Penn State Scandal: NCAA Investigation Won't Lead to Death Penalty

Many people wondered what the response of the NCAA would be after the Penn State sex abuse scandal broke and we got our answer on Friday.

The association will officially be looking into “Penn State’s exercise of institutional control over its intercollegiate athletics programs, as well as the actions, and inactions, of relevant responsible personnel.”

Their previous stance was to let the legal proceedings take its course before any action would be taken.

The question is what exact bylaws the university broke. The NCAA has no bylaws that appear directly applicable to this situation and the association was not created to handle a situation as serious as this.

President Mark Emmert did hint that the NCAA could get involved with Penn State in an interview with Kai Ryssdal of marketplace.org.

Ryssdal: As the body that is charged, in theory, with guaranteeing the safety of student athletes in American colleges and universities, how are you going to do that? What is your role in something like Penn State?

Emmert: Well we have rules and bylaws that — while they were never written to address anything quite like this of course — they speak directly to the control that institutions have to maintain over their athletic departments and their programs. And they speak very directly to ethical behavior of people in those programs and we’ll apply those bylaws, and if the allegations hold up, then we’ll act accordingly.

But what we do know is that the NCAA will not be issuing the so-called “Death Penalty” on Penn State under current law.

That penalty can only be used for schools dubbed “repeat violators” in that they have committed a major violation within five years of being cited for a different major violation. Before this scandal, the athletic department had no major violations since the NCAA started tracking them in 1953.

If the allegations against Jerry Sandusky and those who covered up the story are true, certainly that exhibits a lack of institutional control and clear disregard for ethics. How the NCAA can use its bylaws to make a case against Penn State is still anybody’s guess.

What isn’t a guess, though, is that the football team will not be receiving the "Death Penalty."