This isn't meant maliciously to be a call-out diary, but currently there's a diary on the reclist and I've read at least another this morning that are basically coming to the conclusion that the NCAA sanctions are rough, but not THE death penalty. THE NCAA "death penalty" refers to a specific feature of a set of penalties that include a full suspension of a program, which didn't happen for PSU...and I think that's where we're losing people. The EFFECT of the penalties, however, is that the PSU football program will be irrelevant for years, beyond the 4 that PSU will lose scholarships during.
http://espn.go.com/...
Link format, same one as above URL.
OK, so you didn't execute the man, but you cut off all his extremities and are feeding him swill. He's not dead, but he won't be the man he once was for a long time, and maybe not ever again.
The NCAA has hit Penn State with a $60 million sanction,
Roughly equivalent to an entire year's worth of football revenue. Before you cackle, that revenue supports a lot of programs that don't come anywhere near break-even, including the ones that exist because of Title IX.
Vacate wins until 1998.
Buh-bye Paterno winning records, bowl victories, the lot of them. Not really going to negatively affect anything EXCEPT that it will bolster the win counts for other programs competing with PSU for recruits.
Penn State must also reduce 10 initial and 20 total scholarships each year for a four-year period.
This is the REALLY, HUGE, BIG deal. Let's break this down:
85 scholarships available for D-1 college football.
Penn State loses 10 scholarships for incoming players this year that they would otherwise have. They vacate 10 more for the next 3 years, and that's fewer scholarships for a team already short on scholarship'd players.
Each year following, they will have 10 fewer to give out.
Oh yeah, and the players can leave immediately and play immediately somewhere else at the same level.
So, the 10 will hurt EVEN WORSE the following years, because they will be taken from already-depleted scholarship numbers.
The Big 10 is becoming more and more competitive, and I personally subscribe to the "warm-weather" theory: Football can be played for longer in the youth system in the South and West Coast, and the weather sucks less there: more desirable places for the best players to go.
Also, Penn State won't really be a viable D-I program for 4 years because of the sanctions, which is an entire high school career's worth of time: Penn State will be out-of-sight/out-of-mind for an entire generation of football players.
Penn State Football is essentially dead.