It’ll take a long while – if ever – for Penn State to recover from this:
The fine goes to programs that help abuse victims.
And that’s not all.
So Bill O’Brien has to recruit his own roster again. Good luck with that.
And JoePa’s legacy takes another hit.
All told, it’s brutal. And unprecedented. But we shouldn’t worry, because the NCAA’s heart is in the right place.
https://twitter.com/PeteThamelNYT/status/227388993065611264
When making a power grab, it’s always useful to invoke the children.
There’s no telling where the NCAA goes from here. But I think Mr. Hall captures my sense of cynicism quite nicely.
**********************************************************************************
UPDATE: One additional element to consider:
If that’s the case, what would the NCAA have done if Penn State hadn’t cooperated?
*********************************************************************************
UPDATE #2: Hey, but they saved the important stuff!
Yeah, can’t have innocent people who had nothing to do with what happened being hurt. Unless they’re the current Penn State coaches or players, that is…
Get The Picture 
The NCAA had the right to act in the case because it happened in the athletic facilities and others looked the other way. At the end of the day, this reeks of “Don’t let a good crisis go to waste” by Emmert and the NCAA. This is the death penalty in another name.
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Wait a minute…I thought this was going to be the “death of the NCAA as we know it” because of the lack of due process, the lack of a proper investigation, etc.?
I have to say I think Emmert & the NCAA handled this exactly as they should have–there was an investigation conducted by an external organization, a comprehensive report, and circumstances outside precedent. Penn State could not have been allowed to start the season without response form the NCAA, and the nation expected a response. Far from its own demise, if anything the NCAA strengthened its credibility and authority as much as it could have (and in this instance, it is not inappropriate to have done so, IMO).
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I don’t have a problem with jurisdiction in this case. I just don’t trust the NCAA, period. Maybe I still look at the way that body treated AJ Green and refused to deal with others.
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Yes. Agreed. Rather than trusting them in any grand way, it seems this one time to have been handled as about as appropriately as it should have. (I have no expectation for said appropriateness to continue based on past inconsistencies; the NCAA dying from overreach is left to another day.)
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My only question about overreach is whether the NCAA has the right to levy the fine. This part of the sanctions is the one that makes me extremely nervous moving forward with the idiots in Indianapolis. That, to me, seems to be the NCAA leadership thinking that we “don’t let a good crisis go to waste.”
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PSU’s president signed quickly and became part of the validation that gives the NCAA this power. It was concurred by other member presidents and no mention of appeal makes this action go down as a valid and proper action by the NCAA when holding the athletic structure responsible along with other responsible structures at PSU.
Since the NCAA is the voice for all member schools, they have always had this power and did everything not to use it strongly and correctly ( tOSU, Cam Newton, A.J.), but institutional control now is the challenging issue that forces this action. Perhaps the good side is that this power will be used wisely in the future such that this type of occurrence can never happen again in the college football world. That is the intent. We have complained how feckless the NCAA has been in other situations (I’m still outdone by incomplete investigations and the lack of harsh penalties for tOSU) and now that they show cojones, we shouldn’t be suddenly questioning power abuse by the NCAA.
Players should initiate their application to other schools and go through recruiting again if they don’t wish to play in that tainted milieu. Schools shouldn’t go after players in this instance. That will all work out in the near future and if players we recruited who ended up going there decide to put UGA back into the mix, that should be all done by the players.
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Those chicken-shit Penn Staters just took it. What the NCAA did was waaaaay beyond that organization’s authority and those chicken-shit Penn Staters just swallowed it all without a peep. The Big 10, too. What we just witnessed is the biggest power grab by the NCAA in college sports history. This will come back to haunt some other institution some time in the future.
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Is the NCAA dead, yet, Mayor? Waiting.
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Apparently not. Looks like the fix was in. They already had it worked out that Penn State would just eat it all without a whimper.
