NCAA Hammers Penn State, Does Everything Right

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I've been largely quiet on here about what has been going on at Penn State. Now the sanctions by the NCAA and Big Ten conference has been given out and were well deserved for what PSU Football has kept covered for nearly 14 years.

The fact that for 14 years PSU Football has been able to cover up the Jerry Sandusky scandal without anyone being able to find out is mind blowing.

Penn State sanctions are as follows:

• $73 Million Dollar Fine ($60 Million by the NCAA which cannot come from non-revenue sports, $13 Million by the Big Ten Conference - $13 Million is the amount of bowl revenue they are expected to receive over a 4-Year Time period and that money will be donated to charity) (The money taken by the NCAA will be used to help victims of child sex abuse)
• 4-Year Postseason Ban (which by NCAA rule allows every single player currently at Penn State to transfer and play immediately without penalty)
• Reduction of maximum Scholarships from 25 to 15 per year to offer for 4 years starting with the upcoming 2013 recruiting season and from a Maximum of 85 Total Scholarship players on the roster to 65 for 4 years starting with the 2014 Football Season. Eventually totaling 80 Scholarships lost over the 4 years.
• Not allowed by the Big Ten to participate in its Championship Game
• All wins vacated from the present to 1998 (112 total wins, 111 for Joe Paterno)
• 5-Year probation by the NCAA (along with that also means that student athletes and athletics employees has to complete a yearly training course on integrity, ethics and reporting violations)
• Permission-to-contact rules suspended for this year by the NCAA to PSU (i.e. other schools are allowed to contact PSU Football Players without asking the school for permission)
• The NCAA reserves the right to continue investigating (meaning the sanctions above can still be worse)

The Scholarship reduction will last longer than the 2017 season, the last season under the maximum 65 scholarship limit. It will take at least 6 years (with the 2020 season) before PSU Football can really get back to the full amount of 85 scholarships allowed.

By the time the sanction-rule is fully in effect, Penn State will really have just around 60 Scholarship players on the team (4 x 15 players allowed to bring in per year). I believe the only way to fill the extra 5 they will have is by giving them to the walk-ons that are still on the team.

I believe it will take 8 years before they can really get back to 85 Scholarships. It will start at around the 60-65 range. When they are allowed to sign 25 recruited players, it'll be back to 70-75 the first year and then 80-85 the second year after the Scholarship sanctions has been lifted, and that is if they are able to recruit 25 players to come to Penn State and play football after all that has happened each year. It will only go up around by 10 each year because of the difference of the proposed Senior graduates (15) and the number they can sign (25) (25-15 = 10). In the long run, Penn State lost more than 80 Scholarships - which is already a lot.

Of course that is thinking the BEST-case scenario for PSU. In reality, Penn State will likely not get back to the 85 Scholarship limit until a decade later. Players are not going to want to come to a school that has kept a scandal hidden from the public eye for more than a decade and especially short-term because of the inability of being able to win any kind of championship or go to bowl games.

It will be at least a decade before Penn State can probably compete for any title anyways. Depth will be a long-term issue at PSU Football since you are only allowed 65 scholarship players. Every single position will be reduced on the depth chart by 1 player going from Quarterbacks to Kickers. It is a fore-gone conclusion that blue-chip athletes will be at a premium at PSU and the ability to compete will be down.

Let's just put it this way; Memphis entered the 2012 season with 72 scholarship players on the roster and they are not under any sanction. They only have 5 wins in the last 3 years combined. That is what it is fixing to look like at Penn State or at least similar to that.

Speaking of the scandal, none of the sanctions listed above does not directly give anything to the victims of the Sandusky scandal. The $60 Million that will go to Sex Abuse programs will help to prevent any other potential victims but it does not compensate the victims from the Sandusky scandal that were already abused.

The sanctions, no matter how severe, will not be enough to fix the damage done to the victims. Nothing really will. Sandusky will be forever thought of as a convicted felon and deserving of every punishment he gets. It is exactly two months to the day that we will find out how long Sandusky will serve in jail (which is likely to be a LOT long than he can possibly live). He deserves every single year he gets too.

Paterno died before anything could be done to him, and he was hiding stuff for the majority of those 14 years that helped cover-up this scandal. Outside of the Penn State fanbase, he will forever be looked at as a long-standing coach but in the end had too much power for his own good. He will be looked at as a selfish individual that seeked to put the football program first over the university.

Reputations have been tarnished across the board. There are hardly no bad feelings for Penn State except for those that are affiliated.

So why is it that Penn State did not get the "Death Penalty"? The Death Penalty would hurt virtually every single sports program worse than they got hit today. For those that do not know, all but the Basketball programs gets its money from Penn State Football and that would not be right to the other programs that had nothing to do with the Sandusky scandal. 

The Death Penalty would not be just a death to their football program for the year, but every other sports program that relies on its revenue to operate and would take longer for all sports programs to recover than the football program. That would not be right to the rest of the Penn State athletic programs that had zero to do with the scandal. The NCAA got the punishments right, it affected the football program only that put its program in-front of others, where it should be hit, but did not hit the other athletic programs besides the reputation of the school.

The Death Penalty would also hurt the town of State College, PA. Like Oxford, it is a small town that needs football. Without a football season, State College would lose a ton of money and the economic impact would be painful and even to the point jobs could be lost. This is not like SMU where they are in Dallas, TX and they can survive something like this. State College NEEDS Penn State to have a football season, it would not serve the town justice. The NCAA got this right too.

The NCAA basically got everything right and even to the point where the punishment fits the crime that the University did. One of the very few times the NCAA got everything right. The football program got hit hard but still allowed them to play and Penn State's reputation took a big toll. This is a major wake-up call to any university that decides to put the program in-front of others. Anybody else that is doing this needs to step forward now, or may the NCAA and the courts have mercy on their souls.