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Originally Posted by King James
I understand the blame for the football program because Sandusky's acts were covered up to protect the program and university. However, I think there is a distinction between (1) covering up criminal acts to protect the degradation of a program on the one hand, and (2) covering up NCAA violations to enhance the success of a program on the other.
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If PSU had stopped the criminal acts from happening right away, then covered them up you'd be right. However, they didn't. They may have eventually fired Sandusky, but they continued to allow him access to their facilities, where he continued to commit dozens of crimes over the next 13 years, and then covered those up as well.
Here's an article about the same thing:
http://sports.yahoo.com/news/emmert-...96--ncaaf.html
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The primary matter for the NCAA is application of its own definition of a "lack of institutional control." If the NCAA can apply it to the alleged cover-up at Penn State, it could harshly penalize the football program and also hand down broad punishment across Penn State athletics.
Penn State's failure to act when presented opportunities to confront assistant coach Jerry Sandusky, from top administration to members of the footbal coaching staff including Joe Paterno, is critical to the NCAA review but bylaws don't contain specific language that would apply to this particular case.
FBI director Louis Freeh...said "The most powerful men at Penn State failed to take any steps for 14 years to protect the children who Sandusky victimized,"
As part of the investigation, Freeh's team unearthed email correspondence that shows Paterno not only knew of the 1998 investigation into Sandusky which he Paterno previously denied, but also portrayed Paterno as the most powerful figure in the group, advising Curley to abort a plan to file a report detailing the 2001 crime witnesses by assistant coach Mike McQueary to authorities.
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I can't see arguing that the NCAA language doesn't specifically define covering up serial child rape as a rule violation. Rule breaking is bad. Covering up for a child predator is much worse, and the penalty should directly and proportionately reflect that.