It's a corrupt institution on every level. Haven't people gotten that by now? They are way more about appearing to do the right thing than they are actually doing the right thing. That goes back decades and will never change.

I can't stand Penn State but closing down the university would devastate the local community who had no idea about the abuse.

It wouldn't be justice but vengeance.

The old too big to fail defense. As with the banks, I don't buy that line of reasoning at all.

Does that mean that programs that happen to be located in urban areas should be subject to harsher penalties than programs that happen to be located in more rural areas? For example, should the Temple Owls play by a different set of rules than Penn State simply because of it's location and relationship with its neighboring community?

That doesn't seem very fair at all to me. Would any professional leagues operate that way? Would college basketball sanction schools according to the surrounding market and the local university's relationship with it?

Have past schools that have been sanctioned for one reason or another been spared because of the impact a two-year ban would have on the local economy? I think the answer to all those questions is no. So why would the rules be different for Penn State? Why are people always insisting that the rules don't apply to them too?

I actually agree with the notoriously batshitt crazy Penn Staters that the NCAA should not have gotten involved in what was clearly a legal matter. However, once the NCAA did get involved, I cannot fathom why they were not given the death penalty?

What happened at Penn State is clearly the biggest scandal in the history of intercollegiate athletics and it should've been dealt with accordingly. Anything that ever happened at UNLV or Oklahoma or SMU or Miami or you name it, pales in comparison to to what happened in State College. Hell, you could combine all of the infractions ever committed by all of the aforementioned universities and it still would not approach what Penn State perpetrated on some members of its community.

As I said earlier, I'm not convinced it is an NCAA issue. However, once it became one, that organization had to give Penn State the death penalty or there's no point in ever giving anyone severe sanctions because nothing anyone else is ever going to do again is likely to even approach a massive decades-long cover-up of serial child molestation and intentionally under reporting - or just flat out ignoring altogether - crimes that were committed on that campus.

Incidentally, the main point that Louis Freeh made following his investigation of Penn State – and for which he was excoriated by the Penn State faithful – was that Penn State was more concerned with its perception than anything else and that obsession with maintaining their squeaky clean image is what created the culture that allowed a monster like Jerry Sandusky to rape children with impunity for decades on end.

Well, this latest finding by an entirely different set of investigators seems to corroborate that allegation in full. It seems to me that Mr. Freeh is owed a hearty apology by a hell of a lot of people who viciously attacked him without having any idea what they were talking about because what he found in grizzly detail did not mesh with their fairytale self image.

(11-05-2016 08:30 PM)Dr. Isaly von Yinzer Wrote:  The old too big to fail defense. As with the banks, I don't buy that line of reasoning at all.

Does that mean that programs that happen to be located in urban areas should be subject to harsher penalties than programs that happen to be located in more rural areas? For example, should the Temple Owls play by a different set of rules than Penn State simply because of it's location and relationship with its neighboring community?

That doesn't seem very fair at all to me. Would any professional leagues operate that way? Would college basketball sanction schools according to the surrounding market and the local university's relationship with it?

Have past schools that have been sanctioned for one reason or another been spared because of the impact a two-year ban would have on the local economy? I think the answer to all those questions is no. So why would the rules be different for Penn State? Why are people always insisting that the rules don't apply to them too?

I actually agree with the notoriously batshitt crazy Penn Staters that the NCAA should not have gotten involved in what was clearly a legal matter. However, once the NCAA did get involved, I cannot fathom why they were not given the death penalty?

What happened at Penn State is clearly the biggest scandal in the history of intercollegiate athletics and it should've been dealt with accordingly. Anything that ever happened at UNLV or Oklahoma or SMU or Miami or you name it, pales in comparison to to what happened in State College. Hell, you could combine all of the infractions ever committed by all of the aforementioned universities and it still would not approach what Penn State perpetrated on some members of its community.

As I said earlier, I'm not convinced it is an NCAA issue. However, once it became one, that organization had to give Penn State the death penalty or there's no point in ever giving anyone severe sanctions because nothing anyone else is ever going to do again is likely to even approach a massive decades-long cover-up of serial child molestation and intentionally under reporting - or just flat out ignoring altogether - crimes that were committed on that campus.

Incidentally, the main point that Louis Freeh made following his investigation of Penn State – and for which he was excoriated by the Penn State faithful – was that Penn State was more concerned with its perception than anything else and that obsession with maintaining their squeaky clean image is what created the culture that allowed a monster like Jerry Sandusky to rape children with impunity for decades on end.

Well, this latest finding by an entirely different set of investigators seems to corroborate that allegation in full. It seems to me that Mr. Freeh is owed a hearty apology by a hell of a lot of people who viciously attacked him without having any idea what they were talking about because what he found in grizzly detail did not mesh with their fairytale self image.

Although some people are framing it as "too big to fail," in this instance, I don't think that's the proper framework.

The problem is that that you have (at most) a few dozen (probably less) employees who did something really bad. If they did this at State College High School, you could legitimately say that the whole institution is dirty and there is nothing worth salvaging. But at Penn State you have 17,000 other employees at 21 campuses who do great things for the state and the world. The physics department had nothing to do with this - they probably are just as appalled as the rest of us at the actions of their leadership. Why should they suffer from this?

The closest parallel is Arthur Anderson (whose crime had a much bigger impact that Penn State, and whose immorality was inarguably more ingrained in the corporate culture). The SEC shut down the whole firm, and the universal opinion is that the results of that decision were catastrophic. The SEC has unofficially vowed never to do that again.

Penn State costs related to Sandusky just passed a quarter billion dollars and counting:

http://abcnews.go.com/Sports/wireStory/p...itter_abcn