Do you remember the insane amount of hours you logged studying for that Chemistry exam? Now imagine that because one kid was caught cheating, the entire class failed the test and eventually failed the class. Would that be fair to the kids who passed because they took their time to study?
Now take that feeling and imagine that you are a National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) athlete. Then you find out that someone who graduated seven years ago went against NCAA regulations and because of it your current team cannot go to the playoffs, even though the individual was never your teammate. Why is it that the sanctions that the NCAA delivers are so harsh? Over the last couple of years, there have been quite a few scandals involving major NCAA Division I athletics programs.
Some of the more recent scandals include the recent sex abuse scandal at Pennsylvania State University, and Reggie Bush accepting pay while still at the University of Southern California. Also, players at both The Ohio State University and the University of Miami were caught accepting illegal benefits. The University of Miami is the only school that has not yet been levied with heavy sanctions, only because its investigation has been dragged out for more than a year.
All of these schools, aside from the University of Miami, have been hit with major consequences, including loss of scholarships, postseason bans, hefty fines, and the vacating of wins. While a few of the sanctions make sense, most of them do not.
In the case of Penn State, I think it fits the crime for the university to immediately fire former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky, as well as having to pay the $60 million fine from the NCAA — which is equivalent to Penn State’s annual revenue for their football program.
Penn State was also required to reduce the amount of scholarships offered for the next four years and vacate all wins dating from 1998. Plus, its team cannot go to the postseason for the next four seasons. After the NCAA found out that several Ohio State players were accepting illegal benefits and that Bush was getting paid while at USC, the NCAA said that they could not go to the postseason for two years and one year, respectively.
Why is it that the individuals who had nothing to do with the scandal are being punished? None of the Penn State players helped Sandusky cover up his despicable crimes. The current players at USC were not even teammates with Reggie Bush when he was accepting illegal benefits; they would have still been in high school when he was playing at USC. The postseason ban clearly isn’t hurting Bush. He had to give up his Heisman Trophy, but he’s still playing for the Miami Dolphins every Sunday, making $4.5 million a year.
The same concept goes for the loss of scholarships. Just because one individual made the wrong choice and went against NCAA regulations, does not mean that the future generation of athletes should suffer. Every time the NCAA revokes a scholarship from a school, that’s possibly one less kid who will have the opportunity to go to college. There are a lot of kids that rely on athletic scholarships to pay for their education.
Another thing that does not make sense is when the NCAA vacates or takes away any games that the team won during the duration of the scandal. While I do admit that, in some instances, it is appropriate to vacate games, most of the time it is not. It is suitable to vacate games when the majority of a team is only at that school because they are getting paid. There are scandals that have nothing to do with the playing field itself, but only with an individual tied to the program — as it is with Penn State.
What Jerry Sandusky did to little kids is beyond comprehensible, but making the players on the football team suffer for an assistant coach’s personal actions is uncalled for. Instead of punishing the whole Penn State program, the NCAA should have only punished the people who knew about Sandusky’s crimes and did nothing about it. Now that the wins no longer count, the hours of hard work and dedication that the players at Penn State put in are meaningless. They can say they won so many games while they were there, but now anytime somebody looks in a record book, there will be a little asterisk denoting the games now mean nothing.
The NCAA needs to rethink their method of punishment. The point of an investigation is to find out exactly what happened and who was involved. Instead of punishing the whole program, they should only punish the individuals who were involved — whether it is fining the individuals, forcing them to resign, or even making them pay back their benefits.
