Today the big news in sports is the NCAA handing down its sanctions to Penn State for the Jerry Sandusky child abuse scandal. The four year bowl ban and reduction in scholarships are pretty severe but necessary and it should be at least a decade before the Nittany Lions are relevant again. I am glad that the NCAA is allowing current athletes to transfer without penalty to another school as they had nothing to do with the scandal. But the football program needed to suffer. If Ohio State was sanctioned with penalties for their head coach covering up some of their players trading merchandise and autographs for tattoos then the penalties here must be more severe.
That is not to say that the NCAA has long been one of the most corrupt institutions sports, an organization that has taken advantage of its student-athletes who devote their time and effort and are not compensated for what amounts to a billion dollar industry. The culture around some of the bigs name coaches in college sports can seem cultish and can be seen by those who still defend Paterno to this day. The statement by the NCAA President that they were protecting "the values of higher education" reeked of hollowness. In the end, this whole scandal has taken away what little interest or respect I had left for college sports in general, especially college football. Though I take it that Penn State found this punishment preferable over the alternate sanction, renaming the school to Perv State.
Death penalty.
ReplyDeleteWell worded. I agree with what you say here. The school from the head coach up failed. The whole institution needs to be reworked and the penalties are necessary. This situation was terrible and went on for far too long. It will take a long time for the school to distance itself from a man who was the face of the university for over 50 years though. The transition will be a tough one, especially for the new coach and those players that do stay. Once again if I'm SMU I am screaming at the NCAA for not giving PSU the death penalty. Paying for players is horrible but no where near what went on at Penn State.
ReplyDeleteI think it's hard to compare the SMU situation with that of Penn State, not only is it a different set of circumstances but the environment around the game is very different than 25 years ago. Plus there is a different set of officials and administrators at the NCAA so to expect any sort of consistency out of them is crazy.
ReplyDeleteThe NCAA is garbage, it was 25 years ago and it is today. It doesn't give a shit about people, just situations that effect its ability to make money. They use people just like any other company does. I do agree that the situations were completely different as were the times, but the SMU death penalty didn't stop paying or cheating it still happens today, a lot. The situation at PS was a much greater failure of an institution to handle a major issue then SMU
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