By: David Folz
NCAA Mark Emmert lowered the
hammer on Penn State today, banning them from post-season play for four years. Calling the situation callous and unconscionable,
Emmert leveled these penalties in a quick and decisive manner. Additional penalties include a five year
probationary period, ten scholarship reductions each of the four years on the
post-season ban, vacated wins from 1998-2011, and a 60-million dollar fine for
the program, as well as the NCAA reserving the right to go after individual
coaches. Conference penalties mean not
making bowl revenues from other schools, paying their revenues for other teams
and not competing in the conference championship game for four years.
For the student-athlete the
post-season ban is an entire college career.
If kids cannot play for a national championship or even a bowl game at a
school that is banned, they will not go there.
They would rather play for a rebuilding team, or even a team just coming
up to Division One to play for winning seasons and possible bowl games than be
a part of a banning. The current
students are free-willed to transfer where they please, with no
consequences. The current recruits will
be de-committing and going elsewhere, so they will not be severely punished in
many ways.
The real consequence is Bill
O’Brien and his staff for now. Look the players can go if they
wish to, they have that free transfer to leave. Bill O’Brien knows he cannot do much to
change a players’ minds because they want to win meaningfully and win bowl
games and national championships. If
they want they can at
USC, Notre Dame, or Ohio State without a question. For O’Brien, he could leave by breaching his
contract and not a single person would blame him for doing so. He does want to finish it out though, and he
deserves a lot of credit because he may have known it would be a difficult task,
but now he just found out how difficult it will be.
The lighter side on this is now
Penn State can build their program from the ground up the right way. After so much corrosion on this program from five people to bring down
an entire program, they can bring it up the right way. Under these penalties, they have no shot to
do it other than that. Probation may
seem a light word, but here you cannot screw up because if you do, your program
is literally done.
This scandal has grown over so
much more than the sport of football.
This is about so many victims due to Jerry Sandusky’s predatory nature
and an administration’s lack of caring and instead
putting football ahead of young people, who are eventually going to lead the
nation into a new era. They chose to
sweep this under the rug instead of stopping Sandusky and in the end they will
have their day in court. For Penn State,
they will move forward but the effects on this are very damaging. The atmosphere has finally changed and it is
time for the classroom to come before anything football at Penn State.
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