NCAA Comes Down Hard on Penn State
Sanctions include $60 million fine, 4 -year bowl ban, vacating wins from 1998-2011
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A
Penn State football player leaves the Mildred and Louis Lasch Football
Building following a team meeting soon after the NCAA announced
Sanctions on Monday.
updated 3:25 p.m. ET July 23, 2012
INDIANAPOLIS - No death penalty. More like slow death.
Wiped out in the record book. Wiped out in the wallet. Wiped out in the ability to recruit, and keep what it already has.
Penn State got slammed by the NCAA on Monday in every way.
The
governing body of college sports took away 14 years of coach Joe
Paterno's victories and imposed a mountain of fines and penalties,
crippling a program whose pedophile assistant coach spent years
molesting children, sometimes on school property.
The
sanctions imposed by the NCAA on Monday also include fines of $60
million, orders for Penn State to sit out the postseason for four years,
capped scholarships at 20 below the normal limit for four years and
placed football on five years' probation.
Current or incoming football players are free to immediately transfer and compete at another school.
Penn State scandal
The NCAA slammed Penn State with an unprecedented series of penalties, including a $60 million fine, in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal.
- CFT: Sanctions cripple Penn State program
- Trash Talk: O'Brien's task tough, not impossible
- CSN: Mixed reaction in Penn State community
- CFT: Paterno family statement blasts NCAA, Penn St.
- CFT: No rejoicing as Bowden is winningest coach
- CFT: Big Ten says Penn St. won't share revenue
- CFT: O'Brien has no out in Penn State contract
- CFT: Poll: Were Penn State penalties severe enough?
- The cast of characters in the Penn State scandal
- Timeline: Jerry Sandusky sex abuse case
"The sanctions needed to reflect our goals of providing cultural change," NCAA President Mark Emmert said as he announced the penalties at a news conference in Indianapolis.
The
NCAA ruling holds the university accountable for the failure of those
in power to protect children and insists that all areas of the
university community are held to the same high standards of honesty and
integrity.
July 23: NBC’s Michael Isikoff and college football columnist Bruce Feldman discuss the sanctions against Penn State in the wake of the Sandusky scandal and how it will impact the school, football program and student-athletes.
"Against this backdrop, Penn State accepts the penalties and corrective actions announced today by the NCAA," Penn State President Rodney Erickson said in a statement. "With today's announcement and the action it requires of us, the University takes a significant step forward."
Paterno's
family said in a statement that the NCAA sanctions defamed the coach's
legacy, and were a panicked response to the sex abuse scandal.
The
family also says that punishing "past, present and future" students
because of Jerry Sandusky's crimes did not serve justice.
The
Big Ten announced that Penn State would not be allowed to share in the
conference's bowl revenue during the NCAA's postseason ban, an estimated
loss of about $13 million. And the NCAA reserved the right to add
additional penalties.
Sandusky, a former
Penn State defensive coordinator, was found guilty in June of sexually
abusing young boys, sometimes on campus. An investigation commissioned
by the school and released July 12 found that Paterno, who died in
January, and several other top officials at Penn State stayed quiet for
years about accusations against Sandusky.
Emmert
fast-tracked penalties rather than go through the usual circuitous
series of investigations and hearings. The NCAA said the $60 million is
equivalent to the annual gross revenue of the football program. The
money must be paid into an endowment for external programs preventing
child sexual abuse or assisting victims and may not be used to fund such
programs at Penn State.
Penn State sanctions
July 23: NCAA President Mark Emmert hands down penalties to Penn State, including a four-year postseason ban and $60 million in fines.
"Football will never again be placed ahead of educating, nurturing and protecting young people," Emmert said.
By
vacating 112 Penn State victories from 1998-2011, the sanctions cost
Paterno 111 wins. Former Florida State coach Bobby Bowden will now hold
the top spot in the NCAA record book with 377 major-college wins.
Paterno, who was fired days after Sandusky was charged, will be credited
with 298 wins. Vacated wins are not the same as forfeits - they don't
count as losses or wins for either school.
