The fact that so many high-level Penn State employees knew and did nothing should eliminate the idea of a lack of constitutional control, says filmmaker Thaddeus Matula.
"Complete institutional control from what I'm reading," Matula told IBTimes. "These things were known and nothing was done about it. When you have an institution that knows something of this nature, then there is institutional control."
Matula would know a bit about institutional control and the NCAA handing out violations. He's the director of the critically-acclaimed ESPN documentary, Pony Excess, the story of Southern Methodist receiving the death penalty in the 1980s.
SMU was one of the most dominant teams in college football in the 1980s -- in part through the spectacular running back tandem of Eric Dickerson and Craig James -- but it all came crashing down in 1987. The school was caught paying for players to come and play at the Dallas-area school and received the first-ever "death penalty."
A select group of boosters, according to Matula, were trying to help out players of poor socio-economic backgrounds and couldn't stop themselves once the NCAA started to get involved. The school eventually decided to try to just ride it and stop the payments internally, but it backfired.
"It started as guys thinking they were doing the right thing to help these kids out," he said. "To let them have fun in the big city or to go out for pizza and then it got out of control."
"But what you had at SMU pales in comparison to other NCAA football scandals in that all the money changing hands wasn't all that much. It's blown out of proportion because they got the death penalty."
The NCAA banned SMU from televised and bowl games for two years and essentially neutered the program for 20 years. The governing body has never used the penalty on a football program since 1987, but some have called for it to be used recently.
I keep hearing people talking about the death penalty for Penn State, but I thought that the NCAA only imposes sanctions for behavior that gives the school's program an illegal competitive advantage. Is there more to this?
Topper wrote:I keep hearing people talking about the death penalty for Penn State, but I thought that the NCAA only imposes sanctions for behavior that gives the school's program an illegal competitive advantage. Is there more to this?
Topper wrote:I keep hearing people talking about the death penalty for Penn State, but I thought that the NCAA only imposes sanctions for behavior that gives the school's program an illegal competitive advantage. Is there more to this?
When the early facts of this situation first came out, I did not think that NCAA involvement was proper believing that it was a university and criminal matter. With revelations this week that the chief Penn State University compliance officer had resigned in 2007 in a major dispute with regard to disciplining football players I have really changed my mind on the situation. Reportedly she clashed repeatedly with Paterno over a 5 year period finally escalating to a boiling point with the dicipline of 6 players charged in a criminal matter in 2007. According to media accounts she engaged in a direct personal confrontation with Paterno and recently fired President Spanier at which time she was advised by Spanier that in diciplinary actions of football players that Paterno alone would handle such matters. In effect, football players were to be handled apart from the university honor code and diciplinary standards. It should be noted that Penn State has had more than 22 football players arrested and/or involved in university "incidents" resulting in unpublished/undefined diciplinary actions the past 10 years. This situation has continuted to fester both before and subsequent to her resignation in protest that football players were beyond the PSU honor code and not subject to the same discipline/guidelines as other PSU students. At this point it is clear to me that all institutional control of the football program at PSU was totally lost and that this loss of control was at the specific direction of former President Spanier vesting all diciplinary review and adjudication solely in the control of Paterno without any rules, guidelines....etc. PSU football players were no longer " student athletes" ( a term which is a joke in itself on most campuses) and an entity unto themselves. I agree with Thad that this situation is total loss of institutional control from every link in the chain of command from the university president down to the head football coach. The death penalty should be a major consideration in the case.
I'm a doing a new NCAA College Football Scandal doc... can't announce it yet, but it's NOT Penn State. I should be able to announce it as early as Dec 1, but I might keep it under wraps for a bit after that. We'll see. But it's gonna' be a good one!
Eric Dickerson in Pony Excess
"I've love winning man, it's like better than losing." - Ebby Calvin "Nuke" LaLoosh
