Something needs to happen at Penn State University. It needs to come from within and from without. First, Penn State itself needs to substantially address its role in Jerry Sandusky’s child rape rampage across its campus, which top university officials knew about and covered up.
Tearing down the statue of former coach head coach Joe Paterno, who knew about it and protected Sandusky? That was not a substantial action. That’s a no-brainer. A substantial action would be dismantling the football program for the foreseeable future while the university conducts a full examination to see how its culture became so corrupted as to allow this to happen.
For how long should Penn State go without football? For as long as it takes to change the culture. A year, ten years, a hundred. Who cares? It’s time to prioritize.
Of course Penn State probably won’t do this. Why? Because instead of being honest and owning up to the moral and ethical rot that facilitated Sandusky’s actions, it’s a lot easier and safer to simply indict a few individuals. The incarcerated child fucker. The dead head coach. The fired school president. The Board of Trustees chairman who was finally pressured into resigning.
Nope, there’s nothing wrong with the institution. It was just a few unfathomably bad apples. It’s not the place, merely the guys who ran the place. They weren’t part of a larger problem.
Yeah, right.
Penn State will likely offer a few token gestures to make it look like something’s being done, but which are really designed to rehabilitate the school’s public image. For example, it commissioned the Freeh Report. But will it really act on it? We’ll see.
Real change should come from within, but it probably won’t. So instead, all we have are the changes that will be forced up on the school from without. There will be civil suits against the university, and rightly so. There also needs to be more thorough criminal investigations from both state officials and the federal Justice Department. Hopefully they will bring about the proper sense of gravitas. Criminal convictions and serious sentences for the major players would help.
And then there’s the National Collegiate Athletic Association.
The NCAA could have potentially played a positive role. It could have used its limited powers, which are derived solely from Penn State’s voluntary membership in this private organization, to issue meaningful punishment.
Specifically, the NCAA could have sanctioned the Penn State football program by handing down its infamous “death penalty.” Banning Penn State from participating in NCAA-sanctioned football for a period of time would effectively terminate the program temporarily since all the other teams are also members of the NCAA.
There is precedent. The NCAA handed down a one-year death penalty to Southern Methodist University’s football program back in 1987. Why? Because, crime of all crimes, SMU paid some of its players.
Seriously. SMU compensated university labor with actual money, and so the NCAA utterly destroyed its football program. So one would imagine that this was on the table for Penn State as punishment for sheltering a serial child rapist.
The NCAA handed down its penalties on Penn Sate today. Amazingly, the organization managed to do too little and too much all at once.
No, there was no death penalty. Instead, the NCAA declared that none of the football games Penn State won between 1998-2011 count anymore.
Wow.
Like this matters one iota. Like this makes anything better for anyone. Like this has a shred of relevance. Like putting that front and center isn’t an insult to our intelligence, much less Sandusky’s victims.
Oh, and Penn state can’t play in any bowl games for the next four years.
On the football front, that’s it. No death penalty. Just a meaningless symbolic gesture and a token slap on the wrist.
But the NCAA also did something very serious, which quite frankly, it should not have done. The NCAA has imposed a fine of $60 million dollars on Pennsylvania State University. Not the football program, but the actual school. Why? Because the NCAA estimates that this is the amount of money Penn State grosses from football in a single season.
Now let me ask you this: Who the fuck is the NCAA to extract $60 million dollars from a public, tax-payer funded university?
For those of you who don’t know, the NCAA is not a federal agency. It’s nothing more than a private institution that organizes college athletics. Private. Not public.
This should be a national outrage.
Look. I’m not even going to make the argument about what Penn State could do with that $60 million during an era of budget cuts, like hire more professors, fund more research, update older facilities, reduce tuition, etc. Why? Because the legion of despicable apologists for Penn State will no doubt make that argument for me. Furthermore, the school has a corrupt culture and it will most likely siphon the 60 million from academic concerns to continue funding the football program, while using creative accounting techniques to deny that such is the case. Such are its derelict priorities.
In other words, while the amount of money is a real issue, even more important is the NCAA’s right to demand it.
And so I will reiterate. The NCAA, which is a private entity that answers to no one but itself, is essentially extorting tens of millions of dollars from a state institution.
In reaching this decision, NCAA President Mark Emmert got the approval of his 22-member board, which is composed of college presidents from around the country. But do not be confused. This grants his actions no legitimacy whatsoever. None of those college presidents are officers of the state of Pennsylvania, whose taxpayers fund the school and are effectively paying the fine.
The Pennsylvania state government should take immediate action to prevent the unauthorized transfer of tens of millions of dollars of state tax revenue to a private organization.
In addition, there should be a federal investigation of the NCAA. Virtually all colleges receive substantial federal revenues. Whatever arrangements the NCAA might have with colleges vis a vis sports programs, it cannot be allowed to tamper with schools’ general operating budgets, which also means a roundabout grab at federal dollars. The NCAA has clearly overstepped its bounds.
I’ve already made my case for the depth of cultural corruption at Penn State. And last year, Taylor Branch’s article in The Atlantic exposed the the NCAA for what it is: a star chamber 
of self-interested charlatans.
Both Penn State and the NCAA require a major overhaul that re-centers their respective purposes. But as of today, neither institution has shown the capacity to bring about meaningful changes from within. With every wrong-headed move and every missed opportunity, it becomes clearer that the forces of change must come from without.