Yesterday, Congressman Charlie Dent (R-Pa.) released the text of a letter that he and four of his colleagues from Pennsylvania had written to NCAA president Mark Emmert seeking the lifting of sanctions imposed on Penn State for its cover-up of former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky’s rampant molestation of children.
The letter, viewable here, calls for the NCAA to restore all of the scholarships stripped from Penn State when the NCAA sanctioned the school in 2012. It also asks the NCAA to rescind a $60 million fine imposed on the school. Dent persuaded fellow Pennsylvania Republicans Glenn Thompson, Jim Gerlach and Mike Kelly, along with Democrat Mike Doyle, to sign the letter. Dent, Thompson and Doyle all graduated from Penn State, and Thompson’s district includes State College, home to Penn State.
For those who missed it, Penn State came under fire in the fall of 2011 after the revelation of a massive cover-up of allegations that Sandusky had molested several children on or near campus, which continued even after his formal retirement in 1999. The cover-up extended all the way to school president Graham Spanier and head football coach Joe Paterno.
When the scandal broke in the fall of 2011, Spanier was forced to resign and Paterno was fired. An independent investigation by former FBI director Louis Freeh, ended in July 2012, found that Spanier, Paterno, athletic director Tim Curley and vice president Gary Schultz had known about numerous allegations that Sandusky had molested children on campus–most notably incidents where Sandusky molested children in locker room showers in 1998 and 2001–but did nothing to address them.? Curley was subsequently fired, and Schultz was forced into retirement. Two weeks after the Freeh report’s release, the NCAA slapped Penn State with some of the harshest sanctions in its history.
In addition to the fine and the loss of 40 scholarships from 2013 to 2017, Penn State was slapped with a four-year bowl ban and was stripped of all of its wins from 1998 to 2011. It was also required to implement significant reforms in the way it oversees the athletic program. Spanier, Curley, and Schultz are currently facing criminal charges for their roles in the cover-up. Additionally, two federal investigations into the affair are very much underway–a criminal investigation by the local U. S. Attorney, and a Department of Education probe into potential violations of the Clery Act, the federal law that requires colleges to report incidents of crime on campus. In 2013, the NCAA announced that in light of Penn State’s cooperation, it would gradually be allowed to top up to a full complement of scholarships by the 2016 season.
Dent wrote the letter on the heels of an April 9 decision by the Commonwealth Court, which has appellate jurisdiction over public-sector legal cases, regarding a law that requires every penny of the fine to stay in Pennsylvania. Earlier this year, state senator Jake Corman, whose district is centered around State College, filed a lawsuit seeking the implementation of the law. The Commonwealth Court rejected an NCAA claim that the law was unconstitutional. It was also very skeptical about the decree itself, suggesting it unduly penalized players who were in high school at the time the decree was handed down. It was also concerned that the NCAA had threatened to shutter the football program for up to four years had Penn State not agreed to the sanctions.
The congressional letter echoes these concerns, saying they only punished “innocent student-athletes who had nothing to do with Jerry Sandusky’s unspeakable crimes.” It contends that the sanctions directly contradict the NCAA’s goal of helping student athletes. It also claimed that the NCAA had no right to involve itself in a purely criminal matter.
In an interview with The (Harrisburg) Patriot-News, Dent said that he personally hoped the NCAA would rescind the final two years of the bowl ban as well. His main concern, though, is with the fine and the lost scholarships, since they directly impact the use of public funding to ensure access to higher education.
The letter also posed two questions to Emmert, which can be easily answered.
- The students currently affected by the sanctions were high school students at the time of the Consent Decree’s enforcement and enrolled at Penn State to seek a quality education. How do you reconcile enforcing these sanctions with the NCAA’s mission statement?
- Your organization admitted in the Consent Decree that it lacked authority to fine Penn State for the criminal activity of a former university employee. How can you continue to insist upon enforcing punitive measures against Penn State?
The sanctions were imposed because the cover-up violated some of the most basic principles of intercollegiate athletics. Specifically, the Freeh report revealed evidence that in 2001, Paterno had persuaded Curley not to report a 2001 incident in which then-assistant Mike McQueary saw Sandusky molesting a boy in the shower–a course of action endorsed by Spanier. At just about any university that doesn’t have its head up its rear end, this would have been a firing offense. But not in State College. Additionally, you can make a pretty convincing argument that Spanier and Curley should have looked more into the 1998 incident. Had they done so, would have discovered that assistant coaches and other school employees knew for some time that Sandusky had been taking boys into the shower with him and failed to report it. If that had come to light, it’s hard to imagine Paterno would have been allowed to keep his job.
I had initially wondered why the NCAA didn’t wait until the federal investigations wound up before acting on its own. After all, it had held off on imposing sanctions against Miami in the early 1990s while the federal government conducted its own investigation into Pell Grant fraud. But when I saw that the NCAA had decided to strip the wins, it was apparent that Emmert and his colleagues felt that had Penn State had any sort of control over the football program, Paterno would have been fired–if not in 1998, certainly in 2001. The NCAA was not punishing Penn State for Sandusky’s debauchery. Rather, it was punishing the school for not exercising the most basic level of oversight over its highest-profile sport.
By allowing Paterno to keep his job, Penn State created the appearance that a winning football program took precedence over protecting children. Granted, current players ended up paying the price for something that happened when they were in high school. But the alternative would have been shutting down the program for as long as four years–a penalty that would have been completely unjustified, given that there was no evidence any players knew about this. The message needed to be sent that this sort of behavior was completely unacceptable–and this sanction was probably the strongest way to send it while protecting innocent third parties.
Perhaps Dent should consider that given the egregiousness of what happened in Happy Valley, the NCAA would have been condemned had it not acted. After all, if covering up a serial child molester’s crimes in the name of protecting a football program isn’t evidence of a program willing to win at all costs, what is? That’s what was punished here.
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Darrell Lucus is a radical-lefty Jesus-lover who has been blogging for change for a decade. Follow him on Twitter @DarrellLucus or connect with him on Facebook.
