Implosion of Joe Paterno's Career Will Be Closely Followed by the NCAA

After nine years of failing to report to police that a former assistant coach allegedly molested children in his football team's locker room, it appears Joe Paterno will be allowed to retire from Penn State more or less on his own terms.

After selling his own football jersey for $1,000, A.J. Green was suspended for four games in 2010, his last season at Georgia. A year earlier, Dez Bryant’s final season at Oklahoma State was cut short, not for violating NCAA rules, but for fibbing when NCAA investigators asked him whether he hung out with Deion. This year, a handful of Ohio State players saw their college careers effectively end after trading their own championship rings and other OSU paraphernalia for tattoos.

“If Joe Paterno had given a car to a recruit,” writes Outkick the Coverage’s Clay Travis, “he’d be fired immediately.” But after nearly a decade of covering up—implicitly, at best—child molestation by his former defensive coordinator, Jerry Sandusky, more than 1,000 university students showed up at Paterno's house last night to celebrate the Penn State institution that he is, and the university appears to be giving him the leeway to coach the rest of the season and wrap up his tenure that began in 1966.

As disgusting as the Sandusky case and the circumstances of Paterno’s departure are, they’re even more revolting when viewed in light of heavy-handed penalties doled out by the NCAA when players simply try to reap a small part of the enormous profits they generate.

The NCAA recently approved a $2,000 stipend per year for college athletes, which the organization insists is not a pay-for-play scheme. Writing at Grantland, Charles Pierce calls the NCAA on its nonsense and hypocrisy:

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As soon as you pay someone $2,000, you cannot make the argument that it is unethical to pay that person $5,000, or $10,000, or a million bucks a year, for all that. Amateurism is one of those rigid things that cannot bend, only shatter.

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Ironically, as Penn State's head coach for the past 46 years features in seemingly every college football news story today, college coaches are one segment of the system that stands to lose when amateurism finally does shatter.

The SEC’s football programs brought in a little more than $600 million in 2009, according to the Department of Education’s data related to college athletics. Paying players above and beyond the scholarship grants they currently get would mean less revenue to spread around for athletic facilities, stadium costs and the $4 million and $5 million coaching salaries that are becoming the SEC norm rather than exception.

Most coaches seem to sympathize with their players, often citing the trope of players not being able to afford going out for dinner and a movie during the week. But how do they react when under-the-table dealings are exposed? Usually by excoriating boosters who have the gall to offer money to players who rake in tens of millions of dollars for athletic departments, and occasionally by equating sports agents to pimps.

The $2,000 stipend is a harbinger of a more open payment scheme to come. The sooner it arrives, the better—much like Paterno’s retirement.