In Penn State case, NCAA takes another hit

Two months ago, State Sen. Jake Corman returned a call to his office and shared his disbelief over the power and presumptuousness of the NCAA.

After the Jerry Sandusky child-molestation scandal, the NCAA and Penn State had agreed in 2012 to a consent decree that was born of the details released in the Freeh report and that was withering in its effects: a $60 million fine, the vacating of 111 victories under coach Joe Paterno, a ban from postseason play, the removal of football scholarships.

Corman and Pennsylvania Treasurer Robert McCord had subsequently filed a joint lawsuit against college sports' governing body, and the ostensible purpose of the suit was so simple: Explain yourself. Tell everyone where you derived the authority to punish Penn State like this.

As part of the discovery process, the NCAA released internal e-mails that showed it had put the sentence before the jurisdiction.

Association officials doubted that they even had the power to reprimand Penn State, but no matter: They would use public outrage over Sandusky's evil acts and the university's failure to stop him as leverage, and they would "bluff" the university into accepting the decree. They would stretch their oversight and influence into areas where they suspected it didn't belong.

"This is the beginning," Corman said that November afternoon over the phone. "There will be a lot more."

He was right. Those e-mails - their content, their tone, their aftermath - laid the pretext for what, according to Inquirer sources, is happening now: negotiations between the NCAA and Penn State's board of trustees to continue reducing those penalties.

Already, the NCAA had restored scholarships and lifted the Nittany Lions' postseason-play ban. Now, with Corman and McCord's lawsuit threatening to reveal more once it goes to trial, the association apparently is considering restoring Paterno's victories and allowing the $60 million fine to be used for child protection within the state and at the university.

Now, it's the NCAA that is capitulating, not Penn State. From Ed O'Bannon and those Northwestern athletes daring to believe they should be compensated for their likenesses and labor, to a system of haves and have-nots that has become bloated with money and grown beyond control, here comes one more prospective challenge to the association's legitimacy.

As part of a possible settlement, sources told The Inquirer, Penn State might have to acknowledge that the NCAA had the right to sanction it. But why include that provision unless the NCAA's assertion of authority was dubious to begin with? The convenient ad hominem attack on the lawsuit initially was that, because Corman represents Centre County and, in turn, State College, he must have been putting on a show for his constituency, for the bluest-and-whitest region in Pennsylvania. But the upshot of his pandering to all those Penn State fans in his backyard and throughout the state was that he made it possible to get a fuller picture of how an organization with nothing to stand in its way, with nothing to check or balance it, would act.

There were always two questions at play concerning the Sandusky scandal and Penn State's role in it. The first was whether the university - principally Paterno, president Graham Spanier, and athletic director Tim Curley - had done enough to try to stop Sandusky. The Freeh report concluded they had not, and for that dereliction of moral duty, those three would have to answer perhaps to police and prosecutors and certainly to their consciences.

The second question was whether the NCAA had any jurisdiction in the matter, and that question was entirely separate and distinct from the first. It had nothing to do with the nature or severity of Sandusky's crimes. It had nothing to do with the reactions of Penn State's community, alumni, and students to those crimes - regardless of how immature and tone-deaf some of those reactions may have been, regardless of the reactions' confirming football's outsized importance within the university's culture.

Surely, there will be Penn State devotees crowing about this news, about their sainted JoePa possibly having his good name and his victories restored. But Paterno was never a saint. He was a great college football coach, a man whose flaws included the combination of tunnel vision and naivete that prevented him from seeing clearly what Sandusky was doing. And besides, that second question didn't have anything to do with him, anyway. It had everything to do with prudence and patience and restraint, with officials' understanding their proper function and role and not seizing an easy opportunity for self-righteousness by bringing a hammer down on an easy target.

The NCAA took that opportunity in 2012. Its people shattered Penn State's football program because they could, and they've been putting the pieces back together ever since. The question that Jake Corman put to them was so, so simple: Explain yourselves. Their answer speaks for itself.

@MikeSielski