Penn State gets their wins back Joe Paterno's 111 wins that were vacated will be restored - ESPN My favorite quote from the comments
On the other hand?!? I think NCAA might actually give Roger Goodell & NFL a tutorial on how NOT to run its business. Paterno is gone, kids are irreparably harmed, etc. - why does this even matter, for the sake of a dumb record?...T
By the same token, you have a team of players that had nothing to do with this that are stripped of wins as well, do they deserve that? What happened was terrible, but you can only kick a guy so much. Joe is dead - arguably because of this, and the real perpitrator gets 'life'....
Yeah, maybe you can have: "The 20XX football team went 8 and 3, **Paterno coaching record, 0 and 11." I do feel for the innocent players, just as if a coach was caught cheating.
PA really doesn't care about anything but wins; Paterno now in state hall of fame Joe Paterno Inducted Into Pennsylvania Sports Hall Of Fame - Onward State
The simple fact is you cannot rewrite history. They won on the field. A committee and their vote cannot undo that anywhere except in your imagination.
Sad as this whole affair was, not one player on ANY of those teams in, in any way, indicated to be involved, either by commission or omission. As such, why should THOSE players have their record sullied by the behavior of a man who wasn't even a coach at the time he committed his crimes. What he did was deplorable. He'll spend the rest of his life in jail, but the players are innocent, and shouldn't have THEIR records wiped out by Sandusky's, or Joe Paterno's behavior, which was unrelated to team activities. The NCAA overstepped with its initial penalties, PSU caved to end the pain. A mess overall. D
The NCAA didn't stop there, they cranked it up a notch, stepped into every high school in the country and a yanked a double hand full of college scholarships from various students that had not even met the people involved. Think of the 10th and 11th graders that got slapped around in all this... Sandusky needs to be guillotined. No question about that, but stop punishing the innocent and pretending that they have the power to change the score on a game that has already been played years ago.
Look at Armstrong's records, oh wait.... I could careless either way, but people put way too much energy into meaningless sports.
Athletic associations are clueless, like most "leadership" in this country. In NJ, we had a controversial vote to split parochial schools from non-parochial schools in an effort to "balance power". I guess the non-parochial schools don't want to "lose", because "everyone is a winner". Disgusting, but it was (thankfully) reversed. Now this - Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association has banned some cheering (e.g., "air ball!" or "na na na na, hey hey hey, goodbye!"). The world has gone mad: Wisconsin bans high school cheers that taunt opposition | Prep Rally - Yahoo Sports I used to be supportive of the NCAA, but now I see how screwed up they are. I'm very against athletes getting paid, but the NCAA really made their own bed there, so I'd be perfectly happy if they folded.
Totally different. Armstrong cheated. He broke a rule to gain an unfair competitive advantage. The rule was clearly illustrated from the beginning as well as the consequences if you choose to not follow the rules. It would be like winning a game because you had the other team's playbook. The NCAA is stripping victories just as punishment for something absolutely and completely unrelated to a football game between Penn State and (fill in the blank). Tell me the competitive advantage Penn State had because an ex-coach was a child molester. Tell me why a 10th grader should lose a scholarship as well. What part did that 10th grader play in all of that to be drug in and punished? And football is, most certainly, not a meaningless sport. You learn from sports very valuable lessons about yourself and life that you cannot get in a classroom, ever. Actually, not just football, but the point is the same.
I support precisely such a policy. Parochial schools, or more precisely, private schools, have the ability to recruit the best athletes available. Non-parochial schools, or more precisely, public schools, do not have that option, so the "playing field" is hardly level. Unless you can force the private schools to stop recruiting (unlikely), I support having separate championships for both.
I am assuming you mean a private school is not restricted to a particular zone, correct? Is that what all this is about?
