NCAA announces Penn State’s football sanctions are essentially over

The U.S. Department of Education announced Thursday it plans to fine Penn State nearly $2.4 million for violations of the Clery Act, the federal law that governs crime disclosure at universities participating in federal aid programs.

The announcement is connected to Penn State’s Jerry Sandusky child sexual abuse scandal, which started to unfold publicly in 2011. But the Education Department seeks to fine the school for reporting errors that reach well beyond Sandusky and the football program, where he worked from 1969 until 1999. Sandusky was sentenced to 30 to 60 years in prison in 2012.

Tuesday at Big Ten Media Days, head coaches fielded questions about negative recruiting from Penn State writers. That came after Penn State athletic director Sandy Barbour said opposing teams are lying to recruits and claiming the Nittany Lions could again be put on NCAA probation for the Jerry Sandusky scandal.

“It’s not factual,” she said to the Associated Press. “It’s one thing to take facts and skew them a little bit. It’s another thing not to be factual.”

STATE COLLEGE, PA. -- Late in the afternoon on National Signing Day someone at the University of Pittsburgh student union found the fax number for the football offices at Penn State.

PSU graduate assistants discovered the message, which featured some colorful greetings and a mention of the two schools’ Sept. 10 meeting at Heinz Field.

1. Two years ago, the NCAA vacated 112 of Penn State’s football wins as part of sanctions having to do with an alleged coverup of Jerry Sandusky’s sexual assaults.

2. Friday, after walking back most of its other sanctions along the way, the NCAA restored those 112 wins as part of a legal settlement whose broader impact was finally getting $60 million in PSU money sent to children’s charities. This again made Joe Paterno No. 1 in all-time Division I wins in the official records, with 409.

This is why they’re doing that.

The NCAA will restore Joe Paterno’s 111 vacated victories at Penn State, the organization announced Friday, as part of a proposed settlement with Pennsylvania state officials. The former head coach is now back on top of the all-time Division I leaderboard, with 409 career victories (one more than Grambling State’s Eddie Robinson).

The punishment was originally levied after in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky sexual abuse scandal. Scholarship sanctions and a ban on postseason play for the football program were also instituted and later lifted. The school will still donate $60 million to “activities and programs for the prevention of child sexual abuse and the treatment of victims of child sexual abuse.” This financial commitment was a stipulation of the original sanctions.

After previously ending Penn State’s postseason ban and giving the team back the scholarships it lost, the NCAA could take another step and reinstate former coach Joe Paterno’s vacated wins, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Paterno, who passed away in 2012, had all of his wins from 1998 through 2011 vacated. He had set the Division I record of 409 wins, ahead of Grambling’s Eddie Robinson, who had 408. However, the vacated wins brought his total down by 111, to 298 victories.

When the NCAA was determining how to punish Penn State for the Jerry Sandusky scandal, certain members of the college sports governing body felt it didn’t really have jurisdiction to punish the school’s athletic program, as revealed by certain internal emails uncovered by Onward State. (Penn State has responded to the story.)

The NCAA certainly didn’t come to its decisions lightly. However, the organization appears to have been working to justify a punishment it was already leaning toward.

For better or for worse, many programs have a clearer picture of where they’re going to be come January. Vegas has a clearer picture as well, releasing new odds after two weeks of action.

Florida State, Alabama, Oregon and Oklahoma remain the favorites, with the Seminoles still on top, via Bovada.

Monday, the NCAA quietly released the news that the remaining postseason and scholarship sanctions against the Nittany Lions from the Jerry Sandusky scandal have been lifted. While the decisions to sanction Penn State and revoke those sanctions were controversial, this article will focus only on the recruiting impact.

“There can be no doubt that having the ability to play in a bowl game will entice even more highly ranked prospects to consider the Nittany Lions,” Polak said. “Just a year ago, (five-star cornerback) Jabrill Peppers stated that had Penn State been eligible for a bowl game his freshman season, they would have made the race with Michigan even closer than it was. The appeal to play in bowl games, where everyone on the team gets to travel and play against an unfamiliar opponent, gain even more television exposure, be given a typically ridiculous package of gifts, and compete for an annual trophy is easy to understand.”

Penn State’s bowl ban is lifted, which is absolutely cause for celebration. The kids playing football at Penn State are no longer being punished for the acts of a pervert they never met who will rot in prison for the rest of his life, or the role a coach they didn’t sign up to play for played in his actions. Penn State football has survived its harsh punishments, and its stronger than it was before. Go nuts. You deserve it:

However, we think the kids *might* have gotten a tad carried away. Not dangerously so. Just a little bit:

If it wasn’t clear before, it is now. The NCAA is just making this all up as it goes along. Two years after the organization levied an unprecedented four-year bowl ban and major scholarship losses to Penn State football following the Jerry Sandusky investigation, it handed down another unprecedented decision, immediately ending those sanctions.

I’m uninterested in a moral debate over whether this was the right thing to do, because I’m unsure myself. I think punishing players who had nothing to do with the scandal by holding them out of bowl games for their entire careers was misguided, though. Reasonable people are going to disagree about how this should have been handled, and by whom, and that’s okay.

Penn State’s postseason and scholarship sanctions have been reversed, allowing the Nittany Lions to play in a bowl and other postseason games this season and have a fuller roster next season, the NCAA announced Monday afternoon.

The NCAA gave an historic punishment to the program in 2012 in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky scandal, including a four-year bowl ban, vacated wins, scholarship reductions and a $60 million fine. The scholarship sanctions were previously reduced in September 2013.

The NCAA’s punishment of Penn State football players and coaches for the Jerry Sandusky scandal was never a fitting punishment. It never could’ve been. We said this before and immediately after the scholarship sanctions, bowl ban, and assorted other penalties were handed out.

An imperfect metaphor: it was a traffic court trying to punish an act of international terrorism. Imperfect because traffic courts involve legitimate judicial processes.