Penn State’s NCAA sanctions reduced: Players, coaches and administrators react

The NCAA announced Tuesday that it is reducing its sanctions against the Penn State football program, lessening the initial scholarship reductions levied against the team. This led to a plenty of reactions from across the country, as well as within the Penn State community.

Bill O’Brien had this to say about it:

“Since I was hired here, we’re just trying to do what’s right for the student-athletes here,” O’Brien said. “We’ve made mistakes. We’ve owned up to those. If we sent an improper text or made a [prohibited] phone call, we reported them right away. We’re certainly not perfect. I think we have a good leader here in [university president] Rod Erickson.

“We’re just trying to do the best job we can for Penn State every day.”

“We always felt once we were able to get a young man and his parents here on campus, the place sold itself,” O’Brien said. “It’s a place where you can get a fantastic degree. It’s a place where you can play in the Big Ten. … As far as recruiting the individual athlete, that was never difficult here. The numbers were the difficult part.”

“When the rules changed a little bit, we adapted to those rules,” he said. “The rules now are we can sign a few more guys and can get back to 85 scholarships a little bit sooner. We can’t go to a bowl or compete for a championship, but we definitely can get more on an even playing field numbers-wise, and that’s what we’re concentrating on as a staff.”

Penn State president Rodney Erickson:

“The action taken today by the NCAA, following its review of the positive report issued this month by Sen. George Mitchell, recognizes the significant efforts over the past year to make Penn State a safer, stronger institution,” said Penn State President Rodney Erickson. “This news is certainly welcome to our University community, particularly the student athletes who may want to attend Penn State and will now have the means to do so. As we promised throughout this process, we are committed to continuing to improve all of our policies, procedures and actions.”

“The resiliency displayed by those young men, as well as our entire student body is something of which we are proud,” Erickson said. “I would also like to thank the literally hundreds of University administrators, faculty, staff, students and alumni whose hard work over the past 15 months helped lay the groundwork not only for this action by the NCAA but, even more importantly, for a better Penn State.”

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