In SE PA (the only area I have some experience with) the public schools regularly trounce the private schools, Catholic or not, with the exception of one or two powerhouses. There is no inherent advantage for the private schools in SE PA athletics, because the competition there is primarily academic. The non-parochial private schools are very expensive, promise a better education, higher SAT scores and that your kid will land in an Ivy League school or better, should you so desire. They do not guarantee your kid will get a football scholarship to Ohio State or Alabama, or any other powerhouse, and could not care less about that. The Catholic schools promise much the same as far as educational quality, although not to the extent the other private schools do, along with a nice dose of Catholicism on top. Private schools can wander far and wide to get the best students, the only limit is how far a parent is willing to drive to get their child to school. Catholic schools are territorial to an extent, the non-parochial schools are not. I suppose in other parts of the USA, the Catholic schools promise better athletics as well as a better education, but that's not my personal experience. D
Our public schools recruit too. It's dirty business, but I might agree on the Football field, I do NOT on the wrestling mats. NJ wrestling is among the best in the country, and our State tournament (individual) pits everyone against everyone. To separate out parochials is nonsensical. As an example - last year, the top parochial in our State (Bergen Catholic) had 4 kids in finals for different weights. One of the top publics (Brick Memorial - my wife's alma mater)...HAD 4 KIDS! No one is complaining about the publics, but the parochials need to be separated?? Life is a competition. I compete for a job, for a promotion, for a raise, for a spouse, for a house, for EVERYTHING. I want to compete against the best, I push myself to be the best I can be - the word "fair" is almost a curse in my vernacular. Separation was based on pressure from public schools that can't or don't want to compete. And if you can't - TOO BAD. Anyway, it was overturned here because most agreed with my POV.
Well said - and even if they were "better", there are a ton of other commitments that must be made. Example - one of the top high school football and wrestling youths is from my area. He decided to go to Bergen Catholic, a school with no dorms and 75 miles away. It's ridiculous and it's stupid, but he made the commitment to go there! I am absolutely impressed that he can handle it, as he's the same age as my oldest (freshman). He's getting help, for sure, but not many kids would want to be in his shoes (as evidenced by his brother, also an OUTSTANDING football player and wrestler, who decided to stay home at his local public school). The grass is always greener. Some schools simply don't want to compete. Loads of parochials in my neck of the woods that get pummeled by the publics (again, wrestling is a great example)...the parochials in the northern areas of NJ are the ones recruiting, but let me ask - why didn't that stop St. Anthony's of Jersey City? The Tournament of Champions (TOC) in NJ is open to public or private - why change it for football and wrestling? I'm ranting and getting off topic, but it's clear that athletic administrations are losing touch...seems to be a common theme these days.
Mine either. I went to a Catholic high school (John Carroll Catholic here in Bham). 82-86. We never won a football game from my freshman year until I was in my second year in college. Horrible. Academics were top notch, though.
Reinstating the wins is probably pretty meaningless. For the rest of our lifetimes, whenever you hear Penn State, won't you automatically think of the abuse? I know I probably will. That program is forever tainted.
I get what you're saying, two different situations. Yes, football is rather meaningless and people devote way too much energy into it. There's an incredibly small percentage of people who actually make a living doing so, and the ones that do end up with a life time of pains. Valuable lessons you cannot learn from a classroom, or just from normal life? That's a stretch, and I played sports my whole life. Look at the vast majority of NFL players, complete wastes of space outside of the sport.
It isn't a stretch. But like everything else that is "learned" some people just don't get it and never will.
I wonder if the new info is going to change this again. Joe Paterno Knew of Sandusky Abuse Allegations as Early as 1976, Insurance Company Claims - NBC News "The late Penn State University football coach Joe Paterno knew about sexual abuse allegations against former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky as early as 1976, according to an assertion in a Philadelphia court order made public Thursday. " http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/06/us/jerry-sandusky-victims-paterno-penn-state/index.html?sr=twCNN050616jerry-sandusky-victims-paterno-penn-state0957PMStoryGalPhoto&linkId=24234146 "CNN also revealed evidence that Paterno may have known about Sandusky’s crimes and failed to act even earlier than that. A man who was offered a settlement by Penn State after it acknowledged him to be a victim of Sandusky told the network that he was raped by Sandusky in 1971, spoke with Paterno and another university official about it, and was threatened with police action if he continued to talk about the incident."
