Penn State Scandal: NCAA Must Level Nittany Lions with Harsh Punishment

If the NCAA is to have any hope of restoring a measure of credibility for itself and justice to the world of college football, then it must enact harsh penalties against Penn State in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal.

Granted, President Mark Emmert will have to wait and see how the facts and the legal process unfold in the coming months before rushing to judgement.

In the meantime, the NCAA will launch its own investigation into the Penn State athletics department to weigh the school's "exercise of institutional control" and the "actions, and inactions, of relevant responsible personnel."As well it should.

The NCAA can only do so much to right the wrongs that took place on Joe Paterno's watch, but it must nonetheless do whatever it can within its jurisdiction as the governing body of collegiate athletics to add some measure of justice to this most unjust of situations.

I'm not just talking about Sandusky's transgressions here. Obviously, Sandusky's raping of children is the most shocking set of allegations to be reviewed by the NCAA, but it may only be the latest in a pattern of willful negligence on the part of Penn State's administrators who, it would seem, put the image of the university before the well-being of people.

According to Loop 21, in 2001 JoePa and other university officials ignored and/or attempted to cover up a series of death threats made against black students in Happy Valley, including then-quarterback Rashard Casey.

Assata Richards, one of the students who attempted to bring these letters to the attention of the university, recalls Paterno's reaction to the death threats they had received:

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“We asked him to talk to the players because we were concerned about their safety,” says Richards, “and he said in that meeting that he would never do anything to put the university in a bad light. So we said, ‘Then you are choosing the university over students lives.’”

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Chilling revelations, to be sure, ones that extend a whole new meaning to the ominous phrase "lack of institutional control."

If Pete Carroll and Mike Garrett turning a blind eye to sports agents providing illicit benefits to Reggie Bush was enough to justify a two-year bowl ban and the loss of 30 scholarships over three years for USC, then what, exactly, would the cover-up of child rape and racially-charged death threats constitute in terms of punishment?

The death penalty? Not likely, at least in this day and age where the cash cow of college football is held up with such nauseating reverence that administrators are willing to sacrifice every shred of decency to keep the milk pumping.

The NCAA wouldn't dare put its neck on the line to so harshly strike down a football program that is among its most successful and recognizable "brands."

Though, frankly, the NCAA probably should have Penn State shut down its football program for a year or two, at least long enough to give the university time to clean house.

Surely, the scandals that have rocked Penn State are much more deplorable than anything boosters did at Southern Methodist in the 1980s and, as such, deserve at least as much of a hammer-down as the NCAA brought in that case.

They couldn't possibly crack down on a storied program like Penn State that way, right? That would devastate the whole community, right?

As devastating as it was for those boys whom Sandusky raped while the university turned a blind eye? As devastating as it was for those African-American students who lived in constant fear of bodily harm while Paterno and other Penn State officials ignored their cries for help?

The effects of whatever punishments the NCAA imposes on Penn State will fade long before the wounds left behind by these scandals can even begin to heal. And if, in fact, two wrongs don't make a right, then the NCAA must use what little backbone it has to strike Penn State down.

If that means a year or two without football in Happy Valley, then so be it.