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You know, the question you should be asking (in my opinion, of course) is not whether the NCAA had the right to do any of this, but rather, where the NCAA’s jurisdiction stops. The fact that they punished the university for the actions of its athletic department and the athletic department’s inappropriate influence upon the university is something no other overseeing body could do (short of Penn State itself) so the NCAA feels it can do as it wishes, but this is the first time they’ve deigned to punish an institution for this type of problem, obviously, despite untold other opportunities (the Baylor basketball murder cover-up comes to mind). The inconsistency and arbitrariness, frankly, smacks of a body that is unclear about the depth and scope of its own mission and its concomitant parameters.
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^^^This. Exactly right gastr1. You actually framed the issue much better than I have or ever could.
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gastr1’s response below is right on. Where is the NCAA’s enforcement boundary? I absolutely believe that the NCAA had the right to intervene with enforcement action in this case because the said actions occurred in the university’s facilities and with the knowledge of university administrators.
My only question is whether the NCAA should have the ability to levy a fine such as this. The scholarships limits, post-season bans, the vacated wins, and suspension from participation (the death penalty) have all been used by the NCAA as enforcement mechanisms. I think the member institutions are going to rue the day they allowed the NCAA to levy a fine as they did here.
Would the NCAA have done what they did here (the $60 million fine) if the school had been New Mexico State instead of PSU?
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I believe that. If the issues are not evidently clear involving helpless children as it was in this case, NCAA or Big 10 will not have done anything. PSU admin public opinion is just so weak now, that they likely consider this as self flagellation (mea culpa) to atone for the school’s sins for public relation. THIS IS AN EASIER CALL FOR THE NCAA than proving so called “payment for players”.
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Cojones, my friend, most of that was remarkably coherent. Has somebody changed your meds?
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Play nice!
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If I offended anyone, it was just one mistake. You can’t discount all the imaginary good deeds and philanthropy…
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LOL
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Does tequila count as a med?
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Only when used by amateurs
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Time to call their O-lineman and DB’s…
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I, as we all should, like Spencer Hall a lot, but his high-road routine w/r/t the Penn State scandal has gotten far past grating recently.
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But he does know how to appreciate an opening scene
http://georgiasfilmblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/children-of-men-opening-scene-analysis.html
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They do appear to have a shocking! amount of groupthink going on over there about all of this. Let’s remember that this wasn’t a college football issue until JoePa made it a college football issue. He made the choice everyday for fourteen years to not report what was done on the Penn State campus to protect his fallacy of a legacy. Had he reported the incident immediately upon hearing about it, it never would have become a football issue, and the NCAA would have no standing to exact punishment. But, it makes everyone feel better to say the NCAA is corrupt, harrumph, harrumph, discriminate, rabble, rabble, pay the players, harrumph, useless, rabble, etc. even when they get something right.
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My question is whether they have any offensive linemen, DB’s and or people who can tackle on special teams that we can poach?
As far as fearing the overreach and it’s implications I can’t think of a scenario whereby I’d be disappointed in its application. If anything I’d probably be more concerned about the failure to respond to other serious situations.
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We need offensive lineman NOW.
We, unlike many other programs, are a top tier program with scholarships available NOW.
Richt, Bobo and Friend should be in the air and headed to Happy Valley ASAP.
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UGA did hire John Thomas,off of PSU.
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If you are asking the most profitable college athletic program to pay for a trip and the scholarships, then you already know my answer.
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So was this worse than the death penalty? I mean, 4 years, and 20 schollies each year? That’s going to leave a mark, man. I mean, at least death is one and done with the huge penalty although the damage lasts much longer (didn’t SMU also lose some scholarships after death?)…..The transfer rule had to be done of course, but it is an extra kick to the nether regions.
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Not sure what you mean by ‘one and done’ in terms of SMU’s Death Penalty.
~The 1987 season was canceled; only conditioning drills (without pads) were permitted until the spring of 1988.
~ All home games in 1988 were canceled. SMU was allowed to play their seven regularly scheduled away games so that other institutions would not be financially affected. The university ultimately chose to cancel the away games as well.
~The team’s existing probation was extended to 1990. Its existing ban from bowl games and live television was extended to 1989.
~SMU lost 55 new scholarship positions over 4 years.
~The team was allowed to hire only five full-time assistant coaches instead of the typical nine.
~ No off-campus recruiting was permitted until August 1988, and no paid visits could be made to campus by potential recruits until the start of the 1988–89 school year.
