In a few hours (and likely by the time you read this), the predicted “corrective and punitive measures” against Penn State will be known, and discussion will focus on whether the NCAA’s actions are right or wrong, too harsh or too lenient, fair or unfair. This post is directed elsewhere, no matter what measures are ultimately imposed.
What about the children?
Not the children abused by Jerry Sandusky. Not the children ignored by Joe Paterno. Not that they aren’t of deep concern, but the crimes committed against them will be addressed otherwise. This is about a football program gone horribly awry by a misguided dedication on the part of adults who were supposed to grasp their obligations to children but instead loved their sport and school too much.
The children I’m talking about are the students of Penn State. The problem is that any NCAA action against the school will necessarily have collateral damage, the students. It’s easy to forget that the core of the NCAA’s mission, as well as Penn State’s, is to oversee the education of college students, one relating to their athletics and the other to the totality of their education.
The speculation at the moment is that the NCAA will ban Penn State from post-season bowl games and levy a substantial financial penalty on the school. They will cut the number of scholarships the school can offer, thus putting Penn State at further recruiting disadvantage. The word is that Penn State football players will be allowed to transfer, so that other schools can rush in a cherry pick the team. Whether this is how it plays out will be known soon enough, but what of the collateral damage?
Who will pay for the financial penalties imposed? Ultimately, the students. Whether via tuition or from other sources like alumni donations, the funds that will pay the penalty are funds that would otherwise be used for students. The penalties won’t be taken from Joe Pa’s estate, or the salaries of administrators.
Who will suffer for the lack of scholarships, but students who hope to go to Penn State on a free ride. That they could go elsewhere isn’t the point or necessarily the solution. Some come from communities close to the school and want to be able to see their parents on weekends. Some have dreamed of being a Nittany Lion their whole lives. Some want to go to Penn State because it offers a program in a field of study they sincerely desire to learn. What about these students?
The bowl game penalty is less of a problem, but not without concerns. Universities thrive on spirit, which brings in alumni donations, student applications and a sense of belonging and pride. Granted, these same things may well have driven the outrageous decisions to ignore terrible crimes, but they are also part of the soul of the rest of the student body who did nothing wrong and made no such outrageous decisions. It would be one thing to rip the heart out of administrators who forgot why they were there, but the NCAA will rip the heart out of students who had no say in the matter.
And while the stars may be scooped up by other Universities who will offer them sweet deals to play in another school’s colors, not every player is a star. Some may not develop until they get a bit of seasoning, when NFL dreams may become possible. Some may be really good players, but not good enough to get an offer. They came to Penn State with one understanding, that they would have a chance to play in the big leagues, and now they’re stuck. They can transfer on their own, and walk away from friends and roomates, girlfriends and mentors, or they can stay for the education while giving away another dream they thought they had achieved.
The sense that the NCAA lost control of Penn State’s zeal to win football games at the cost of children sexually abused by Jerry Sandusky is clearly a matter of concern. In the grand scheme of wrongs, what Sandusky did trumps anything the NCAA can do. But then, they aren’t on the same plane, and it’s not a zero sum game.
That Sandusky’s crimes were horrible, and the administration’s decision to conceal it, to fail to deal with it, to allow children to be abused rather than risk damage to their beloved football team, doesn’t mean that more harm has to be done to the innocent students of Penn State.
So what should the NCAA do about Penn State? I have no answer. There is certainly a message that must be sent to every college and university, every coach and administrator, that putting their team ahead of their duty to protect children is intolerable. And yet, the NCAA must simultaneously temper its message by not compounding the problem by collateral damage to the innocent students of Penn State.
A scalpel is better than a bludgeon. A fully conceived solution will do no harm to those who don’t deserve to suffer the punishment along with those who do. Remember, the students at Penn State who had nothing to do with this fiasco are children too.
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I am an alumnus of the school in question. While there I received a nice and helpful (academic based) partial scholarship from the widow of JoePa’s biographer. I immensely enjoyed the ceremony of the football games, as a freshman, when I lived across a field from the stadium and could see the stadium always and fairly close up out my dorm window.
That said, I think the school would be better off, in the long run, without a football team and without a basketball team.
Just my opinion. Not trying to persuade anyone it is correct.
The school may be better off, though I suspect some would debate that conclusion, but each individual student involved also has a stake in the sanctions. They did nothing wrong, yet suffer as well.
I don’t know. Staying in the NCA and maintaining the teams means paying out large fines.
OTOH, getting rid of the sports teams, and not paying fines to maintain the sports teams, would be a form of cost cutting.
In this monetary sense, it is better to get rid of the teams and cut tuition to reflect the money saved.
