Who Got The “Death Penalty”?

Twenty-five years ago Southern Methodist University (SMU) was found to be paying student members of their football team from $50 to as much as $725 a month from a slush fund maintained for that purpose. The sports powerhouse was on NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) probation at the time for earlier violations. As a result, the NCAA slapped SMU with a cancellation of their upcoming season and all home games the next year, along with a handful of other penalties, an action dubbed the “Death Penalty.” 

So for adding cash payments to the other perks provided big time college football players, like scholarships, jobs they rarely if ever show up for, etc., etc., the NCAA shuts down the SMU football program long enough to derail it for twenty years. It is pretty hard to find any harm in what went on at SMU beyond the negatives that maintaining a semi-pro football team does to any institution theoretically focused on learning. In the SMU case a university that is an arm of a church. 

After due consideration the NCAA chose to ratchet down the level of punishment meted out to Penn State. After all Penn State didn’t break any NCAA rules; they just ignored report after report that they had a pedophile in a senior position in their football program. Starting with two janitors, who saw Jerry Sandusky rape a little boy in a Penn State shower room 14 years ago. One said he had seen some awful things while in the service in Korea, but nothing as horrific as that. But fear of Sandusky kept the janitor from going to the authorities, so he just told his boss. 

Sandusky was allowed to retire, but he kept his office in the sports complex and his access to the shower rooms. He kept right on taking boys to Penn State away games and keeping them in his hotel room. Ignoring one incident after another, the top officials at Penn State agreed among themselves to hush up the Sandusky “problem.” The football culture at Penn State is so powerful it erased all common sense and decency for nearly fifteen years. 

But they will play football at Penn State this fall; no NCAA “Death Penalty” for Happy Valley. The University will pay a massive $60 million dollar fine, and they will not be eligible for a bowl game for the next four seasons. The number of free riders will be cut by twenty; Penn State will only be allowed to have 65 football scholarship players on their roster instead of the 85 currently allowed. There are additional slap-on-the-wrist penalties but nothing that will cause too much pain. 

An immediate chorus of whines emanated from Penn State supporters. The most frequent, “It’s worse than the Death Penalty.” Nonsense! Who knows how many little boys this monster violated? Little boys carrying the lifelong “Death Penalty” Sandusky left on their very being. If Penn State’s penalty matched that of the victims of its football culture, there would never be another Penn State football game, not this fall, not ever.