The Death Penalty

Twenty-five years ago, the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) cancelled the entire football season at Southern Methodist University. A number of rules were broken, the worst being that payments had been made to players for over a decade. The NCAA sent a very strong message when it shut down the program for the season, the death penalty in college sports, if you will. To date it is the harshest sanction ever given by the NCAA.

Today Louis Freeh released his report on the cover-up at Penn State. The late coach Joe Paterno, athletic director Tim Curley, university president Graham Spanier and vice president Gary Schultz are all clearly implicated. These men harbored, enabled and protected child rapist Jerry Sandusky. Powerful men there in Happy Valley, where Penn State football is practically a religion. Back in 2000, a janitor saw Sandusky rape a young boy in the showers. A Korean War veteran, the janitor had seem some bad things, but this sickened him. He spoke with the other janitors, and they all agreed to go up against the powers that be would be like "going after the president of the United States." The janitor feared losing his job. Freeh said at a news conference today, "If that was the culture at the bottom, God help the culture at the top."

Sandusky is in jail. Others may find themselves facing criminal charges as well. Our justice system is working, but there needs to be, in my opinion, a response from the culture of college football. An official response. There is nothing in the NCAA rule book about sexual abuse and rape. The rule book should be revised.

Before his death in January, Joe Paterno wrote a letter that has now been released by his family. In it he says that the rapes were not a football issue. Really? I wonder what the little boys who were sodomized in the football locker room showers by a Penn State coach would say about that. College football is big business. It lines pocketbooks and feeds egos to the point where some people think they are untouchable, above the law.

The Nittany Lions should get the death penalty. Shut the program down for the upcoming season, at the very least. Everyone involved in football there would then have lots of time on their hands, time to contemplate what happened, what went wrong, and how it can be prevented in the future. Allow those players with scholarships to play for another Division I team and get their education. It's a great opportunity for the entire college football community in our country to band together and do the right thing.

What was perpetrated at Penn State makes the shenanigans at SMU back in the day seem like small potatoes. If that school had its entire season cancelled, how much more so should the NCAA exact the death penalty on Penn State.

Susan