NCAA must act: Gut Penn State football
After an eight-month inquiry, Former FBI director Louis Freeh's firm produced a 267-page report that concluded that Paterno and other top Penn State officials hushed up child sex abuse allegations against former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky for more than a decade for fear of bad publicity, allowing Sandusky to prey on other youngsters.
Joe Paterno is dead and so is what was left of his good name, shredded to pieces by investigators who didn't seem terribly impressed by anything the coach once did on Saturday afternoons.
Jerry Sandusky will spend what is left of the rest of his life in prison, paying for crimes so despicable they are hard to even comprehend. Some former Penn State administrators could be heading there, too. After Louis Freeh's damning report, they might want to think twice about taking their chances before a jury of their peers.
The cult allowed to fester at State College has been exposed, with a once-proud university looking like a backwater institution where worshipping at the statue of Joe was more important than protecting young boys exposed to horrors that will haunt them the rest of their lives.
Paterno's family can protest all it wants, but there is no way to spin this: He hurt a place where his word was gospel, and it may be decades before anyone outside Pennsylvania hears the words "Penn State" and doesn't immediately think of naked boys being abused in the same showers used by the young men who brought the university glory on the football field.
His name has already come off a Nike child care center in Oregon. His statue outside Beaver Stadium should come down next.
Unfortunately, it's not enough. Nothing may ever be enough to make up for what is arguably the worst scandal to hit college athletics. There is no way to turn back the clock, no way to give back to the victims, now grown men, who testified against Sandusky the childhood innocence they lost forever.
There are, however, ways to make sure the culture that enabled Sandusky never takes root on any college campus again; ways to help re-establish some moral authority in college sports; ways to make sure no university janitor is ever afraid again to report a terrible crime because he fears losing his job.
Yes, Penn State has already paid dearly, its pristine reputation damaged beyond repair. "Winning with honor," a motto made famous by Paterno, is worth a wince and a cringe. The school will also surely pay from the pocketbook, with untold millions going to victims in civil suits.
The almighty football program at the center of all this must pay, too. It must or else we have learned nothing from this sordid mess.
Don't wait for the school to impose some voluntary sanctions on itself. It won't happen. No one at Penn State has the guts to do it.
That leaves you, NCAA. You must act. Now.
No more excuses. No more using semantics to try to dance around the responsibility of policing the seamy side........
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http://www.boston.com/sports/colleges/football/articles/2012/07/14/column_ncaa_must_act_gut_penn_state_football/?page=1
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