The football team brings in a bloody fortune to the school. I heard in the reporting today that the $60 million penalty equates to one year of football revenue. Getting rid of sports is hardly a cost cutting measure.
Well, that depends upon how much of the $60M offsets tuition in real reality. Having attended the school for 4 years (including one year where the football team won the National Championship), and graduated from there, my opinion is that the football makes the school cost more than it otherwise would. I think the fact that kids like football causes a “football premium” of sorts at Old State.
Ultimately, the real answer lies deep in the accounting books, which are bound to remain as mysterious to us as the real fate of TWA800.
I’m not sure why the NCAA needs to respond to this at all. Other than to make itself feel better and to seem involved. Obviously, prosecuting Sandusky made sense. Taking down the Paterno statue seems appropriate, too. But, as you say, all the NCAA’s actions seem to do is harm a bunch of kids who weren’t in any way involved. I know the NCAA likes to flex its muscle and show how important it is, but under what theory should it get involved in this? Because Sandusky was a coach? Because Paterno did whatever it is that he did? It seems to me that this is already a cautionary tale for other schools. The scandal toppled the most successful football coach of all time. I’m betting other schools are taking note.
I wondered that as well. Great point
The NCAA was formed in 1906 to protect young people from dangerous exploitation. Some how was morphed into an organization to exploit young persons and promote the unworthy.
I doubt they cared that they were shifting the costs of the penalty to the students and faculty. They were more concerned about how it might cut football revenues for other schools.
The collateral damage argument would seem to prevent the NCAA from ever imposing sanctions against any college for any reason. The collateral damage would be the same if they were being punished for giving away free cars to players for touchdowns. There is nothing you can do that only punishes the overtly guilty. And the overtly guilty are not the only ones responsible anyway.
The organization at Penn State is sick. It is far sicker than if they were just giving away cars. It would be perverse if they punished free cars more severely than child rape.
While it’s true that anything that affects a team member or coach affects the whole team, the punishment can be tuned to address the specific wrong. Here, it affects everyone, players, students, alumni, staff. It’s hardly the same. Routine NCAA violations are handled routinely. This is completely different.
I think what you say applies well to the “money damages” portion of the NCAA penalty, but not so much to the “injunctive relief” portion.
The failure at Penn State was a deep organizational failure. There is little choice but to punish the organization. That means forcing everyone from the head coach and the school administrators to the student body to change how they think about the football team.
Again it would be perverse if the penalty for giving away ten cars was less than allowing ten children to be raped. And a decision to give away ten cars made at the highest level would have very very sever penalties.
I just pulled 10 kids out of the air. It is more like 52 counts of child molestation dating from 1994 to 2009 according to wiki.
I say tear it down and let them rebuild it.
Little choice? This wasn’t a football infraction at all, but a heinous crime that was covered up to protect the football program. Regardless of what the NCAA has to say about it, the perpetrators should be imprisoned, not docked post-season play. You seem to forget this isn’t about sports, but about the coverup of child sexual abuse. The law provides remedies.
My feeling is that this is similar to punitive damages in a liability suit. Ultimately the company’s customers pay more to make up the losses. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t hit people or corporations with punitive damages.
The way I see this, Paterno et al. covered this up because they were worried that the program – which generates $60m in revenue per year – would be damaged. If that is the case, then my feeling is that the program, and the school, must be hit, hard, to highlight where priorities should lie.
As to affecting the students: the reason the program was “worth” protecting was specifically because it had such wide-spread support. That support was what made it into a money machine. When people ignore the rape of children for the sake of money, the money must be stopped.
I’m not sure the punitive damages analogy holds. The company’s customers don’t have to buy its good if it’s prices are too high. Students and alumni at Penn State don’t have such a simple option.
That’s a fair point. I was thinking more along the lines of why punitive damages are levied. But I still think that the collateral damage, while unfortunate, has been at least lessened here.
I saw an interesting proposal over at ESPN, suggesting that the football program be converted into a non-profit, with the excess each year going to various anti-abuse charities and perhaps scholarships for abused children. I think that a rough estimate would be along the lines of $30 million per year.
My central concern is that the football program is a cash cow, a golden calf if you will, and worshiping it led the administrators astray. It seems to me that the punishments do very little to address that particular problem, which presents the ability for something like this to re-occur.
Addressing the problem via the football revenues seems to have greater merit than other remedies, in that it at least goes to the heart of the systemic problem and can be converted to more directed use. But not fines or penalties, which means it’s diverted from students to the NCAA, which helps nothing.
