Penn State Scandal: Calls for Death Penalty Horribly Misguided

There's no ignoring the horrible crimes alleged to have taken place in and around Penn State University between 1994 and 2009.

Former Nittany Lions defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky allegedly perpetrated these crimes, but just as troubling is the fact they were essentially covered up by legendary head coach Joe Paterno and a handful of high-ranking Penn State administrators. Justice for everyone involved must be served.

Some form of justice has already been dispensed. Sandusky has been shunned from the university as he awaits trial for child sex abuse charges, and Paterno, athletic director Tim Curley, administrator Gary Schultz and university president Graham Spanier have all been forced out.

They have paid for their involvement, but many people want more. They want the university itself to be punished.

Some figure that the best way to do this is for the NCAA to hit the football program with the dreaded "death penalty."

To give you an example, here's how AP national writer Paul Newberry argued for the death penalty to be used on Penn State:

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The death penalty was put in place to shutter a wayward program when the violations were repeated and especially heinous. But it's been used only once, with SMU's outlaw football team way back in the 1980s, and never seriously considered again.

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Behind closed doors in Indianapolis, officials with the governing body will tell you the penalty is simply too severe in light of what it did to the Mustangs, who more than two decades later still haven't come close to matching the success from their Pony Express days.

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But if the horrifying allegations at Penn State don't warrant the most serious sanctions, should they be proven, then it's hard to imagine any case ever reaching that threshold.

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The point, in so many words, is that this is as bad as scandals get, and it therefore deserves the worst possible punishment.

Basically, an example must be made of Penn State.

It's a point that many have made, and a point that many will continue to make. There is no hyperbole when it comes to the Penn State scandal, and those who would have an example made of Penn State have a legitimate gripe.

However, I have a problem with the death penalty argument. The best way I can sum it up is with these six words:

This is not an athletic issue.

Not one bit. At its heart, the Penn State scandal is a legal issue, one that will be resolved by lawyers and judges. It is also a morality tale, which will be an ongoing case in the court of public opinion for years to come.

The Penn State football program, and indeed all Penn State sports programs, have nothing to do with anything. Penn State athletics are innocent bystanders in all this. 

Those that will argue for the use of the death penalty will cite the NCAA's right to punish a university for its lack of "institutional control." If the inaction of Paterno and the others involved in the cover-up of Sandusky's misdeeds, effectively allowing him to roam free for close to a decade, does not constitute a lapse in institutional control, what does?

The problem with this argument is that the inaction of Paterno and company did not directly benefit the football program in any way. The Nittany Lions have always had a reputation for being a clean football team, and I don't see why that should change just because a small group of men were up to no good on their own time. All the football program did was continue to exist.

The only time the death penalty has ever been issued in college football was in the 1980s to Southern Methodist University. SMU's crime was paying its players, something it did habitually despite repeated warnings from the NCAA. It was an actual athletic issue, and a textbook case of a loss of institutional control.

The Penn State scandal is not. It's a textbook case of a criminal committing crimes, and his contemporaries watching out for him and themselves. Some of them have already paid a price, and some of them still have prices to pay.

Because the football program didn't do anything wrong, demanding that it also pay a price is asking too much. Hitting it with the death penalty would be grossly unfair, and it would border on being cruel.

Let them play.

Update: Friday, Nov. 18 at 6:50 p.m. ET

It has been revealed that the NCAA will investigate Penn State's exercise of institutional control. This is the first step towards hitting Penn State with the death penalty, but that depends entirely on what the NCAA uncovers with its investigation. At the absolute very least, the NCAA is doing its due diligence.