The NCAA's "cram-down" on Penn. St.

One PSU Trustee said, "It's like walking around with a dagger in you..."

Another said "Mark Emmert showed himself to be a sanctimonious hypocrite..."

These are expected reactions of the Penn St. faithful in reaction to the NCAA's sanctions against Penn. St.

Many will agree that PSU needed to be held accountable for something in all of this. Many PSU fans will disagree, but when the university president, whose hand wrote portions of the NCAA's rule book and who acted sanctimonious in his own right with his fellow university presidents in proclaiming about doing it the Penn St. way hid critical information, it is hard not to see that the NCAA wanted its pound of flesh.

Emmert and his cronies did EXACTLY what I expected them to do...they killed an ant with a hammer.

They were not going to be denied in expanding their power base and the Sandusky mess gave them the perfect opportunity. Armed with the Freeh Report and increasing public outrage many on the NCAA board looked to blow PSU football off the map...

That same morning, NCAA President Mark A. Emmert called Penn State President Rodney A. Erickson and told him the majority of the NCAA's Division I board of directors -- 18 university presidents -- had coalesced around a decision: Shut down Penn State's football program for four years.

This moment didn't feel like the beginning of a negotiation to Marsh. "In federal bankruptcy court," he says, "there is a concept of a cram-down -- a judge tells creditors, 'Here's the deal, this is all you are going to get, a few pennies on the dollar, and you should be happy with that.' You know, take it or leave it, because you don't really have any choice.

"Well, this was the NCAA equivalent of a cram-down."

That is pretty stunning to me.

USC fans know all too well that the notion of due-process is in name only. The NCAA can and does move the goalposts as they see fit....but this is a big reach.

I won't even try to figure out specifically what PSU/Paterno et al are all guilty of. I am more concerned at Emmert's power grab.

Now that the NCAA has gone down this road what is the next "case" they rule against?

I hate morality police. The NCAA is scary at best in enforcing its own rules on amateurism, does anyone have faith when they step out of that comfortable realm.

The other thing that stands out to me is the intentional lack of communication with the whole PSU BoT.

It makes me wonder if the NCAA used the same tactics against USC...especially when many were screaming to sue the NCAA. Because USC is a private institution that communication/information is private. I am pretty sure that PSU can't use that in general...and even if they could there was no way this was going to be kept secret, not with the explosiveness of this whole situation.

I would even say that the NCAA would have demanded public statements if no other reason than to further humiliate PSU.

Do the presidents of the NCAA member institutions really want to stay on this path? At what point do they say STOP!?

Reading the ESPN article shows just how bad the NCAA wanted to be a player in this.

That's a bad sign...