Penn State Scandal Thread
- Thread starter Eric the Red
- Start date
Foppa
All-American
Most likely, yes. And I would expect the sanctions to start immediately. But I wouldn't say it's a guarantee that these recruits still wouldn't come...as walk-ons or a part of a small class...especially when 6 of their current recruits come from the state of PA.
The Dude
Heisman Trophy Winner
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Foppa
All-American
I only know this because I can't spell 'acquiring' rightUmm...I'm ok with that...but I didn't say it
shhh
HuskerFowler
All-Conference
The only reason i can think of is to give them the option to drop down to FBS to be able to atleast compete at that level. Like me, they are thinking with these penalties they wont be able to compete against BCS teams.
I would bet they stay BCS and fight to get back, go thru some pretty bad seasons and do the best they can. They have to much talent around them and great facilities, it will just take a long time IMO...10 years atleast. Then its just a matter of what confrence, if the Big 10 dumps them, then they might have to go independent until they get back on their feet.
I would like to see the Big 10 keep them on board, for academics and to just stick behind a confrence memeber. Once they get thru the penalties, they are still a great university and they have enough resources to recover and be successfull program again. The university is bigger then a few people that made some terrible decisions, it shouldnt bring down the whole university forever, just set them back, and i think the penalties will do just that.
HuskerFowler
All-Conference
Ya i can see a couple kids wanting to represent the home team, and help the university get back on its feet. Hometown pride kind of thing
Blackshirts007
All-American
i find it hard to believe that the penalties will be this harsh, but i wouldn't mind them if they were. That would completely wipe out the program. Basically losing everyone for the next few years besides some walk ons. Obviously they wouldn't move to division 1AA but they would NEVER be successful again and they would be the laughing stock of the B1G. If this does happen i wonder what would happen to them in the B1G. Didn't they recently say the presidents do not have the power to kick out PSU? maybe thats why the whole thing about wanting to have the power to get rid of them, maybe the B1G presidents knew what was coming? Penn state will forever suck if this is true.
Notre Dame Joe
All-Conference
For @ 20 years people laughed at the Big East for rejecting PSU's application saying it was one of the all time dumbest decisions. Fortune is fickle.Bucky said:
Hingle McCringleberry
Starter
No. A team like Penn will never forever suck. They want it to much, much like Nebraska. CNN is saying 30 million in fines, and I'm sure some more of this is true. Jo Pa and Co brought shame to Penn, and all of College ball, if they do not give the death penalty I am happy with this, it is pretty much the same thing with out the name, the line has been drawn.
Excel
All-American
I have a problem with how this whole scandal is being played out in the public forum. Begin diatribe...
Follow me here because this is one crazy tangent, and yes it does prove Godwin's law but it's the same problem I have with how we remember the Holocaust.
The lesson of the Holocaust is not that the Germans are awful people, that Hitler was some foul manifestation of Satan or that Jews are worthy of some special pity, compassion or liberties never mind that one or all of those things may be true.
The lesson from that genocide is that people, placed in the right environment and conditioned in a certain way, can be driven to commit horrible, unthinkable acts like coldly rounding up and murdering their own neighbors and friends. The fact that it happened in Germany, at the time one of the most advanced, cultured and tolerant societies in the world, further serves that point. Anyone could be driven to such things. We did not learn that lesson. Instead most of us still confine it to a topic of "Jewish" or "German" interest rather than one pertaining to all mankind. Simply peruse a bookstore's history shelves to see that. It was something that happened "over there" done by men who are nothing like us. So we still stumble into the same kind of thinking as the Germans in the 1920's and 30's as do people all across the world still do and when the conditions are right we get Rwanda or the former Yugoslavia leaving us to wonder how and why it had to happen.
It's a similar deal with Penn State. The issue is not Penn State football, though sure, in this case it is. I mean it is and it isn't at the same time.The issue is that people like Sandusky gravitate toward organizations where they can have close contact with children; youth sports, churches, schools. This happens. We won't be able to stop it but we sure as hell can limit it. It requires institutional honesty and aggressive policing. Penn State officials didn't report Sandusky because they thought it would soil their University's reputation. That was true. They would have been scorned and laughed at in '98 if they'd outed Sandusky, don't doubt that. We need to get rid of that aspect, there shouldn't be shame in finding a pedophile in one's organization. These people exist everywhere. The shame should come when that institution's agents enable the monster.