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“The NCAA sanctions on Penn State, taken in sum, far exceed the severity of shutting down a program for a year or two. Our sanctions address the cultural change necessary at Penn State. What some refer to as the death penalty was not severe enough.”
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I don’t get what you’re trying to point out? My response was to a poster that mentioned the Death Penalty as being “one and done.” Anyone with an ounce of common sense can clearly see that the punishments handed down to SMU far exceeded a one year ‘punishment’.
Your ‘meaty’ quote from the NCAA seems to imply that I argued SMU’s punishment was far worse than PSU. While, your reading comprehension skills are lacking, for the sake of amusement…I’ll bite – even though it’s an apples to orange comparison.
~PSU still has football this year. SMU first year of punishment did not.
~PSU has football next year. SMU only played away games.
~PSU can still be seen on tv. SMU had a TV ban of 3 years.
~PSU still has a full coaching staff. SMU could only have 5 full time positions.
~PSU can still recruit. SMU had no off-campus and no paid on-campus visits until 1988.
But I guess in your mind, one extra year of bowl ban and a loss of ‘up to’ 25 more recruits outweighs SMU’s punishment. The money is insignificant at this point.
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The quote is from the NCAA, not me. So, in their collective mind it is worse, you should read the full penalties…you might see their point.
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This is getting tiring. Your reading comprehension is rearing its ugly head, yet again. I never said otherwise, in fact I acknowledged that the quote is from the NCAA. I hope your not a product of our great institution.
While we’re at it….here’s a comment for you.
“We had our backs to the wall on this,” Penn State president Rodney Erickson told the Centre Daily Times of Pennsylvania in an interview later Monday, saying the school accepted the penalties to avoid the so-called “death penalty” that could have resulted in the suspension of the football program for at least one year. “We did what we thought was necessary to save the program.”
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Senator, Mac and others….I and others have been wrong to deny the NCAA’s involvement in the Penn State situation.
It will be easy to take the cynical view and call the punishment of Penn State a power grab.
The NCAA did have the right to act, and NOT because of the venue or circumstances of the criminal activity, but because the culture at Penn State put athletics before anything.
But in a larger sense, the NCAA simply had no choice…it is evident from the comments of Emmert and the President of Colorado State that this action was taken with the full support of the member institutions.
If that is true, and I have no reason to believe otherwise, then the NCAA penalties simply express the will of the member institutions.
The NCAA and its members are simply saying that the tail can not, will not be allowed to wag the dog.
They are right.
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If Paterno, et al, hiding sexual abuse of minors because of the negative fallout publicly is not THE prime example of flaunting a lack of control an institution has over its football program, then nothing does. Reggie Bush is a parking violation in comparison to this pre-meditated murder, metaphorically speaking.
And, completely unrelated, Garner, Bobo, and Grantham need to be on a plane to State College today. Just sayin’. We have (quite) a few openings for talented individuals.
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I would send Lakatos. He probably recruited some of their guys back in the day.
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SJ, no apology needed from you to anyone. You were right that PSU should have stepped up first, they didn’t. You were also right to be concerned that getting the NCAA involved in making judgement decisions on culture and values is a dangerous precedent to set. This incident (s) was so despicable that the NCAA’s intrusion is being well-received by the majority of fans reacting, but almost all are sharing the same concerns you have expressed.
I have to admit that Emmert did a solid job in stating the case for NCAA involvement, I just wonder where this perspective was with the handling of tosu and All Barn in the past 2 years, and where has the executive committee of the NCAA been the past 30-40 years as we have watched CFB to get out of hand when common sense should have prevailed. This might be the most egregious example of Football Gone Wild but it didn’t begin in 1998, administrators could have kept things in check by reacting earlier when “rules” were bent to accommodate athletes who didn’t conform to behavior expected of other students….starting with academic requirements.
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You and SJ III have voiced opinions of this action like mature people should and I applaud you both and others here for not grabbing the mike and calling for the pitchfork and torches. I have been a picky voice against the NCAA going back to USC and tOSU. This time they used power correctly and didn’t become one of the polesitters torn by their loyalty to CFB and the deification of coaches. People in power sitting on their hands and not using it where it is called for : that’s how this whole shit got started.
