Can someone explain this in English? I do not follow sports.
NCAA's punishment of Penn State is meant to send a message
Published: Monday, July 23, 2012, 9:37 AM Updated: Monday, July 23, 2012, 10:21 AM
By JEFF FRANTZ, The Patriot-News The Patriot-News
The NCAA handed down a harsh judgement against Penn State's football program.
Penn State will be banned from bowl games for four years. It will lose 20 scholarships a year for four years. It will pay a $60 million fine -- a year's average gross annual revenue for the football program. That money will be used to fund programs to prevent child abuse. Penn State can't pay that fine with academic money or by cutting other athletic scholarships.
Christine Baker, The Patriot-NewsPenn State students and others awaiting the NCAA announcement at the HUB on the State College campus.
And the Nittany Lions' 109 wins between 1998 and 2011 have been vacated. Joe Paterno is no longer the winningest Div. I football coach of all time.
NCAA president Mark Emmert said the NCAA crafted the punishment as a consent decree, which the university has signed. No appeal is expected.
The penalties are meant to carry a message, Emmert says. Big sports, he said, have become too big to fail, and in some cases, too big to question.
Penn State signed an athletics integrity agreement with both the NCAA and the Big Ten to implement the recommendations in the Freeh report.
The NCAA considered shutting down Penn State football, Emmert said, but thought it would punish too many innocent people. He said Penn State President Rodney Erickson and board Chairwoman Karen Peetz are already taking necessary steps to push the university forward.
Penn State's current players will have the opportunity to transfer to another school without having to sit out a year. Any player who wants to stay at Penn State, but not continue to play for the football team will be allowed to convert their scholarship to a grant.
NCAA President Mark Emmert, right, during a news conference as Ed Ray, NCAA Executive Committee chair and Oregon State University president, looks on at left, during a news conference in Indianapolis, Monday, July 23, 2012. The NCAA has slammed Penn State with an unprecedented series of penalties, including a $60 million fine and the loss of all coach Joe Paterno's victories from 1998-2011, in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal."If the university culture had been open,transparent,forthcoming,collaborative as Rod Erickson and Penn State's Board of Trustees have been over the last year, we wouldn't be having this conversation," said Edward Ray, chairman of the NCAA's executive committee.
In decided the penalties, the NCAA stepped outside its standard
disciplinary process. Instead, it empowered Emmert to hand down
penalties.
"We needed to act, and we needed to act quickly and effectively," Ray said.