NCAA in 2012: Don't do what Joe Paterno & PSU Did...NCAA in 2014: Do EXACTLY what Joe Paterno & PSU did.

As most of the PSU community was digesting the hideous performance, both morally and technically, of the latest Board of Trustees meeting to pass a resolution on settlement talks in the NCAA v. Corman lawsuit the NCAA itself landed perhaps the biggest blow for fraud, hypocrisy, and fence sitting ever seen.

I want to take you back to July 23rd, 2012 when NCAA President Mark Emmert unfurled the PSU Consent Decree. There are a plethora of problems with the 'conclusions' stated in the consent decree, based on the flawed Freeh Report, that others like Ray Blehar and the SMSS Freehdom Fighters have already covered in great detail that I am not going to cover here. I want to focus more specifically on a few points and contrast it to a resolution the NCAA adopted one week ago.

The NCAA consent decree stated the following:

Of course at the time people who cared to look closely knew this statement to be entirely false. The facts demonstrate that Spanier, Schultz, Curley, and Paterno did indeed report the incident to the only mandated reporter with responsibility for the child, Second Mile head and licensed psychologist Jack Raykovitz. By making this report, to a trained licensed professional outside of PSU they obviously were not concealing the report and expected it to reach authorities per the relevant PA statutes which Raykovitz was aware of and bound by. In addition at least two people in the case have independently testified that they believed the child welfare agency was contacted and to date no one has disproven this claim.

Furthermore, Joe Paterno specifically stated that he did not know how to handle these things (likely because PSU had never trained him due to their failure to implement Clery Act laws, a Board failure not a Football program failure) and therefore reported it per university policy to people he felt would, i.e. Curley and Schultz. Paterno also realized correctly that he should report what he was told and step aside, as his involvement could cloud the follow up either way. Finally sexual abuse investigators who are trained would not want him following up with or confronting the accused because it could cause problems, especially since he was not a direct witness to anything.

Despite all of this the NCAA attempted to use PSU as a punching bag for it's own PR purposes and sanctimoniously hammered the football program with the worst sanctions in history. Mark Emmert in his press conference stated:

"What we can do is impose sanctions that...ensure that Penn State will rebuild an athletic culture that went horribly awry. Our goal is not to be just punitive, but to make sure the University establishes and athletic culture and daily mindset in which football will never again be placed ahead of educating, nurturing, and protecting young people."

Of course anyone who knew Penn State football knew at the time this was a farce. Penn State had never under Joe Paterno put football ahead of anything else, especially educating and nurturing young minds. Penn State had been called the model for NCAA student athletes by Miles Brand, regularly ranked in the top of the NCAA in graduating it's players, and there are literally hundreds if not thousands of testimonials of Paterno imparting important life lessons onto his players and preparing them to be productive citizens in society.

Fast forward to last week. On August 8th, 2014 the NCAA approved a new resolution to deal with sexual abuse at schools. The most noteworthy element of the resolution from the point of view of the Sandusky scandal was this one:

The resolution essentially says that no member of the athletic department should attempt to intervene, direct, or control any sexual assault allegation. It is a truly odd stance to take for an organization which has admitted that they relied on Freeh's report to justify the sanctions and agreed with it's conclusions. The issue being that Freeh's report, including it's recommendations, criticized the "Penn State 4" for not attempting to investigate it themselves:

This is the height of hypocrisy. In 2012 a (flawed) investigation which, if you are knowledgeable in child abuse laws and procedures, determined Penn State officials reported an allegation to exactly who the law says they should, but the report is used to claim some kind of 'moral failure' and 'lack of institutional control' by the NCAA to levy sanctions. The NCAA, backed by several members of the board, in violation University standing orders, told the world don't do what Paterno and Penn State did, but rather use your powers to intervene, or we will intervene and crush your town and football program. We will destroy the legacy of the greatest and likely most ethical coach to ever walk the sidelines. We will stain it's faculty, staff, students, and alumni for all time by calling them child rape enablers, a mark that will not likely wear off anytime soon. Yet now, in August of 2014, the NCAA adopts an official stance that no members of athletics should attempt to direct or intervene in a sexual abuse investigation. This is in direct contradiction to the Freeh report and the Consent Decree which relied on that report.

The NCAA effectively just said to the world - Do what Joe Paterno did, and that's our official position, in writing now. With a settlement pending in the Corman lawsuit, and the University likely knowing the sanctions will ease further this fall, it is likely the Board will continue it's official 'move forward' policy and like the NCAA, sweep this all into the past. Unfortunately for the Board and NCAA, there are people in the Penn State community who actually care about truth and kids and won't move on until these things see the light of day, even if they stain our university to it's highest levels. We will never move on.

It's time to burn this whole thing to the ground.