In this case we should all stand behind the NCAA.
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Good observation about the NCAA’s prior lack of enforcement leading to this significant punishment and, what is seen by many, the NCAA over stepping their authority.. That is certainly ironic. Perhaps even more ironic is JoePa’s inaction driven by his selfish concern to protect his legacy/program/drive for the record that has now led to the roof collapse which has buried his program, his legacy, and his record.
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She Who Shares My Name made a great observation about this: If the NCAA acted like this when schools were caught paying players or otherwise cheating then there wouldn’t be any cheating any more.
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Yeah Mayor, I gotta admit last week when I was railing about the NCAA’s “power grab” and facisim, my She suggested I had lost my rabbit-ass mind, “Hell, this is what they are supposed to do, is it not?”
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They need to hire a few former FBI people to help expedite their pathetic investigation process.
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Confusion on the scholly reductions? Emmeret said, “will have it’s initial scholarships reduced from 25 to 15 per year for a period of 4 years” …
That’s still 40 scholly’s but not 20 / year
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I’m pretty sure it is 10 initially, from 25 to 15, but they must maintain 20 below the limit after two years… so 65 instead of 85 total…. or Georgia’s modus operandi if you’d rather.
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That’s correct.
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I saw on Twitter that the NCAA is considering waiving scholarship number requirements at the schools that take the players.
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Good Lord!!!! CMR and Bobo–go to Happy Valley NOW, not tomorrow, and sign every O-lineman they have!!!!!
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Too late. Saban will have 130 players if this is true.
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Where did the loss of 20 scholarships per year come from? The press conference I heard said scholarships would be reduced from 25 per year to 15 per year.
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it’s both. It’s a cut from 25 to 15. Also a cut from 85 to 65 starting in 2014. In effect, their 2014 recruiting class could actually be 5-10 kids just to get down to the 65 number.
They will open Spring in Year 3, Year 4 and even Year 5 with 40-45 scholarship players. Many of whom will be unable to compete due to injuries.
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Living just outside of Harrisburg, PA , I have a very different view/opinion regarding what these sanctions mean for PSU football. The notion that they may never recover from this seems very unlikely. Make no mistake, the PSU brand is strong in this area…very strong. It will remain strong. Loyalty here is huge.
Being well endowed, the 60M is a sneeze for them and the vacated wins are in the past.
The penalties moving forward are the bowl ban and more importantly the loss of scholarships. While these will have an effect, there will always be players from this geographical region that desire to play for PSU. The probation would seem to be a non-factor.
In an odd way this may actually serve to circle the wagons.
The most important thing for the immediate future of this team is hiring a high profile coach.
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That was my first question. How long until they recover? Seeing that their alumni base and branding is bigger/stronger than SMU, they should recover quicker than they did. The problem with that measuring stick is that SMU still hasn’t recoved…..
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Way bigger, way stronger. It’s almost nauseating living in this area.
Since Sandusky’s arrest/conviction they actually had an all-time high donation of funds to PSU, somewhere along the lines of 75M thus far.
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Which is part of the reason I think the program needed to be shut down for a couple of years.
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I agree, not using the ultimate weapon is a signal the Death Penalty is no longer an option for the NCAA due to the contractual and financial considerations that would result from schedules/agreements already in place. I feel the penalties were good, fair, and warranted but allowing football to continue for all but one, potential, game each season means the fans can move forward with no major change. PSU hasn’t been a strong program or conference champion for many years. Not appearing in a mid-level bowl that only 15-20K fans traveled to isn’t a crushing blow. Will they be less competitive for a decade or so, sure, but that is life for mid-major programs like GT, Kansas, Washington, and South Carolina anyway. In other words, such programs exist in every conference already.
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Turning a Penn State program into a Kansas level program is pretty serious punishment, Mac.
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But is still a step up for many who have followed the rules. Take a Vandy/Kentucky from the SEC, or a Northwestern/Indiana from the Big 10/11/12, a GT/Duke from the ACC, etc., they would all love to qualify for decent bowl occasionally. (I realize GT often doesn’t follow the rules, just knew they are well known locally for Boise and SF level bowls so everyone could relate to the point.)