Penn State and the Nation as a whole has an opportunity here to pluck some positives out of this tragedy; institute new safeguards, educate people about legislation protecting whistle-blowers, have a real national dialogue about child molestation and its pervasiveness. PSU especially has an opportunity to turn this around. They're a massive research university. Just imagine if they were to open a department or facility devoted to studying the issue, educating the public, advising decision makers in a variety of institutions and providing therapy for victims. Unfortunately I don't see any of that happening.
Officials in State College and at Second Mile failed by allowing Sandusky to prey on those children. We too will have failed those children and countless others if we are content with simply locking up Sandusky and smacking down PSU football. They are not what we need to focus on here though they surely need to be dealt with. There's a larger issue.
That's not to criticize anyone for considering the football bit. This is a football-centric forum, of course you're going to talk about it. I do it as well. I guess I'm just a little disappointed with our approach to this as a country. Anyhow that's about it.
fin
Follow me here because this is one crazy tangent, and yes it does prove Godwin's law but it's the same problem I have with how we remember the Holocaust.
The lesson of the Holocaust is not that the Germans are awful people, that Hitler was some foul manifestation of Satan or that Jews are worthy of some special pity, compassion or liberties never mind that one or all of those things may be true.
The lesson from that genocide is that people, placed in the right environment and conditioned in a certain way, can be driven to commit horrible, unthinkable acts like coldly rounding up and murdering their own neighbors and friends. The fact that it happened in Germany, at the time one of the most advanced, cultured and tolerant societies in the world, further serves that point. Anyone could be driven to such things. We did not learn that lesson. Instead most of us still confine it to a topic of "Jewish" or "German" interest rather than one pertaining to all mankind. Simply peruse a bookstore's history shelves to see that. It was something that happened "over there" done by men who are nothing like us. So we still stumble into the same kind of thinking as the Germans in the 1920's and 30's as do people all across the world still do and when the conditions are right we get Rwanda or the former Yugoslavia leaving us to wonder how and why it had to happen.
It's a similar deal with Penn State. The issue is not Penn State football, though sure, in this case it is. I mean it is and it isn't at the same time.The issue is that people like Sandusky gravitate toward organizations where they can have close contact with children; youth sports, churches, schools. This happens. We won't be able to stop it but we sure as hell can limit it. It requires institutional honesty and aggressive policing. Penn State officials didn't report Sandusky because they thought it would soil their University's reputation. That was true. They would have been scorned and laughed at in '98 if they'd outed Sandusky, don't doubt that. We need to get rid of that aspect, there shouldn't be shame in finding a pedophile in one's organization. These people exist everywhere. The shame should come when that institution's agents enable the monster.
Penn State and the Nation as a whole has an opportunity here to pluck some positives out of this tragedy; institute new safeguards, educate people about legislation protecting whistle-blowers, have a real national dialogue about child molestation and its pervasiveness. PSU especially has an opportunity to turn this around. They're a massive research university. Just imagine if they were to open a department or facility devoted to studying the issue, educating the public, advising decision makers in a variety of institutions and providing therapy for victims. Unfortunately I don't see any of that happening.
Officials in State College and at Second Mile failed by allowing Sandusky to prey on those children. We too will have failed those children and countless others if we are content with simply locking up Sandusky and smacking down PSU football. They are not what we need to focus on here though they surely need to be dealt with. There's a larger issue.
That's not to criticize anyone for considering the football bit. This is a football-centric forum, of course you're going to talk about it. I do it as well. I guess I'm just a little disappointed with our approach to this as a country. Anyhow that's about it.
fin
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BOJ
Special Teams Player
If the presidents have a 70% vote then PSU would have to show cause why they should be allowed to stay. They certainly have the power to kick them out.
Notre Dame Joe
All-Conference
This sounds right to me. I believe evil is buried in somewhere in every man's heart. The potential to be motivated to commit atrocities we normally would abhor is built into the mind. And I'll not digress too much, but a lot of massacres get barely a footnote in popular history because they did not take place in The West but in the "other" part of the world. When you read about what they did with blades, you wonder what might have happened if panzers and gas chambers were on all continents.
as for it could never happen here, that is a line that gets carelessly tossed around in response to many awful things. Someone even said it wouldn't happen at Notre Dame. [We fire our legends for going 9-3] He was of course shouted down by other posters.
Do they not have something like that? I'd imagine a school that large has strong departments of Psychology, Medicine, Social Services, Criminal Justice and others. If not I'm pretty sure PSU will be putting some serious $ into a research and advocacy fund.
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