Two of the six entities investigating Pennsylvania State University announced their sanctions today. The National Collegiate Athletic Association allowed the university to continue playing football uninterrupted by suspension. It put the team on five years probation; fined the university one year's profit from the football team (payable over the five years); prohibited the team from playing in honorary and lucrative post-season "bowl" games for four years; reduced the number of future football players that the university could give free tuition to; permitted current players to transfer to other schools without penalty; and post facto vacated the team's football victories since 1998, when the school first learned of former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky's pedophilia. Yesterday evening, David Jones, the sportswriter for the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania newspaper referred to here in a previous post, wrote that if Penn State football could escape without a ban on its games being televised it would be a "victory." There was no TV ban.
Penn State plays its games in a group, or "conference," of universities called the Big Ten (which has 12 members). Conference members share the profits from the post-season games in which members play. The Big Ten also sanctioned Penn State today, announcing that it will take Penn State's share of this profit for the next four years and donate the sum to child protection agencies (For post-season profit purposes the next four years the Big Ten thus becomes...the Big Nine, or Eleven...B1G.)
So there you have it from the college sports entities. "In progress" as they say on TV are the investigations by the Pennsylvania Attorney General's office, the United States Department of Justice, the U.S. Department of Education, and the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, in addition to the civil suits by Penn State's victims.
Image: Penn State players carry Joe Paterno off the field in celebration of victory.