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No doubt PSU has mega support … but who’s gonna coach these wanna-be’s in the next 4 years? All the money in the world ain’t gonna bring a mega-recruiter or any other young up-and-comer worth a darn to Happy Valley to right the ship any time soon. The crazies will support this shell of a program, but at best they’ll be 5-7 years to come. It’ll be worse than Notre Dame … and those bozo’s still haven’t recovered from minimal penalties + mega bad management/recruiting decisions.
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Galen Hall is available. Call it a “homecoming.”
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According to the great reporter for The Patriot-News, Bill O’Brien is not going anywhere, which is a downer for Galen because he would have been perfect for the job
“O’Brien could resign. His contract states that if he wants to terminate employment for any reason before his five-year contract is over, he has to pay back his base salary at the time multiplied by the number of years left.”
http://communityvoices.sites.post-gazette.com/index.php/sports/bob-smiziks-blog/33779-leaving-would-cost-obrien-heavily
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Why resign? He’ll be getting $2.3 Mil/year with no expectations for winning anything from the fanbase. Use some roster management, schedule some cupcakes and learn to live with about 4 wins a year for the next 7-8 years.
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True but that doesn’t mean we can’t long for the good ol’ days of Galen Hall
http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2008-10-17/sports/bianchi17_1_galen-offensive-coordinator-total-offense
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I think this was the right call. Let the program continue in shame rather than be a martyr via the death penalty. And I’m glad the big source of JoePa’s motivation is now negated in the history books. But I wonder about the $60mm…that just comes from a pool of money that is going to be sought-after by the victims. Does the NCAA get “first dibs”?
And did I just hear Corch smile?
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Wow, MY groin is sore just reading about this dick punching. My thoughts are pretty sympatico with others here; PSU needed to be punished, but I’m leery of anything that gives an organization as arbitrary and capricious as the NCAA more power.
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Nicely summed up. Me too.
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Me three.
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At the risk of being seen as callous by introducing levity into this situation, the Senator’s observation that “(w)hen making a power grab, it’s always useful to invoke the children” made me think of this …
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this may be a minority viewpoint, but I think PSU voluntarily submitted to NCAA sanctions as a mechanism to get out in front of the wave of civil suits by the victims. They would seem to have a subtantial exposure to punitive damages, based on the length of time this went on, the number of victims involved that we know about (chances are there were more), and the documented willingness of upper level admins at the school to look the other way.
It’s strictly damage control now. They’re going to get hammered, and they deserve to get hammered, but at least no one can say they havent taken decisive action to address the culture of lettting football concerns override everything, even basic human decency. That’s been dismantled, the vacated wins, bowl sanctions and scholly cuts punish them backwards and forwards, and the “fine” will go towards helping victims.
I doubt anyone who had input into the decision to accept NCAA sanctions at PSU cared about what kind of a long term precedent they were setting in terms of NCAA jurisdiction. Letting the NCAA drop the hammer was simply the fastest and most efficient way to make the changes that they feel like they needed to make to start making all this right. Whether you think Emmert is a pompous blowhard trying to get out in front of the parade, a Mike Adams style bureaucrat trying to make a power grab, or a good guy with a genuine but perhaps misguided wish to do something he doesnt have the power to do, the NCAA was a convenient mechanism to allow the PSU powers that are currently in place to make some painful, and (to me) appropriate changes.
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While an admission of guilt or agreeing to sanctions may be helpful in repairing your image, I don’t believe it will serve to lessen awards in civil cases, it could even hurt.
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I disagree that the civil suits are what forced PSU’s hand in signing the consent decree to punishments.
I think it’s more of a damage control issue with the NCAA than anything else. No matter how much people have framed the sanctions as “they’ll wish it was the death penalty,” completely stopping and restarting a football program will always be worse than the bowl ban & scholarship hits sanctioned.
The AA must know that if the Freeh report produced this information, what could NCAA investigators + civil subpoenas further uncover? How far back could it go? I’m sure the NCAA privately said to PSU, “Accept these sanctions, or roll the dice and hope nothing worse comes out.”
