Showing 16 comments for
Sandusky Abused Children, NCAA Abuses History

Great article, Mr. Prager!

I'm glad you mentioned the kids involved, not just those victims of Sandusky, those kids that played their heart out on the Football Field and fought for every statistic on their record. The NCAA just took away all those hard earned records by saying those games have never been played. I am also a believer that the NCAA created more "victims" than Sandusky did, while hiding behind respectability.

"...I do not take issue with the other NCAA punishments of Penn State." Why? Why is punishing the innocent (i.e. the students, athletes and the entire State College community) for the crimes of a few specific, known and identifiable individuals, less offensive to you than the re-writing of history to which you rightly object?

Since all those involved in the heinous coverup are no longer at Penn State, the rest of the sanctions levied by the NCAA are punishing the innocent, not the guilty. I fail to see how this is moral.

For example, consider the $60M fine. As money is fungible, Penn State can just as easily forgo investment in a new library or new engineering labs as they can cut spending on their football program. This would directly impact the students of Penn State, the overwhelming majority of whom are there to gain an education and are in no way involved in Penn State football.

I think the NCAA missed a golden opportunity to institute major reforms of college sports. Division 1 football has become little more than a professional farm team system for the NFL. It's long past time to get the big money out of college sports and restore a proper balance between scholarship and athletics.

Dave

Being a progressively dominated body, don't ever expect the NCAA to get anything correct. Progressives love to re-write history and turn it into propoganda to further their marxist views, so the NCAA has no problem erasing victories, just another progressive lie. The NCAA, where a Native American mascot is hostile and abusive, unless there is an actual tribe that can be paid into silence and the mascot retained. Another useless organization, in par with the unions, that Colleges that teach courses other than altered propoganda should leave in droves. If you could find such institutions. Hillsdale comes to mind. Do you know of any others?

FACTOID ALERT ""I recognize that Joe Paterno and the university officials enabled this evil to continue. ""

A factoid is a falsity that gets repeated often enough it comes to be accepted as fact. The REAL fact is, there is no evidence linking Paterno with any coverup. Freeh's statemets that Paterno was involved in a coverup are entirely unsupported by facts placed into evidence in his own report. The REAL fact is, Paterno reported the information McQ gave him to the people with authority to order an investigation and then stepped out of the way so they could do their jobs.

I saw an article the other day in which the author STILL referred to "Sandusky's alleged crimes." Even after his conviction of those crimes. Yet, no one has seen fit to use the word "alleged" when referring to Paterno's supposed involvement in a cover up. Its ok, though, he's dead. Voltaire said, "To the dead, we owe only truth."

Funny, if the evidence for this alleged coverup is so strong, why haven't Curley, Schultz, and Spanier been charged?

Richard Jewell, Wen Ho Lee, the Duke lacrosse team. Americans have learned nothing when it comes to trial by media.

And what of the bonuses and salaries that were handed out under (now) false pretenses, since their resume of accomplishments is non-existent?

The NCAA failed to consult Sandusky's victims before they issued their draconian punishments.

Although not widely reported victim 4 released a statement via his lawyer that he was "dismayed" that the NCAA punished his "favorite university."

Do the victims blame the football team or do they blame Sandusky?

I don't know details of the case, but from what I read, Paterno and other officials did report at least some of the abuse but police dropped the case due to lack of evidence. What's Paterno supposed to do at that point? Continue to pursue a case on his own like a vigilante?

If the crimes had a material effect on the outcome of the football games, NCAA would be justified. But NCAA is just wanting to make a statement and punish someone. Too bad Paterno isn't still alive to defend himself.

Regardless of what NCAA says, in my mind, Paterno will alway be the most winning coach in college football until someone else wins 409 games.

Dennis- I remember having the same thought when the Browns left Cleveland and moved to Baltimore and re-named themselves the Ravens. Then the NFL commissioner stripped the Ravens of all their previous history as the Browns to award it to the new Cleveland expansion franchise which was awarded the name Browns. Ignoring the legacy of one of the greatest football coaches and owners of an NFL franchise Paul Brown who started the Browns, then sold them to Art Modell and returned to the NFL as part owner and coach of the Cincinnati Bengals, the original uniforms of the Bengals had an remarkable and deliberate resemblance to the uniforms of the then original Cleveland Browns because Paul Brown has been forced out of the management and coachiing at Cleveland by his partner Art Modell.

The NCAA can do or say whatever it wants - it will not change the facts one iota. Personally, I couldn't care less about the goings-on of a bunch of guys in tights grabbing each other on a striped field. Since I don't care, it's not possible to care LESS than that, but if it WERE possible to care less than that, I would care even less about statistics about guys who wear tights and grab each other on striped fields.

Having said that, apparently there are quite a lot of people who do seem to care about the goings-on of a bunch of guys who wear tights and grab each other on striped fields. The people who actually care enough about that to keep track of which guy coached which particular group of guys in tights the best will always know that some guy named Paterno was that guy.

I will give this all the brain-space it deserves, which means I will have forgotten the details by lunchtime tomorrow, but as a guy who thinks history (about important stuff, anyway) is worth getting right, this sort of nonsense offends me. Not because it matters that some guy named Paterno was a winning coach (so what?), but that a lot of people seem to think that the facts of history are subject to change when they fall outside what something thinks they ought to be.

When this story first broke it sounded like the Penn State players were the objects of the abuse. Not so. This was Sandusky activity to young boys not even part of the team. When he retired, i think Joe thought the problem was over.He did report the activity from info given to him. These boys were not part of the football program. Why punish the players?

Great discussion, Dennis! So what do we do if some day we learn that one of the people making this decision at the NCAA is a pedophile. Do we then have to go back and erase his decision to erase the record at Penn State?