This week's issuance of the Freeh report on the Jerry Sandusky case saw a former head of the trustee board resign his trustee post today. It's become more probable that Penn State might see the death penalty for at least its football program.
On one hand, most of the people responsible for the cover-up are either dead or heading to jail; the current players at PSU weren't in on it and the coaching staff has been overhauled. However, when I did a Facebook post on that earlier this week, I neglected the deterrent value of punishment; it often isn't just to punish the perp, but to let others thinking about doing something similar think twice.
The one main application of the death penalty (actually a suspension of the program for a number of years rather than a total ban) was of the Southern Methodist football program. They had their 1987 season canceled due to an ongoing string of under-the-table payments to players with the knowledge of the school's president on down; that president, Bill Clements, wound up getting elected governor before things hit the fan.
Ongoing rapes of boys is far nastier than a booster slush fund for players; the latter is against NCAA rules but otherwise legal. For a poor kid struggling to make ends meet beyond having tuition and the dorm-room paid, it might even be something of a good thing outside of the shadiness of it all.
However, there is nothing good out coming from raping a child. If SMU got a year off from football and an away-only 1988 for running the second-best pro football team in Dallas, then Penn State would be lucky to be allowed to stay in the NCAA at all. I posited a 13 year suspension of the program to match the 13 years of cover up, but an indefinite suspension might not be out of the question.
It would leave an interesting hole in the Big Ten schedule and might result in PSU being replaced by another school (Cincinnati, maybe? Notre Dame, if they want to give up that Switzerland of football thing?) but that's a secondary matter.
"How many pedophile coaches are there to prevent?" Not that many, one would think and hope, but we have the prospect of more mundane rapes that might well be covered up.
Here's the story-line in my head. Star player has his way with a young coed and utters the nasty c-word, "consensual" when she presses charges; young lady is cast as a slut and nothing happens. The powers that be at a school might make sure the accuser is made miserable rather than doing the proper things.
Has that happened? Probably. Would a school think twice about allowing it to happen if PSU gets a trip to Jack the Dripper? You betcha, as the Sage of Wasilla would say.
P.S.-5800 Google hits for Sage of Wasilla; I guess that was too easy.
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