The fine may well represent bona fide and demonstrable COMPENSATORY damages. For example, the TV rights that the NCAA sells may be worth less. $60 M may even be low compared to the demonstrable compensatory damages.
Even so, they still don’t seem right. there is no analogy that is both simple and realistic here.
The closest analogy I can think is that the fine is like liquidated damages in a contract, and the fine seems bad as policy for reasons similar to liquidated damages in a contract being legally disfavored. The relationship between PSU and NCAA is probably best visualized as a contractual relationship, even if large parts of the contract are implied-in-fact.
The ban feels like a form of revocation in view of breach. The money damages feel like liquidated damages (or, worse yet, a prospective agreement to allow the damaged party to determine damages on a post hoc basis).
Vacating the wins was a wise decision; too bad JoePa didn’t get to hear that.
The immediate financial impact on students will be fairly small; PSU had the second highest donation total in history after the scandal broke and will most likely set a new record this year.
But the collateral damage certainly exists. I don’t know how to avoid it. Consider the collateral damage every time a city pays out large sums for police misbehavior; the money doesn’t come from the police, and the worst off are the taxpayers.
[links to PSU finances preemptively deleted]
As we regularly discuss how paying judgments and settlements for abuse and misconduct from the general fisc fails to serve as an incentive to stop the misconduct and shifts the cost off the wrongdoer onto the taxpayer, this is the same as what’s happening at Penn State. If it’s wrong for cops and prosecutors, it’s wrong for Penn State.
As for vacating the wins, I have no idea what was accomplished by rewriting history. Taking JoePa’s name off the list? History is what it is, except if you’re Stalin.
[and thanks about the link]
(Full disclosure, here) I had the opportunity to be involved in the Penn State football program about 25 years ago. I graduated from PSU undergrad. I like Penn State and hate pederasts.
Subjectively, the punishment “to the third generation” inflicted by the NCAA is absurd. Punishment of the innocent to provide an example to the possible, future guilty, is a crude, barbaric and totalitarian method of controlling behavior.
Objectively, it is football,and changes to a football program are, in the course of history, usually fleeting and ephemeral, phenomena. (Cf. BYU).
Vacating the wins, a penalty which primarily affects someone who has been dead for months, seems a little impotent. Paterno may have been doubleplusbad, but the NCAA is not so powerful as to change history.
In the “unintended consequences” column, my concern is for those players on other teams where the cherry picked Penn State players may end up. Those players who will be bumped from 1st or 2d string positions because the NCAA allowed the PSU players to transfer for football reasons.
BTW, why are they allowed to transfer? Is the program at fault or not? Why punish the whole program (and school) and then say that if you are part of a small minority that can escape, then there are limited consequences?
The Hollywood ending – All the Penn State Players on the roster, feeling wronged by the draconian punishment meted out by the unaccountable NCAA, decide to stay on rather than transfer. Then, against all odds, PSU crushes every opponent in the regular season. The egocentric coach of the Number 1 ranked team feels the pathological need to defend the ranking and undefeated record against the PSU squad that is being played up by sports writers as an unfulfilled Cinderella story. Thus, a last, unsanctioned “bowl game” takes place at an undisclosed practice field in inclement weather (unless the opponent is USC) and pirate broadcast on the internet. The game is ended in a tie, before time runs out, when the NCAA sends in armed SWAT teams to prevent the defiance of its authority (and to protect is licences and intellectual property).
That would make for one hell of a movie, except no one would ever believe it could happen.
I think a SWAT team composed of university presidents
would be more of a threat to their own safety although the football players might die laughing.
Doesn’t reparation hiring as the result of discrimination suits usually end up collaterally damaging innocent parties?
Whether for racial or sexual discrimination, when courts (or settlement agreements) ordain that X number of victims of discrimination are to be hired or promoted in order to achieve a balance or to repair past harms, people outside the class are hurt in their ability to be promoted or hired.
Yes, it’s to make up for past wrongs, but it collaterally harms those who–at some nebulous level–‘benefited’ from past practices. It’s not that they themselves caused harm that leads to their hurt, but only their membership in a group outside the class.
Mr. Burgess –
Reparation hiring does damage innocent parties, ask the Plaintiffs in any “quotas” case.
That is why quotas are not allowed, or at least not favored. The law prohibits discriminatory non-hiring and firing not mandated hiring. I.E. not taking away what has been “earned” through a discriminatory action.
But of course that was why. The NCAA needed to punish lest they be thought weak and insufficiently outraged.
As SHG says, it’s not a question of more or less; the difference is one of kind. Based upon your argument, why stop with the football program? The administration was as guilty, if not more so, as Joe Pa.