The NCAA has decided their punishment for the Penn State football program as a result of the Jerry Sandusky sexual abuse scandal. No bowl bids for four years, loss of 20 scholarships per year for those four years, a $60 million sanction, and the removal of all wins from Penn State dating back to 1998.
While I have no problem with the four year bowl ban, and the loss of scholarships as punishment from the scandal, and I really don’t care about the $60 million fine, the loss of wins for the last 14 years seems curious. How did the NCAA come up with that decision? Did head coach Joe Paterno cheat in all of those games? Did they use ineligible players? Was there any wrongdoing by any of his football players in each of those games? The answer to all of those questions is No.
111 of Penn State’s wins have been erased from the record books, plus six bowl wins, and two conference championships. Joe Paterno has gone from the winningest coach in NCAA football history with 409 wins, down to 12th place, with 298. Sandusky was defensive coordinator from 1977- 1999. So the NCAA removed the wins from his last 2 years as coach, and the next 12 years also? I just don’t understand how they came up with the range of years that Penn State would lose their wins from.
Paterno died back on January 22 of this year, and the university removed his statue this past Sunday, which I agree with. The statue would be a daily reminder of the scandal, and although he was a great football coach, the university should no longer have a deification of their former football coach on their campus.
As usual, the punishment will be felt by football players and coaches that had nothing to do with the scandal, and all those responsible for covering up or at least not doing enough to stop the abuse, are long gone. Let’s hope that Penn State can now move on, get through a tough 4 year stretch, and eventually get back to the football power they once were, eventually.
