Punishing Penn State

So last fall, I wrote a post about all the CRAP going on within the Penn State football team. It was disgusting. And guess what? It's still disgusting, and it just makes me so angry!

I will only summarize what's happened this week (partly because you don't really care about all the details, but partly because I don't even know them all myself.) THIS article however on the Sports Illustrated website is a really good one, and I recommend you read it if you want to know what's going on with the whole thing...

NCAA sanctions:
1. The school has been fined $60 million, which is apparently roughly equal to one year's revenue from the football program.
2. They are also limited in the amount of scholarships they can give out
3. They have been banned from postseason games for the next four years, and (seperate from the NCAA sanctions) the Big Ten banned them from sharing in the conferences bowl revenue during postseason games.

And now I'm going to get up on my soap box for a little bit...

I think sexual abuse of any child or minor is about as sick as you can get. Period. I have no tolerance for it. I work at the Department of Corrections, and I see it all the time, and it makes me sick to my stomach. And I'm pretty sure 99% of you reading this would probably feel the same. What I cannot comprehend is how someone, anyone, could turn a blind eye to actions like this, and ignore it. Much less ignore it for 14 years!!

So as perverted and nasty as Jerry Sandusky is/was, I'm just as disgusted with Joe Paterno (and three other top officials at the college) for ignoring it. Because they did nothing about it, it went on for far too long. If something could have been done to prevent anymore harm when Paterno first found out, we will never know. Although, I'm definitely on the side of "YES - things could have been different". I believe Sandusky would not have gotten away with it for so long, he might not have harmed near as many precious children and ripped their innocent childhood and away from them.

For years Paterno preached "success with honor" as a motto for their team... I have no words to even convey how I feel about this hypocrisy.

In addition to all of the punishments handed down from the NCAA, they also stripped away all of Paterno's wins since 1998 (when he first found out apparently), taking away 111 wins from the past 14 years. With this, it strips his title as the most successful coach of all time, and now our beloved Bobby Bowden will be credited with that title.

Here's the thing though FSU fans - as much as I love Bobby (and I do love him a lot), let's try not to celebrate this title for him. Of course it'll be great for him to be credited with this honor, but it was a horrible way for him to get it. Little children were still abused and hurt and that's not fair. Bobby himself said he wished the title could have been earned, rather than receiving it this way.

I could go on and on about nonsense like this, because it just baffles me. But for now I'll close out this rant, and move on. Just continue praying for the victims and their families of not only this one predator, but of all sexual predators. And please, I beg you, do something if you have the chance.