The NCAA slapped the Nittany Lions with sanctions that will reverberate through College Station for the next four years and beyond. They gutted the revenue earned this year from the Penn State football program, banned the team from bowl games for the next four years, and "vacated" all wins from 1998 through 2011, effectively destroying the legacy of Joe Paterno, who is no longer the "winningest coach in history."
So the football team survives and players can play the game, but the prestige is gone along with Joe Pa's statue, and that's fitting. Why should a team and a university have bragging rights when the so-called "ethical" leaders were nothing but apologists and enablers for a serial child molester?
I find all of it very satisfying, since it puts the priorities of the university back where they should have been in the first place.
Penn Live
Penn State will be banned from bowl games for four years. It will lose 20 scholarships a year for four years. It will pay a $60 million fine -- a year's average gross annual revenue for the football program. That money will be used to fund programs to prevent child abuse. Penn State can't pay that fine with academic money or by cutting other athletic scholarships.
And the Nittany Lions 109 wins between 1998 and 2011 have been vacated. Joe Paterno is no longer the winningest Div. I football coach of all time.
NCAA president Mark Emmert said the NCAA crafted the punishment as a consent decree, which the university has signed. No appeal is expected.
The penalties are meant to carry a message, Emmert says. Big sports he said, have become too big to fail, and in some cases, too big to question.
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