The Penn State sanctions

"We all have to remember that we can’t let our love of the games get ahead of the core values, and we know that happens often. This is a painful, painful reminder that awful things can happen when that occurs."
—MARK EMMERT, president of the N.C.A.A., announcing sanctions against Penn State University after the child sexual abuse scandal.

The Penn State football program is now irrelevant which is exactly the right place for it to be. It was rendered irrelevant because, in the minds of a few misguided people, the program was considered more relevant than the safety and welfare of innocent children.

It is impossible to have any sympathy whatsoever with those criticizing the severity of the sanctions handed down yesterday by the NCAA.

For one, the family of disgraced ex-Penn State football coach Joe Paterno should just shut up. Of course they don’t want to see their family name dragged through the mud, but they are beginning to sound like O.J. Simpson saying he will himself bring to justice the murderer of his wife. My message to the family: Suffer in silence.

To those who say the NCAA is unfairly punishing the innocent — those football players on the team far removed from the scandal — the organization was careful to do just the opposite by saying any one of those players can transfer to another school, if they want, and play immediately. Normally, an NCAA athlete must sit out a year after transferring.

And finally, to those who say "Why punish the football team when this wasn’t a football issue?", my response is: "Are you out of your f-ing mind?"

This was, above all things, a football issue. The scandal arose because Paterno and other school officials felt the football program was so important that it had to be protected at all costs — even if that meant more children would be sexually abused by a predator allowed to roam the campus freely.

I thought it was telling that every single head football coach and even former coaches interviewed after the sanctions were announced thought they were just. The sanctions’ critics are a very, very small minority — most of them located in central Pennsylvania — but they don’t have a leg to stand on. They still don’t get it.