Freeh Report: In calls for justice at Penn State, NCAA death penalty would be injustice
by Archive, aol.sportingnews.comMarch 14th 2012
Beaver Stadium should be burned down and the ground salted so nothing ever grows there again. Joe Paterno is, well, it's not worth repeating.
That's what I heard on the radio Friday morning. And those were the more sedate calls.
People want to punish a corpse. They want justice. They want the NCAA to put Penn State football out of business.
The outrage is justified. The death penalty isn't.
It would bring all sorts of practical implications. I don't expect hearing about them will change your mind. Not if you're stuck on the point death penalty advocates keep repeating: If the NCAA punishes schools over free tattoos, how can it let Penn State get away with its crime? SMU got a one-year death penalty for buying players. Relatively speaking, what does child rape warrant?
Ten years? Fifty years?
This is unexplored territory for a reason. The acts are so obscene that NCAA sanctions trivialize them. That doesn't matter to the angry masses. They say the program must be destroyed to save itself. Hasn't that already happened?
The school president was fired. The administrators who allegedly aided the cover-up are facing jail.
The head coach was fired. Now he's dead and his legacy is ruined. Sandusky is reviled and will die in prison. The university has suffered incalculable damage. And we're not even talking about the tens of millions it will pay to Sandusky's victims.
NCAA sanctions are designed to punish and deter. When it comes to punishment, Penn State will have an unprecedented amount without the NCAA getting involved. When it comes to deterrent, what's the next potential Sandusky gang going to think?
"Let's see, we're all going to jail and our school's become an international disgrace. That's OK as long as the NCAA doesn't ban us from the GoDaddy.com Bowl."
It's generally assumed university employees know not to commit rape in the shower. So what happened at Penn State did not violate any specific NCAA rules, other than the nebulous "lack of institutional control" statute.
The NCAA could act on that, but it would be a slippery first. In his November letter to Penn State, NCAA president Mark Emmert cited Bylaw 19.0.2 and the responsibility of coaches to set a proper example.
He cited 11 previous cases where schools were punished for violating it. But in every case, there were also the standard violations like improper benefits, contact and academic fraud. Those things alter the level playing field the NCAA is charged with maintaining.
You could argue that covering up Sandusky aided the team. But it just allowed Penn State to conduct football business as usual. Harboring a pedophile did not give the Nittany Lions a recruiting advantage.
Penn State would be the first school sanctioned solely because its representatives broke the law. That may sound dandy, but it would set a prickly precedent.
Police arrested 30 Florida football players during Urban Meyer's tenure. Would that now rise to "lack of institutional control?" Just this spring, Montana fired its football coach and athletic director after two football players were accused of sexual assault. Does Emmert need to act?
What would the new standard be to initiate sanctions? And do you trust the Inspector Clouseaus at the NCAA to administer them fairly? And the Penn State lynch mob acts as if the violations happened last season. The smoking gun was fired in 2001. Incoming recruits were in second grade.
Recall cases like USC, where Reggie Bush cashed in and Pete Carroll waltzed to the NFL. The NCAA comes down, leaving Matt Barkley and other innocents to pay for old Trojan sins. If you want the death penalty in Happy Valley, don't ever rail against such injustice again.
About 99.9 percent of the people there are as sickened by Sandusky as you are. Critics say they still need to be sent to time-out for loving their coach, donating their money and being slavishly loyal. Yes, they are guilty of being part of a runway football culture. If that alone warrants the death penalty, there should be no games this fall in Tuscaloosa, Austin, Columbus and a lot of other places.
Penn State's lack of institutional control warrants far more severe punishment than the NCAA could ever dispense. What we need now is a little more emotional control.
Would giving Penn State the death penalty deter what isn't already deterred?
No.
Would it punish the guilty?
No.
Would it please the outraged masses?
Yes.
But that hardly makes it justice.
Original Page: http://aol.sportingnews.com/ncaa-football/story/2012-07-13/freeh-report-penn-state-joe-paterno-ncaa-death-penalty-jerry-sandusky
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Victor Cuvo, Attorney at Law
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