Bumped and Updated below the fold...P

Interesting article this morning...

If recent reports that Joe Paterno and Penn State worked together to cover up what they knew of Jerry Sandusky’s shower activities with young boys are true, sports law experts who spoke with The Patriot-News Saturday afternoon say there is merit for the Penn State football program to receive the death penalty.

The death penalty is the harshest punishment the NCAA can mete out. To date, only one Division I football program — Southern Methodist — has been dealt that punishment. It prohibits a program from competition for at least a year and usually is imposed only after repeated rules violations.

University of Toledo sports law professor Geoffrey Rapp said that until Saturday he didn’t think the crimes that resulted from the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal at Penn State fell under the purview of the NCAA.

But that changed with CNN reporting the discovery of an email chain from February 2001 where Penn State officials agreed to speak to Sandusky about "future appropriate use of the University facility" and then contact officials at The Second Mile, Sandusky’s charity, and the Department of Welfare about the case. A day later, after talking to Joe Paterno, they had changed their minds.

I am not comfortable with this.

I think the NCAA is woefully out of its depth in trying to investigate and enforce with any consistency "simple" cases like pay for play, extra benefits and academic fraud. The NCAA even going down this road regardless of what CNN reported is a train wreck waiting to happen.

I don't disagree that there is some apparent damning things in this email chain, but with Joe Paterno now dead and two of the three other people involved facing perjury charges The NCAA is not going to be able to investigate this thoroughly. Yes, they can use the material from the pending trials but this is the big leagues.

The NCAA is ill equipped to get involved with this.

Also, a lot of this happened way before any of the current players at PSU arrived, so why should they be punished. Of course, many said the same thing about USC when their sanctions were handed down and we all know the NCAA screwed that ruling up...this is much bigger deal so I don't see how they can get it right.

My friends at the BBC have their well reasoned take. They make some interesting points. Hard to really know where it goes...

I am certainly not a PSU fan. I respect their program and their traditions, but I was never a Paterno guy. I thought he stayed way too long. While he was the face of the program, many thought that his staff was the reason for PSU's success over the past few years. Hard to know from my view as I don't follow PSU. Paterno's performance in front of the camera during that ESPN Outside the Lines piece that looked at PSU's many off-field legal issues a few years back made him look like a bumbling old fool. I seem to remember a comment he made about going home and beating his wife after a bad loss (I tried to look for it but didn't find it). Even if the comment was in jest that comment turned me off to Paterno.

PSU has been through a lot...maybe not enough but giving PSU the "Death Penalty" is a pointless act that solves nothing.

I do know that this is far from over and PSU will continue be in the spotlight...

UPDATE:

Looks like the NCAA is going to take a wait and see approach but they will have some pointed questions for PSU.

Findings from Penn State's internal investigation into the case of ex-defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky are due Thursday. The NCAA says it has already been collecting information from the probe led by former FBI director Louis Freeh.

The NCAA says Penn State will have to formally respond to questions from NCAA president Mark Emmert, even after Freeh unveils his findings.

Like I said last week, the NCAA is ill equipped to handle this.

This is mission creep...another step closer to increasing their power.

Tomorrow is going to be interesting...