penn-state-penalized-NCAA.jpg
The N.C.A.A. president Mark Emmert, right, and Ed Ray, the president of Oregon State University and the chair of the N.C.A.A. executive committee at a news conference in Indianapolis on Monday. (Michael Conroy/Associated Press)
The NCAA has hit Penn State with a $60 million sanction, a four-year football postseason ban and a vacation of all wins dating to 1998, the organization said Monday morning.
The career record of Joe Paterno will reflect these vacated records, the NCAA said.
Penn State must also reduce 10 initial and 20 total scholarships each year for a four-year period.
The NCAA revealed the sanctions as NCAA president Mark Emmert and Ed Ray, the chairman of the NCAA's executive committee and Oregon State's president, spoke at a news conference in Indianapolis at the organization's headquarters.
"In the Penn State case, the results were perverse and unconscionable," Emmert said.
"No price the NCAA can levy with repair the damage inflicted by Jerry Sandusky on his victims," he said, referring to the former Penn State defensive coordinator convicted of 45 counts of child sex abuse last month.
The NCAA said the $60 million was equivalent to the average annual revenue of the football program. The NCAA ordered Penn State to pay the penalty funds into an endowment for "external programs preventing child sexual abuse or assisting victims and may not be used to fund such programs at the university."
With the wins from 1998-2011 vacated, Paterno drops from 409 wins to 298, dropping him from first to 12th on the winningest NCAA football coach list. Penn State will also have six bowl wins and two conference championships erased.
The Penn State athletic program will also be put on five-year probation and must work with an athletic-integrity monitor of NCAA's chosing.
"There is incredible interest in what will happen to Penn State football," Ray said at the news conference. "But the fundamental chapter of this horrific story should focus on the innocent children and and the powerful people who let them down."
The Big Ten will also sanciton Penn State. The conference has called an 11 a.m. ET news conference to announce to league-related penalties.
Penn State, in a statement released less than an hour after the sanctions were revealed, said it will accept them and that the "ruling holds the university accountable for the failure of those in power to protect children and insists that all areas of the university community are held to the same high standards of honesty and integrity."
"The tragedy of child sexual abuse that occurred at our university altered the lives of innocent children," school president Rodney Erickson said in the news release. "Today, as every day, our thoughts and prayers continue to be with the victims of Mr. Sandusky and all other victims of child abuse."
The penalties came a day after Penn State removed Paterno's statue outside Beaver Stadium, a decision that came 10 days after a scathing report by former FBI director Louis J. Freeh found that Paterno, with three other top Penn State administrators, had concealed allegations of child sexual abuse made against Sandusky.
The Freeh report concluded their motive was to shield the university and its football program from negative publicity.
The NCAA took unprecedented measures with the decision to penalize Penn State without the due process of a Committee on Infractions hearing, bypassing a system in which it conducts its own investigations, issues a notice of allegations and then allows the university 90 days to respond before a hearing is scheduled.
Following the hearing, the Infractions Committee then usually takes a minimum of six weeks, but it can take upwards of a year to issue its findings.
But in the case of Penn State, the NCAA appeared to use the Freeh report -- commissioned by the school's board of trustees -- instead of its own investigation.
"We cannot look to NCAA history to determine how to handle circumstances so disturbing, shocking and disappointing," Emmert said in the statement. "As the individuals charged with governing college sports, we have a responsibility to act. These events should serve as a call to every single school and athletics department to take an honest look at its campus environment and eradicate the 'sports are king' mindset that can so dramatically cloud the judgment of educators."
NCAA Division I Board of Directors and/or the NCAA Executive Committee granted Emmert the authority to punish through the nontraditional methods.
"It was a unanimous act," Ray said. "We needed to act."
Penn State athletics had been given no indication from the NCAA about what sanctions or penalties were to be levied on the department and football program, a source with direct knowledge of the situation in State College told ESPN.com's Andy Katz on Sunday night. If this were a traditional infractions case, the athletic department would have known up to 24 hours in advance.
A trustee said Penn State has hired Gene Marsh, a lawyer for Lightfoot, Franklin & White in Birmingham, Ala., and a former member and chair of the NCAA Infractions Committee. Last week, ESPN contacted Marsh, who also previously represented former Ohio State coach Jim Tressel, and he refused to confirm or deny he had been retained by Penn State.
A former Committee on Infractions chairman and current Division I Appeals Committee member told ESPN.com's Katz on Sunday the NCAA's penalizing of an institution and program for immoral and criminal behavior also breaks new ground.
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SOURCE: ESPN | The Associated Press
Andy Katz
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