Let’s face it – so far, Mark Emmert is having a really crappy 2014.
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UPDATE: And here’s quite a quote from Coach Cal’s new book:
“The situation reminds me a little of the Soviet Union in its last years. It was still powerful. It could still hurt you. But you could see it crumbling, and it was just a matter of time before it either changed or ceased to exist…. The NCAA will soon have to reform itself or it will not remain the dominant force in college athletics.”
Get The Picture 
Well, shit Bluto, I guess this court agrees with you in the legal sense, and with all you fellers who thought the NCAA had stepped way out of bounds on the Penn State deal.
Whether this opinion stands remains to be seen.
We argued this at the time. All I can say is that the NCAA may have been CONSTITUTIONALLY (theirs) out of bounds, but as college sports governing body, they were morally obligated to do something…and Penn State agreed.
Typically for Penn State, and unfortunately for the many fine folks who matriculated there, now the Nits are having second thoughts….morning-after depression?
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Facing the death penalty, I’d sign anything the NCAA put in front of me to avoid that. You would, too.
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What the NCAA did was a cram-down job by Emmert who acted without proper authority against a university whose president was acting without proper authority to accept the punishment. Other than that, it was just fine.
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Moral outrage doesn’t supercede legal authority. If the Department of Agriculture wanted to take a stand against pedophilia, it wouldn’t have any standing to rush over to Happy Valley and penalize Penn State.
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“Moral outrage doesn’t supercede legal authority.”
I don’t know, Hacker, sometimes maybe it should.
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I understand your argument. IMO, Sandusky and everyone who played any role in covering up his actions (i.e. Paterno, Spanier, etc.), personally deserve every punishment anybody can cook up for them. And if the NCAA had used its investigative powers to look into the matter, conclude that it was a criminal matter and not an athletic matter, and turned all their data over to the PA authorities and the families of the victims, I would have applauded them.
The issue I have is the NCAA using the affair as an excuse for a power grab, or a PR stunt. I’ve seen too much of Emmert to assume that his motives were pure. Even if they were, he’s provided Paterno loyalists a bogeyman to rail against. The issue is no longer that Paterno excused child rape, it’s that the NCAA overreached.
And the effect of the NCAA rushing to do something just for the sake of doing something is that the penalties are likely to be lessened, or overturned. Just like in Miami. The NCAA had the institution dead to rights on major violations, overreached in zealousness to punish, and completely sabotaged its own investigation.
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Power grab and a PR stunt. No way this was done to the children.
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Er…for the children
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Emmert rushed the actions against Penn State and ignored the NCAA Constitution because he was going to be gone to London for the Olympics for a month and wanted everything to be over and done with before he left town. That’s a fact. That is also a hell of a way to run an organization as important as the NCAA.
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I think this essentially boiled down to a sentiment by the Senator that letting the NCAA overstep their own Constitutional power by even a hair, was a bad idea. Sandusky and Paterno are vile, but letting the stooges from the NCAA set penalties outside their inforcement and punishment mandates as stipulated in their rules and regs was just a bad idea. They’re nitwits.
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My contention has always been that while the NCAA set a terrible precedent, Penn State AGREED to these sanctions at the time. Now, the obvious question is whether Penn State felt under duress when entering this contract and that may be cause to void it, but I wonder what the objective standard will be to determine that. Plainly speaking, it’s not like the NCAA got Penn State drunk or held a gun to its head to get it to enter the agreement. I don’t know if the court would conclude that the threat of the death penalty is an example of being under duress on par with those other examples, but it will be interesting to watch unfold.
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Well as I recall the NCAA was threating the “Death Penalty” if PSU did not agree. This is plea bargaining pure and simple. The only problem is I don’t know if the NCAA By-Laws allow it. If they don’t the judge can void the agreement.
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Has anybody thought about what would have happened at Penn State had the NCAA not stepped in?
Shit had been going on for years, years and nothing happened, nothing.
Oh, well they did tell Sandusky he should not do that, but they let him keep his keys and he kept right on doing it.
People went to Joe and he dumped it upstairs…the most powerful man in the state of Pennsylvania…”I did all I could”
So, but for the NCAA what would have happened?
NOTHING.
Moral outrage may have won out over constitutionality, but it was rightly done as far as I am concerned.
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Besides the criminal prosecutions and the civil suits, you mean?
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bINGO. The US legal system already had this covered, as all you attorneys out there are a testament to.
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The NCAA didn’t get involved until after Sandusky had been charged and Spanier and Paterno had been fired.
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I don’t recall where the NCAA is responsible for that life sentence that Sandusky is currently serving.
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Or the civil judgments that courts are awarding the victims.
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Looks to me like Emmert decides what he wants to do and then tells some underling to find a way regardless of fairness. authority, or legalities.
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You mean like Stalin did? Maybe Cal’s comparison of the NCAA to the old Soviet Union is correct after all.
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