NCAA Sanctions Against Penn State 'Unprecedented' and 'Frightening'

Following the NCAA's independent investigation into the widespread cover-up of child sexual abuse by former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky, the governing body of U.S. college sports has imposed unprecedented sanctions against Penn State University. Did they go too far?

Dave Zirin, sports columnist for The Nation magazine and host of Edge of Sports Radio, thinks so. Appearing on Democracy Now!, Zirin says the sanctions will punish Penn State students, while sparing top officials, including Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett -- who has drawn criticism for his handling of the Sandusky investigation while serving as the state's Attorney General and preparing for a gubernatorial run.

Zirin says the NCAA's sanctions represent an historic and dangerous power grab for a governing body that has no democratic oversight.

"What the NCAA did was something they have never done in their history, which is involve themselves in a criminal manner and punish a school unilaterally for the purposes of their own brand rehabilitation," Zirin says.

Zirin also believes the sanctions let Penn State trustees off the hook.

"We're attacking 18-year-old scholarship athletes and making them pay the price when people in power have not really had to be affected by the horrible crimes that took place in Happy Valley," Zirin says. "I do not trust the NCAA to be [the] adjudicating body for the simple reason that their very existence ensures more cover-ups and more scandals in the future."

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Comments

[OldFreddie]

10:57 AM on 07/26/2012

Most "frightening" to me is that everyone just accepts that this was a Penn State "football and Paterno scandal", and no one connects the dots starting with why Sandusky was on campus in the first place, unrestricted after his retirement from football in 1999. Spanier and the Board of Trustees alone gave him professor emeritus status in his retirement agreement, over the objections of Paterno, they alone gave him an office in the football building and access to all PSU facilities. It's all in the Freeh report, the part that people just gloss over in their attempts to make it all about the "coverup" by the football program, but the facts are that Sandusky retired from football in 1999, and the football people did nothing to keep him hanging around all those years. They were told there was nothing they could do to revoke his emeritus status, to live with it. It's the truth, read the Freeh report.

[gypsy508]

03:58 PM on 07/25/2012

The students are punished because their football team might win less games? The horror! As for the athletes, the NCAA gave them permission to get the heck out of there. Under NCAA rules, they normally would have had to sit out one year. Any defections means more playing time for others who will progress faster and be able to transfer in the future. Other than the bowl game ban, I don't see this hurting the players at all. They still get the suit up and play one place or another.

[George Hung]

11:42 PM on 07/24/2012

Frightening? Really. You scare pretty easy Zirin. There was a $60M fine for a school that has almost a $2 billion endowment. There were 20 curbed scholarships and current students can transfer without penalty and all of their scholarships are protected. 112 wins were retroactively removed. These very reasonable penalties were delivered because a univesity athletic program failed to abide by the constiutional bylaws of that all parcipants agree to abide by. That is hardly "frightening".

Frightening is the perpetual wars in afghanistan. pakistan, somaila, uganda, libya and potentially syria and iran. Frightening is threat of the Euro collapse. Frightening is the threat of major banks collapsing. Frightening is our FED secretly giving away TRILLIONS of dollars to banks. A university getting slapped on the wrist? Please. Go try and scare a couple of ten years about the "tickle monster". Grow up Zirin.

[E1k]

10:04 PM on 07/24/2012

Emmert's punishments hit the wrong target. Penn State should have been removed from the NCAA. From all sports. All athelete's should be transferred along with any scholarships to other schools, should they wish to be. No fine would be necessary. All involved coaches and administrators would be banned from working in an NCAA school. Should any of those people get jobs at another school, those schools would be banned from the NCAA. Joe Paterno's records would be removed from the NCAA files. After a period of 10 years, Penn State could apply for reinstatement as long as none of the affected coaches or administrators no longer work there. In addition, Penn State would have to agree as a condition of reinstatement, that they pay for the transfers of all athlete's to any other school that the athlete academically qualifies for, and that all uninvolved coach's be paid their complete contract immediately and in full, should they wish to be, and finally that Penn State does not lose any scholarships at all. Instead Penn State must continue at least at the level they currently do, give scholarships to scholars who would attend Penn State.

[cali4856]

09:47 AM on 07/25/2012

So in your opinion thousands of students, faculty, Pennsylvanians should be punished for the actions of 3 men? A little over the mark. The NCAA went too far and there will be future ramifications. You don't punish people who had no involvement in the incident. And the NCAA states about a football program being too big to fail. Cut me a break, the NCAA is all about $$$$.

[E1k]

08:59 PM on 07/26/2012

In my opinion, Sandusky is in jail for life. Paterno is dead, the others involved should not be allowed to work for another NCAA school. The rest of the coaches of the other sports could stay if they wanted to, or get paid for the entire remaining amount of their contracts and move to another job. They just would not be working for an NCAA school until they decided to leave Penn State or stay for the ten years and hope for reinstatement. The student athelete's would be transferred to other schools and Penn State would pay for the remainder of their schooling until they graduated. I don't see that as a punishment for anyone other than the administrators involved and Penn State as an institution. Penn State would be paying for the schooling of hundreds of student atheletes and also would be required to maintain the number of scholarships it currently gives to athletes. But instead of giving then to athletes, Penn State would be required to give them to scholars. That is a win for students and that makes it a win for Pennsylvania. Instead of making Penn State pay $60 million to a charity that they then could write off as a gift, let Penn State actually help students.