You know, I’ll be the first to admit that I’m as critical of the NCAA as anybody. And I’ll also admit that I’m not at ease with the process that led to the Penn State sanctions.
But I’m not insane about it.
Whatever evil Joe Paterno and Penn State officials failed to stop, the 112 wins are wins.
Where will the NCAA draw its line? What other wrongs that have nothing to do with victories on the playing field will the NCAA address by nullifying the hard-fought wins of innocent student athletes?
The lesson the NCAA is teaching young people — that history and truth don’t matter if enough powerful people don’t want them to matter — can be as injurious to society as the cover-up was to the victims of Sandusky.
When you’re at the point where you’re equating vacating college football wins with enabling a serial child rapist over a period of years, it’s way past time to seriously question your standards of personal morality. Or, as I said, your sanity.
All I can say is that I hope that’s the worst thing I read for a while.
Get The Picture 
Sounds like the same group-think that got Penn State where they are today.
The new “Success with Honor”?
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“The lesson the NCAA is teaching young people — that history and truth don’t matter if enough powerful people don’t want them to matter — can be as injurious to society as the cover-up was to the victims of Sandusky.”
Wow. Someone needs a serious bitch-slapping.
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Now that my jaw is back in its rightful place after reading that, Mr. Prager’s statement above is exactly–EXACTLY!–the thought process that led to the cover-up–that wins are just as important to “the program” as injury is to the victims. Sick, screwed-up stuff.
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Maybe I don’t have a soul, but I can kinda see what the guy is talking about. Punishing the organization for enabling an inhumane crime makes plenty of sense to me but what does it have to do with wins? I can see erasing wins for a Reggie Bush/USC situation where those wins were the direct cause of what the NCAA was punishing.
I also see it as a really slippery slope. Do they repo the championship rings the players have? I say take the wins from Paterno’s record and a lot of the other sanctions are just. But why go back and re-write history when it doesn’t make anything better and only makes things worse for the innocent bystanders?
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It had less to do with wins than with who should be in record books and the manner in which they achieved their records.
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Prager went around the bend a long time ago. But it’s funny that someone who’s so obsessed with protecting “traditional values” could be so casual about the subject of child rape. I mean, you’d think that preventing little kids from getting raped would be one of the strongest “traditional values” there is — way stronger than concern over some dead coach’s win/loss record — but apparently not.
Get this through your thick skulls, JoePa defenders — there are a lot of facets to the Sandusky scandal, to be sure, but I can’t think of any that are less important than whether Joe Paterno holds the all-time wins record or not.
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Bobby Bowden agrees with that.
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Exactly, Bobby spoke at the FCA meeting in Albany last year and spoke to a reporter afterwards. I can’t give you his exact quotes when asked about his long time friend Paterno but here is the gist of what he said.” A coach can’t cover up something like that [child abuse], he just can’t. Joe knew that, he knew that.. We have to remember that Joe is not what this is about, it’s those kids. I think Joe will be all right, he is a strong guy, but it’s those kids we need to think about.” I do remember what Bowden said when asked if he would call his old friend. “I have no plans to do that. Honestly, I don’t know what I could say if I did call him.”
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“If, as the NCAA report charges, Penn State’s silence spoke volumes about Penn State’s culture, what does America’s silence in the face of the NCAA’s falsification of history say about ours?”
So that’s what that heavy burden on my soul I’ve felt for the last few weeks was. I’m just like a child rapist protector because I don’t give a crapp that Penn State’s wins were vacated. What a total douche bag.
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Penn State is the only place in the world where I actually think vacating wins would matter to the people involved in this sort of coverup, especially if Joe Paterno were still alive. Those wins and the all-time wins record were all that mattered to Joe Paterno. We’ll never know his motivations, and we may never know exactly what happened, but I feel certain that any steps he took to shield Sandusky’s acts from the light of day were taken to preserve A) his job and, B) his wins record. And, really, Item A on that list was really just to keep amassing wins for Item B. In any other case, eliminating wins changes nothing. In Penn State’s case, it takes away one of the things that those culpable were trying to protect.
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Even more than the wins record, Paterno wanted no blemishes and would not tolerate the criticism/scrutiny/negative publicity. He and his program were perfect, don’t you know.
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Jesus. I love me some National Review, but they really need to stop publishing anything about Penn State. This is twice they’ve put up morally reprehensible drivel on the matter.
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There is no better example of how corrupt the PSU fans/program had become. The value system led directly to the top, you have to hope those in charge of the institution are above the lowest of the fanatics. As for saying this did not have anything to do with the wins means you are very naive to think a program who would tolerate child rape didn’t cover up things like doping, stealing, and DUI’s. Penn State has no cover for claiming purity any longer, just like tosu. Dirty, filthy dirty. Screw them, I still don’t knbow why they didn’t get the Death Penalty for at least a generation.
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To add to your point, I remember reading somewhere when this 1st came out that anytime a player got in trouble with the campus or local police, they were to inform JoePa before charges were filed and that he would handle dicipline with his players.
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That occurs in most small college towns, and did in Athens at for a long time. Bigger metros are like Saban with this, the police don’t have to time to sweat the small stuff. I don’t really understand booking young adults in to jail for minor offenses but agree disciplining college students is an important part of the process. Traffic-court type offenses (running a stop sign, driving without a license, unpaid speeding tickets, etc.) that do not cause an accident or physical injury shouldn’t be on a police blotter, or require booking them into a jail. That would keep it out of the AJC and Red and Black.
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Did you expect anything better from the National Review?
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Yes, actually.
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Nope.
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Everybody knows, wins in football at Penn State have everything in the world to do with how history is taught in California.
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The gnashing of teeth over the vacated wins seems a good indicator that the NCAA hit the bullseye with that portion of the punishment.
If we can see some folks go to prison over the coverup, I think we will done with crime and punishment at PSU.
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His legacy, the way he wanted it perceived, was over long before the NCAA vacated those wins. This is one instance where history wasn’t written by the victorious.
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National Review has become almost knee-jerk in its need to sail into the wind. Comes from the habit of defining yourself by what-you’re-not. It’s what we used to hate about liberals. A lot of conservatives have fallen into the habit, and they don’t even realize it.
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“All I can say is that I hope that’s the worst thing I read for a while.”
and it probably will be, at least until Dennis strikes again
http://www.sadlyno.com/?s=dennis+prager
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Did anyone read the comments on Prager’s article? They are equally batshit. One woman had the audacity to compare the NCAA and their sanctions to the Nazis burning Jewish families belongings.
The important thing to remember is that no one has taken a thing from the players who played in those games. They played in them, they
remember the games, they know who won. The memory is not gone, I don’t care what the record book says. Secondly, Prager, moron, Bobby Bowden is not the winningest coach in American Collegiate Football history. Neither
was Paterno. Bowden is now third behind Gagliardi and Robinson.
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It’s the Glenn Beck Effect. Got a ticket for jaywalking? Glenn’s going to find a Nazi metaphor in there somewhere.
So, when does PAAWWWWL open a franchise in central PA?
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Don’t forget the Soviet Red Army
http://www.humaneventz.com/?p=42&cpage=1
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“Did anyone read the comments on Prager’s article?”
plb1947 did:
“Reading these delusional comments from the Happy Valley folks, I`m surprised Sandusky wasn’t acquitted and given a medal for service to the community.”
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Over the top comments under an article, film at eleven!
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“How News really works. Film at eleven!”
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