Weiss: NCAA penalty must fit PSU's crime

How the mighty have fallen. Literally.

Joe Paterno, who for 46 years was the head coach of his self-described ?winning with honor? football program at Penn State, has been shown to be a man who kept many secrets. It has been revealed he did not act in the way that justified a statue in his honor.

And Sunday, a day before the NCAA is expected to come down hard on Penn State with a bowl ban and a possible fine of $60 million, the statue was? removed.

The decision by Penn State president Rodney Erickson to tear down the statue that once guarded Beaver Stadium was the right thing to do. The 900-pound bronze statue, which was built in 2001 to honor the Hall of Fame coach?s record-setting 324th career victory and his contributions to the university, was gone by 8 o?clock Sunday morning.

Police barricaded the roads leading to the stadium just before dawn. Workers put up a chain-link fence and concealed the 7-foot statue under a blue tarp. They then lifted the statue off its base and used a forklift to move it into the stadium as 100 to 150 students, watching, chanted, ?We are Penn State.?

Ever since the Freeh report came out on July 12, the statue has been an eyesore on campus, a target for criticism and a constant reminder of the evil Paterno condoned by burying child sex abuse claims against a retired assistant coach, Jerry Sandusky, who molested 10? boys over a 15-year period. Some of the incidents occurred in the Lasch football building on campus.

Paterno?s failure and the failure of three other top university officials ? former president Graham Spanier, former AD Tim Curley and former VP Gary Schultz ? to report a 2001 incident to authorities allowed Sandusky to continue abusing children, according to the report.

Sandusky has been convicted of 45 criminal counts and is scheduled to be sentenced within the next two months to upwards of 468 years in prison. All four men had denied they protected a pedophile. Curley and Schultz are scheduled to go on trial shortly for lying to the grand jury. Their hearing is Aug 16.

?I believe that, were it to remain, the statue will be a recurring wound to the individuals who have been the victims of child abuse,? Erickson said in a statement.

The statue will be put into storage, Erickson said, ?because it has been a source of division and an obstacle of healing.?

The Paterno statue has been an emotional, albeit misguided, rallying point for students and alumni who were upset by Paterno?s firing four days after Sandusky?s Nov. 5 arrest. The coach?s death Jan. 22 from cancer at age 85 only made his adherents more adamant.

Pragmatically, this was the only thing the university could do if it wanted to show it was moving forward. But that?s not good enough for the NCAA.

Mulitiple sources are saying the NCAA will hammer Penn State with staggering penalties Monday morning, including a multiyear bowl ban and crippling scholarship losses. The school will not receive the death penalty and be barred from fielding a team. The actions were reportedly approved by the NCAA executive committee.

CBSsports.com reported Sunday night, the school will be fined anywhere from $30 million to $60 million.

The NCAA is taking unprecedented measures with the decision to penalize Penn State without the due process of a Committee on Infractions hearing. But in many ways, this is the worst scandal ever on a college campus and should be treated as such.

It is worse than SMU?s massive cash payments to 21 players. As a repeat offender, the NCAA hammered the Dallas school?s football program for that, giving it the death penalty in 1987. SMU decided not to play in 1988, either, as it tried to regroup.

In this case, the victims will have to live with the scars the rest of their lives.

Emmert had already mentioned in a PBS interview last week that the death penalty was not off the table and said, ?It was as egregious as anything I?ve ever seen.?

This is no time to go soft on crime, or in this case, a premeditated lack of institutional control. The outrage among the general public has been so great that the NCAA needs to do something dramatic to send a message that this kind of amoral, unspeakable behavior will not be tolerated.

In the past, the NCAA has limited penalties to schools involved in impermissible benefits to student-athletes and rules infractions. But NCAA presidents have indicated in recent months they are willing to use harsher penalties for the worst offenses. That included appearances in postseason events and TV bans.

But the Penn State situation is precedent-setting. Although not violating the letter of the law in the NCAA rule book, the school obviously failed in its obligation to ensure the welfare and protection of anyone who assumed he would be safe on its campus. It is also a clear lack of compliance with the federal Clery Act, which requires the reporting of crimes against children.

Erickson attempted to preserve part of Paterno?s legacy, saying his name will remain on the campus library because it ?symbolizes the substantial and lasting contributions to the academic life and educational excellence that the Paterno family has made to Penn State University.?

But if the NCAA hammers the school, the administration may want to rethink what Paterno really taught the students with his actions before locking the university into that decision.

Whatever happens today in Indianapolis, Paterno?s legacy has already been torn down along with the statue. Nike has taken his name off the child development center it built on campus. Brown removed his name from the coaching chair at his alma mater. The Big Ten erased his name from its championship trophy. And the town of Grambling, La., wants the NCAA to investigate whether all of Paterno?s record-setting 409 victories were valid, claiming that the late Eddie Robinson, who had 408 victories, would be a better role model for the standards to which college athletics aspires.

The NCAA is at a crossroads. It can either come down on the side of nit-picking rules violations or it can address the bigger picture.

Source: http://feeds.nydailynews.com/~r/nydnrss/gossip/gatecrasher/~3/Jbk2kNrbkPk/scandal-penn-state-worst-a-college-campus-ncaa-penalty-fit-crime-article-1.1119670

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