From the New York Times
Review by Kirby Burkholder in SRM 334
The death penalty is a term that no college or university ever wants to hear associated with their name. Unfortunately for Penn State University, they are finding out what this term means. The death penalty is when the NCAA imposes penalties resulting in, at the most, a ban on the upcoming seasons. For Penn State, after the big scandal of Coach Sandusky being charged with sexual abuse on children, they were charged with many penalties as well. Penn State was fined 60 million dollars, a 4 year post-season ban was placed on the team, scholarships were reduced significantly from 25 to 15 for incomers, former players could transfer without NCAA transfer regulations, and all of Penn States’ wins from 1998-2011 were stripped. In the article we read, it argues whether or not these punishments are fair or not coming from the NCAA, and if the NCAA should be dealing with the penalties period since the scandal was a criminal scandal from Sandusky’s standpoint, not the actual team.
From an outsider standpoint, you definitely feel for the Penn State community and all the players. It is hard to agree with stripping the teams’ wins from all those years for the players sake because they didn’t do anything to deserve not to have the wins counted. Actions by the NCAA did need to happen though. It was too big of a scandal, especially with other school officials being involved and staying quiet. The article makes a good point in that the NCAA can’t make the penalties too weak and then seem like the situation was handled lightly, but to what extent is enough for this type of situation? The penalties may always be arguable, but punishment definitely needed to happen because of the scandal and in order to set the example for other schools that things won’t just slide by.
This easily relates to our sport media class by the fact that this was huge in the public eye for months and months. When this scandal broke, it was all over the news, ESPN, papers, twitter, etc; all day and every day for a long time. It was the hottest topic in the US and talked about everywhere, sports fan or not. The media was eating this up and all media outlets were trying to be the first to break new information or add to the story. Still to this day it is talked about and the story is still breaking. This will go down as one of the biggest sports scandals of all times.
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The Death Penalty, in sports is one of the most devastating things that can happen to a universities sport program. Being banned from sport for a year is the harshest punishment the NCAA can hand out and has done this five times prior. It is the ultimate way to slowly kill a program because of implications that the NCAA can impose on that school. This is what Penn State had been facing when this article was written. The NCAA was in debate over whether they should still force strict punishment on the accused school if the person in question wasn't harming the players or the actual “team.” Yes, what Sandusky has done is absolutely one of the grossest things I have ever heard of, but it is right to punish the whole football team, especially the players who had nothing to do with it?
At the time of this article, the NCAA had not struck Penn State with all of the violations they have received to date. I think that what the NCAA has done is kind of harsh, but in another way they are sending a message to the rest of the universities out there. The NCAA has been under ridicule because of all the negative press, especially college football that has been receiving quite a bit of “off-the-field” problems with players and coaches. They are sending a message out warning everyone else to pretty much keep their noses clean because the integrity of the game is suffering.
The media breaking this story has done it in a number of forms from Twitter to Facebook. The emergence of social media and news feeds has made this story covered from head to toe literally since it broke the public. Sara Ganim was the first to break this story after she was receiving tips and information. She spent much time in the field and would send back video and news through social outlets back to the office for others below her to follow up on. Investigating the story and not giving up eventually led to her uncovering the story and breaking it to the public. Sara’s reporting and investigating shows how reporters receive information and relay it back to their office as fast as possible. I had no clue how fast media can honestly spread until I read this article. In short, Penn State has a long road to recovery to bring their football program back from the depths of where it is now. The NCAA has imposed what I think are very strict and stern penalties and are showing the rest of the schools that they are in-charge and they will continue to hunt for violations among universities throughout the country.
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