Penn State Office of Physical Plant workers cover the statue of former football coach Joe Paterno near Beaver Stadium on Penn State’s campus in State College, Pa., on Sunday, July 22, 2012. The university announced earlier Sunday that it was taking down the monument in the wake of an investigative report that found the late coach and three other top Penn State administrators concealed sex abuse claims against retired assistant coach Jerry Sandusky. (AP Photo/Centre Daily Times, Christopher WeddleRALPH D. RUSSO and TOM COYNE
Now the NCAA gets its say on Penn State.
College sports’ governing body was expected to deal a series of heavy blows to the Nittany Lions football program on Monday, less than two weeks after a devastating report accused coach Joe Paterno and other top university officials of concealing child sex abuse allegations against a retired assistant coach for years to avoid bad publicity. A news conference was scheduled for 9 a.m. in Indianapolis.
A multi-year bowl ban, lost scholarships, recruiting limits, probation and a multimillion-dollar fine all seem likely for the program Paterno built into a national power under the slogan of “success with honor.” And the NCAA, heavily criticized for its sometimes-ponderous pace in deciding penalties as scandals mounted at Ohio State, Auburn, USC and elsewhere, acted with unprecedented swiftness in arriving at what it called “corrective and punitive” sanctions for a team that is trying to start over with a new coach and a new outlook.
The NCAA announced no details Sunday in serving notice that it would indeed weigh in on perhaps the worst scandal in American college sports history. President Mark Emmert cautioned last week that he had not ruled out the possibility of shutting down the football program altogether – the so-called death penalty, famously used against Southern Methodist a quarter-century ago – saying he had “never seen anything as egregious” as the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal.