Lingering Doubts about Lifting PSU Sanctions

NOTE: The NCAA is a membership organization. Universities are members. Did the NCAA do the right thing when it rescinded the sanctions it had imposed on Penn State?

Written by Ian Ablett, East Lansing, MI

The NCAA set out to prove true a “jock” stereotype—that athletes “get off easy.”

Last September the NCAA dropped remaining sanctions against the Penn State Nittany Lion football team … two years early. PSU had its post-season ban lifted and scholarship allowance restored.

Courtesy: AP

The NCAA’s move contradicted what its president, Mark Emmert, had said earlier: “Our goal is not to be just punitive, but to make sure PSU establishes an athletic culture and daily mindset in which football will never again be placed ahead of educating, nurturing, and protecting young people.”

The word “culture” is important. It’s a word that the NCAA stressed when it passed down the original sanctions in 2012.

But in lifting sanctions did the NCAA do the right thing? The answer isn’t a matter of what’s right for college athletics. It’s about what’s right for athletics, generally, and how institutions respond to athletes’ improprieties.

Take this example. In 2012, an Ohio teen — a member of a local high school football team — was convicted of raping an incapacitated 16 year-old girl, who had passed out from drinking at a party. He also took and sent nude photos of the victim. Last fall the tier-two sex offender re-joined his high school football team after being released from a juvenile detention center.

Courtesy: notpsu.blogspot.com

The sports culture in the US is seriously out of whack. What’s the response? Do institutions came more about protecting athletes than victims? Do they care more about team, conference, and school? Too often victims are blamed, discredited, intimidated, and belittled.

Sports figures tend to cover for one another, too. For example, when the NCAA lifted the PSU sanctions Michigan State head coach, Mark Dantonio, said: “I think it’s good for the Big Ten and it’s good for our division, and it just strengthens it.”

Courtesy: ralphcipolla.com

So it’s all about the competition? Is it all about wins?

The NCAA may not have or follow a Code of Ethics. It certainly has a business model.

The NCAA rescinded sanctions against Penn State. Was it the right thing to do? The question lingers.