Anything on top of the Freeh report separately discovered would show PSU’s obsturfication/failure to be forthright, and would justify a real Death Penalty sentence, since the Freeh report was an independent yet University-sanctioned finding.
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It’s not clear the NCAA could have done anything without PSU’s voluntary submission to discipline. It’s also not clear that the NCAA could have done anything worse after an NCAA investigation than they’re already doing. NCAA folks dont have subpoena power. The civil suits will drag on for years. There may very well be “other stuff” out there as far as new victims, but it’s hard to imagine any more damning internal evidence than the Freeh Report already laid out for them.
If you dont think civil suits and potential liability for massive punitive damages were a factor, you werent around about 20 years ago when Dr. Louis Poetter and the Anneewakee molestation scandal were making their way through the Fulton Superior Court. Penn St will get hammered in the civil suits, and it should. It’s just a question of whether they can limit the extent of the punitive damages. If I was representing them, I’d be plenty worried about how to do that, but it’s just my opinion.
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“We had our backs to the wall on this,” Penn State president Rodney Erickson told the Centre Daily Times of Pennsylvania in an interview later Monday, saying the school accepted the penalties to avoid the so-called “death penalty” that could have resulted in the suspension of the football program for at least one year. “We did what we thought was necessary to save the program.”
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well, history shows we can certainly trust the statements we get from Penn State administrators, doesnt it? What else would you expect him to say to spin it as favorably to PSU as he could?
the last thing in the world anyone is going to do, in his position, in my opinion, is say “We’re trying to hold the punitives under 100 million dollars.” You let the NCAA hammer you, you abjectly accept the punishment, and you hope the eventual jurors get saturated with stories of “poor Penn State, these guys there now didnt do anything, they’re getting killed by the NCAA” and quit thinking about the fact that those SOBs sat on information that a child predator was using their facilities as a playground for 15 years, or longer.
There are enough people who love Penn State football that they’ll recover from this. And if it takes them 10 years, too damn bad for Penn State.
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Just a little footnote about all of this…
Remember when the NCAA president job was open and many in the Bulldog nation pined for Adams to get the job. Emmert just had his chance to create more power for the office. Every president would have taken it, I think that Adams would be far more likely to continue to use it.
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….Or that another new guy who takes Emmerts place won’t abuse that power? Besides, how do we know Adams won’t be Emmert’s successor? Adams will be without a job soon and who knows how long Emmert will be Prez of the NCAA.
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I guess we should breathe a sigh a relief regarding Jim Donnan’s ponzi scheme. After-all, Coach Donnan did use his prestige and contacts from UGA to lure investors. What if there is evidence Donnan was doing similar acts back in 1998, is UGA looking at severe penalties?
Bad facts make bad law. This PSU penalty is an over-reach by the NCAA that will soon be regretted.
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Is it an over-reach? Most certainly. But, I don’t think it is necessarily a precedent that will be acted upon soon (at least I hope there are not circumstances that warrant such). Penn State essentially waived their right to due process and took what the NCAA offered as a sentence. I don’t think Miami (as an example) is going to get similar punishment just because Emmert blasted an organization responsible for one of the most despicable coverups in sports history.
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One reason that I felt pushed this action was to prevent the players from hanging in limbo past a long investigation that could put the skids to many player and family plans. It had to be adjudicated rapidly and with care. I think that was done.
Whether we think the NCAA has shown mature decisions and actions in the past or not, they at least grew up in time to answer this problem succinctly.
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This is a great point, Cojones…and I will be just uncynical enough for a moment to trust that the NCAA gave five minutes consideration to the players’ needs for once.
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“over-reach by the NCAA that will soon be regretted.”
Forget, Hell! After hooding for rendition to an undisclosed black site in Happy Valley until this shit blows over, a defiant JoePa is still #1
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haha. good one.
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Yeah, that’s classic
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Joe Paterno’s last official win now Nov. 1997 vs. Wisc. His starting QB? Mike McQueary.
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Now there is some well researched trivia. I didn’t even know McQueary ever started as a QB at PSU.
