Is the Penn State Punishment Fair?
Today the NCAA announced that it is imposing unprecedented penalties on the Penn State University football program. The penalties include both retroactive penalties (such as vacating previous wins), future penalties (such as a prohibition from playing in bowl games for four years) and very large monetary penalties, to the tune of $60 million. In addition, the Big 10 Conference is applying its own set of penalties, which will effectively bar Penn State from sharing revenue from bowl games. The reaction has been mixed. On one hand, former players have weighed in on Twitter with tweets to the effect that they had nothing to do with Jerry Sandusky's horrendous crimes, so why should their records suffer? Further, there are many who continue to maintain that the late Joe Paterno did no wrong. He reported Coach Sandusky's alleged (at the time) crimes to his nominal superiors. Of course, the word "nominal" is key here. If anyone was in charge of the Penn St