In the history of the NCAA, there have only been five "death penalty" cases handed down. This is a situation where the school is banned from competing in a sport for at least one year. In case you're interested, the five cases are:
- The University of Kentucky basketball program for the 1952–53 season
- The basketball program at the University of Southwestern Louisiana (now the University of Louisiana at LaFayette) for the 1973–74 and 1974–75 seasons.
- The Southern Methodist University football program for the 1987 and 1988 seasons.
- The Division II men's soccer program at Morehouse College for the 2004 and 2005 seasons.
- The Division III men's tennis program at MacMurray College for the 2005–06 and 2006–07 seasons.
All of these NCAA bans were handed down as a result of either gambling or recruitment violations. Far less serious than the child sex abuse on the PSU campus. So, can we expect to see a much harsher sentence handed down to Penn State?
I know the details are still coming in, but it amazes me that any human being, especially a parent could take part in a cover-up like this. In at least one incident, it was reported that a Penn State assistant coach walked into the locker room while Sandusky was sodomizing a young boy. You never know how you'll react in a horrific situation like this. But I'm quite certain that Sandusky would have taken a serious ass whooping if any real man would have caught him in this heinous act. At the very least, couldn't the assistant coach have stopped the assault? How could he walk away while the child was still be molested? By doing nothing, he's almost as guilty as Sandusky, in my opinion!
In 1999, although it was apparently know that Sandusky was a child predator, he was still allowed to retire as "valued member of the Penn State football legacy"*. There was also a reported lump sum payment of $168,000 given to Sandusky during that time. I have to wonder what that was all about. And if all of this wasn't bad enough, Penn State allowed a known child molester access to the the campus until just last year, when the story went public! Are you freggin' kidding me?
By covering up Sandusky's crimes, PSU essentially empowered him to commit more crimes. How many children could have been spared if PSU would have done the right thing and turned Sandusky in when they first learned of the child abuse? If nothing else, they should have taken measures to ensure that he never had any unsupervised contact with young boys! Again, I can not understand how people can turn their head on something like this.
There's also a debate on whether a statue of legendary Penn State football coach Joe Paterno should be torn down. It was recently reported that Paterno took part in the cover-up. To be fair, it's also known that Paterno did a lot of good things in his life. And I don't think that a person should necessarily be judged by his worst moments. However, seeing a statue of a guy that covered up for a child rapist doesn't sit right with me. The statue must come down...
This whole thing really infuriates me. When it comes to children, I have no tolerance for any kind of abuse. It takes a really sick bastard to even think about sexually assaulting a child. You could bundle all of the world's child molester's together and throw them off of a cliff and it would be perfectly fine with me. They are the lowest form of humanity and the world is a much better place without them.
If any or all of these cover-up allegations turn out to be true, a NCAA ban will likely be the least of Penn State's worries.......
kw
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