Horns247 Board

It's late for me to be throwing my 2-cents in here, but first you have to look at why Paterno let Sandusky continue knowing what he was doing. Folks, it was to preserve and protect Paterno and the football program! That's it. Nothing more or less. Paterno and his jolly old coharts at Penn St chose to do whatever to protect the FOOTBALL program and Paterno's legacy.

Having said that, how can anyone be happy with any ruling other than complete, "the school is dead in the water forever death penalty?" Anyone who can sit there and type that they are concerned for the athletes or the football program at Penn St is absolutely crazy. As with any school, there must have been rumblings about what was going on by players. You can't keep stuff like that quiet when you are the guys taking the showers after games! You are making these football players and coaches out to be uninformed on the subject. Personally, I believe a lot of the guys knew or at least had ideas about what had transpired but chose to look the other way also.

If I was the SMU president, I would be suing the NCAA. If there was ever a school that deserved the death penalty it is Penn St. I think they got off pretty damn light under the circumstances. They still get to have a football program and that is totally and uneqivically wrong.

Agree with Penn St. not getting what they deserved. I don't follow anyone's thinking that this is worse than the death penalty. USC got a 2 yr bowl ban, Penn St got 4 yrs. USC lost 30 scholarships in 3 yrs, Penn St lost 4. SMU got the death penalty for cheating. The penalty for Penn State should have covered the same 5 years that their probation covers, slow and painful death, another yr of lost scholarships and bowl ban. All the little coeds we saw on TV with the look of horror as they heard the penalties should have seen the look of horror on the children's face as they were being raped by Sandusky as paterno and his boys stood by and did nothing, or the look of horror on the parents face when they learned of this.

This is a slow death. USC never fell below 75 total scholarship players Penn State will be limited to 65 (two more than an FCS program). USC players didn't have the option to transfer without penalty.

Also USC was on bowl probation for 2 years. They have recruited so well because they could tell recruits that they might only miss one bowl game -- if they redshirted, and that they would just reload.

Hell, USC used the scholarship reduction to cut out dead weight and then racked up two straight top recruiting classes.

Any recruit who goes to Penn State knows they won't sniff a bowl game during their career. This won't reach the full scholarship limit at least until 2020.

These penalties gut the program for at least a decade, more than likely two decades.