PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER Commentary: …Anger still burns among some PSU alumni over Corbett’s role, as governor and a member of the school’s board of trustees, in firing legendary football coach Joe Paterno after Sandusky was arrested in November 2011.
Corbett at the time also publicly backed the NCAA sanctions imposed on the university, including limits on football scholarships and the erasure of 111 of Paterno’s 409 victories, the most ever for a coach, from the record books.
“The Kane report doesn’t cause more bleeding, but it doesn’t heal past wounds for those who are angry at him for how he treated the university in the aftermath,” said Christopher Borick, a pollster based at Muhlenberg College… (more)
If I recall, the NCAA threatened the dreaded “death penalty” if Penn State did not agree. Invoking the death penalty negatively affects recruiting for years to come. When they make you an offer you can’t refuse, you don’t refuse. When the heat of the moment passes you can always go back to court and try to straighten it out. It matters not what the NCAA says, you cannot erase Joe Pa’s record. You can burn the books but not the knowledge.
EDITOR: Excellent approach, if that were indeed the case. Problem is we have little confidence that is what actually took place.
We were likely the first among the media to read and report upon the NCAA By Laws. There exists a very thorough investigatory process which is subject to appeal from the administration to representatives of all of the universities.
How many universities would have wanted to cede such new powers to the NCAA, powers that do not exist in its constitution? How many would have held Penn State’s football program responsible for what an errant retired professor was suspected of having done in its field house?
We think that Gov. Tom Corbett did not want the type of thorough investigation that the NCAA By Laws required and which, at the appeal stage, would have become public.
It was his pleading (through surrogates) for an immediate decision that caused the NCAA to impose draconian penalties. The NCAA had no choice because they were not allwoed to perform a normal investigation.