The Hammer Falls, Part III: The ULTIMATE "The Show Must Go On": NCAA Declares Penn State Football Too Big To Fail

It's taken me nearly twelve hours to pick myself up off the floor from laughing at the NCAA and their limp-wristed approach at actually trying to make meaningful punishment from the Freeh Report.

The Hammer came down today:

• Four-year bowl ban (including a clarification from the Big Ten that it includes their title game)
• a 20-scholarship reduction (10 entering, 10 continuing) for each of the four years -- that's approximately a 25% reduction in scholarships (a school usually gets about 82)
• What these two penalties alone mean is that any Penn State football player now has open right to leave Penn State and enroll somewhere else without penalty.  HOWEVER:  They may have to get Federal financial aid to do so at out-of-state rates.
• A $60,000,000 fine (the NCAA later reports that as a year's gross football revenue at Penn State) for the program, over five years, which cannot be taken from revenues from any other sport.
• All Penn State wins, including a 2006 Rose Bowl win (the second BCS win from that year now vacated -- USC's national title win was the first) and a 2008 Orange Bowl appearance, gone, all the way back to the beginning of the Freeh Report-known coverup in 1998.  This means Joe Paterno no longer has ANY wins records for college football -- Bobby Bowden has the FBS record, Eddie Robinson the full college football record.
• An additional $13,000,000 "fine" has been assessed by the Big Ten, stripping Penn State of the bowl revenues for the next four years, all to be given to relevant charities.
• Five years probation, which can lead to the Death Penalty

So why am I laughing at all this?

I want you to read some of the FAQ I linked to at "The Hammer came down today", and try to wrap your brain around the NCAA's reasons here, and hope that you don't come to the same conclusions I do and have for about 9 months now!

First, let's address the main question, from a direct quote from the NCAA FAQ:

Why not the death penalty?
 
Imposing the death penalty does not address the cultural, systemic and leadership failures at Penn State. Instead, our approach demands that they become an exemplary NCAA member by eradicating the mindset that led to this tragedy.

If imposed, the death penalty would impact far more student-athletes than those at the Penn State program. Indeed, hundreds of student-athletes who are not even Penn State students would be negatively impacted.

How many ways do I dissect this as a cover for "if we impose the Death Penalty, the OTHER SCHOOLS lose too much money?"

If you truly want to "address the cultural, systemic, and leadership failures at Penn State", you will not be able to do so and retain Penn State's membership in the NCAA.  The failures, obviously, go THAT DEEP into the system.  I reference two questions that I will later re-address as the only conditions that I would impose on ever seeing another sporting event at Penn State;  The disappearance of the District Attorney investigating Sandusky a decade ago, and the claims that a number of high-level donors at PSU were being given boys to rape by Sandusky in exchange for their contributions.

At every turn, before today, a major move to punish the program has been met with violence and cult-like resistance.  The more I read on this University, the more it scares me the religious reverence given this man and this program.  To simply WOUND this cult, rather than ERADICATE it, well could make things WORSE.  They become more dangerous -- you could easily see some irate Penn State supporter go to a visiting content and make the situation in Colorado look tame, and I wouldn't put it past some Nittany Lion supporter doing so!

To make them an "exemplary NCAA member", you pretty well will have to run off every donor, every major supporter, every local sponsor, and much of the political structure in Happy Valley, Pennsylvania -- not JUST those within Penn State University itself.  (And I use the disappearance of the District Attorney as a good example of this.)

In fact, the second NCAA statement, in so many words, IS "The Show Must Go On"!  That, at ALL cost to reasonable conduct and human decency, even child rape and pedophilia must not stand in the way of ensuring the gate receipts and program revenues keep sports alive at NCAA institutions.

At what point are we going to get a fucking brain and realize that the entire interscholastic athletic system is probably hopelessly dirty and must be cleaned out, consequences be damned?

You don't give the Death Penalty just to the one institution, you give it all of them, in the manner that anybody committing this behavior is DONE.  And if killing off Penn State means that there is no more women's golf at Nebraska, frankly...  TOO DAMN BAD.  The NCAA has allowed corrupt collegiate athletics in the few revenue sports to go on for far too damned long to keep other programs afloat.

If the NCAA can't dip into their massive merchandising revenues to offset the damage to the other schools in the Big Ten, etc., to cover for this, then there really is nothing to say, because the pedophilia and the like would not only support, as a matter of necessity, the sports at Penn State, but at the other institutions as well.

This isn't a matter of the other student athletes, but a matter of the entire corrupt lattice of the NCAA, the reliance on ESPN and other media outlets and their television contracts, and the very few revenue sports which allow the rest to exist.

Therefore, I don't buy into any of this!  This is "The Show Must Go On".  Death Penalty Penn State, and dip into the coffers that you take in from the 100 or so schools, and cover for some of it.

And then they exceed the stupidity by adding this to the FAQ:

Isn’t this basically the death penalty?
 
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.

The NCAA has actually determined that they wanted to give a penalty worse than the Death Penalty!!

SO WHY IN THE FUCKING HELL ARE THEY ALLOWED TO PUT OUT A FOOTBALL TEAM?

I'm not talking 1-2 years here.  We're talking 5-10-permanent!!!

In fact, if we want to take you seriously, Mark Emmert (the NCAA's current President, for whom you can see a 7 1/2 minute video of the announcement here), and you want us to believe this is worse than pulling the program (which has effectively killed the relevance of the one football program you did it to for just two years, SMU, for 25 years -- it was 22 years from SMU's Death Penalty to even their first MINOR bowl since), you have, in my mind, one option:

Disqualification and expulsion from the NCAA.

You are effectively, and with the consent and non-appeal from Penn State, attempting to kill their program well into the 2040's.  The goal of these sanctions, as stated by this FAQ, is to cripple this program for more than the quarter-century that SMU has been crippled.

Again:

SO WHY IN THE FUCKING HELL ARE THEY ALLOWED TO PUT OUT A FOOTBALL TEAM?

"The Show Must Go On", for the benefit of the OTHER schools.

Right?

Penn State was one of the about 12-15 schools who makes money on their athletic programs.

According to ABC News, using 2010-2011 numbers, the football program ($60M) brings in over half the revenue of the athletic department ($118M).  And, using those same numbers, the Penn State athletic program had a $32,000,000 profit in 2010-2011.

This is before Sandusky's coverup became public.

What I believe is about to happen is that you will end up with about 4-6 sports left:  The two revenue sports (football and mens' basketball), and enough women's sports (basketball and volleyball first) to satisfy Title IX.

Between lawsuits and these fines, plus the loss of gate revenues once this team effectively reaches FCS or even Division II-level play (remember, the intention of the NCAA, with these penalties, is to make the next bowl appearance of any kind for Penn State be somewhere past the year 2034), revenues are about to nosedive, and expenses (legal) are about to skyrocket.

It won't even be a matter of them robbing Peter to pay Paul.  Paul is keeping Peter afloat, and that's about to end.

Laughably lenient.  And an insult to humanity.

The Show Must Go On, yet again.

If you really want me to believe The Show Must Go On that badly, I have two demands:

1. The  parties involved in the disappearance of the District Attorney who was investigating this a number of years back be brought to account:  Involved and co-conspirators -- probably to the point of murder charges.
2. I want answers on Mark Madden's claims that Sandusky may have been pimping these boys out to Penn State donors, making the PSU football program a front for an entire pedophile ring.  (And yes, I just asked Madden on his Twitter how that investigation is going...)