The NCAA Goes Off the Deep End

I usually do not write about sports on this blog, but the action by the NCAA to penalize Penn State is so ridiculous that I have to mention it. Clearly, the alleged conduct by Jerry Sandusky was reprehensible. That is why he was charged, tried and convicted of his crimes. But what did Penn State do? It failed to report Sandusky to the police. It fired Sandusky and thereby ended the conduct at Penn State, but it did not tell the police about what Sanduskey is alledged to have done. It is that conduct for which the NCAA lowered the boom. It is a monumental overreaction.

Penn State is being fined sixty million dollars by the NCAA. No one seems to know exactly where that money is going, but we all know where the funds are coming from. The taxpayers of Pennsylvania will have to come up with the cash. So tell me, why should the people of Pennsylvania pay money to the NCAA if Penn State did not report Sandusky to the police?

Penn State is being barred from post season play for a number of seasons and its use of athletic scholarships is being severely restricted. This will kill Penn State football. It will kill Penn State basketball. It will kill Penn State tennis. It will kill Penn State women's field hockey. It will kill every Penn State team. So, who will pay the price for this? Again, it will be the people who live near State College, Pa. and the students of Penn State. Sports brings a lot of revenue to small businesses in the area of Penn State, and the NCAA is destroying the quality of the Penn State sports program. Students who came to Penn State to enjoy, among other things, the Penn State sports program will be sacrificed to the NCAA's retribution for something that happened when most of those students were in elementary school.

Why didn't the NCAA punish the actual folks involved. The NCAA could have barred the people in the football program, the Athletic Department, and even the University administration from participation in NCAA programs. It could also have barred any university that hired these folks from participating in NCAA programs. That would have been punishing the guilty. The downside to that punishment is that these individuals would have been able to go to court to try to stop this action by the NCAA. It is not hard to imagine that a court would find that the NCAA was far beyond its power to take such an action. Instead, the NCAA decided to punish the innocent in a way that will get the NCAA $60 million and be extremely hard to attack in court.

Then there is also the question of the excessive nature of the punishment here. The penalty here is much worse than any that were handed out to programs that got involved with giving performance enhancing drugs to the athletes or shaving points to fix games for gamblers. Those violations go to the heart of the athletic program. Failing to report Sandusky to the police is nothing like that.

The NCAA made a big mistake. It should alter the punishment.