When my phone rang just a few seconds after the NCAA sanctions were handed down Monday, I knew it was someone from Penn State calling, likely outraged that our beloved university was being punished so harshly. I've received these calls all week.
"I don't think it's fair mainly because there were no violations on the field of play. There were no violations by athletes," said one caller, decrying the raft of penalties that will, among other things, keep the university's football program out of the post-season for four years. "Only by coaches and administration, all of whom are gone and facing criminal charges. ... I just feel the NCAA is pimping off the Penn State situation," said my friend on the phone, a former football player and current college administrator. "What do you think?" he asked. He was clearly upset.
And, he is clearly wrong.
I'm sorry. I just can't join the throngs of furious Nittany Lions. My outrage is too focused on a university that failed us and, more importantly, all of the boys who were raped and abused by former coach Jerry Sandusky. He was convicted last month for sexually assaulting 10 boys over more than 10 years, while everyone, according to the Freeh report on the scandal -- coaches, administrators and Penn State's Board of Trustees, sat back and let it happen. Too afraid to ask any questions, too afraid to lose their careers, too selfish to care about anything but football and the big money it represented.
What do I think, my friend? I think the NCAA sanctions are not only fair but also could have been harsher.
Arguing that the NCAA overstepped its bounds and has no right to butt into this criminal case is ridiculous. That is the same type of legal-loophole thinking that Joe Paterno, Mike McQueary and other top officials who knew about Sandusky's behavior used when they "followed the letter of the law" and reported to their superiors that Sandusky may have done "something" to a boy in the shower that awful night in 1998. They reported this suspected rape to their bosses and then went home.
I think we got off easy.
But to hear the indignant reaction of those in the Penn State family and in the media, you would think that the NCAA was shutting down the entire university. I just don't get it. We are talking about a university -- not one man, many men and women, an entire culture -- that allowed a former coach to repeatedly rape and abuse boys for decades on university property and school trips.
We are talking about a university (not just a football program) that covered up these crimes, allowing the football program to become a safe haven for a child rapist. It is a university and the entire culture around Happy Valley that happily saw no evil, heard no evil and spoke no evil as long as the profits were rolling in and the stadium seats were filled. And now we all have to pay the penalty for allowing that culture to fester.
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