"I didn't want it to happen like this," Bowden told the AP. "Wish I could have earned it, but that's the way it is."
The
scholarship reductions mean Penn State's roster will be capped at 65
scholarship players beginning in 2014. The normal scholarship limit for
major college football programs is 85. Playing with 20 less is
devastating to a program that tries to compete at the highest level of
the sport.
In comparison, the harsh NCAA
sanctions placed upon USC several years ago left the Trojans with only
75 scholarships per year over a three-year period.
The postseason ban is the longest handed out by the NCAA since it gave a four-year ban to Indiana football in 1960.
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Bill
O'Brien, who was hired to replace Paterno, now faces the daunting task
of building future teams with severe limitations, and trying to keep
current players from fleeing to other schools. Star players such as
tailback Silas Redd and linebacker Gerald Hodges are now essentially
free agents.
"I knew when I accepted the
position that there would be tough times ahead," O'Brien said. "But I am
committed for the long term to Penn State and our student athletes."
Big
Ten Commissioner Jim Delany said that players will likely be allowed to
transfer within the conference, something that is usually restricted.
The possible exodus isn't confined to just the next few months. Penn
State players currently on the roster are free to transfer without
restrictions for the length of their careers.
Penn
State players left a team meeting on campus in State College, Pa.,
without talking to reporters. Penn State's season starts Sept. 1 at home
against Ohio University.
The sanctions
came a day after the school took down a statue of Paterno that stood
outside Beaver Stadium and was a rallying point for the coaches'
supporters throughout the scandal.
At a
student union on campus, several dozen alumni and students gasped,
groaned and whistled as they watched Emmert's news conference.
"It
was kind of just like a head shaker," said Matt Bray, an 18-year-old
freshman from West Chester, Pa. "You knew it was coming, but it was hard
to hear."
Emmert had earlier said he had
"never seen anything as egregious" as the horrific crimes of Sandusky
and the cover-up by Paterno and others at the university, including
former Penn State President Graham Spanier and athletic director Tim
Curley.
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The
Penn State investigation headed by former FBI Director Louis Freeh said
school officials kept what they knew from police and other authorities
for years, enabling the abuse to go on.
There
had been calls across the nation for Penn State to receive the "death
penalty," and Emmert had not ruled out that possibility as late as last
week - though Penn State did not fit the criteria for it. That
punishment is for teams that commit a major violation while already
being sanctioned.
"This case is obviously
incredibly unprecedented in every aspect of it," Emmert said, "as are
these actions that we're taking today."
Penn
State football under Paterno was built on - and thrived upon - the
premise that it did things the right way. That it was not a football
factory where only wins and losses determined success. Every major
college football program tries to send that message, but Penn State
built its brand on it.
Paterno's "Grand
Experiment" was about winning with integrity, graduating players and
sending men into the world ready to succeed in life, not just football.
But he still won a lot - a record-setting 409 victories.
The NCAA had never sanctioned, or seriously investigated Penn State. Few, if any, national powers could make that claim.
Southern
California, Ohio State, Alabama, all have run afoul of the NCAA. Even
Notre Dame went on probation for two years after a booster lavished
gifts on players in the 1990s.
The harshest
penalty handed down to a football program came in the `80s, when the
NCAA shut down SMU's team for a year. SMU football has never gotten back
to the level of success it had before the "death penalty."
Emmert
said there were concerns about the collateral damage of shutting down
Penn State football for a year, and that's why the death penalty was
ruled out.
"It hurts people who had absolutely nothing to do with this process, which is always the case," he said.
Emmert added that no attempt was made for the sanctions to be more severe than the death penalty.
"That isn't a comparison I or anyone else needs to make," he said. "People in the media can make those comparisons."
Delany said he believes Penn State is capable of bouncing back from the sanctions.
"I
do have a strong sense that many of the ingredients of success are
still at Penn State and will be there in future years," he said.
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