The Penn State Scandal and Why the Death Penalty is Too Much

With no actualy sports being played, today has been a day dominated by the release of the Freeh Report, the government issued investigation on the Penn State scandal and supposed coverup. I have not, and probably will not, read the entire report, but I have enjoyed listening to radio host's and fans' reactions to the entire incident and how Penn State should be punished, if they should be punished, by the NCAA.

There have been people wanting as little as nothing and as much as 47 years of no football, equal to Jerry Sandusky's prison sentence. Those were merely outliers and most of the reaction was a little more sensible. The term that still came up more often than it should have was "death penalty."

The NCAA's version of the death penalty is completely banning a school from a sport for a given time period. This has only happened once. Southern Methodist University had their 1987 and 1988 football seasons cancelled when it was found that they had been generously paying their players for about a decade. The loss of those two seasons nearly destroyed the football program altogether and they never played in another bowl game until 2009.

This punishment may be exactly would the brass at Penn State deserve for failing to do their civic duty by turning Sandusky in 13 years ago, but how would that be fair to the current Penn State team, who had absolutely nothing to do with the crimes committed or the subsequent coverup? They would lose an entire football season or be forced to transfer to another school. Both could potentially derail any future in football for those players. Players who had no involvement in the scandal.

Then you have to think of the fans. Penn State has an extremely loyal fan base, over 100,000 of which pack Beaver Stadium every football Saturday. How is is fair to them to take away something they love for a scandal that they had no involvement in? College football fans are addicts to their teams, taking away their addiction cold turkey can really throw a cog in their autumn lifestyle.

Then there is the Big Ten to consider. How much money would the conference and each member school lose from not having Penn State for a couple years? Probably more than they want to admit. Again, there are eleven institutions that played no part in any of this.

So, clearly, the death penalty drags in a bunch of innocent souls, making that not an option. If the NCAA were to levy any penalty on Penn State, I suggest two things. The first would be a fairly standard NCAA punishment, the loss of available scholarships. This wouldn't affect the current roster. It would damage the program, but not beyond the point of repair.

The second would be stiff fines in the form of a donation to some kind of children's charity. And I am not talking some feel good few thousand dollar gratuity, but millions of dollars in tribute to the very group of people the university allowed to be hurt by their inaction. Football is a sport responsible for bringing in large sums of money to any college, so why not essentially disable the primary benefit of football without actually axing the entire program? The players get to keep playing, the fans get to keep watching, and the type of people who were most damaged by the entire scandal get a monetary benefit.

We also must not forget that Penn State, while clearly breaking all kinds of federal law, has not actually violated any NCAA regulations. Nobody will object to the NCAA stepping in and throwing their sanctions on, but we also have to remember that the long arm of federal law can still come down on the university and the individuals involved too. 

There is no doubt that Penn State has been the shame of college football lately and they surely deserve to take the blame and fall for everything they have done (or, rather, not done). The death penalty is too harsh on the current roster and the fans, but if you take a large chunk of Penn State's pocket book away, it might get the point across to other schools that this sort of thing is taken seriously and nobody is too important to be punished.