The NCAA used the Ray Rice news that took the sports world by storm as an opportunity to announce that they have ended all of Penn State’s sanctions handed out for the 2011 Jerry Sandusky scandal.
Penn State will be eligible for the postseason this year as well as have all of their scholarships reinstated next year.
Jerry Sandusky’s child sex scandal, which was largely covered up by school administration all the way up to the President of the institution, is what brought the sanctions in the first place. It was one of the most horrific incidents to ever happen in college football and tarnished a tight and squeaky clean program Joe Paterno had spent decades building.
They were levied with sanctions as a result and have spent the past few years picking up the pieces. The players were given an opportunity to transfer without punishment. Nine players chose to do so, and the ones that stayed wanted to try and rebuild some of the school’s reputation.
Former coach Bill O’Brien did a good job of getting the focus back on football and leading his kids out of a dark time, winning 15 games in his two seasons, and smoothing things over with many of the outraged fans.
“Penn State has made remarkable progress over the past year,” said South Carolina president Harris Pastides, a member of the NCAA’s board of directors. “The board members and I believe the executive committee’s decision is the right one. It allows both the university and the association to continue to move toward a common goal of ensuring that educating, nurturing and protecting young people is a top priority.”
When NCAA president Mark Emmert announced the sanctions in 2012, public perception was very split. Some people called it “the death penalty” and compared it to the sanctions levied against SMU in the 90’s for paying their players and using that as a recruiting tool.
However, many people on the other side weren’t satisfied with the punishment in the first place and likely will not be pleased with this news. It has turned out to be anything but a death penalty.
It should be noted that all of the administration that was involved in the cover-up has since been removed or fired. Sandusky was convicted in July 2012 on 45 counts of sexual abuse of 10 boys, and he is serving a 30- to 60-year prison sentence. Former school president Graham Spanier, vice president Gary Schultz, and athletic director Tim Curley are all awaiting their own trial.
Justice will be given and those men will each have to pay for their role in all of this, but how much longer should the current players have to suffer? Two years later, people seem to still be split on this, and the NCAA will never be able to please everyone.
Penn State is now on their second head coach, a new athletic director, a new school president and vice-president, and a new group of kids. They have certainly paid a price. They have done what they have been asked to do by the NCAA to deal with it, and are being rewarded for their actions over the past two years.
The NCAA has been slowly peeling back the punishment as the school continued to make progress over those two years. When they passed their first “exam,” they were rewarded with ten of their scholarships back, allowing them to go from 65 to 75 this season. They would have gone to 80 next year, but will now be back to the maximum of 85.
The NCAA will likely catch some flack for this, but as long as Penn State stays on the straight and narrow, continues to clean up the program and run a tight ship from here on out, then hopefully we can all finally move on from the Jerry Sandusky scandal while he rots in jail, right where he should be.
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