CP wrote:See, I disagree. Schools are always feeling the pressure to protect those at the top of the chain, particularly when those figures are nationally prominent and bring donors and money to the school just by their very presence. They only take action when forced to do so because the risk/reward slants too far in favor of covering it up for as long as possible.
Punishing the institution by taking away the money has the side effect of punishing student-athletes, but the institution still needs punished. Perhaps knowing that your programs will receive the death penalty if you allow this type of behavior to continue might prevent the next college president from looking the other way.
Just punishing the individuals insures that those in charge will just be smarter about throwing those beneath them under the bus. Protecting themselves and the institution is always their paramount concern. If, in the future, that means flipping on a prized asset like Joe Paterno (or Jerry Sandusky), then I would much rather have the potential tortfeasor on notice that he'll be turned in (and not protected) when he crosses the line.
And I respect that opinion.
But I think that the institution has been punished and will be punished further. Penn State is done as a tier 1 university. It will be decades, if they ever recover. And the lawsuits will come. They will pay out tens of millions over this. It will hurt and they will suffer.
And given that, I think that the NCAA bringing further punishments punishes the wrong people too much without adding much relative to the suffering PSU is going to suffer over this.


