23 July 2012 (State College, PA)
At 9:00 am Monday morning NCAA President Mark Emmert announced sanctions
and penalties against Penn State University's football program due to the
ongoing abuse scandal. The most egregious penalties include a $60 million dollar
fine, a 4-year postseason bowl ban, and a 3-year ban of university officials
from seeing Christopher Nolan's new summer hit "The Dark Knight
Rises". The latter of the three punishments shocked the Nittany Lion
community the most.
“$60 Million Dollars?” current Penn State President Rodney Erickson started,
“No problem, we make that in just one football season alone. But the denial of
University Official’s right to view ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ cripples our
university beyond means.” Erickson continued saying that the penalty will
affect recruitment efforts the most with his “coaching staffs inability to
relate to whether or not Batman dies at the end.”
Penn State’s football recruitment efforts were already thought to be out
of date since 2001 when sources close to the staff said that the 74 year-old
Joe Paterno began to highlight the university’s “nifty weight thingies” and the
schools knack of throwing a “jim-dandy” of a shuffleboard tournament. Some recruits that were interviewed
additionally said that the glorified Paterno would take them and their families
out to dinner around “3:30 pm or 4:00 pm” then take a quick nap at the family's home before departing for the evening.
The sentiment of Erickson; however, is not unanimously felt around State
College. 2009 Penn State graduate Hunter Langel said that he feels “the
sanction on “The Dark Knight Rises” gives hope that something like this [abuse
scandal] will never happen again.” Some students agreed with Langel but as one
would suspect the feeling on campus is a split one. Take for instance current
PSU Junior Greg Kosar, who, along with his Omega Sigma fraternity brothers, is
planning on finding the recently removed Joe Paterno statue and taking it to
see Christian Bale battle Tom Hardy. “The thought that Joe Pa wouldn’t be able
to watch this movie kills me,” said Kosar. “He was never one to turn his back on
an event as big as ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ release.”
Amidst the movie controversy is the fact that Penn State will also
forfeit 10 scholarships this year and 20 the next 4 years. Although, this loss
of scholarships is widely believed not to deter the football program in anyway
due to Penn State boosters continuing to provide large cash gifts to players, a
routine practice around Division-I college football.
NCAA President Emmert has also sent a letter of suggestion to Big Ten
commissioner James Delany recommending that the two worst teams in the
conference play in an annual “Sandusky Bowl”. Emmert reportedly recommended
that the loser of the game would have to house soon-to-be convicted sex
offender Jerry Sandusky until the following years Bowl game.
No matter how you look at the penalties posed to Penn State and their
football program the fact remains that this form of abuse was an unprecedented
occurrence in college sports. The sentence of “The Dark Knight Rises” ban will
not only give victims and their families some form of justice, but it will also
send a clear message across Division-I football that corrupt programs will be decisively
disciplined from here on out. NCAA
President Emmert concluded his press conference by saying that he “know(s) ‘The
Dark Knight Rises’ was not as epic as ‘The Dark Knight’, but, besides for Jerry,
not seeing Anne Hathaway in a Catwoman costume is one of the best forms of
punishment I know.”
Photo Source: Joe Robbins/Getty Images http://tinyurl.com/csj9fmo
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