Monday, July 23, 2012

The NC2A Drops the Hammer on Penn State

Now the folks at ESPN who have been screaming for vengeance against Penn State can go off to NFL training camp with a feeling that they've done their duty.

But I think Kentucky fans should have serious concerns about the notion that the NCAA can simply levy enormous punishments on member institutions -- even if no NCAA rules have been violated.

10 comments:

  1. The NCAA says it determined that its bylaws and constitution were violated, so--to the extent that is correct--this Kentucky fan has no concern with the NCAA's authority to jump in here with penalties.

    The one penalty that clangs off the rim for me, however, is the vacating all of the football team's wins over the last so many seasons, moving Joe Paterno off the top of the all-time-victories list. I haven't yet found the rationale behind that. If the NCAA in some way determined that the Sandusky mess somehow conveyed Penn State a competitive advantage in those games, then I can see it; I can't imagine, however, how that would be the case. Instead, what it seems to me is that the NCAA effectively wanted to take down its own statue of Paterno. And I don't buy that. One of the takeaways of this whole saga should be that Paterno was a really successful football coach--but that fact doesn't mean necessarily anything more than that.

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    1. For the record, I just ignore all of the NCAA orders vacating certain games. If a game was played, and it was intended to be an official game, then I count it.

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  2. My biggest problem is that they only penalized football. It seems to me if you are saying the entire athletic department had this problem, then you should punish every sport at Penn State not just football. I like you don't get the stripping of wins, and honestly I don't even get the scholarship reduction.

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    1. The stripping of the wins feels to me as though they just wanted to distance the good name of the NC2A ... or whatever ... from Paterno and Penn State. That's a bad reason if that's the reason.

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    2. And that's a good point about football-only vs. the department-at-large.

      The NC2A should change its name to the Department of the Appalled, and it should just grade everything on a five-star scale of how appalled they are ... Enes? Three stars appalled. Joe B. coaching UK grads in an exhibition? One star appalled. Sandusky/Paterno/Penn State? Five stars appalled.

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  3. I agree with both of you guys. I don't think you can show a plausible connection between the punishment and the actions of people at Penn State -- and I am concerned that the NC2A just appears to be making up penalties with no respect for its usual practice.

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