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Hell, DW, what a great find….kinda, like, goosebumpy, huh? What they say about Kharma’s personality is true.
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as Dooley would often say, “very ironical”.
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Since this report has gone live, the stones have been flying. The whole situation is a tragedy, and all because the hideous perversion of one man.
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The unseen penalty is that future potential 3,4,5 star student-athletes’ parents will quietly guide their sons (and daughters for other sports) elsewhere. Unless the potential athletes’ parents bleed blue and white, PSU football (not to mention everything else under the athletic department banner) is going into the wilderness for a generation, at least… probably longer because by the time they are in the clear penalty and stigma -wise, no one will remember their sports accomplishments.
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If there is any doubt about the NCAA’s intent here, this from the NCAA website:
“The NCAA sanctions on Penn State, taken in sum, far exceed the severity of shutting down a program for a year or two. Our sanctions address the cultural change necessary at Penn State. What some refer to as the death penalty was not severe enough.”
If this makes some college football coach, athletic director, administrator or fan somewhere nervous….good.
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This NCAA punishment has given me an idea about criminal law: Instead of executing convicted murderers, let’s draw the punishment out over several years. First, cut off their hands. Then the following year cut off their feet. The year after that, since they would be immobile and unable to flee, burn them with a red hot poker like a branding iron against the torso but do it for days at a time. Next year poke out both eyes but slowly and one at a time taking days to do it, then flog them for hours at a time on a daily basis for the entire next year. Yeah, that’s way more severe than simply giving them the death penalty which is so passe.
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Has Sandusky been found guilty?
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sorry, brain fart.
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On the totally selfish side, when you subtract the 111 wins from Penn State, Georgia is now No. 10 instead of No. 11 in all time wins.
1
Michigan
895
312
38
1245
0.734
30799
14149
16650
2
Texas
858
333
34
1225
0.714
29508
15787
13721
3
Nebraska
856
349
41
1246
0.703
30719
16098
14621
4
Notre Dame (IN)
853
301
41
1195
0.731
30126
15000
15126
5
Penn St.
828
361
43
1232
0.690
28096
15369
12727
6
Ohio St.
825
316
53
1194
0.713
28064
14471
13593
7
Oklahoma
819
310
53
1182
0.715
31951
15063
16888
8
Alabama
814
320
43
1177
0.710
28104
13413
14691
9
Tennessee
794
347
54
1195
0.687
26631
15368
11263
10
Southern California
779
313
54
1146
0.703
27675
14793
12882
11
Georgia
748
400
54
1202
0.645
25214
16591
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Missed, understandably, while the big guns were going off:
“Students athletes may retain their grant in aid so long as they remain academically eligible, even if they are not on the team…”
Whoa! Did I hear that right? THAT’s something new I would not mind seeing expanded.
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We’ve been doing that for years. All part of the process.
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Nick, are any of your recruits’ scholarships in jeapordy if you need one to snag a nugget from PSU?
Maybe CMR can use a few of the ones UGA has laying in the drawer.
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I think it’s strange that they did not shut the program down for one year. I think the program probably needed an entire year off the field, and (despite the outcries that were sure to come) a rebrand. New logo, new colors, or go back to whatever the pre-Paterno logo was, etc. They need to start over at Day One and have a new era begin in Happy Valley.
And as some have pointed out, even consider destroying the facilities where the awful events happened. I’m not usually one to advocate wasting property and money for the sake of dramatic gestures, but in this case I can’t imagine asking players to go into those showers.
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People walk the streets of Hiroshima every day.
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That analogy might work if Japan dropped the bomb on themselves and decided to leave Hiroshima in ruins afterwards.
I award you no points and may God have mercy on your soul.
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+1
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Hiroshima? Sure. But wait until you get a load of Nagasaki
“In the study of objects which gave definite clues to the blast pressure, such as squashed tin cans, dished metal plates, bent or snapped poles and like, it was soon evident that the Nagasaki bomb had been much more effective than the Hiroshima bomb. In the description of damage which follows, it will be noted that the radius for the amount of damage was greater in Nagasaki than Hiroshima.”
http://www.cddc.vt.edu/host/atomic/hiroshim/hiro_med.html
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I’m getting pretty tired of hearing the old “don’t punish the innocent” line. If that were the most important thing to consider, programs would very rarely get put on probation b/c schools almost always fire the “evildoers” before the hammer comes down.
