrong doing or you let it slide (thereby rewarding it and encouraging it to continue unabated in the future). The NCAA took care of its money machine. Wrong doing was encrouraged here and it will continue int he future.

Melody Warbington (rwm52)

unless I overlooked the sarc tags. God told Abraham he intended to destroy the cities because of their wickedness. He agreed to spare them if Abraham could find just 10 righteous therein. Apparently, he couldn’t and the punishment was just. God is always just.

I do agree with your point with regard to penalizing wrong.

JimmyGee

This was not a NCAA “rules violation.”. This was a crime that went on since 1998 and had leadership of both the football program and the university involved in the cover up. This was a crime, not a booster club slush fund scandal!
I remember reading on Drudge Report reading how the NCAA was going to bring down an epic ruling against Penn State…. Right. Just like the Supreme Court was sure to rule Obamacare Mandate unconstitutional.
So what crime warrants the NCAA Death Penalty? Because if this doesn’t I don’t know what does.

barleycorn

NCAA should stay out of it. Actually the NCAA should be shut don’t. It is a corrupt organization.

ncfamilyman

But you’ll get no argument from me on this one.

bpgmswv1646

You have done an excellent job defending conservative principles in this discussion.

Usually it is liberals that put forward the kind of arguments being made here against JSob’s well reasoned arguments.

Also ditto to the poster that brought up contracts and conservative philosophy.

If we cannot hold to principle in the hardest of times (like child rape) then how can we do so on other issues?

Also the scholarship penalty is the real penalty here. People unfamiliar with collegiate athletics do not understand how much more damaging this will be than a Death Penalty would have been.
6eorge Jetson

I doubt anyone here would advocate the government telling the NCAA what to do. The NCAA made their decision and all that remains for us is Monday-morning quarterbacking.

$60 million in explicit fines plus an inevitable reduction in the PSU football enterprise value on the same order of magnitude is not a slap on the wrist. (I’d guess the PSU football enterprise to be on the order of $500 million. Forbes did a ranking and placed PSU at 3rd at $100 million but that can’t possibly include the net present value of all of the revenue streams a top football program generates.

Refuse to watch PSU games if you really want to do more than yell at the internets.

emptybucket

let us hope that as a result of all that has happened including the FBI report that Americans will never forget what COULD be going on at a “sports” college near them.

This has been much more than an eye-opener, and shame on our justice system if the others involved in the covering up of Sandusky’s perversion are not punished.

I have wondered did not any of the parents of these abused boys see that something was amiss? There have to be a ton of parents grieving to think they did not understand or even recognise their son was being abused. Very sad.

BTW, thanks for that Dept of Labor Statistics page link!

uselogic

Just a point. The PSU report was produced by former FBI director Louis Freeh’s law firm, not a government agency. Penn State’s Board of Trustees commissioned Freeh’s firm to do an outside investigation. At this time, several of the people named in the report have claimed there are multiple factual errors.
6eorge Jetson

The PSU football program is a ~$500 million market value enterprise, and when push comes to shove, is run like a ~$500 million market value enterprise.

There is an old saying that goes something like unusual/hard cases make for bad law.

Although unsaid, I can infer that I’m in agreement with JSobieski in this stage in that there is no higher authority than the NCAA that we should be appealing to. I disagree with JSobieski about the lack of a PSU “football entity”. THe PSU football entity dominated the PSU academic entity in this affair. If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, swims like a duck, then it should be treated like a duck. I agree w/ JSobieski that internal NCAA-PSU contracts should be enforced. I don’t know enough about NCAA-PSU contracts to say that the death penalty is precluded when it is an option in other conditions (SMU). If the death penalty was in the legal realm of possibility, then I think it should have been applied. (And I’m not going to spend my time reading up on it.) Although a fine of 1 /10th of an entity’s market value and conditions that are sure to reduce it by another 1/10th is no slap on the wrist.

There is much hypocrisy in the college football world, and plenty to be disgusted about in the Rube Goldberg, Statist-leaning NCAA. If your takeaway is to resolve to consume fewer of its products, then I commend your conclusion.

kipling

I am not sure criminal negligence stops at PSU. Someone mentioned yesterday that no other college in the NCAA would touch Jerry Sandusky with a 10 foot pole. Obviously the word had made the rounds and at least cause suspicions. I wonder how much of what the NCAA did was simply a CYA.

On another note, the punishment did not fit the crime and is simply a slap on the wrist when compared to the devastation caused to the victims and their families. This should not be the end of the issue.
ncfamilyman

how some people are trying to have it both ways with our ideology? Here’s what I mean:

Corporations are individials in the eyes of the law. We all agree on that.

Here we have a corporation (“individual”) that was deserving of a severe, severe penalty. Probably the death penalty (I don’t believe organizations/individuals involved in any way with child rape can be rehabilitated).

They didn’t receive it.

Instead we have people arguing that this organization should *not* be treated as an individual, and that the punishment of 4 or 5 people plus a “fine” will fix everything.

This outfit should have been whacked. Period. Missed opportunity, and I expect nothing less than from the NCAA, whom I hold in major contempt. Money won over principle.

To the PSU fans:
I don’t care how much you love PSU football. Everything you loved was a lie. You worshipped an idol, and it was that worship and that culture that spawned the coverup, and probably ruined the lives of children, already in vulnerable circumstances, who were raped and scarred by a nasty, sick, evil old man.

The whole campus knew about this guy’s predilections, and it was all a BIG JOKE! What a funny, funny joke everybody!

If you were intellectually honest you would admit that the program should have been whacked. Instead, like Matt Millen on ESPN, you are so close you can’t see how your thought process about this has been poisoned.

Great diary RepairMan.

JSobieski

Corporations have owners represented by Board members.

Who owns a sports program? The university. Who owns the university? Nobody. Unlike a corporation where there are shareholders who will lose their investments if things go wrong, there is no anology in the non-profit world. In the corporate world, the shares of the corporation are want continue through time as different employees, executives, and board members come and go.

You punish corporations as a way of punishing shareholders. Who do you punish by punishing a university or a sports program of a university when all of the individuals who cause the problem are gone? You are punishing buildings, trademarks, and football uniforms. It is silly, and giving evidence to what women who don’t get sports often say—”you are really just rooting for a uniform”

In the corporate world, most corporate punishments are in the form of fines. Corporate death penalties are extremely rare, and when it does happen—see Arthur Andersen—you will find that most of the people at Red State were critical of it.

The “whole campus” didn’t “know” squat. The number of people with direct knowledge may have been as few as 1. The number of people with knowledge of direct testimony one degree removed could have been as few as 4.

Hearing a rumor about something doesn’t mean you know something.

I heard a rumor that Jeb Bush was going to jump in the 2012 primary right before Florida.

I heard a rumor that Obama was going to dump Biden as his VIP pick.

Those are rumors. When conservatives start to equate a rumor as knowledge, we have problems.

if someone where to tell you that your neighbor sexually abused kids, would you immediately proceed to the police on that basis? Do you believe everything that you hear?

What PSU did is horrible. Those responsible deserve to be punished. However, we aren’t liberals. We don’t embrace things contrary to justice because a particular crime is horrible or that human beings greatly failed in a particular situation.

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