Sunday, June 9, 2013

Fighting For The Other Side

The NCAA has seen it’s fair share of scandals in college football, but none of those scandals compare to what happened at Penn State University 2 years ago. On November 6, 2011 retired Penn State Football Assistant Coach, Jerry Sandusky, was arrested and charged on multiple accounts of child molestation.  Several of these accounts dated back to Sandusky’s days as an assistant coach under the late Joe Paterno. One account even occurred in the Penn State Football facility in 2001. Following the arrest, media coverage was “out of control.” Penn State University chose to manage the media risk by firing Paterno. To this day, many believe Joe Paterno could have done more to stop Sandusky. Instead of conducting an internal investigation, the NCAA used Penn State’s Freeh Report. Penn State hired former F.B.I. Director Louis Freeh to investigate.  Freeh concluded “"In order to avoid the consequences of bad publicity, the most powerful leaders at Penn State University repeatedly concealed critical facts relating to Sandusky's child abuse from the authorities, the Board of Trustees, Penn State community, and the public at large. Although concern to treat the child abuser humanely was expressly stated, no such sentiments were ever expressed by them for Sandusky's victims." The NCAA took Freeh’s report and handed Penn State Football the worst sanctions college football has seen since Southern Methodist University received the death penalty many years ago.  The NCAA sanctions included a 60 million dollar fine, a four-year football postseason ban, vacation of all wins dating to 1998, and a reduction of 10 initial and 20 total scholarships each year for a four-year period. The NCAA made an example out of Penn State in order to make sure this never happens again. Although some may think these sanctions are too harsh, I believe it was the right thing to do. After the 2001 incident, (a graduate assistant witnessed Sandusky molesting a child in the Lasche Building locker-room) Sandusky should have been arrested and banned from Penn State for life.  Instead, the incident passed and Sandusky continued to prey on young children for 10 more years. The graduate assistant told Joe Paterno what he saw that night, Paterno than relayed the information to his superiors. Paterno should have taken care of this incident himself.  Paterno could of saved several victims, his legacy, and the future of Penn State Football. Although these sanctions are tough, they may have not been tough enough. Current Head Coach Bill O'Brien is still recruiting very well. He recruited the number 1 quarterback in the class of 2014, Christian Hackenberg. He also won 8 games last season after losing several star players. Maybe the NCAA should have given PSU the death penalty. What do you think?

4 comments:

  1. I was thinking this is where you might go for this assignment. I know this is a polarizing argument on the penn state campus because of how important Joe Paterno was to the community. Not sure if you saw this clip of a phone interview with a girl from penn state who argues the opposite of your argument for this post.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OpxN69IEV4
    I'd love to see you write something from the other prospective stating that the school was punished too severely. I think that would be more challenging to write because of your conscious.

    The one criticism I have of this post is that it takes a long time for you to get to your thesis. I don't find out your opinion on the matter until more than halfway through the post. The facts about penn state scandals are nice but i'd be more interested in reading your opinion first before the facts. This is something I have a problem with in my writing. It takes me forever to get to my thesis. I'm trying to work on that for future posts.

    ReplyDelete
  2. This post was very hard for me to write. haha. I can not stand the NCAA! The Jerry Sandusky scandal was not a football issue. I have a hard time believing that Joe Paterno and his superiors tried to hide a child molester from the public. That youtube video made me hate Craig Carton even more haha. The girl made some valid points. Joe Paterno told the chief of police, what more could he do. Also, thank you for the criticism! I did take to long to get to my thesis.

    ReplyDelete
  3. It's extremely interesting to see you arguing this point. I worked at a radio station when all of this happened and it was all over our news so I heard a lot about it, even if I don't follow football that closely. You did a good job arguing your points, and I see that even more now reading your comment.

    I agree with Steve that you took a while to get to your actual thesis. I would have liked to hear a little more argument to go along with the facts. Don't necessarily remove them, because they are very important for the argument. Just expand on what you said. Also, think about breaking it into paragraphs. It's a little hard to read a solid block of text like that, especially if you have to scroll.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I forgot to mention this in the email:

    "Paterno could of saved several victims, his legacy, and the future of Penn State Football."

    Could of?

    You meant "could've." Could have saved.

    Don't do that again.

    ReplyDelete