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I don’t think it’s legal or ethical to go after PSU’s players. But getting a couple of those famous LBs that don’t count against the 85 scholly limit would be nice. Hey guys, come on down, the weather’s nice. Well, it will be in Oct. I think Penn State is done for a while but I take no joy in that fact. It is never good to find out that one of your long time heroes has feet not of clay but of stinking slime.
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And isn’t Ted Roof as DC punishment enough?
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Zing+1
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A friend of mine lives across from JT Thomas (one of our new S&C coaches) in State College, PA. He snapped this photo of Coach Thomas loading up for his move to Athens.
https://mail-attachment.googleusercontent.com/attachment/?ui=2&ik=859f91d819&view=att&th=138b5d7658f4ebf2&attid=0.1&disp=inline&safe=1&zw&saduie=AG9B_P-jzLhgkajzW8rywxypy2j5&sadet=1343081565838&sads=96buwGef9NXqJK_84pzDNssT_AQ&sadssc=1
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can’t seem to paste pic link or pic….its beyond my computer skills.
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While you’re working on that, in the meantime, we could just use “Tony Franklin loads up his car after being fired Wednesday” and “Tony Franklin gets a little help moving out” to get the general idea of what Coach Thomas loading up for the move to Athens may look like
http://blog.al.com/spotnews/2008/10/franklin_packs_up_leaves_aubur.html
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Who is on the Penn State roster that UGa is or should be pursuing right now. Jarvis worked out pretty well for us. We’re short at WR, DB, OL, Special Teams. How good are they, are any of them southerners, and would they count against the 2013 recruiting class?
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Good question. Seems like we would be ideal with so many spots available.
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As I understand it, no transfers emanating from the stinking crater that was Penn State count against any school’s recruiting numbers. So, even if UGa had the optimum 85 roster spots filled, the Dawgs could round up three or four or as many as they deemed necessary. As we are painfully aware, with the speculative 70ish scholarship slots spoken for that leaves an entire side of the ball (and then some) available.
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Hell, sign their whole starting O-line and all their starting DBs as backups. Make it a package deal. That might entice several to come together as a group.
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I could get behind that!
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I agree with what appears to be a majority of the commentors – the appropriate punishment for Penn State rests in the civil and criminal courts. The NCAA penalties are basically nothing more than extortion – a wealth transfer from boosters, alumni and a PUBLIC university to charitable causes. (I’d be pretty pissed as a Georgia taxpayer and Hartman Fund donor if I knew my money was basically going to some charity – regardless of the merits of the cause or not – rather than to the University).
I say all this after reading most of the Freeh report and realizing that the President, VP for Finance and AD were pretty much typical bureaucratic scumbags; the GC was a total idiot; the Trustees were largely asleep at the wheel; and as much benefit of the doubt as I’d like to give Joe, because he always seemed like a nice guy on TV, you can’t read the report without thinking he should have known something was rotten in State College and should have done more about it.
In addition, the idea that this is going to somehow help the university regain control over the football/athletic programs is a joke. At any big university, I-A football has become the most highly visible “symbol” of the university over the past 30-40 years, and the NCAA’s actions today don’t do anything to change that. (I mean, Michael Adams loved to pretend that athletics didn’t run the University and publicly – mostly for his NCAA/political buddies I assume – seemed very anti-athleticcs; but he was on the field before every football game (including the away ones), acting like a pompous ass, and is one of the first guy’s in the locker room after the game.)
The same can be said for all the “holier than thou” media members now applauding the NCAA’s actions – until they start writing columns and having 3-hour radio shows about how great colleges’ academic programs are, rather than talking about intercollegiate athletics, they need to drop the attitude and stop being posers.
Thus, instead of “restoring the balance” between academics and athletics, the NCAA’s actions today only reinforce the sad notion that I-A football is becoming the NFL’s AAA (i.e. its just bidness).
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